Who Is Trying To Turn Animal Shelters Vegan
I n the due north-east Spanish region of Catalonia, an enormous bull called Pedro is poking his head over a barn door to look at some sheep. He'll stay there for two hours if the sanctuary volunteers allow him; he'll have to be tempted away with treats then that the sheep can be let out to graze. Pedro knows the routine; he's been hither since he was a calf, when he was bottle-fed by volunteers. He lives a overjoyed life – he is fed, he roams, he watches sheep, he sleeps; and when he dies, it volition exist of natural causes.
"He's enormous!" I say to Olivia Gómez de Zamora, a veterinary banana from Madrid who spends a lot of fourth dimension coaxing Pedro from the befouled.
Gómez de Zamora tells me this blazon of cattle is bred for its milk. "The adult males are slaughtered for meat," she says. "So we never encounter them."
Fundación Santuario Gaia, where Pedro lives, and El Hogar are ii of about xx animal sanctuaries in Kingdom of spain where vegan activists dedicate themselves to rescuing animals, creating a place where they can alive without being put to work or slaughtered. The employees and volunteers spend a huge amount of fourth dimension in each other'south visitor. Some might telephone call it intense: they live and work together, melt and swallow together, and at that place are leisure activities such as picture nights and debates. The sanctuaries are continued via WhatsApp, where they share veterinary data and coordinate creature rescues.
We're used to seeing dogs and cats saved from abuse or neglect, only at Gaia and El Hogar – effectually two hours' bulldoze apart on either side of Barcelona – most of the animals are pigs, cows, goats and chickens. Gaia co-founder Coque Fernández Abella, 43, an animal rights activist and vet, says: "Nosotros wanted it to exist for so-called farm animals because they are the most forgotten. No i takes care of them because they're seen equally products.
"Growing up," he adds, "it was typical to kill pigs to swallow at home. Since I was pocket-sized I had to help with information technology – it was horrible, because of the screams, simply you had to practise it. I remember when nosotros rescued our first squealer, the memories of the killings came dorsum to me. After everything bad I've washed in the past, it's right that I should aid animals now."
The sanctuaries are havens for animals that, rather than being killed for meat or shackled for dairy production, live happily and freely. They are fed and exercised, given medicine if they're sick, rehabilitated if they're injured and – the main privilege denied to well-nigh farm animals – allowed to alive long lives.
Veganism and such intendance for animals may seem surprising in Spain. Matador directly translates as "killer". Surely animal-rescuing vegans are an oddity in the land of bullfighting and pata negra?
"Information technology's truthful we are very much into ham and bullfighting," says photographer Ana Palacios, who stayed at both sanctuaries for ii weeks, capturing their daily goings-on. "Just in the UK, you guys chase foxes!" While the cannibal tradition is in that location, peculiarly in the south, "it isn't that popular among young people," Palacios says. But veganism is increasing in popularity in many countries – even the ham capital of the globe. Between 2017 and 2019, Castilian study the Green Revolution found a trend towards institute-based eating. In 2017, 0.2% of Spaniards identified every bit vegan; by 2019, it was 0.5%. Vegetarians account for 1.5% of Spain'due south population. Animal welfare was the 2nd most mutual reason cited for going vegetarian or vegan (23.eight%) afterwards wellness (67%).
Gaia employee Marta Sampaio, 24, says her parents were concerned when she made the conclusion to stop eating meat, aged 15. Now, whatever time she's ill, her enthusiastically cannibal male parent is convinced her diet is to blame. She travelled to Spain from Lisbon to find a place to work with animals. Afterward training for a few months as a veterinary assistant, she Googled vegan sanctuaries in Spain, and started as a volunteer at Gaia. She plant herself empathising, unexpectedly, with chickens. Her outset was a chick called Angie, brought in by a girl who found her wandering alone in the road. Because chickens are bred to produce eggs every twenty-four hours, all year round (rather than in cycles of a week or so, two or 3 times a year), they're frequently sick. Sampaio has gained a reputation as the "crazy chicken lady" for her habit of taking the sick ones domicile. "Angie was a baby and didn't have any brothers or sisters, so she couldn't be with the other chickens," she says. "I kept her at home and she slept with me, in the crook of my shoulder."
