Everyday Vegan - A singing voice for the voiceless

How do you feel when you are doing the vigils?

Even though I have been doing them for so long, they are hard for me every time. I now live in Whanganui and usually do them Sunday afternoons at two local slaughterhouses. Every vigil day, I wake up with a sinking feeling. It is definitely the hardest day in my week, and the hardest thing of all is knowing I can’t do anything to save the animals I meet.

How do you cope with seeing their distress?

There are a number of things in my life that help me to balance out all the sadness I feel when I’m at the slaughterhouse, and when I’m confronted on social media with the distressing reality of our treatment of our animal kin. 

I teach piano and keyboard to young children, and their sweetness, as well as the belief that I am enhancing their lives, helps me to be positive and outgoing. You can’t be a misery guts around children. I enjoy playing piano myself also, and this is another outlet.  

I eat a healthy vegan diet and keep up a moderate amount of exercise, walking my dog Gigi daily and going to the swimming pool a couple of times a week. I don’t like the cold weather and don’t do much gardening in winter, but enjoy pottering around outside in summer. I recently joined a choir and a French conversation group. All of these things help me to keep a balance. 

My background as a spiritual seeker also helps a great deal. I was brought up in the Catholic faith, attended Quaker meetings for a few years, and have lived in ashrams overseas. I am familiar with Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism, and their respective teachings. When I feel desperate, I dig deep and somehow find it within me to keep going in the work I feel called upon to do.

How do you see the animals responding to you?

When I was in India in 2019, as the recipient of the Philip Wollen Animal Welfare award, I was interviewed by All India Radio. I told the story of a particular cow, who I recall to this day, who had been right at the front of the truck and consequently one of the last to be unloaded. I kept eye contact with them and sang to them for some time. When this cow was going down the ramp into the slaughterhouse pens, he or she stopped and turned their head around and looked straight back at me, as if to say, “Can’t you help me?” When I told this story on the radio, the producer of the show came in at the end of the broadcast and said that he had decided to turn vegetarian. This case stands out in particular of a cow who was pleading with me.  

When did you start singing to the animals?

I had been doing solitary vigils for about a year in and around Hamilton, but there was rarely the possibility of approaching the animals because the trucks didn’t stop.   One day when I was driving on a highway, I saw a stock car filled with sheep on the side of the road. The driver was off collecting more sheep to take to the slaughterhouse. This was the first time that I could actually get close to the animals, to reach in and pat them, and to talk to them. 

As I was with them, seeing their unease and uncertainty, feeling desperately sorry for their plight, the idea came to me to sing to them, the way a mother would sing a lullaby to comfort and placate her children, I guess. I am useless at remembering lyrics to songs, but had learned certain mantras during my various trips to India, and so spontaneously started to sing one I knew well. I was hoping the gentle vibrations would help to calm and reassure them, and also act as a blessing on their souls.

Here in Whanganui, we are fortunate that we can get quite close to the animals in the pens, so I still sing to the animals, both mantras and other songs. When I forget the words, I make them up or hum. It’s a good job the animals aren’t fussy about the quality of the voice of the one who serenades them!  

In my seventies now, my voice has definitely deteriorated, but it doesn’t stop me.  Actually, it’s partly for me that I sing. It is a channel for the love I feel for them and my deep sorrow that they should be in this position at all. I always hope that they understand my sincere intentions and it helps them in some way.  

Do you have people joining you on vigils these days?

On a couple of occasions while I was still in the Waikato, activists travelled from Auckland to do a combined vigil with me and I was very touched by this. But in general I just did them by myself.  

When I arrived in Whanganui at the beginning of 2018, I had several people with me right from the first vigil and, while the vegans who come regularly have changed over the years, I still have a couple of local friends who regularly join me. At one vigil earlier this year there were thirty of us, as friends in the Save Movement had travelled up from Wellington and Palmerston North, and down from Taranaki. 

Taranaki Animal Save activists in particular are very supportive of us here in Whanganui, and come down often to boost our numbers and make more of a statement at the slaughterhouse. I am very grateful for the commitment of all the activists who give their time and resources to peacefully protest, and to call into question the cruel and unnecessary killing of sentient beings for food.

Do you get abuse from slaughterhouse workers and drivers?

I worry more about those doing the vigils with me than about myself, and while people have thrown glass bottles and fruit at us, these occasions have been infrequent, thankfully. Abuse hurled from motorists is like water off a duck’s back for me, I am not someone who has a lot of personal fear or anxiety. I am sad to say, though, that there have been a number of altercations with drivers and slaughterhouse staff. I have had staff and drivers jabbing fingers in my face, cursing me, calling me names, and, on a couple of occasions, drivers have even used their trucks to try to scare us. This is very dangerous. 

Regan Russell, a Save Movement activist from Toronto, was tragically killed in 2020 when a stock truck ran over her. In the last three years, I have made a number of complaints to the slaughterhouse, to trucking firms, and to MPI [Ministry for Primary Industries] about staff, and over the treatment of animals. 

Just this week I contacted MPI about a driver who was jabbing cows with an electric prod over and over again, and cursing them at the same time. It was appalling, but one of our activists got it all on video.  No animal will ever be treated in such a way on my watch. Cruelty to helpless animals strikes at my very soul. I cannot bear it.

Have you had any conversations with slaughterhouse staff or drivers, and to what end?

We have all had conversations, and the hope is that what we say has made them think. But cultural indoctrination, cognitive dissonance, and habitual patterns are hard enough to penetrate in the general public, let alone people in the Industry. 

I did find it interesting to learn that the Production Manager of one of the slaughterhouses, whose job it was to oversee all the activities in the plant itself including slaughter, left about a year ago to manage a berry farm! I think seeing us every week with our peaceful but confronting presence, as well as the conversations we had had with him personally, might have had something to do with it, but I don’t know for sure.