NOAH'S ARK
Claudette Vaughan talks to Noah Hannibal

Noah Hannibal has been involved with the animal rights movement his entire life. The son of animal liberation pioneer Patty Mark, he grew up in a house were protests and midnight raids on factory farms were commonplace. He is an active member of Animal Liberation Victoria's Open Rescue team and has travelled around the world working on campaigns for various animal rights groups. Noah is also a photographer whose animal rights pictures of rescues and protests regularly run in major magazines and newspapers around the world, helping to expose the cruelty of factory farms. Here is the Abolitionist's interview with him.

Abolitionist: Tell us about your activism Noah?

I am heavily involved with Animal Liberation Victoria, running the office and several campaigns. We focus on fighting for factory farmed animals as these are the animals that suffer the most abuse (each year over 50 billion killed for meat worldwide, and the numbers keep going up). We do a lot of public education such as handing out ‘meet your meat’ dvds and holding demonstrations, but some of our most important work is carrying out rescues and investigations at factory farms and slaughterhouses.

Our Open Rescue team regularly documents the lives of misery animals endure inside factory farms. In general the public have no idea know what goes on in these hell holes and the industries want to keep it that way. We know that animals are suffering in these places, we know that many die slow and painful deaths, so we feel we have a moral duty to get in there and do what we can to help. This involves rescuing animals and documenting the conditions so that the farms can be exposed in the media.

We usually rescue those animals who are sick or injured and in most urgent need of veterinary care. One of the most rewarding aspects of all this is getting to make a difference to the lives of the individual animals. Many do not make it as their condition is already so bad, but at least they die in caring hands rather than slowly starving or being trampled on by their cage mates. For those who do make it, it is a completely awesome experience seeing them in sanctuaries, recuperating and living peaceful, happy lives.

As a photographer one of my roles is to document the conditions inside factory farms and get these images to the media. Many of the photos taken by our rescue team are picked up by newsires like Reuters, Associated Press and AFP, which means publications around the world will run with these images.

I am also sick of hearing the anti vegan sentiments that you can’t be strong without eating meat and that vegans are all pale wasting away weaklings, so I regularly lift weights and am currently bench pressing an easy 140kgs (and gunning for 150kgs), which is more than most carcass eaters will ever manage. When you lift these sort of weights it makes it difficult for anyone to say that veganism is going to result in a loss of strength. The best part is that when people see massive vegans shifting huge weights in the gym it's going to cause the typical meathead gym junkie to reconsider any anti-vegan attitudes they might hold.

Abolitionist: What successes particularly stand out in your mind?

I suppose it is the change in public awareness of animal rights issues over the years, it’s slow, almost glacial, but there is more of an awareness out there (still nowhere near enough, of course). And this increased awareness is definitely due to the hard work of animal rights campaigners all over the world. It’s also important to have tangible victories, and some of these have included our puppy farm campaign in which we shut down Australia’s largest puppy factory farm, or taking part in an investigation in Vietnam a few years ago where we exposed this really horrific zoo, and got the place shut down after the photos were made public. Successes like that are quite sweet.

Abolitionist: You are an integral member of the ALV Rescue Team. How many raids have you been on now Noah and which one's are the most memorable for you?

I don’t really keep count but it’s a fair few by now. What sticks in my memory the most is those animals we have to leave behind. Sometimes this is due to the fact that we just don’t have any more room in the rescue van, or we’re out of time. At one battery hen farm we got in through the manure pits and all these hens had fallen down into the manure, there must have been close to a hundred down there. Everywhere we shined our torches we would see sad little eyes reflecting back at us. We got out as many as we could but there is no way we got every last one of them. These sort of things can really haunt you.

Abolitionist: Every Saturday morning you and other animal activists protest outside KFC. Why them especially and how is that campaign progressing?

KFC are the target of a global campaign calling for an end to the suffering of the 850 million baby chickens cruelly raised and killed for the company each year. For the last four years we have been holding weekly demonstrations outside KFC stores as part of the international KFC cruelty campaign. During this time we’ve handed out over a million leaflets and spoken to countless people about the broiler chicken industry.

We have also conducted numerous investigations into KFC suppliers and slaughterhouses and repeatedly find birds who are bred and drugged to grow so quickly that their legs often collapse under their artificialy enhanced weight, crippling them. Many die of starvation and dehydration because their broken legs will not carry them to food and water. They are crammed by the tens of thousands into sheds thick with ammonia fumes and forced to spend their entire lives living in their own waste. The birds routinely suffer broken bones from being grabbed by their legs and violently stuffed or thrown into crates or from being slammed into shackles upside-down at slaughterhouses. Many chickens are still conscious as their throats are slit and when they are dumped into tanks of scalding hot water to remove their feathers.

Abolitionist: You attended the last UK Animal Rights Conference. What went on and what speakers stood out in your mind?

A huge number of workshops took place during the gathering, including practical skills as well as campaigning issues like promoting veganism, setting up local groups and fighting the fur trade. There were a number of high profile activists giving workshops, including Greg Avery and Keith Mann.

The gathering provided a fantastic opportunity for activists to network and swap ideas. One of the highlights was a round up of the animal rights situation around the world, in which representatives from 25 countries gave updates on recent activities in their country. Many of the participants were very interested in the Open Rescue work taking place in Australia and a workshop was organised to discuss the possibility of carrying out Open Rescues in other countries.

Hearing about the human and animal rights situation in Columbia was particularly distressing, as the speaker informed us about dissenters of all sorts ‘disappearing’, and a fifteen year old activist who was kicked to death by the police at a bullfight protest. Another upsetting moment was the screening of ‘Jill’s Film’ a documentary about the life of Jill Phipps, an activist killed by a live export truck during a blockade. It was especially sad and moving watching the movie sitting amongst many of her close friends.

Overall though, the gathering was a tremendously positive experience, with attendees taking home with them a host of new campaigning ideas.

Abolitionist: At the recent World Meat Conference held in Brisbane you were part of a lockdown at one of the Queensland abattoirs. Tell us about that.

That was a pretty full on experience. We chained ourselves to the machinery on the slaughterhouse kill floor, so that they would have to shut down operations. We managed to shut them down and stop the killing line for half a day. For a few hours we were surrounded by over forty abattoir workers screaming abuse at us. Then the owner came in with an angle grinder. When he saw that this wasn’t going to intimidate us to unlock ourselves he started shoving it in people’s faces. There were four of us locked down in there and this one girl was close to breaking down, so the slaughterhouse owner kept shoving it in her face, taking enjoyment in the fact that she was so traumatised. It was one of the most cowardly things I had ever seen. This is what they were doing to humans with a slew of media waiting outside the building. So you can imagine what they do to the cows when there’s no one else around.

Abolitionist: Why are you vegan Noah?

The simple answer is because I don’t see any ethical alternative. Once I became educated about the animal abuse involved in the production of milk, eggs and other animal products I would have been a hypocrite if I continued to consume such products and maintain I was against cruelty to animals. It doesn’t hurt that now it’s getting easier and easier to live as a vegan.

Abolitionist: Will we live to see the day of a more enlightened compassionate humanity towards the non-human animal kingdom?

I really hope that one day soon we are going to reach a tipping point. We’ve seen it start to happen with vegetarianism, which just twenty years ago was viewed as some lunatic fringe hippy enterprise, but is now becoming more and more part of the mainstream. So I’m quietly hopeful. And even if we don’t live to see that day we can do our best to set it in motion.

http://www.alv.org.au
http://www.liberationphotography.org