This summary provides the high-level information from the lengthy document in 3 sentences: The document describes the lives and experiences of various farmed animals using their identification numbers to represent their treatment as production units rather than individuals. It highlights the deprivation, suffering, and brutal deaths these animals endure on dairy farms, egg facilities, and veal operations despite labels implying more humane treatment. The author argues that animal agriculture can never be humane and invites the reader to support the work of Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary in advocating consistently for veganism and animal liberation.

1. To the industry, they are known as #35 is a two-days old baby. #67,595 is one of the 80,000 birds
production units #6, #35, and #67,595. His umbilical chord is still attached, his in a family-owned "free-range" egg
To the "compassionate" consumer, they coat is still slick with birth fluids, his eyes facility. She has never seen the sun, or
are known as feel-good labels: "organic are unfocused, his legs, wobbly. He is felt the grass under her feet, she has never
dairy", "rose veal", "free-range eggs". To crying pitifully for his mother. No one met her mother. Her eyes are burning
welfare advocates, they are known as answers. with the sting of ammonia fumes, her
"humane alternatives". To each other, they featherless body is covered with bruises
are known as mother, son, sister, friend. He will live his entire short life an orphan, and abrasions, her bones are brittle from
To themselves, they are simply what you his only experience of mother love will the constant drain of egg production, her
and I are to ourselves: a self-aware, self- be one of yearning for it, his only severed beak is throbbing in pain. She is
contained world of subjective experiences, experience of emotional connection, one exhausted, depleted and defeated. After
feelings, fears, memories – someone with of absence. a lifetime of social, psychological,
the absolute certainty that his or her life emotional, physical deprivation, she copes
is worth living. Soon, the memory of his mother, her face, by pecking neurotically at phantom
her voice, her scent, will fade, but the targets for hours on end. She is two years
#6 is a first time mother. painful, irrepressible longing for her old and her life is over. Her egg production
She is frantic. Her baby is missing. She is warmth will still be there. At four months has declined, and she will be disposed of
pacing desperately up and down the old, he and other orphans like himself by the cheapest means possible – she will
paddock, bellowing and crying, and calling will be corralled into trucks and hauled be gassed along with the other 80,000
for her lost boy, fearing the worst, having to slaughter. birds in her community. It will take three
her fears confirmed. She is one of the full work days to finish the job. For two
thousands of defenseless females born As he will be dragged onto the killing long days, she will hear the sounds and
into a quaint, verdant, organic dairy farm. floor, he will still be looking for his breathe the smells of her sisters being
She will spend her entire short life grieving mother, still desperately needing her killed in the gas drums outside her shed.
the loss of baby after baby. She will be nurturing presence, especially at that dark On the third day, it will be her turn. She
milked relentlessly through repeated time when he will be frightened and will be grabbed by the legs and taken
cycles of pregnancies and bereavements. needing her more than ever in the midst outdoors for the first time in her life and,
Her only experience of motherhood will of the terrible sights, and sounds, and like every single one of the 80,000 "spent"
be that of a mother's worst loss. In the scents of death all around him and, in his hens, like every single one of the 50 billion
prime of her life, her body will give, her despair, in his want for a shred of annual victims of our appetite, she will
spirit will break, her milk "production" consolation and protection, he, like most fight to go on living, and she will accept
will decline, and she will be sent to a baby calves, will try to suckle the fingers no explanation and no justification for
horrifying slaughter, along with other of his killers. being robbed of her pathetic only life.
grieving, defeated, "spent" mothers like
herself. He is the face of the "rose" veal we are She is the face of the "free-range" eggs
encouraging "responsible restaurant we are encouraging college campuses,
She is the face of organic milk. leaders" to use. businesses and consumers to use.

2. These are the "beneficiaries" of the them, a new practice of living, a new way education that is consistent with, not
"humane farming practices" that we, the of being in the world? undermining of, our ultimate goal –
animals' defenders, are developing, Animal Liberation – and when the Go
promoting, and publicly rewarding by Many of us justify our endorsement of Vegan message is central to every single
encouraging "compassionate" consumers "humane" animal products and our one of its communications, from online
to buy the products of what we know to pursuit of welfare reforms by saying that resources, to printed literature, to ads,
be nothing but misery. "Humane" the world is not ready to change, that it demos, and billboards, to outreach events,
practices that, if any of us were forced to may never go vegan, that the most we can to the in-depth exploration of farmed
endure, none of us would experience as hope to accomplish in the meantime is animal personhood detailed in the
humane. to reduce the suffering of today's doomed individual portraits published on the
animals. But this is not true. This is not Prairie Blog.
We, the activists, know that there is no a fact. It is a fear – a fear of action, a failure
such thing as compassionate, responsible of will, a self- defeating attitude and, On a shoestring budget, with an all-
or ethical farming on any scale. We know ultimately, a self-fulfilling prophesy. volunteer core of vegan educators who
that the only humane and ethical are determined to tell the whole truth
alternative is vegan living. The truth is, the world can change. about meat, dairy and egg production, a
Indeed, the world has changed many small, grassroots organization like
Why are so few of us telling the truth? times before, and it has changed in ways Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary has built
Why are we describing "free-range" that seemed impossible at the time. The s o m e t h i n g t h a t l a r g e , we a l t hy
products as "humane" when we know the truth is, the world will change, but only organizations have not only failed to bring
horror such practices inflict on their if we work towards creating that change. forth, but have consistently undermined
victims? Why are we lying to the public, It will stay the same if we, the self- through years of anti-vegan advocacy: A
and ourselves, that "compassionate" proclaimed agents of change, encourage vibrant vegan world growing in the
animal farming is anything but a myth, a it to stay the same. It will change if all of middle of the nonvegan world, a place
marketing scheme, a deceptive label? us tell the whole truth that there is no where the animal refugees are regarded
such thing as humane animal farming, and represented as the persons they rightly
Why are so many of us offering up the or animal use of any kind, the truth that are, a place where the human residents
lives of animals by encouraging the the only humane alternative is vegan advocate tirelessly for nothing less than
consumption of their flesh, eggs and milk, living, the truth that animal farming on total liberation, a Free State in the heart
when our only duty is to fight for their any scale is an ethical and environmental of the human-subjugated world, a place
lives as if they were our own? Why are we disaster, the truth that animals are persons where the principles of abolition are
promoting the practice of consuming like you and me who happen to be applied in word, thought, and deed.
animals when we know it to be brutal, nonhuman and who have the same
inexcusable, unconscionable and inherent right to life and liberty as you A vegan enclave whose very presence has
completely unnecessary? Why are we and I. The truth that vegan living is not already changed the world's physical,
rewarding consumers for demanding a "lifestyle choice", but a moral political, psychological and spiritual
more of the the very thing we are imperative. geography.
struggling to eliminate? Why are
westrengthening and rewarding the We can do better. Indeed, we have an I invite you to experience it for yourselves.
worlds' entrenched speciesist assumptions, obligation to do better. Join us in our struggle to expand its reach.
when our job, our only job, as vegan
educators and activists, is to challenge and I invite you to see for yourselves how Help us make it borderless.
change those assumptions by offering much can be accomplished when a small
anew model of thinking about nonhuman group of dedicated activists commits all Joanna Lucas
animals, a new model of interacting with of its time and resources to vegan Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary