BOVINES

Labour

Buffaloes are worked to exhaustion in rice fields and markets, pulling carts in extreme heat.

Yaks are used as pack animals in the Himalayas. Many suffer from malnutrition, frostbite, and overloading.

Zebu cattle are common draught animals in Asia and Africa, often injured from yoking, overwork, and beatings.

When animals collapse, they are abandoned or sold for slaughter.

What you can do:

Reject all use of animals for labour. Promote animal-free technology in agriculture.

Entertainment

Rodeos and Bull-Leaping

Bulls are used in rodeos, bull-leaping, and other high-stress spectacles. They are deliberately provoked using electric shocks, tight flank straps, and sharp tools to force aggressive behaviour. These events glorify domination, fear, and violence.

What you can do:

Oppose rodeos and bull-based events. Educate others on the suffering behind the spectacle. Support legislation banning these practices.

Bullfighting

Bullfighting involves prolonged torture masked as tradition. Bulls are stabbed repeatedly before being killed. Many die slowly from blood loss, exhaustion, or collapsed lungs.

What you can do:

Reject bullfighting as culture. Call for bans and divestment from bullfighting regions. Never attend or support these events.

Cultural Festivals

Cows and bulls are paraded in religious or national festivals. Many are forced to run, jump through fire, pull floats, or perform under stress, surrounded by noise, firecrackers, and chaos. Injuries, heatstroke, and collapse are common.

What you can do:

Speak out against exploitative animal use in cultural festivals. Encourage compassionate, animal-free alternatives.

Safari Parks and Exotic Shows

Spiral-horned antelopes like eland, kudu, and bongo are bred for display in safari parks and zoos, or for sale to trophy hunting reserves. They are denied natural lives, confined for photo ops and profit.

What you can do:

Boycott safari parks and captive breeding programmes. Promote in-situ conservation and ethical tourism.

Staged Hunts and Viewing Attractions

Bison are exploited in staged hunts or fenced viewing experiences. They are often treated as background props, with no freedom or respect. In some areas, tourists pay to watch or shoot them within enclosed ranges.

What you can do:

Oppose staged hunts. Share the truth behind “heritage tourism” that commodifies wild beings.

Hunting

Wild banteng, gaur, buffalo, and yaks are hunted for bushmeat or trophies. Many species are endangered due to hunting.

Bison are killed in trophy hunts across the US and Canada. Some are fenced in for canned hunts.

European bison (wisent) were nearly wiped out by hunting. “Managed culling” continues.

Spiral-horned antelopes like kudu, bongo, and eland are popular trophy kills. Hunters seek size, age, and horn symmetry.

Anoa and tamaraw, both critically endangered, are still targeted for meat.

Saola are often killed accidentally by snares intended for other species.

What you can do:

Oppose trophy hunting. Support anti-poaching patrols. Pressure governments to ban wildlife trade and enforce protections.

Farming for Flesh

Cows and bulls are raised and slaughtered for beef. Most are stunned with a captive bolt or gassed, though many remain conscious during slaughter. Veal is the flesh of male calves stolen from dairy mothers. Some are killed within weeks.

Water buffaloes are used heavily in live export and backyard slaughter. India is a top exporter of their flesh.

Yaks are raised and killed in cold climates for their bodies.

Domestic banteng are used as meat animals in Southeast Asia.

Bison are bred and killed as “exotic” meat. Bison burgers are marketed as lean, healthy flesh.

Spiral-horned antelopes like eland and kudu are farmed on African game reserves for luxury meat.

What you can do:

Reject all animal flesh, including “grass-fed” and “free-range.” Expose how farming commodifies sentient beings. Support plant-based food systems.

Leather

Cows and buffaloes are killed for their hides. Leather is used in shoes, car interiors, clothing, and furniture. It is not a waste product. It is a profit-driven industry worth hundreds of billions — a global system that props up the flesh and dairy trades and subsidises continued breeding, suffering, and killing. Baby animals are especially targeted for their soft skin, marketed as “luxury.” The dairy industry kills newborn males for not producing milk and sells their skins as “calf leather” to recoup profits. Ask yourself: are you wearing a baby?

Buffalo leather is used extensively in belts, bags, and furniture. Many buffaloes are transported long distances to slaughterhouses in India and Bangladesh, where cruelty is routine and regulations are ignored.

Yak and bison leather is marketed as “artisan,” “natural,” or “sustainable” — masking the violence beneath the brand.

But leather’s cost goes far beyond the animals:

 ▫️Factory farms produce 130 times more waste than the human population, polluting rivers and soil.

▫️Tanning requires toxic chemicals like formaldehyde, mineral salts, and cyanide-based dyes. Most leather is chrome-tanned, producing hazardous waste.

▫️Tannery runoff poisons water, harming ecosystems and human health. Workers suffer high rates of cancer and respiratory illness.

▫️Processing is increasingly outsourced to countries with weaker protections. Children work unprotected. Whole communities pay the price.

▫️Skins from buffaloes, yaks, bison, and even dogs are used in leather goods — sometimes mislabelled entirely.

If you wear leather, do you know whose skin you're in?
 
What you can do:

Never buy leather: “Vegetable-tanned” and “ethically sourced” labels are greenwashing — the real harm happens long before tanning.

Expose the lie that leather is a harmless byproduct. It is a product of slaughter, suffering, and environmental collapse.

Choose cruelty-free materials: Modern innovations use cork, cactus, pineapple leaves (Piñatex), mushrooms (Mylo), corn waste, coconut husks (Malai), and more — all without killing anyone.

Support sustainable, animal-free design: From car interiors to fashion houses, the future of materials is plant-based, biodegradable, and kind.

Reject leather: Reject the idea that someone’s skin belongs on your shoes.

Milk

Cows are forcibly impregnated on a cycle of production, only to have their calves taken away hours after birth. Calves cry for their mothers. Mothers search and mourn. Male calves are shot, bludgeoned, or sold for veal. Females are fed milk replacer and enter the same cycle. Dairy cows suffer painful udder infections (mastitis), lameness from hard flooring, and exhaustion. Most are killed at just 4–6 years old.

Water buffaloes in India and Italy are used for dairy like mozzarella. Male buffalo calves are dumped or beaten to death.

Yaks in mountainous regions are milked for human use, with calves left deprived.

Wild yaks and buffalo face hybridisation with domestic breeds bred for higher yield.

What you can do:

Reject all dairy. Share the hidden cruelty. Choose plant-based upgrades.

Bovinae are not resources. Not milk machines. Not meat on legs. Not beasts of burden. They are sentient individuals with intelligence, memory, emotion, and community. Every one of them deserves freedom. The fight for animal liberation includes them all.