jemappelleyadira:

flannelowl:

jemappelleyadira:

PCC: a place for learning and getting a lot of pamphlets.

Today I received one about “being kind to animals” as the man put it. The front displays cute pigs and a chick (aw) then you open it up and are attacked with sad images of factory farm life (I now have lost my appetite for breakfast). Skip to the end and you find pages about the resolution to the cruelty is to just become vegan.

Here is where my problem is.

I absolutely have no problem with people choosing a vegan lifestyle. I, myself, was a vegetarian and then a vegan for quite some time. This is okay for some people but not for all. And by no means is this a solution to the problems of industrial agriculture today.

If people really want to stop the horrendous realties millions of animals face every day, is to choose better alternatives (no, this does not mean you have to stop eating meat). How about we invest in choosing animals that were humanely raised and fed a proper diet? People are willing to spend lots of money on great TV’s, cars, cell phones….but not the food you eat!? Food that is supposed to keep you alive AND healthy? 

Wake the fuck up.

I’m not saying we need to go into debt just trying to get some dinner. What I am saying is we need to get our priorities straight and pay a little extra for better quality food that will actually be of benefit to us. Sorry guys, McDonald’s Dollar Menu doesn’t do shit for you. And hey, guess what? When more people start demanding/buying better quality food things will start to change. These factory farms will no longer continue to run because they will be losing money cause no one wants that crap anymore.

Since when did food become so low on our priority list?

I posted a quote not too long ago about the REAL cost of food. You may go into a grocery store or fast food restaurant and think you are buying a cheap meal. But the hidden costs lie in the environment, animals, fossil fuels, and the quality of the food itself. 

So come on, do a favor for yourself. Give your body a little more respect. You can replace material things anytime, but you only get one body. Cheesy and cliche to say? Very. Is it true? Very.

It’s delusional to think you can feed the greed of all the meat-eaters in, say, America with so-called humanely-raised grass-fed beef, etc. There just isn’t that much land in the whole world. They’re already destroying most of the rainforests for cattle grazing land and to raise corn and soy for cattle. When is it going to stop?

You might be interested to know that as “humane meat” production has gone up in the last decade, factory-farmed meat has gone up even more. Perpetuating the idea that meat can be in any way humane or ethical or environmentally responsible only serves to A) give people who have access to it and can afford it an illusory ethical get-out-of-jail-free card, not to mention the idea that they’re somehow compassionate people even though they pay other people to mutilate and dismember the bodies of feeling, sentient beings for nothing but their own pleasure, and B) make everyone else feel okay about eating meat so that they don’t think twice about it, even when going to McDonald’s. The factory farm industry LOVES the free range organic humane meat movement, it’s the best misdirecting PR they could ever have.

While, yes, I guess it is obviously better if some animals are treated well before they are slaughtered, and I appreciate that there are many small-time farmers out there who believe they’re doing the right thing, I will never support this argument because it implies that it’s still okay to slaughter them and there’s absolutely no way to take the cruelty and inherent oppression out of that. You’ve lived a pretty free life, you haven’t been caged and living in your own filth; if I killed you now and ate you, you’d be totally cool with that, right? Hell, I didn’t even forcibly impregnate you and steal your young away from you; you’d probably be getting off way better than even the free-rangest, most grass-fed cow in all the world, so how could you possibly object?

I can’t wrap my head around this argument that going vegan isn’t a way to help animals, yet somehow eating meat in any capacity is. So you’re saying that if, hypothetically, most people stopped eating meat, that wouldn’t have as much of an effect on factory farming as most people choosing to eat so-called humane meat? As I hinted in the first paragraph, this is just a gross misunderstanding of economics. As long as the majority of the first-world population thinks that the exploitation and consumption of animals’ bodies is acceptable, there’s no way to feed them all with “humanely-raised” meat—it’s environmentally, ecologically, and economically impossible. Factory farming is only growing stronger; it’s not going anywhere. Factory farming arose, during a population explosion, to fill a need that started with culture and advertising campaigns convincing people that they needed to eat copious amounts of meat to show their status or be healthy or whatever other reason. As long as that zeitgeist persists, animals will continue to suffer and be killed by the tens or hundreds of billions every year. The only way to change that is to change the perception of animals from that of commodities to that of sentient beings like us with the right to not be owned and exploited.

