Transcriber: Chen Cohen Reviewer: Jeong-Lan Kinser
It was a Friday afternoon, I was walking down the street with my friend, Vered,
when suddenly we saw a bird lying on the pavement.
She didn't move; she was dead.
We found a small paper box, put the bird gently inside,
and buried her in the field just outside our neighborhood.
We said a little prayer that we invented on the spot,
and we promised each other that from that day on,
we will always be sad on Friday afternoons
in memory of the bird.
Obviously, by the next Friday we already forgot our promise
but I never forgot the bird.
I was only 6 years old. It was my first encounter with death
and I never forgot it, although it happened many years ago.
All children love animals, want to pet them, to take care of them.
For children, all animals are friends:
the jumping lamb, the sweet calf,
the little yellow chick, the funny piglet,
all are beloved creatures.
For me, when I'm going to take my son,
one of you, took your son, or daughter think about it, to a petting zoo,
what did they do? "Oh look Mummy, they're so cute!
"I wanna hug them, can we feed them?"
right?
But on the way out of the petting zoo,
how come we go to a restaurant and eat the same animals we just hugged?
Somewhere, somehow, the connection between these sweet animals
and the food on our plate was lost.
What caused that 6-year-old girl that cried over the dead bird,
to forget her compassion and become a food critic
who recommends her readers
where to eat a great dish of bird, lamb, fish, piglet?
As a journalist and a food critic,
I used to love a good juicy steak, or a plate of quality cheeses.
I never stopped to think of the way my food was made,
and of the animals who suffered for it.
Who moved my compassion?
How many of you have or had a dog or a cat at home?
How many of you, a dog or a cat at home?
These are mine.
How do we feel when we hear of someone who abused a dog or a cat?
Angry, frustrated, upset.
We know it's wrong. We know we shouldn't be cruel to animals.
We love our companion animals.
The thought that someone would eat them would be horrifying.
But what about this picture?
Does it make us feel the same anger? or sorrow?
Why don't we care about chickens and calves
the same way we care about dogs and cats?
Why do we call some of them pets, and others are just food?
Not long ago, I visited my friends and played with their pet.
She was a smart lovely creature.
She can learn tricks and make all kinds of things,
you know, she has a remarkable memory that if you hide something from her,
she would still look for it.
She ran to me when I called her name,
and came to eat when I pointed her food.
I'm not talking about their dog or cat.
I'm talking about Frohi, a chicken who survived the meat industry.
Before I knew her, I thought it was weird to think of a chicken as a pet.
Today I know she's a warm, loving, beautiful creature,
just as my beloved dogs.
Did you know she has 30 different calls for all kinds of situations?
She starts communicating with her chicks even before they hatched.
She turns her eggs 30 times a day to keep them warm.
Frohi lived happily with my friends, who found her in a dump,
just outside a hatchery, where she was left to die.
But her body was deformed to grow so much meat,
it eventually killed her.
You can rescue a chicken from the meat industry,
but you can't take the industry out of the chicken.
She was only 1 year old when she died,
while a free chicken can live up to 10 or even 15 years.
I never thought I'd be so sad over a dead chicken.
But I was. I am.
It's much easier for us not to think of all these animals,
when they are hidden away from us.
We don't see those 200 million chickens
that are being killed in the meat and egg industry, every year, in Israel alone.
They are so many, they're faceless and nameless.
We don't think of them as who they really are,
as smart and as communicative as Frohi.
As sweet and as vulnerable as that little chick we once hugged,
in the petting zoo. They are the same.
I was lucky to get to know a chicken that closely,
but how many of us even get the chance to know these animals?
Can we even think of cows or chickens as free creatures,
when already in kindergarten we are taught that cow lives in cowshed,
a lamb belongs to the pen, we sing 'Old McDonald's had a farm'
and read stories about cows giving milk to children?
Nobody tells us the truth about these animals.
Nobody tells us the truth about what really happens to them
in the livestock industry.
The livestock industry is making a huge effort for us not to know
what's really going on behind its thick walls.
It spends so much money to tell us lies
about cows walking in the field,
eating grass, being milked by beautiful girls,
or chickens running in the wild with little chicks following them
Someone wants us to believe those deceiving images,
and tells us nothing about the packed cages, the filth,
the horror, the pain, and the inevitable death these animals suffer
in these cruel industries.
No cow or chicken gets to live happily ever after,
unless they are being save by people who pull themselves out of this matrix,
and reconnected to the roots of compassion.
When we are young, it is very easy to connect to roots of compassion.
A friend of mine went fishing with his kids.
They were sitting there for hours, waiting until finally they caught a fish.
My friend pulled the fish out of the water flopping, and start hitting his head,
to kill the fish, you know.
His kids watched him in horror.
They didn't see dinner.
They saw their father brutally killing a living creature.
They didn't agree to eat the fish.
It was easy for them to make the connection,
because their hearts were still open.
Their minds were not yet being filled
with all these lies and misleading information.
Their bodies were still clean from habits and false needs.
But it's never too late to find the way out of the matrix.
We can all get to know our animal friends once again.
We can get all the information we want about them,
and about those cruel industries.
Sir Paul McCartney once said
that if slaughterhouses had glassed walls, everyone would be vegetarian.
Today, the thick walls of slaughterhouses,
dairy farms, and chicken coops become thinner.
We don't need to depend on the stories the industry tells us.
We can get all the real information ourselves.
Today we have much more access to photos, videos,
and testimonies through the web.
We just need to open our eyes to see our friends again,
to make the connection between them and the food on our plates.
It will be better for our health, better for their well-being,
and for the planet we all live on.
Let's reconnect to those natural roots of compassion
we have towards all living beings.
Let's touch this clean innocent place in our hearts:
a place that we all have,
a place I still remember from that Friday afternoon.
Thank you.
(Applause)