A few dollars per pound is a bargain, but who else pays the price?
by Peter Singer and Jim Mason
Americans eat a phenomenal amount of chicken, more than any other meat. Those of us over 50 can still remember when chicken was a treat for special occasions because it … Read More

In our mind’s eye the farm is a peaceful, pleasant place where calves nuzzle their mothers in a shady field, pigs loaf in the mudhole, and chickens scratch and scramble about the barnyard. We comfort ourselves with these bucolic images — images that are implanted by calendars, coloring books, and … Read More

By Jim Mason
Poor old animal agribusiness. It is getting hit from all directions. According to Feedstuffs, the authoritative weekly newspaper for agribusiness, “The 1990s will be a difficult decade for animal agriculture with consumption trends, cost/price squeezes, food safety, the environment, and animal welfare all influencing production systems.”
Citing the … Read More

By Jim Mason
A friend heard an advertisement on the local radio about the Butterball Turkey Company needing workers in artificial insemination, called “AI” for short. So I went to the personnel office across the street from the turkey killing plant in this small midwestern town. Latinos, Asians, and poor … Read More

By Jim Mason
Americans, at least, have a tremendous appetite for meat, dairy products and eggs. They have little appetite, however, for information on the lives of the animals who produce what they eat. Perhaps they sense something. Do they sense that beyond the mountain of steaks, hamburgers, sausages, cold … Read More

“Hey, Diddle Diddle, The cat and the fiddle
And a cow jumped over the moon;
The little boy laughed to see such sport
and the dish ran away with the spoon”

By Jim Mason
At first, I didn’t think of other animals as things to be used like machines. To me, they seemed … Read More

By Jim Mason
There is a cooling relief in finding the source of years of anger. My anger, I am learning, goes back to those childhood years when I was being indoctrinated about animals — how they were put here to serve us, how they feel nothing. I was lied … Read More

Animal Rights 2003 Conference Keynote Speech By Jim Mason
I want to talk to you about two themes: Domestication (the negative) and Kinship (the positive) and then close with some talk about an enlarged vision of our movement and its mission.
What Karen Davis (founder, United Poultry Concerns) has told you … Read More

(or… Our Blindspot for Animals) By Jim Mason
For over 150 years now, leading Western thinkers have been pondering The Nature Question, i.e.: What is to be our place in nature? Most of them have questioned our Western tradition of seeing ourselves as masters over nature. A good many have … Read More

Dreams of Times Bygone and Those to Come Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn.
The sheep’s in the meadow, the cow’s in the corn.
Where is the boy who looks after the sheep?
He’s under a haystack fast asleep.
Will you wake him? No, not I,
For if I do, he’s sure to cry. … Read More