Are you a compassionate xmas gift-buyer?

Bile farms exist for the Traditional Chinese Medicine trade, but some of this horrendous bear gall bladder product, extracted in Asian countries from immobilized traumatized bears through a process of unbelievable cruelty, finds its way into ordinary chewing gum, toothpaste and face cream. As consumers we can never be too vigilant about the sources of the seemingly innocent products we buy.

What is in the Christmas presents you are choosing this year? For instance, what have you bought in the line of shoes and handbags? Check out Jill Robinson's well-organized site www.animalsasia.org, and find shocking information on the reptile trade (which underlies shoe and handbag fashions). The live animal markets of the Far East are a horror, and they provide ingredients of many an interestingly packaged alternative "health" product.

Those with a "non-harm" ethic must be vigilant at Christmas. It is impossible to compute the scale of suffering that goes into the standard turkey dinner: the millions of birds who were raised in cramped factory farms, stuffed with growth hormones and medications and then slaughtered while still young, never having been out of doors or had a moment of free healthy movement. What does it mean that we humans centre a whole festival around a tormented bird?

Many of your stocking stuffers will have been tested on lab animals -- soaps and scents and bubble baths ... To get some idea of what is and what is not tested on animals these lists help (but are not comprehensive: ask each corporation what they do to animals by going to their websites ...)

http://www.peta.org/living/beauty-and-personal-care/companies/default.aspx
http://www.leapingbunny.org

So what to do? The best gift is to buy an animal or sanctuary sponsorship from one of the reliable animal welfare organizations like WSPA (World Society For the Protection of Animals) which has a choice of programs to support in the name of your ethical-minded friends and relatives; see their site www.reallywildgifts.ca to purchase gifts for as little as $20 which go to animals themselves, with e-cards which are sent to the friends and relatives in whose names you give them. Or: find a homeless pet shelter near you, and donate or adopt.

Avoid any plastic gift, they will end up in the environment where they will not break down because they were not part of nature to begin with: plastic will reduce itself down to blobs of toxicity, which will cause problems at the molecular level to many life forms. At the macro-physical level, it will enter the plastic islands in the oceans that spell death to marine birds, turtles, fish and myriad other creatures.

We need to resist the message that by buying things we will pump up the economy. The entire world begins a buying orgy every Christmas, measured by retailers minute by minute, but the ever-expanding human race cannot secure its own material safety by destroying the natural world around it. Please: choose gifts accordingly. We are not the only creature on the Ark.