The first meeting of the 2010/2011 year will take place:

WEDNESDAY September 15 in A203 Mr. Unsinger’s Room at Lunch!

^{-If interested in learning about the cruel and unusual punishments Animals are forced to go through through Farming, Cosmetic, and entertainment industries. This year we plan on completing more community service activities to help send the community, school, and possibly the world our message to help stop Animal Cruelty. During the meeting we will only be introducing the year’s plan on activities and learning opportunities for ALL members. come join us if this interests you in any way, and Bring your friends! oh yeah…..Free cookies shall be provided ;)}

join us and bring friends!

So today we just started out by basically discussing the opportunity to be our Junior Officers for the 2010/2011 school year. If you are interested applications are available through our email- hhs.aac@gmail.com.
Also if your interested i in doing summer volunteer work with the club then email us so we could sign you up on our summer sign-ups list so you can receive emails about events over the summer!

Our main focus this week was to take a look at the dissection industry which has actually created an industry because of the high demand of deceased animals by the schools around the country. The industry is actually at the point where they raise certain animals especially for dissection, and other schools just end up purchasing the deceased animals from private companies that literally go out and collect dead animals or get “free to good home” pets and in the end just slaughter them themselves.

In 1990’s in Mexico it was discovered that an Arizona company was sneaking hundreds of stray cats over the border to sell to to schools around the U.S for dissection. Children were often paid $1 for every cat they would bring to the company . In order to kill the cats, The inhumanely shoved the cats in bag and submerged them in water for hours until it was noticed the cats were deceased.

Although dissection does indeed help your learning and understanding of the internal organs, The animals are often soaked in very harmful liquids and chemicals. The chemical formaldehyde is used to preserve the animal before dissection, and during dissection but has also been known to cause nasal, throat, and lung cancer. 

BUT there is something you can do to end this! You ALWAYS have the right to ask for an alternative assignment, and your teacher should actually require the class signs a permission slip regarding the dissection. You may also encourage some of your classmates to choose an alternative as well or talk to your teacher about the whole doing an alternative assignment so the school is able to save money for about the 30 animals that will be saved :D

During this meeting we revealed the inhumanity behind animal use in the entertainment industry. We focused on the mistreatment of elephants in circuses. Trainers use various tactics of “controlling” the helpless elephants and shorten an elephants 70 year life span to about thirty years. Baby elephants constantly die from the abuse and those who survive are subjected to cruel trainers who have no issue electrocuting, hooking, and beating them. The violence was not used as a way to protect the trainers but rather as a way to instill absolute fear into the animal thus causing the elephant to do everything the trainer asks in front of an audience. A video taken by undercover PETA workers was donated by PETA and shown during the meeting. There is only one law protecting the animals: The Animal Welfare Act, which only states minimum guidelines for which the animals must be handled; the majority of circuses do not obey this law since there is no means of enforcement. The circus deprives its animals from everything that is natural to them, they are normally kept in tiny trailers/boxcars for 50 weeks with very limited access to food, medical care, and even water. Injured elephants are still forced to continue the performances/rides they are scheduled to do. Circuses DO NOT save animals! The best way to save animals is to protect their habitat, not to take them out of their niches and put them in extremely uncomfortable conditions. Kids learn nothing from circuses, the animals do not perform any tricks that are natural to their species. When circus animals are no longer “usable”, they are sent to hunting ranches or animal dealers where they usually face their violent death. So many countries and cities have banned the use of animals in circuses, for the sake of these animals America needs to be next. You can do so much to help, if you want to borrow the video or have any questions please send the AAC facebook page a message. These animals are chained and hooked by sharp metal bullhooks purely for entertainment. Remember that these businesses run on money and the only way they get this money is from you! You can stop this cruelty! FACTS: Elephants can feel a fly landing on their sking…imagine how painful the trainers tactics are. Baby elephants live with their mom until they are teenagers and are babysat by other elephants. Elephants mourn and bury the body of the dead with sticks and leaves. Tigers in the wild live in areas between 75-2000 square miles but spend their entire lives in a 4’X5’ cage in the circus (the only time they come out is to perform unnatural and painful tricks).

