Category Archives: Victims in the shadows

Human insect use and consumption – a compilation

Posted on September 27, 2022 by There's an Elephant in the Room

I was shocked to read recently that around 1 TRILLION (1 trillion = 1,000,000,000,000) individual insects are currently raised for consumption and killed on farms every year. It’s a staggering number, all the more so for the fact that it’s … Continue reading →

Posted in insects, Uncategorized, Victims in the shadows | Tagged African palm weevil (Rhynchoporus phoenicis), cricket (Acheta domesticus), domesticated silkworm (Bombyx mori), environment, honeybee (Apis mellifera), insects, invertebrate, mopane caterpillar (Imbrasia belina), sentience, sentient, yellow meal worm (Tenebrio molitor) | 2 Comments

Crocodile tears – getting under our skin

Posted on September 2, 2021 by There's an Elephant in the Room

In the past few days, I’ve seen several excellent posts condemning a well-known designer brand for their use of crocodile skins for leather goods while exposing the conditions in which these innocent creatures are ‘farmed’, with images and descriptions that … Continue reading →

Posted in Leather and skin, Victims in the shadows | Tagged animal rights, consumer demand, crocodile, designer, exclusive, fur, leather, victims | 4 Comments

Victims in the shadows: octopuses, squids and cuttlefishes

Posted on July 9, 2021 by There's an Elephant in the Room

Octopus are soft-bodied, eight-limbed molluscs of the order Octopoda. The order consists of some 300 species and is grouped within the class Cephalopoda with squids, cuttlefish, and nautiloids. This blog was originally inspired by the many excellent articles I’ve read … Continue reading →

Posted in Aquatic individuals, Octopuses, squids and cuttlefishes, Victims in the shadows | Tagged cephalopod, consumer demand, consumers, cuttlefish, dream, exploitation, food animals, harvest, intelligence, intelligent, octopus, profit, respect, slaughter, sleep states, squid, vegan | 5 Comments

Using bees for honey; it’s not vegan and it’s not ‘conservation’.

Posted on June 10, 2021 by There's an Elephant in the Room

Using and consuming honey taken from bees is not vegan. All the latest research suggests that bees are sentient individuals whose lives matter to them. In keeping with the many other species whose lives and bodies are ‘farmed’ by humans, … Continue reading →

Posted in Addressing resistance to change, honey, Victims in the shadows | Tagged honey, honey bees, honey is not vegan, insect apocalypse, mass extinction, vegan | 4 Comments

About a goose

Posted on September 28, 2020 by There's an Elephant in the Room

Having recently come across the concept of ‘International Rabbit Day’ which is apparently on 26 September, I was idly investigating which other species of humanity’s victims had ‘days’ and came across ‘Happy Goose Day’ on 29 September. This puzzled me. … Continue reading →

Posted in Advocacy, Chickens and eggs, consumer demand, Victims in the shadows | Tagged Chickens and eggs, commodification, consumer demand, feathers, foie gras, geese, goose, goose eggs, goose hunting, Happy Goose Day, slaughter, Torture, vegan, veganism, victims | Leave a comment

Thinking of ducks

Posted on February 28, 2020 by There's an Elephant in the Room

Ducks. As a child I used to love visiting duckponds. It was a Sunday treat and few children of my generation in my part of the world haven’t been enchanted by ‘going to feed the ducks’, clutching a bag of … Continue reading →

Posted in Advocacy, Statistics, Victims in the shadows | Tagged Chickens and eggs, cooking, down, duck, duckpond, ducks, feathers, foie gras, hunting, shooting, slaughter, speciesism, sport, vegan, zoonotic, zoonotic disease | 4 Comments

Victims in the shadows: Horses

Posted on October 19, 2019 by There's an Elephant in the Room

Every so often, outrage rocks social media about the slaughtering of horses, often those whose lives have been used, broken and discarded by the horse racing industry. Like all other nonvegan institutions grounded in our abuse of our fellow earthlings, … Continue reading →

Posted in Speciesism, Victims in the shadows | Tagged betting, blood farm, entertainment, having a flutter, hormone replacement therapy, horse, horse racing, horses, HRT, Pig fertility, pregnant mares, premarin, racing, speciesism, urine | 2 Comments

Defining veganism in light and shadow

Posted on September 3, 2019 by There's an Elephant in the Room

I have always stood by an assertion that veganism was perfectly adequately defined by Donald Watson and his contemporaries when they first developed the philosophy and the words to describe it: The vegan believes that if we are to be … Continue reading →

Posted in Victims in the shadows, What is ...? | Tagged cloud, country life, deer, fishing, game, grouse, hunting, light, nonveganism, partridge, pheasants, salmon, shadow, shooting, sport, targets, trout, veganism | 9 Comments

Victims in the shadows: emus

Posted on August 16, 2019 by There's an Elephant in the Room

This series of short blogs hopes to shine a spotlight onto ways that humans exploit other creatures for financial gain, ways about which the majority of consumers are unaware. This is not intended to shock; it’s intended to illustrate and … Continue reading →

Posted in Speciesism, Victims in the shadows | Tagged butcher, consumer demand, consumers, emu, emu oil, emus, feathers, flay, flesh, leather, oil, oppression, plucking, prejudice, shoppers, slaughter, slaughterhouse, speciesism | 8 Comments