The website care2.com is about doing and creating social change. Currently, this site offers "butterfly credits" when you take action on issues or engage in community discussions. These credits can be accumulated and later traded in for good works, such as helping farmers grow organic cotton, bottle-feeding a kitten or puppy, or providing clean water for people. There are 69 option altogether, includng one called "raise a farm animal humanely."
This is highly inappropriate for an organization working toward social justice issues. The end result of all animal farming is slaughter. We, the undersigned, find this a problem for as a social justice issue because:
- There is nothing humane about slaughter.
- Cows and goats, whose milk is used for human consumption, have their babies removed practically from birth.
- In order to continue giving milk, the mothers must be continually impregnated in a procedure akin to rape. There is nothing humane about that.
- "Humane" is a matter of degree - there are no government regulations to determine what is and is not humane.
- Environmental impacts are not lessened by "humane" farming.Grass-fed cows actually produce more methane than factory-farmed cows.
- Wild animals are still dispossessed of their land to make way for grazing animals.
For these and many other reasons, which can be found at www.humanemyth.org, we, the undersigned, urge care2.com to remove the "raise an animal humanely" option in giving butterfly credits, and replace this with two options: "help feed a sanctuary animal" and "support efforts to eradicate hunger through humane options." There are many many good sanctuaries for "farmed" animals out there - some of the best being Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary, Sasha Farm, Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary, the Gentle Barn, and Goat Mountain Ranch Sanctuary. And HIPPO and VegFam are two excellent organizations that seek to create long-term change in countries routinely plagued by hunger without killing a single animal. In other words, they work to practice truly sustainable farming. Everyone gets to live.
