No One Has To Die!

Humans like to play god. We like to think god gave us the power to be god on earth because according to some questionable archaic manuscript “he made us in his image” – whatever that is. We like to think we have superior intelligence, (god given or evolved) and should therefore be in charge of the world around us. Humans are control freaks and narcissists, and the millennia have shown us to be dominating, cruel, and destructive – to everything and everyone – including ourselves.

As we formed our respective societies and cultures, we graduated from hunter-gatherers, basically eating whatever came our way – to farmers: growing our food and learning how to utilize it in its various forms, how to store it to last us through cold, barren weather, and how to fine tune its basic nature to give us more variety and better quality. We are pretty amazing when it comes to stuff like that.

I mean, the things we are able to do to food today to sustain us all with healthful options is nothing short of god like. As a result of our smarts and our new and improved diet, we grew as a species exponentially. This of course, meant we needed more food.

One of our strategies in feeding ourselves to keep up with the increased demand was to eliminate hunting as a mainstay and adapt animal husbandry into our farming practices. (Note: in the 1300s a “husbandman” was a farmer, so this aspect of farming became known under this sobriquet) So we bred and domesticated the animals we used to hunt. This way, we didn’t have to brave the elements and rely on our accuracy with aim in order to eat meat. We just had to go outside to our field and there was a plethora of quiet, trusting victims we could brutalize to put on our plates. Our food production had changed to keep up with our populations and needs. Gradually, farms turned into factories, churning out animal products faster than we could use them.

Our species had erupted like a human Vesuvius, and dammit we were hangry! So food became mass produced and then transported everywhere, even into space. We became a raging inferno of consumption, not just food, in everything.

Animals weren’t considered living beings; they were commodities to be exploited for our own gain. They were disposable. They were products. They were the epitome of the “use and toss” mentality. Maybe once of a day, a farmer cared about the animals he raised, even though they still might end up as food, he may have provided them with the best care he could. He may have even shed a tear on slaughter day. Native Americans are said to pray to the spirit of the animal they hunt and kill, to thank it for it’s beneficence to their people. Today however, that is mostly not the case. Our meat is lined up in a grocery store freezer, wrapped in plastic and labelled neutrally. There is no comparison to the living creature it once was. No one thinks about the animal as a being, as a living creature who thinks, feels love, feels fear, is happy or sad – just like us. As long as an animal is the “commodity” on a farm, whether for it’s meat or other by-product, its value is only as good as the dollar value the economy places upon it.

No one thinks about the feelings of the mother cow as her baby is taken from her right after birth so we can harvest her milk; no one thinks about the baby, bawling for his mother as he is locked into a small container to confine his movements so his flesh will remain tender for veal. We turn a blind eye to truck after truck filled with living beings driving down the highway, eyes meeting ours through our windows; eyes that you couldn’t tell weren’t human except for the setting. Do you look away? Do you block it out? (Although once of a day, humans were pushed into containers en masse and transported to so-called work camps, and I’m pretty sure anyone meeting their eyes looked away too.)

And what’s sad about all of this is we don’t need to eat meat to survive. Our farming skills, our nutritional knowledge has also progressed to the extent we understand meat-centric diets are bad for us, and plant-based is not only completely doable, but also super delicious.

And no one has to die!

But whether a small family farm or giant farming conglomerate, one thing cannot be disputed: there is no humane way to die. Electrocuted, throat slashed, boiled alive, strung up then cut, gassed, it’s all cruel, painful, and unnecessary. These animals didn’t ask to be kept in a barn all their short lives; to be kicked and pushed into subservience; to be kept in small cages, lying in their own filth; to have their babies removed right after birth; to be artificially inseminated over and over again by men with tools and thick arms. They didn’t ask to be born into this world of cruelty and inhumanity. They didn’t agree to be oppressed and tortured for our gain. They have no voice to speak their truth. And because of that – because they can’t fight back – they are victimized again and again and again.

