MY ANIMAL RIGHTS LECTURE (Transcript) During the recent Animal Rights 2002 convention in Washington, D.C., I was given the opportunity to address 700-800 activists. I approached the podium with mixed feelings. I was emotional, and many themes ran through my head, but there was a film crew finishing up the fourth day of their NotMilk documentary, so I tempered my temper. I had no idea exactly what I would say, or how I would communicate my sentiments. ____________________________________________________ NOTE: A talk is delivered in a different style than a written essay. There are errors that I would have liked to edit, but here follows a verbatim transcript. ____________________________________________________ My talk: Tonight, we're talking about turning compassion into action, and I want to change the terminology a bit. I want to warn us all about turning passion into inaction, because I've seen too much of it. Two years ago, before the election cycle, I was lucky enough - it's a real big ego boost, to have three hundred dairy farmers give the NotMilkman a standing ovation, and that's what happened when I lectured in Washington with Ralph Nader about genetic engineering and biotechnology -taking an anti- stance to farmers who are also against genetic engineering. Imagine...if I go to one of their conferences, you are never going to have me applaud a cheesehead, it just isn't ever going to happen. I will sit in the audience and maybe be the only one sitting there not applauding whatever they have to say. I am anti-milk one hundred percent, and the abuse that occurs to these animals. Last night, I had a very interesting perspective because I sat right next to Lorraine who is from the other side, and next to a man, Dan Murphy, who is the editor of a pro-meat magazine. I love to play poker. I'm a good poker player because I watch people's faces, and over the course of an evening's play, I watch tells, I watch faces, I watch eyes, I watch fingers, I watch tapping on the table, and blinking, and I know what they're holding by the end of the evening. I watched the man very carefully. When he applauded, they applauded. He was the leader of the group. When he smiled, they smiled, and there's two things that really disturb me. One is...were you here to hear Ingrid Newkirk's speech? It was magnificent (APPLAUSE). It was the single best speech that I have ever heard in my life. As a matter of fact, it is the only time that I've gone and bought somebody's tape (LAUGHTER) this morning. It's worth sharing with somebody--a great speech. But what disturbed me was this man gave her a standing ovation. He stood and applauded...with enthusiasm. And earlier in the evening, we got some questions to ask, and this has to be a defining moment in our movement. His answer. One word answer. Do you know what he said to the question? He said "yes," and the question was "Are you guys producing more meat for consumption?" Isn't that disturbing? The answer is yes. Does that mean that something that we're doing is not working? I left last year's AR-2001 with a great amount of emotion, with mixed feelings because, on one hand, everybody stood and applauded after Wendy's when one man was arrested. This man made a movie about pigs and it was wonderful. It was a wonderful feeling, and shortly thereafter Wendy's changed their policy thanks to the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and others and our actions. Wendy's announced that they were going to support more compassionate raising of chickens. For God sakes, these poor birds are allotted eight by eight inches of floor area, and PETA got a great victory. They gave them 8 and a half by 8 and a half. Now come on, that's not a victory to me. Is that a victory to you? (APPLAUSE) As Ingrid spoke last night, and I sat in the front row, and I was watching these people...I imagined...I love Ingrid, I really love Ingrid. Her book, Free The Animals was an enormous inspiration. That's why I'm here tonight. That's why I rescued my dog. That's why I am writing about animal rights issues, and it's why I do from five o'clock in the morning until midnight or later, seven days a week. That's why I do what I do, researching the lies that come from the other side. But, boy, oh boy, I just for a second- just imagined after Ingrid spoke, and we were applauding, I imagined a pig following, and coming up, and putting his forelegs up here and saying..."But I'm still going to die." Compassionate slaughter? I reject compassionate slaughter. I hate compassionate slaughter. I had an Internet chat with a woman of Islamic faith who said to me, "Allah is perfect. We have Halal slaughter, and we measure their pain, and there is no pain. These animals feel no pain. They die. Allah is perfect. He wouldn't allow the pain. These animals die." If you think that they don't have pain - if you think that we're going to lobby Congress and get them to pass laws, what are the laws accomplishing? They're telling Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Jones that it's okay to eat meat. I reject Ingrid's statement that we have to go from A to R and then from R to Z. (APPLAUSE) We're telling them that eating meat is cool, and you know what else? Our own movement - I'm looking at vegetarian web sites and vegetarian newsletters and vegetarian magazines and newspapers and I'm reading articles that say we have to get the calcium, that meat eaters have better bone density than