I’m sorry, you can’t be kind to animals by slaughtering and eating them in a nicer way; the way to be kind to them is by recognizing their right to live their lives for their own reasons and BY NOT MURDERING AND EATING THEM.

Using your own words: you should do a favor to the animals and give their bodies a little more respect; an animal is not merely a material thing that is easily replaced, it is a sentient being, an individual just like you; each animal you eat only got that one body, that one chance to live and experience this world, and no matter how well she was treated she never had a chance to feel the kind of freedom to exist that you take for granted.

If you want to continue eating meat, cheese, eggs, or milk, by all means eat the stuff you’ve been led to believe is nicer and healthier for you; but please stop pretending you’re the savior of the world by advocating the “humane” options and just admit that you like the taste of it, and that knowing someone died for it doesn’t make you care enough to be willing to give that up. That’s not an insult or a passing of judgment, that’s just the truth that it all boils down to.

I highly recommend you reading Omnivore’s Dilemma. In the book the author, Michael Pollan, makes a great point at acknowledging the inevitable: humans eat meat and will continue to. I am a big animal lover and almost come to tears when I see a little squirrel dead in the road. But I have accepted the fact that a large majority of the population will continue to consume animals for food. So, instead of trying to force everyone to become vegan and have them forfeit meat and other animal products from their diets is, well, foolish, and a waste of time. 

Instead we should make the reality better!

How?

By actually going back to a time when meat was not so cheap and plentiful. Go back to raising them properly (living REAL outdoors lives), feeding them grass and other things they would NATURALLY eat (instead of feeding them a mixture of corn, plate waste, chicken litter and other dead animal leftover…oh and of course a shit ton of antibiotics), and killing about 400 cattle a day per factory instead of 400 per hour like it is now.

The fact is…people have become incredibly spoiled and expect meat to be cheap and quick. And that spoiled lifestyle has created this big problem.

Getting back to the book….Pollan talks about early human civilizations and how nature works together between species. To put it more plainly, the circle of life. Animals kill other animals in the wild because they must. Without any death in nature between animals, populations would soar and there would be no competition therefore overrunning our natural resources and wiping them out. Biologically speaking, a human is an animal….an OMNIVOROUS animal at that. We eat animals for the nutritional benefit they can provide. Animals play a part in the environment’s health and ours. As Pollan put it…we provide them with food and shelter and protection and they, in return, give us their bodies for consumption. 

This is how it is supposed to be if they are properly raised and slaughtered. They are seen with respect and PURPOSE. Not just an object that will end up on a dollar menu.

We have lost touch with what the animal’s purpose is: to live and to provide. We do have to ability to give them a happier, cleaner, better lives and they provide us with sustenance. 

Becoming a Vegan is a personal choice, and a brave one, that not everyone is willing to do. So how can we make the reality better? Change the fucked up system. It CAN happen.

Michael Pollan saddens me because he uses pseudo-science and writing talent to convince people like you—people who would otherwise care about the lives of animals and not want them to die, and who already were or would maybe eventually go vegan or at least vegetarian—that somehow the real way to help animals is to pay someone to murder them so that you can eat their bodies. And he gives rich white liberal meat-eaters a way to pat themselves on the back until they (hopefully) break their arms.

How can you possibly say that that the animal gives us its body for consumption? Animals have no way of giving consent to us for something like that and why the hell would they anyway? Animals in general, unless they are chained, their spirits are totally broken, or they don’t realize what’s happening until the knife is going into their throat, will try to escape life-threatening situations. Yet Pollan has you convinced that slaughter is some kind of beautiful and natural agreement between two consenting individuals. And then you go around and tell this crazy idea to other people and it spreads and suddenly everyone thinks they’re doing animals a favor by eating cheeseburgers.

Michael Pollan is the best public relations agent the meat industry ever had.

If you care about animals at all, please stop paying people to kill them and please stop eating them.

PS: Humans are not omnivores, another perspective