Kind Translators?

It all began with some chickens. Sadistic, grinning workers, filmed undercover at a US slaughterhouse for a well-known fast-food chain, jumping on the birds, breaking their bones and crushing their heads, grabbing them by the legs and slamming them into the wall, then leaving them to agonise on the floor. Other employees debeaked chickens, or hung them from hooks ready to be killed by scalding. Perhaps because of a faulty installation, or under-trained workers paid too little to care, many chickens came out of the scalding tanks to continue fully conscious along the killing chain. A scenario from the worst horror film.

In some towns and cities, these revelations led to an ongoing boycott of the chain. But a niggling doubt remained: Are chickens in Canada any better off? And what about other fast-food chains? Are they more respectful of life?

Curious to find out more, we continued our investigations. From chickens to other "animals for consumption", from factory farms to slaughterhouses, not once during this heartbreaking journey did I see the happy calf that smiles up at us from packs of veal, but rather terrified calves, barely a day old, their umbilical cord still hanging, dripping, from their belly, auctioned off to end their short lives in the pitch black, shackled with their legs apart so as not to soil themselves with their own faeces.

As 2005 drew to a close, the Quebec winter brought its characteristic frosts and thaws but also a peculiar array of inexpensive, often grotesque, clothes and accessories trimmed with multi-coloured fur. Who was providing this seemingly limitless supply of fur?

A team of courageous volunteers travelled to the northern Chinese province of Hebei to take some photos. The months they spent there revealed horrors beyond our imagination¹. A single image says more than a thousand words, so please take fifteen minutes of your time to watch this film². We hope and believe it will change your attitude towards fur and that, afterwards, you too will feel at the very least deep sadness and compassion for the animals that suffer for such a futile end. These images show one of the worst cases of animal torture we have ever witnessed. Sadly, this isn't a montage or an isolated case… contrary to what the fur industry would have us believe.

Information kept coming in. Infiltrators exposed the lives of animals in certain laboratories³. Video footage backed by numerous eye-witness accounts showed the public the tortures these animals must endure⁴. Around the world, a phenomenal number of animals - millions if not a billion - are being mutilated behind laboratories' closed doors⁵, even as doctors and scientists^{6 7 8} condemn the cruelty of vivisection and animal experimentation, raise questions of ethics, and propose alternative solutions which, because of financial interests, are slow in coming.

Cases of animal abuse, some unimaginably cruel, came flooding in from all areas: animals for consumption⁹, for fur¹⁰, for testing cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, for circuses¹¹ or for Quebec's puppy mills^{12 13 14 15}, owned by abusive breeders, often condemned elsewhere in Canada, who are drawn to a province that has yet to implement effective animal-protection laws. Some cases cited the atrocities that certain pet-food companies inflict on animals in their laboratories. Others, based on recent veterinarian and scientific reports, condemned Canada's seal cull and its open flouting of the law: reports, photos, videos and first-hand accounts show that during this frenzy of killing, 42% of seals are skinned alive ^{16 17 18}.

A cry of outrage went up around the world. We learned of a campaign to boycott Canadian seafood. Why don't they understand us? Why are they so critical? One of the main reasons why the Canadian government authorises the cull is because the seals "deplete cod stocks." Where is the true story? In the statistics? How many people know that the hundred million pet cats around the world, in the hundreds of millions of tins of cat food they eat, consume far more fish than the entire harp seal species? Or that autopsies have shown that cod accounts for just 2% to 3% of a seal's diet, the rest being species that prey on cod? That when in 1535 Jacques Cartier described the Grand Banks of St Laurence as being carpeted with so many cod he could scoop them up in a wicker basket, there were also some 30 million seals? That over the past 30 years, trawlers have radically transformed the fishing industry? That fishermen warned the Canadian government a decade ago that cod stocks were dwindling because of overfishing by foreign trawlers? That in 1993, a year after imposing a complete ban on cod-fishing by Canadian boats, the government was still issuing licences to foreign crews behind Canadian fishermen's backs? For an objective view, certain points of view and facts are worth reiterating¹⁹. But where does the truth lie? And how can we explain the dramatic fall in the worldwide cod population, for which fishing lobbies are blamed²⁰, when in 2003 a call was made for "a radical reduction in the number and power of the fishing boats that trawl the North Sea, Irish Sea and off the west coast of Scotland"? When it had already been concluded that the damage caused by overfishing was such that "restrictions are necessary but will not suffice to allow cod to recover." We have every reason to ask ourselves whether the dubious management and plundering of natural resources, with no concern for future generations, isn't the real cause of this serious problem, and whether the seals aren't simply useful scapegoats and victims of political ambition.