And I’m here to tell you, peeps, it doesn’t matter if the cow was “grass-fed” or the chicken was “free range”. It’s all the same when you’re loaded into the back of a truck with prods and jackboots only to end up at a bloody abattoir, smelling the carnage of others gone before you, facing the steely eyes of the executioner who just wants to get his paycheck at the end of the week and doesn’t give two shits whether he is careful in how he administers the coup de grace. (Holocaust survivors recounted similar reasoning.)

Don’t be fooled by big business propaganda: these positive terms used to convince us the animals led a happy life prior to dying is just so much hype. Like the term “Work Camps” during WWII, cartoon drawings of laughing cows; cute, chubby pigs standing before a grill in chef hats; chickens waving on a roadside sign wearing a napkin bib: these are gimmicks designed to keep us blind to the reality of what these beings go through, how they suffer, before being unceremoniously killed all in the name of feeding our families. (Funny, not funny, this excuse was used for the “work camps” too!)

Yes, the meat you feed your family was once a living, breathing animal – like yourself. Like your children. Like your pets. Where is our god-like intelligence now? Either we are not as smart as we think we are or we are purposely turning a blind eye to mass murder on a global scale – once again.

The Past Is The Present

Remember back in the day when it was cool to smoke? Oh man, those sloe-eyed sultry women who could inhale through their nostrils were my idols! Clicking open the shiny silver cigarette case, flicking the gold-plated zippo, inhaling the first whiffs of butane, then “zoopf” the flame itself, six inches high, dazzling in its initial flash, then the first tendrils of smoke curling around a glowing end.

It was pure Hollywood, peeps, and I was a part of it. So were many, many of my friends, starting in our early to mid-teens. There was a law about age, you had to be 16, but no one enforced it. Unless you looked about five years old, no one refused to sell anyone cigarettes. In fact, even if you were five years old, all you had to say was you were buying them for your parent or grandparent, and boom, away you went with a little box of death that in the late 70s cost about $2.

In the 80s, the health and welfare party poopers got real hot and heavy over the health risks of smoking, and in 1988 new legislation was passed requiring cigarette packages to list certain health warnings and it just snowballed from there, peeps. Before long, the age was raised again (and people actually checked ID this time around!), smoking was banned in public places, then in the workplace, then gruesome images graced the boxes. People were quitting left and right, like passengers jumping off a sinking ship. Tobacco companies rallied, but the health conscious boomers were stronger and today, smoking is persona-non-gratis everywhere.

But let me tell you, the uproar! The initial hue and cry! Campaigns about curtailing our rights to choose, personal freedoms, the financial impact on tobacco companies and tobacco farmers, oh the humanity! It was not a popular concept at first. Our health was less important than the income generated from the industry – I mean, how were these rich tobacco families going to continue to live their extravagant lifestyle? Would they have to sell a yacht or two? Perhaps they’d have to forgo a few vacations or budget for Christmas?

Eventually, those companies either rallied and diversified or they died out. But life went on, and the quality of life for many was so much better. Today, we recognize how bad smoking is for us, and the memories of the turmoil of the 80s and 90s, as changes were made, has faded.

I feel like this scenario is playing out again, peeps.

But this time, it’s with meat and dairy.

Think about it: animal agriculture is a huge part of our world. It’s not bread that is the mainstay of cultures around the world, it’s meat. Our diets are meat rich for the most part. Rarely does the average family have a meal that is not meat-centric with a side or two of high-fat carbs.

So think of animal agriculture today as the tobacco industry of yore; and the way people fight to continue to eat meat despite medical organizations and World Health Organization’s (WHO) warnings about the risks of eating meat.

Society at large does not appreciate the truths about eating meat, the same as they repudiated the truths about smoking back in the day.

I can see it now: suddenly, all meat packaging starts to carry warnings as to the health risks associated with its consumption, maybe even gruesome pictures of colorectal cancer and plugged up arteries.

Animal ag farmers and dairy producers are already crying foul as activists storm their facilities and expose their deplorable conditions and abusive methods. They are opening their arsenal of propaganda to fight to maintain their position financially and ethically, just like tobacco companies did way back. Billboards are going up for both sides, peeps, using the highways as battlegrounds, and slogans as weapons. 

