Animal Agriculture: Motherhood Betrayed

This Mother’s Day, we not only commemorated the millions of more-than-human animals so cruelly separated from their mothers by the animal abuse industry, but also recognized an exceptional mother within our ranks at Project Animal Freedom: Jenna Luzynski.

The missing mothers:

As with all human-centered holidays, there exists a grim, vastly underreported truth lurking just beneath the gilded festivities, well frosted chocolate cakes, and frolicsome conversations: the profound suffering, death, and violence inflicted upon the most innocent, defenseless, and vulnerable among us, many of whom happen to be mothers and all of whom are someone's child. Cows, chickens, and pigs are almost never included as honorees of holidays such as Mother’s Day, even though their motherhood is every bit as valuable, commendable, and meaningful to them and their children as a human mother’s love is to her and her human-animal child.

Their kidnapped children:

In industrial hatcheries, baby male chicks will never know the feathery warmth, tender coos, and gentle protection of their mother as they are shredded alive by the hundreds of millions in macerators or thrown into massive dumpsters to die of stress, dehydration, and suffocation, often within just hours of hatching. Baby cows are stolen from their mothers within days or even hours of birth in the dairy industry, and mother cows can spend entire days bellowing in grief for their beloved children to return. Mother pigs will never know the joy of nuzzling their children, and many of their children die from illness, starvation, and repeated bodily mutilations, all while she remains trapped in a narrow farrowing crate, unable to help her struggling children just feet away. “Nothing can replace a mother's love for her child. Nothing.” And yet we rob them of this profound, sacred bond, every day, by the millions.

A celebration of motherhood inviolate:

But Mother’s Day is more than just a solemn reflection on the shattered motherhood of our more-than-human animal compatriots; it is also a celebration of those motherhoods that have managed to thrive in a world that rips so many mothers and their children apart, from baby male cows heartlessly stolen from their mother's side just hours after birth to the thousands of families torn apart of the US-Mexico border.

This Mother’s Day, we celebrated Jenna Luzynski, the matriarch of the Luzynski-Paul-Stanley family. Jenna was one of 10 children born to Toni Paul, a devout Catholic with a remarkable penchant for lucid writing that helped get her children through school, and she attended Epiphany, now a charter school, where she became a top athlete; you can still see her golden plaque to this day in the main hallway leading to the gymnasium. She would continue pushing herself to excel after giving birth to her first child, Kristen, at age 18 and then her next child, Kyle, at age 22.

A fortuitous education:

Just months after Kyle’s birth, she enrolled as a full-time student at St. Louis College of Pharmacy, or STLCOP (pronounced STILL-cop) for short, and began the next major adventure of her life: juggling raising two children, working a part-time job, paying the bills, and passing her organic chem classes. Our Executive Director can still remember those late-night evenings when her study buddy, Joey, would come over to prepare for the next grueling exam while The Jerry Springer Show buzzed in the background. Despite the alien markings in her advanced organic chem textbooks, she graduated on schedule after five years of persistence and began a 20-year career at Walgreens as a Staff Pharmacist.

A life of opportunity:

It was her enormous exertion in becoming a self-made professional that propelled her burgeoning family from the working class to the upper middle class, in turn giving her children so many opportunities she could never enjoy as one of 10 children in a middle-income family; in fact, one could reasonably argue the entire existence of Project Animal Freedom owes itself to her gutsy decision to do whatever it took to ensure her children had a better life by embarking on her career as a pharmacist. The wealth she has generated for her family through her high-paying, albeit high-stress job is sufficient to enable our Executive Director to serve as a full-time activist despite only marginal personal income.

A taxingly tricky thyroid:

She has worked so hard to provide for her family, indeed, she has severely overtaxed her thyroid in the process, leading to hypothyroidism, extreme fatigue, and feelings of hopelessness; none of the myriad doctors nor the scores of books and articles she has consulted have provided the long-awaited panacea to her now chronic, virtually incurable condition. Despite her pronounced lethargy, she continues to work long hours, all for a deep, abiding love of her family. We would not have the house without her. We would not have our cars without her. And we would not have Project Animal Freedom without her.

A genuinely extraordinary mother:

This Mother’s Day, we would like to recognize one of the anonymous extraordinaries working in the background who makes so much of our work at Project Animal Freedom possible. From Kyle, Gabe, Kristen, John, and the rest of the Project Animal Freedom team, thank you so much for being such an outstanding mother; so many people owe their wellbeing to you, and we hope this Facebook post shows just a small modicum of our respect for your tireless dedication to us, your animal-loving family, and the organization your sacrifice helped birthe. To many Mother's Days and animal rights protests to come!