by Pam Ahern
Most people consider themselves compassionate, right thinking and kind to all things great and small. How then do they rationalise the cruelty of killing animals for food? Dealing with this conflict means most people avoid thinking about it, happily swimming in the river of denial. They generously support charitable organisations like the RSPCA and Lost Dogs Home while mulling over ham sandwiches tut tutting about the cruelty of killing whales. They hold on to their romantic childhood belief of farm animals living happy lives frolicking all day in paddocks.
The reality of this is there is no way of honestly avoiding the moral dilemma of "is it just to take the life of a healthy animal merely to satisfy our glutinous pleasure?" It has now been medically established that one can at the very least adequately survive on a sensible diet that doesn't involve any animal products. In fact many health professionals are now advocating an animal free diet in acute stages of cancer and other life threatening conditions.
Bearing this in mind it makes one feel a tad uneasy in persisting in a regular dietary intake of animal suffering, sorry products. Those who espouse a vegetarian/vegan diet are conveniently cast off as fuzzy animal lovers who still belong in the trees. Again this appeases a sense of conscience, as we don't wish to be seen as cruel or unfeeling. Sure animals matter but not enough for many to stop eating them or their products and thereby inflicting untold suffering on their lives.
Our Western lifestyle provides many food choices and what we choose to eat says far more about our ethics than our palatory preferences. Unpleasant thoughts of just how the jovial pig lived confined in a barren ammonia drenched shed denied her basic instincts of rooting the ground and nesting in straw. Having no mud in which to wallow only the urine and excrement soaked concrete floor on which to lie. Or what of the inquisitive hen, crammed into a tiny cage, standing on inhospitable wire flooring that will damage her fragile claws and cause deformities, she will never know sunlight, wind or rain. She will never be able to stretch her wings or dust bathe and part of her beak will have been cruelly removed to prevent pecking of other birds and cannibalism. All for the sake of an egg. The gentle cow will bellow for days after her calf has been taken from her, all so humans can enjoy the milk she produces for her calf. We do not consider their suffering as it would quite simply turn our stomach and put us off our food. And what of the fear that ravages their every muscle as they are callously manhandled in abattoirs, some still fully conscious as their throats are cut? Our eating of animal products is for many a habit, all of our friends do it and habits are hard to change.
It is convenient to see animals of a lesser order, placed on this earth by the creator for our use and abuse. But what if Darwin got it right and "they differ from us not in kind but degree" is our treatment of them still justified?
Slowly a paradigm shift is occurring in society as our treatment of other species comes under the microscope. Many are awakening to the fact that it is but an accident of culture and geography that the family dog is a pet and not dinner, that farm animals are sentient just like our cat or dog and that they have an interest in not suffering. For them the knife is just as sharp as it is to our cat, dog, or even us. While animals will never comprehend their lot in life from paddock to plate, or rather intensive factory farm to plate, they know fear, and they will actively try to avoid it. If you want proof just visit any abattoir, but don't expect to be greeted with open arms like one would on any factory tour. Chances are you won't make it past the front gates, and there is good reason for this. Such an assault on ones sensibilities will proffer the best stimulus for vegetarianism the world could offer, hardly anything the meat and livestock industry would wish to be associated with.
The upshot of this all is that we can never have a just society while it is based on such an inhumane system of food production. Food for thought anyway!
Pam Ahern's Bio:
Grew up loving, caring for and rescuing cats and dogs while eating assorted other animals until the day I woke up to the fact that the kindest thing you can do for animals is not eat them! My mission now is to help others on their journey to this same realisation.
Currently residing in Central Victoria with a menagerie of animals, all with dubious and colourful backgrounds. Looking out my window each day I see my dear friend in Edgar Alan Pig quietly lazing away with the dogs and ask myself "why is one friend and one food?" how have we got it so wrong? Working to make things right and the world a better place is now my journey.
Working away at my computer each day with a cat on my lap has bought me to another revelation, "who ever invented polar fleece didn't have a cat!"
Seize the day!