CockadoodleMoo.org

In Reno, you see a lot of pro-meat bumperstickers. “Eat Meat — The West Wasn’t Won on Salad” is a popular one. A co-worker even has it on his desk. Where to respond? 

The West was actually “won” using genocide, racism and environmental destruction. It is interesting how opponents of veganism try to link it with being sensitive and thoughtful, with not being macho, with not being capable of massacres and rape. And, you know, I’m fine with that.

~ Mark

Mark: 

We're preparing a vegan Christmas meal for Dianne's family this year so we've been testing out some prepared foods. (We'll make the majority of stuff ourselves, but it's nice to have a few store-bought things to take the burden off.) So we've been testing some product. First up, Wholly Wholesome Dairy-Free Pumpkin Pie and Apple Pie. 

The pumpkin pie is simply awful. It's got a gel-like consistency, not creamy or pumpkin-y. And after it cooked, it got a thick pudding-skin-like top coat that was inedible. The crust was tasty, but we couldn't eat it more than one piece — and we eat all desserts.

The apple pie was fine. It was a typical store-bought, smallish apple pie. For less than half the price, you could make a much better one yourself with a pie crust and a can of apple pie filling. 

So the dessert we ended up going for? Our own chocolate turtle tort and five flavors of Purely Decadent soy ice cream. Cookie Dough flavor is killer; it's made with coconut milk! (I'll try to post the chocolate turtle tort recipe by year's end.)

This past weekend, we were invited to have a table at a big pet-adoption event at the Reno Livestock Events Center. "Livestock events" — how could we pass that up?

It was actually a great event — sponsored by Best Friends, SPCA of Northern Nevada, Nevada Humane Society and Shakespeare Animal Fund — that gave exposure to small animal charities and helped them get their word out and/or adopt rescued animals. We gave out literature from Farm Sanctuary (their recipe booklet and "Go Veg" kids stickers were a big hit), plus postcards of CockadoodleMoo and the latest edition of our newsletter Don't Have a Cow (ordering info is on the home page).

Dianne painted an awesome banner with a painting of Ally the chicken on it, as well as posters with photos of the animals. So here's where it got fun. Talking with dozens and dozens of people — none of whom were vegan — and giving them vegan stuff. One thing I'm horrible at is not judging people by their looks, and boy was I off-base at this event. 

I'm not good at talking with strangers and Dianne used to be worse, but ever since she got a job as a florist at a grocery store and is forced to deal with the public, she's far surpassed me. People I wouldn't have thought remotely interested in what we had to offer, she would say hi and offer them a newsletter. 

For instance, there were two shaved-head young women who I thought for sure would be down with all the vegan stuff looked at it and quickly averted their eyes and hustled away. Soon after them came two men in their 50s wearing baseball caps with golf-club logos on them. Dianne said hi and soon they were telling us how much they loved farm animals and each took a newsletter. 

There was a kind young woman with a pet massage business across the aisle from us. She was curious and would come over and talk and look at the materials and then go back to her place and come back a little later and take one of the items and go back and return for more. No idea how interested anybody might be, but we tried. Now we've got to get the web site going well for everybody who just got postcards with the URL. 

Of the hundreds of people there, we met only one vegan. She said, "Oh my god, I can't believe I finally met another vegan in this town." Then she turned to a guy with her, "See, other people are vegan, too!"

That was sort of our main goal, aside from generating exposure for the sanctuary: getting the word out that people who look like you really can be vegan and be healthy and happy while doing it.

Oh, one thing we learned within the first five minutes of the event was that our newsletter needed to be free. Everything but it had a sign saying "Free stuff". It had a sign saying "$4". But it quickly became apparent that no one would be interested in paying $4 to learn more about veganism. If our goal is to spread the vegan word, it had to be free. We ended up giving out about 40 of them. Can't wait to see if people respond.

~ Mark

Our volunteer Dusty came out this weekend, braving nearly impassable rutted and icy roads. She's volunteering as part of a class, and her teacher asked her to write up how the situation relates to "power and authority." 

This is an important topic for me, and one I expect to write a lot about in the future. But here are some rambling thoughts off the top of my head as to how power and authority relates to CockadoodleMoo.

A position of power — such as humans have over animals or a parent has over a child or a government has over a people — is not healthy if the one in power uses that power to exploit those at the mercy of that power. Unfortunately, "might makes right" is a guiding principle for many — of course only when they happen to be on the side of "might." This is especially the case with humans' relationship to nonhuman animals. People justify the worst exploitation of animals with quips about liking it at the top of the food chain. Yet they would never accept this excuse in other contexts, such as accepting another nation's rationalization for massacring a conquered people. Or imagine if an alien race invaded Earth and began putting humans in factory farms with the cows and pigs and used the same logic that THEY are now at the top of the food chain. 

Rather, I would make the case, that in order to truly earn power, one must protect and respect those over whom one has power, similar to how an adult human should protect rather than exploit a child. A good way to understand why this is the only morally justified use of power, one should consider philosopher John Rawls' "veil of ignorance". He said that any rule is morally justified if a being would agree to that rule without knowing what body they would be put in on this Earth. Basically, imagine yourself looking down on Earth from some land of pre-existence. You can make whatever laws or philosophies you think appropriate as long as you don't know which thinking, feeling being's body you'll enter when you get here. For instance, then it wouldn't make sense to create sexist or racist laws because you wouldn't know whether you're going to be born into a man or a woman's body, an Asian person's body, an Arab's, a black's or a white's. But neither would you know whether you're going to be born into a human or a nonhuman body. How could you then use your power to exploit, harm and kill animals — especially when doing so is unnecessary? 

With the animals at CockadoodleMoo, we are often asked how we plan to "use" them. We don't use them. They are under our care and protection, with us exerting authority only when necessary to keep them safe, when it's in their best interest. We're lucky enough to be the ones in the position of power (a far better position to be in) and thus there's a responsibility to treat this luck-of-birth with awareness, understanding and respect for those we're fortunate enough to have power over. Besides, to inflict suffering on those with no power seems cruel and unjust. The animals generally were brought into this world because of human action, and thus we feel an obligation to offer them the best life we can. To exploit them merely because we can would only justify the philosophy of "might makes right". More importantly, we wouldn't want someone else who, by happenstance, has power over us to exploit us so it would hypocritical of us to do so ourselves.

~ Mark