VSET Advocacy

    There are many issues, both local and national, of great importance to vegetarians. ETVS board member Cindy McDaniel is our VSET Animal Rights Activist and she has worked tirelessly to better the lot of animals in our region, from volunteer work at shelters and spay-and-neuter clinics to passing out literature at rodeos describing the unpleasant conditions under which rodeo animals exist. Most of our members are concerned about animal welfare issues, and Cindy has helped to focus those concerns.

    If you know of something of importance that should be addressed, send us e-mail at etvs@korrnet.org and it will be directed to Cindy's attention. Keep checking the Advocacy Page for frequent updates and ETVS campaigns being addressed.

  • The Humane Society of the United States - Log onto this website and click HUMANElines and you can sign up to be e-mailed an online newsletter that comes out every few weeks. The online newsletter gives updates and information on national animal rights/welfare issues, including legislation. It includes addresses of who to write to and also includes fax numbers and e-mail addresses when possible.
  • The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals - Log onto this website and sign up for the ASPCA online News Alert and receive their free online newsletter with information on issues involving cruelty to animals and what you can do to help
  • People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) - Log onto this website and click on "Action Alerts" and click "Subscribe" and you will be sent online notices regarding various animal rights issues and what you can do to help
  • The Sea Shepherd Society - Sails into danger to safeguard the seas from commercial destruction by means of public education and investigation, documentation and, where appropriate and where legal authority exists under international law or agreement with governments, enforcement of violations of the international treaties, laws and conventions designed to protect the oceans. Sign up for email updates on their Contact page.
  • The Doris Day Animal League - The Doris Day Animal League is a nonprofit, national, citizens lobbying organization formed to focus attention on issues involving the humane treatment of animals. Working with members of the House of Representatives and the Senate both in Washington, D.C., and their home states and districts, the League's goal is to pass laws to reduce the suffering of animals anywhere they are mistreated. Dues are only $10 a year. Sign up here.
  • SHARK works to expose animal cruelty in many forms focusing on hunting, especially canned hunts, game management, rodeos and bullfighting, and to reveal the complicity of corporate supporters of these activities.
  • Animals Asia Foundation - As bad as things are for animals in our country, they're worse in parts of Asia. There dogs and cats are raised in factory farms, rather like our own pork factories, transported in cramped cages and often killed on the spot in Asian meat markets in unspeakably cruel ways such as - don't read any further if you're very tender-hearted - being boiled alive, as we do lobsters. Dogs are sometimes raised as pets, then taken on special outings where, while the family plays frisbee, they are hung with one foot touching the ground, so that they die slowly, the belief being that fear and pain make the meat more tender. Then the family roasts their pet for a special feast. Bears are farmed for their bile. Et cetera. AAF is faced with gargantuan challenges to end this culture of cruelty, but they have already made vast strides. They need your help.

    CONTACT INFORMATION FOR GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS AND TELEVISION NETWORKS"

    This is the contact information for our senators in the State of Tennessee for voicing your opinion and protest when a local issue comes up. A handwritten letter still gets more attention than a dozen e-mails or phone calls about the same subject!

    • Lamar Alexander - 523 Dirksen Office Building, Washington, DC 20510
    • Bill Frist - 825 Hart Office Building, Washington, DC 20510

    Here is the link for finding your representative based on your zip code: WriteRep

    These are the addresses for the five major television networks so you can fire off a postcard or letter when they you see a show or commercial that offends your animal-friendly sensibilities!
    • ABC Television Network - 77 W. 66th Street, New York, NY 10023-6201
    • CBS Television Network - 524 W. 57th Street, New York, NY 10019-2902
    • FOX Broadcasting Company - 10201 W. Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90035
    • NBC Television Network - 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10112-0002
    • PBS Television Network - 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314-1649.

Current Issues

Save Our Cumberland Mountains
Help Keep Our Mountaintops Right Where They Are!  The rally at the TDEC office in Knoxville to protest the destruction of the mountains of Elk Valley had a gratifyingly large turout, and was covered by Channels 6 and 10 as well as Associated Press, WUOT and TN Radio Network. SOCM urges us to continue to press Bredesen to take a stand on keeping mountain top removal out of TN. Call 865-426-9455, or email tiffany@socm.org. Learn more on our SOCM Advocacy page.
                           Mountain top removal, now more politely called cross ridge mining.

Factory Farm, Environmental Protestors to be Jailed as Terrorists

What's that oppressive, totalitarian regime where they jail those who expose the truth? Oh, yeah: Texas. Under a proposed law anyone who seeks to encourage an end to cruel and unsanitary factory farming or animal experimentation with "political motivation" can be fined and jailed. Critics say this law, HB433, could outlaw not just animal rights protestors but all environmental advocacy. Even taking pictures exposing substandard practices, belonging to an activist environmental organization, or even contributing money to one could get you jailed as a "terrorist," a trivialization of the word that should outrage all who lost loved ones at the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, or the Murrah Building. Read more at the Working for Change site. See the text of HB433.

