Our baby daughter Awen had a health visitor check up this week. As part of the visit they always bring you some freebies, and this time they gave us this book (pictured below) called “Who’s Hiding on The Farm”.
The health visitor didn’t understand why I politely gave the book back to her. So I explained: if this book is about a farm then the pig on the cover will be killed at 6 months old. The lamb about three months. The cow might make it to three years as a dairy cow before being sent to the slaughterhouse (even though they naturally live to be 20) and every child she has will be removed at a day old.
The chicks at the bottom of the cover, if they are male, might make it to 24 hours old before they are killed. They will either be gassed or thrown into an industrial grinder alive. I said I doubt the book would mention any of that so we wouldn’t be reading it to our daughter.
The health visitor was horrified. She said she’d never thought about it like that and had been giving these books out to all the children in the area without a thought. She is going to go back to the local health authority to suggest that the books are replaced.
Books like this are horrific to even contemplate once you make the connection. If we’d not read books like this as children, then we’d have never grown up thinking that farms were anything other than places of slaughter. But, as vegan businesses, we have people who are fighting back against the propaganda. People like our Vegan Business Tribe member Tina Newman (creator of Vivi The Supervegan) who is currently raising investment for her own vegan children’s media company, Peace in a Pod Productions. Or the many other people we have in the Tribe leading the vegan children’s movement.
So the next time you see a childrens ‘farm’ book, maybe ask the parent, child or librarian if they fully appreciate what that book is trying to normalise. You might not get it taken off the shelf, but you will definitely plant some seeds.
David 💚🌱
David’s thoughts from the week, published every weekend for members only.
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