Our research then led us to meet organisations working to improve animal welfare and to introduce laws that will give animals ethical living conditions and, ultimately, rights.

New concepts such as speciesism²¹ are emerging. Countless men and women, scientists, researchers, legislators, biologists, witnesses and compassionate consumers are waking up and, each in their own way, each in their own country, refusing to be a part of the sorry treatment inflicted on an incalculable number of animals across the globe.

Animals have many more friends than one might imagine. A growing undercurrent is rising up in opposition to the dehumanising pursuit of profit at all costs. Citizens want a better future for themselves and their children. They also want an end to the immoral and cruel way in which certain people treat animals. Compassion towards those that cannot speak up for themselves can only benefit the way we, humans, see each other.

The people of Quebec are, in their vast majority, generous and caring. They love animals. No-one we spoke to was fully aware of the hidden cruelty behind fashion, food or animal experimentation. A cruelty that still goes on today.

The vast quantity of information on animal exploitation that was only available in English, and the apparent lack of information in French, inspired volunteer translators to offer their services to organisations that were only too happy to accept. At last the public could be exposed to something other than images of happy pink pigs, or the affluent fur lobbies' relentless promotion of their wares.

The sheer magnitude of the task, and the need for new translators, soon became apparent. And so Kind Translators was born.

We hope the translations we provide for animal welfare organisations will find their way to you.

1 http://www.animal-protection.net/furtrade/report_fur_china.pdf
2 http://www.animal-protection.net/furtrade/movie.htm
3 http://www.petatv.com/viv.html
4 http://www.artezia.net/animaux/vivisection/vivisection.htm
5 http://www.peta.org.uk/factsheet/files/FactsheetDisplay.asp?ID=144 and http://www.stopanimaltests.com/animalTesting101.asp and http://www.eceae.org/english/faq.html
6 http://www.ohsukillsprimates.com/quotes.htm
7 http://www.dlrm.org/
8 http://www.whale.to/a/ruesch4.html
9 http://www.humanefood.ca
10 http://infurmation.com/facts.php
11 http://www.circuses.com
12 http://www.cbc.ca/streetcents/archives/guide/2002/08/s06_01.html
13 http://www.spcamontreal.com/english/pages/services/complaints.html
14 http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20051111/puppy_mill_051111/20051111?hub=TopStories
15 http://www.speakingofdogs.com/puppymill.html
16 http://www.kindtranslators.com/fichiers/Rapport_vet_chasse_phoques_file_95.pdf (Report on seal hunt- Source: IFAW)
17 http://www.kindtranslators.com/fichiers/Rapport_vet_chasse_phoques_2001.pdf (Four-page report, source: IFAW)
18 http://www.stopthesealhunt.com/atf/cf/%7B1AE979E3-67B2-4AC0-A26D-17D11CF1EAB6%7D/sealsandsealing2006.pdf and http://www.ifaw.org/ifaw/dimages/custom/2_Publications/Seals/sealsandsealing2007.pdf (Reports on seal hunt in 2006 and 2007, source: IFAW)
19 http://www.seashepherd.org/editorials/editorial_050328_2.html
20 http://www.kindtranslators.com/fichiers/La_mort_de_la_morue_EN.pdf (dated June 16, 2003)
21 Discrimination on the basis of species.