Action: Boycott beef, even if you have not yet made the commitment to go completely vegetarian; the cattle industry causes untold harm of many sorts, and this, following the suit against Oprah Winfrey and Howard Lyman (be sure to check out his site) for "food slander," threatens our very right of free speech. Cattlemen have begun to take the term "Cattle Baron" a little too literally. And keep an eye on our own Tennessee legislators, lest lobbyists treat them to one steak dinner too many.


Chimp Believed Half-Human by Many Goes to Research Lab Anyhow

Oliver, ostensibly a chimpanzee, demonstrated such unusual and human-like characteristics that many scientists thought he might have been the half-human product of bestiality; in the part of Africa where he originated chimps are common pets. Other related species have produced hybrid offspring, such as the horse and the donkey or the lion and the tiger. Among other unique traits, Oliver always walked upright, something no one has ever been able to train any other known chimp to do. If half human, would Oliver have a soul? Indifferent to such concerns, experimenters eventually acquired him and condemned him to seven years in a featureless 5' x 7' cage. And if Oliver was just a chimpanzee, what does the fact that so many thought he might be partially human say about our experimenting on other primates? See part of the story in the Abilene Reporter. Read about his new home.

 

ORGANIC TORTURE

After approving uniform standards for organic food that include provisions that poultry that bears the "organic" label MUST have access to the outdoors, the USDA has buckled to giant poultry corporations and abandoned that stance. The pretext is that poultry outdoors is subject to airborne diseases. In reality, of course, it is the cramped, unnatural confines of the tiny cages into which these birds are crowded that is the perfect breeding ground for diseases, many of them communicable to humans.

Action: Please write Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman (below) and ask her to enforce the USDA's own humane and healthy outdoor access standards for all poultry labeled "organic." To do less is to mislead the public that relies on the USDA to vigilantly scrutinize and safeguard our food. And remind your friends that both animals and people benefit most when humans adopt vegan or vegetarian diets.

Secretary Ann Veneman
U.S. Department of Agriculture
1400 Independence Ave., SW
Washington, DC 20250
202-720-3631
Fax: 202-720-2166

To read more about this and other animal welfare issues, see:

http://www.hsus.org/ace/15848

"BUT, SURELY YOU EAT FISH !?"

Many of the world's most majestic fish, such as the Marlin, the Swordfish and the Sailfin, fish that, in our childhood, were the very symbols of the sea, are threatened with extinction due to commercial fishing. The most destructive aspect of overfishing is the drift nets reaching lengths as long as 50 miles (though 25 mile lines are more common). These lines not only sweep up mature fish but juveniles and "trash:" non-target fish and sea mammals (the "bycatch"). See http://www.chambers-associates.org/Big-Marine-Fish/extinction.html, http://www.seawatch.org/longlining.htm, http://audubon.org/campaign/lo/ow/ and http://www.billfish.org/dir/advocacy/positions/bycatch
Our favorite guardians of the seas, The Sea Shepherd Society, has long had a policy of cutting through the red tape regarding drift lines, where they are used illegally, by the simple expedient of cruising close to the trawlers and severing the costly lines; Sea Shepherd badly needs donations to cover operating expenses.

Action: Call, fax, or write U.S. Secretary of Commerce William Daley. Ask that he ensure rapid implementation of an effective, environmentally sound, bycatch reduction plan that will help rebuild overfished fish stocks.

Contact Information for:
U.S. Secretary of Commerce William Daley
Secretary William Daley
U.S. Department of Commerce
15th Street & Constitution Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20230
Tel: (202) 482-2112
Fax: (202) 482-2741

Horse Slaughter

Pet horses, work horses, racehorses and even wild horses go to slaughter by the tens of thousands each year in America. Most arrive at the slaughterhouse via livestock auctions where, often unknown to the seller, they are bought by middlemen working for the slaughter plants. Some are shipped in trucks for more than 24 hours at a time without food, water or rest, and suffer horribly along the way. Increasingly, stolen horses are included on the trucks. See the Doris Day Animal League site to learn what you can do to fight this and other forms of cruelty to animals.

Rumbling Falls Cave Saved

For two years the Tennessee Water Quality Control Board and the Department of Environment and Conservation made a mockery of their names by resisting a coalition of environmentalists trying to save one of the world's most spectacular caves from being converted to a septic tank by the town of Spencer, Tennessee. See http://www.tectn.org/Issues/Water/Spencer.htm for background. This battle has already been won, but check out the images at http://www.darklightimagery.net/RFC/RumbleRoom2digital.html (note the climber on the rope) and associated links to see what we almost lost, had it not been for the efforts of groups like the Sierra Club. And to speculate on why so many of those in government seem to have no souls.

Please contact your federal Representative about animal and safe food issues (to find the contact information for yours, go to www.house.gov or call 1-800-688-9889), and ask him or her to support H.R. 857, the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act.