vegetarians. When I look at the studies, I know what phonies they are. My life's work. I used to do research. I ran a lab. I've held death in my hands. I know how to read scientific studies. I taught statistics. I know how to work with the numbers. I get the original studies. I look at their faces. I talk to scientists. I know how flawed these studies are. In 1997, the Journal of the American Medical Association hosted a nutritional conference, a conference that was sponsored by, guess who? The dairy industry. And in 1998, Peter Holt's September 23rd - go to the library and look this study up - September 23 in JAMA. Peter Holt did a study about colon cancer, and said that people who eat low fat cheese don't get colon cancer, and what did he do? He measured over a five year period - he gave free low fat cheese to people over a five year period and there was a tiny - not even a statistical difference that was significant. A millimeter of growth more for the people who didn't eat the cheese. A millimeter of cellular proliferation, and the dairy industry has been using that, since the study was published in 1998 to say that drinking milk prevents colon cancer. I went to one of the junior authors of that study and said "What happened between 1995 when the study ended and 1998," and I learned that the people who actually ate the cheese got the colon cancer. That issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association contains one of the great commentaries. That's really comedy, and not science, because the cellular proliferation AND GROWTH -an additional doctor wrote an editorial called "Proliferation Happens," like shit happens, criticizing that study. You can get the article. They knew it was a fraudulent study, and nobody else in America reported it. When I saw the study - you know how I learned about it? Reading the press releases put out by the dairy industry learning that they had a press conference set for the Plaza Hotel in New York, and that week every newspaper in America reported: "Drinking milk prevents colon cancer." TVs and radios and magazines repeated...and I went on the New York stations and said "The study was a fraud." I got in the way of them to show that it was exactly the opposite. And study after study, that's what these people do. Recently, I wrote about a study in Denmark, Annette Hjartaker, breast cancer - saying that drinking milk as a child prevents breast cancer. This study was so significantly flawed, and people within our own movement have been attacking me for it, I don't know where this is coming from, and there's something wrong. We're getting the message that you've got to have Vitamin B-12. That being a vegan does not work. You're not healthy if you don't get Vitamin B-12 which comes from rendered animal intestines from the bacteria that grow within. You're flawed if you don't take calcium pills. We're not getting enough calcium, we're not getting enough protein. Something's wrong. They're giving us a message that being vegetarian or vegan is not healthy. Our own people. You see somebody giving you that advice, that being a vegan does not stand on its own, go into your organic garden and pick a carrot and you're going to get all the Vitamin B-12 you need. Doctors take your vitamin B-12 measurements from your bloodstream when it's stored in the liver, not in the bloodstream. And they say you have very low levels of Vitamin B-12 compared to meat eaters. You shouldn't have any, according to their theory. You've got to take these pills? That's not the way it works. When we get organizations that tell us that we are going to get these animals slaughtered compassionately, I scratch my head and I wonder, and I ask everybody the same damned question: "Is there too much violence on television? Tell me, is there? (THE AUDIENCE SCREAMS A COLLECTIVE "YES.") Geez, you're all wrong. No! There's not enough violence on television, because when we see somebody die, bang, you're dead, they fall over, that's it, in real life, ouch, it hurts. Ouch, it hurts for a long time. It takes ten minutes to die, and during that period, twenty square feet are filled with blood. I want people to see that. I want people to see un- compassionate slaughter. I want them to see what it's really like. That's our responsibility. Our responsibility is to take this message. More people are eating meat, and what we're doing isn't working. So, take that compassion and turn it into passion and let the world know that we don't believe in compassionate slaughter. We don't believe in any slaughter. These animals are dying, partially, because of some of our misdirected efforts. We've got to make the effort to say that no animal deserves to die. Buy two books today. One is Eternal Treblinka, which will have you crying, and the other is Ingrid's Free the Animals, and get Ingrid to get back to the original message. Thank you. __________________________________________________ Robert Cohen author of: MILK A-Z Executive Director (notmilkman@notmilk.com) Dairy Education Board http://www.notmilk.com This file: http://www.notmilk.com/forum/990.txt Do you know of a friend or family member with one or more of these milk-related problems? Do them a huge favor and forward the URL or this entire file to them. Do you know of someone who should read these newsletters? If so, have them send a empty Email to: notmilk-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and they will receive it (automatically)!