AAC revealed the secrets behind the food industry. Factory farming, which produces our main source of meat have introduced new tactics that go beyond cruelty. Much of this cruelty can be summed up in this video from goveg: http://www.goveg.com/factoryFarming.asp

There is some information we discussed through the presentation that is not included in the video (such as tactics and animal intelligence levels), but the video has had the most impact.

Watch! I think everyone should see this video at least once. This type cruelty can easily be stopped by individual action. So watch and make a difference :)

Announcements:

Applications for shadowing officers will be out soon

T-shirt designs due next wednesday (4/28)!

Next Meeting: Wednesday, April 28 *New event will be announced!*

Club News:

~First EVENT= Making animal awareness posters to hang around school on wednesday March 31 after skinny 7th, you will get hours!

~Next Meeting= March 31

Meetings are every Wednesday

~T-shirt drawings are due Wednesday April 7

~Bring any fleece material (to make toys for the humane society), start asking neighbors, parents, or friends for material and bring them to the next meeting!

~Stickers and cookies!

Summary of Meeting:

     During this meeting, AAC discussed the philosophical level of the acceptance of animal cruelty. Leading philosophers such as Rene Descartes (now known as the father of modern philosophy) believed that animals are machines made for humans. He and his followers conducted experiments where they nailed the paws of dogs and cats onto boards and tore their chests open in order to reveal their hearts. He argued that the noise an animal makes in these experiments is the same as the noise a machine makes when it runs out of oil. Philosopher Immanuel Kant agreed with most of Descartes arguments but also admitted that animals are sentient beings (having the capacity to feel and suffer). However, he still believed that animals are a means to human ends. The acceptance of these ideas led to the widespread belief of speciesm, a term coined by animal activist Peter Singer, a form of racism that puts one species above another. In speciesm, human needs and wants are seen as superior to that of any other kind of animal. Industries that exploit their animals for profit utilize speciesm to their benefit.

Despite Descartes and Kant, famous philosopher Jeremy Bentham, shifted society’s moral thinking of animals: “The question is not, “Can they reason?” nor, “Can they talk but rather, “Can they suffer?”. Bentham started the emergence of animal activism as people like Peter Singer began to feel responsible for animal cruelty. Singer has significantly lowered the amount of animal testing done in big cosmetic corporations such as Revlon.

AAC thought that members should know the philosophy behind the acceptance of animals as human property in order to intelligently tackle more controversial issues such as animals abused as livestock and for medical improvements (that we will go over in future meetings).

Key Points:

• Humane Society tentative sign-up list ($8). More details at next meeting
• T-shirt design contest! We will talk about it in greater detail at the next meeting
• Animal Cruelty in the clothing industry
• Donut Holes!

Today AAC revealed the secrets behind the clothing industry, focusing on fur and leather. Members learned the two strategies this industry uses to acquire its animals: trapping animals in the wildlife and breeding in ranches.

The traps hunters use do not always catch the type of animals they are designed for. Lots of dogs, cats, and other animals (that are illegal to use for their skin in America) are also caught. When the intended animal does get trapped, hunters are advised to stomp the animal to death so that the trap may be reused. Hunters do not need to check their traps every day, resulting in the starvation of the imprisoned animal. If an animal’s arm/leg gets caught, they usually chew off that limb in order to get free. However, their other body parts are more commonly caught (such as their noses/faces), which is much more painful. As ruthless as trapping is, animals bred on a ranch do not face any easier obstacles. Their lifestyles are similar to that of animals bred for food. Most leather comes from the beef industry since it makes very little profit off selling beef. Almost all their money comes from selling leather. Both strategies for obtaining these animals usually ends in skinning them alive.

Why? Because it’s faster and cheaper.

Leather and fur is constantly mislabeled. Most of the fur/leather industries get their animals from third world countries (especially in this recession). There, they use a variety of animals (most of which are cats and dogs) and conveniently mislabel them as fur/leather so they are legal to sell in America.

****Powerpoint will be posted shortly****

The only way these industries are in business is because of your support. Buying these products tells these companies that what they are doing is okay. If you do not agree with their tactics, you can help stop them.

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