Gómez de Zamora left her veterinary banana job in Madrid to work at Gaia, and stayed for two years. Now back in Madrid, she notwithstanding collaborates with the sanctuary, merely is filled with grief for one animal she cared for there. Her eyes well up and her voice cracks equally she remembers Juana the goat, who had a mass on her spine that caused paralysis. "The time I spent with Juana was very beautiful and very painful, considering we were aware of her complicated prognosis and that the moment was coming when nosotros wouldn't be able to do any more," she says. "It was hard: you lot had to exist OK for her, considering her mind was even so OK, even if her body wasn't. You had to make sure she was still enjoying life, and going out in the lord's day in her wheelchair."
It's easy to imagine vegan animal sanctuaries as soft, emotional places, only at that place is a steely side. Animals aren't merely rescued from the sides of roads: sometimes they're swiped from state execution. In 2017, the El Hogar sanctuary fabricated headlines after rescuing a bullfighting moo-cow called Margarita.
Margarita had an irresponsible owner. "When he got drunk with his friends, they would chase her on horseback," says El Hogar founder Elena Tova. "She is nonetheless afraid of men." The authorities discovered he hadn't legally registered Margarita; under Spanish law, unregistered cows must exist killed as without a vaccine tape, there is a chance their meat could make people ill, or even cause a pandemic.
"They couldn't be reasoned with," says Tova, who explained again and again that she wanted to have Margarita to a vegan sanctuary to alive out her natural life; they could guarantee she would never be used for meat. "They didn't want to modify the law or brand exceptions. So we created a page on change.org calling for Margarita not to exist killed. It got 190,000 signatures in less than a month." She convinced the owner to allow them have Margarita. "Only it wasn't plenty: the vets still wanted to kill her. They made excuse after excuse and drowned us in red record, until a judge who felt for us wrote to me to say, 'They're not going to give y'all the cow' – they already had a date to kill her. So I went one nighttime, under encompass of darkness, and stole Margarita."
She insists she wasn't afraid, and points out that the movement was technically legal: the owner had signed a contract permitting her to access the farm and accept Margarita away, and so information technology wasn't breaking and entering. But the authorities – whom Tova chosen next day to explain where Margarita was – were, as she puts it, "super pissed off. They turned up at the sanctuary. Then the press came, and TV cameras – we were on the radio and in the papers." Eventually, the strength of public opinion forced a change in the police. "Now, in Catalonia, when a cow is unidentified, they tin't kill her."
Tova was only nine when she began caring for abandoned dogs and cats. She even stole snails and crabs from supermarkets, so they wouldn't be killed. When her parents refused to allow her to bring any more than animals habitation, she took food to an olive tree where the animals knew to wait for her. But doesn't it take its cost, this level of care and concern for creatures who are abandoned and abused, who get sick and injured, and e'er, somewhen, dice? Yeah, she says, information technology does. "Nosotros are very happy, just we have an inner sadness that's very difficult to get rid of. Then you have to be pragmatic, put your focus on the positive things you can modify and recollect about the animals rather than yourself and your feelings."
Fifty-fifty though keeping their operations running is a abiding financial struggle, both sanctuaries are nursing bigger dreams. Fernández Abella wants to expand Gaia then they can salvage many more than the 500 animals they're currently caring for, and hopes their stories will plow more than people towards veganism. Tova, at El Hogar, promises to open a small-scale animal hospital onsite "if it kills her", then terminally ill animals can dice in their ain domicile.
As for Palacios, she found herself changed by her time photographing the sanctuaries, almost a year ago. "It was the profound bond between animals and humans that really struck me," she says. She hasn't eaten meat since.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/24/how-vegan-activists-are-saving-spains-farm-animals
Posted by: dotyandre1985.blogspot.com
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