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Meet Mom Growing up in a crummy neighborhood in urban New Jersey, stray cats were everywhere. We were on welfare at the time and even though mom had a rough time saving money to feed us, she would always find a way to get a bag of kibble for the strays. I was only eight at the time, but can easily recall all the cats sitting on our window ledges just waiting for mom. We eventually borrowed a Have-A-Heart trap from the local shelter, and as best we could, started our very own trap, neuter and release program. We would often trap a very angry cat, whom we would then drive to the shelter for the operation. A month later, this fierce feral would be belly-up on our living room floor purring and playing with string. We saw many cats transform this way. It was a good feeling. I also remember one day when walking to the Five & Ten, mom grabbed my brother and I, covered our eyes and yelled, “Don’t look kids, it’s a dead animal!” Through splayed fingers covering my eyeballs, I could see a woman in a full-length fur coat marching by, glaring at the crazy woman and her two “abused” kids. “Mom get off me!” I yelled. “You’re so embarrassing!” I walked 20 steps in front of her the rest of the way. Meet Me Two years later, mom’s lack of resources met the criteria for a boarding school for needy children, so off I went to Hershey, PA—dairy country. While at boarding school, I started volunteering at a nearby dairy barn, where I would clean out stalls and bottle-feed baby calves. At this young age, I wasn’t questioning where these calves’ mothers were, or why they needed a bottle filled with powdered milk. I simply loved spending time with them, struggling to hold the big plastic bottle as they pushed against it, suckling as much as they could. I would squat down next to these newborns and scratch their heads lovingly. One night at dinnertime, we all got in line for the buffet. Frozen peas and square carrots, mashed potatoes from a box and a strange breaded meat. I asked my house-parents what the strange meat was. “It’s veal,” they said. I tried to recall if I had ever heard of this concoction. “What’s veal?” I asked, “Is it like hamburger or chicken or..” “No,” my housemother replied. “It’s baby cow.” “WHAT!! Baby cow? Like the ones we take care of?” “No, not them.” “Oh…” I wish I could tell you that this was my a-ha! moment, that I took the veal off my plate and stopped consuming meat right then. But I didn’t, I ate the veal, for two reasons. One, at 10, I didn’t know what else to do, no one told me I didn’t need to eat meat. Second, there was a big chocolate cake on the counter, and I knew I couldn’t have any unless I ate everything on my plate. My a-ha! moment didn’t hit until one of my vacations back home to New Jersey and I saw a magazine sitting on mom’s coffee table—PETA’s Animal Times. I flipped through the pages and saw graphic images I had never seen before: pigs hanging by their hind legs, laboratory rabbits undergoing the Draize eye test and elephants being beat by trainers. Little had I known, mostly because I was away at boarding school, that mom was an animal rights activist. I soon discovered I was one too. That year I stopped eating “weird” meat, and slowly began cutting out everything else. Like Mother, Like Daughter Veal came back to haunt me a couple of years later when I was in high school. I was at the Olive Garden with a group of students, squished in between six people on a booth seat. I could barely turn my head as the girl sitting next to me ordered Veal Parmesan. “You can’t eat that!” I yelled at her, “That’s baby cow!” “So what?” she glared at me, “I like it.” I stood up, climbed over the three people to my right and moved to the other end of the table, grumbling the whole time about baby killers. I was beginning to feel like my mom. That November, mother-daughter bonding was like never before. The day after our turkey-free Thanksgiving, mom invited me to come with her to New York City for her annual festivities—the “Fur Free Friday” protest. I was nervous, but once in the crowd of folks carrying faux blood-splattered posters and shouting, I found myself chiming in. “Macy’s, how’d you get your fur today? Gassing, Trapping and Anal Electrocution!” I’ve attended almost every fur free Friday since that year, most of them with mom. Veal, Again... I didn’t actually become vegan until my freshman year in college when PETA intervened once again. I went to the Helping Animals 101 conference in New York City, and it was there I learned that in every glass of milk or chunk of cheese is a little dead veal calf. I couldn’t handle the guilt. That weekend I became vegan—it didn’t hurt that I was also introduced to soy ice cream. Soon afterward, I transferred to Marist College where I began the task of starting a new animal rights group—FoxP.A.W., People for Animal Welfare. Before long, I saw it. Cycling in every two weeks on the college cafeteria menu—veal. I decided to voice my opinion to the dining committee, explaining thoroughly the circumstances behind the veal industry. Veal has been off the menu for three years. Back on the Farm In my junior year of college, I was fortunate to find the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. On my first trip to the farm, I saw a tiny calf surrounded by people oohing and aahing, taking pictures, and some even crying. Dylan, a five day-old calf, had been recently liberated from a dairy farm where he was to be auctioned off as veal. He was no use to a farmer who dealt in milk and too scrawny to become meat; he was simply a byproduct. I began to work on the farm in February of 2006, and actually helped wean Dylan off the bottle. He has been hand raised, and now is the sweetest steer on the farm. He recognizes his name, and will follow you around eagerly. Outside of his pen sits a real wooden veal crate on display. When people see the crate and the picture of calves on a veal farm beside it, most can’t even believe it’s legal. “They’re only babies!” some people exclaim. I hope that the work I’ve done, and will continue to do, will make up for that day when I was 10 years-old, and chose the chocolate cake over questioning the breaded meat on my plate. Or for that matter, the day I was too embarrassed to walk with my mom after her compassionate display of activism. Robin Henderson is a proud new graduate of Marist College where she headed up the student group Fox P.A.W. (People for Animal Welfare). You’ll find her and Dylan at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary, www.woodstockfas.org.
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