It seemed like an unwinnable war, for either side, until I recalled the tobacco issued and suddenly saw a resemblance between the two.

Now I know who will win (at least a majority) because the writing is on the proverbial wall, peeps. Been there, done that.

Health and welfare will start to take the lead, as usual; and anti-meat sentiment will raise it’s broccoli-topped head and brandish carrot swords whilst showing the world a better, healthier more compassionate way. I know it, because health and welfare won the war against cigarettes, so I know it will be victorious here too.

Sure, some people still smoke. It is not gone completely. I expect meat eating to be the same. Neither will be completely eradicated until many, many years hence. But I figure it’s a start – and every little step taken is better for the environment, for us, and for our children.

Only 40 years ago practically every man, woman and child smoked. Today, only 20 per cent of the WORLD smokes. That’s fucking amazing, peeps! And guess what – people are living longer – back in the 50s, life expectancy was 52. Today it’s 72. That’s a 20 year difference and probably much of it is attributed to the non-smoking lifestyle choices and changes we have made. After all, we have fewer smokers and fewer incidences of second-hand smoke diseases. 

Imagine if meat were were mostly eliminated – life expectancy could be 82 or 92 – with less to no cholesterol ingested and very few carcinogens absorbed from processed meats, meat-related diseases would decrease drastically.

I changed my way of thinking about cigarettes way back when, and I quit smoking – as did most of my friends. Today, I also don’t eat meat or dairy – same with many of my friends. I adjusted to the changes both times based on new information and education about the reality of the industries and how they affect us and the world at large (not to mention the animals, in the case of animal agriculture).

If you can quit smoking because of the health benefits and what we now know, you can do the same with meat.

Go vegan!

 

 

 

 

AR Activists Fight For People Too

I often hear “Why are you so worried about animals? What about the human rights issues?” Being a vegan and animal-rights advocate and humanitarian are not mutually exclusive. One feeds into the other in multiple ways.

When I rail against the treatment of agricultural animals at factory farms and slaughterhouses, one thing seems to get swept under the rug: who is committing these atrocious behaviours? We are presented with these clandestine videos of horrific abuse perpetrated on these innocents, and we heave a collective cry of “Animal Abuse” and that is what we tend to focus on: the action of the abuse and the suffering of the non-human animal on the receiving end.

What about the person behind the steel-toed boots and heavy work gloves? Who is he/she? (I will continue on with this article using the pronoun “he” for simplicity’s sake) Why would anyone take a job like this? Are they really ok with this behaviour? Do they behave this way with their own pets or children? WHAT THE FUCK?

I was perusing Twitter this morning and saw a post by @agargmd stating the animal agriculture business is not a friend of minorities and migrant workers and the American diet supports the industries and politicians who continue to oppress these peoples.

BING! I had an Oprah Lightbulb Moment that flashed like stick lightning striking ground.

Of course! An industry of oppression uses the oppressed to fuel it.

The Guardian states: “Most farm work in America is performed by immigrants, most of whom are undocumented and therefore exploitable. The big agribusinesses that hire these immigrants will tell you that they need an unfettered supply of cheap foreign labor, because they cannot find Americans willing to do these jobs.”

Another quote: “According to a report compiled by Eric Ruark (pdf), the director of research at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (Fair), as of 2006, only 27% of workers hired by agribusinesses are American citizens, 21% are green card holders, around 1% are part of the guest worker program … and a whopping 51% are unauthorized immigrants.”

50 PER CENT are unauthorized immigrants! Holy fuck!

In Canada, upwards of 25,000 migrant workers are brought in legally to do work farmers need which citizens apparently won’t do; the exact number of undocumented migrants was estimated in 2004 as more than 36,000, doing a variety of jobs such as cleaning, nannying, labour and farm labour.

Ok so there is no shortage of illegals to hire for these less-than-desirable jobs in the agricultural industry. These people face working conditions which just barely meet industry standards in most cases, risking life and limb daily. In 2004 Tyson received a citation for an employee who inhaled hydrogen sulfide and was asphyxiated – did I read that right? A CITATION? For a death?

Between 2003-5, Maple Leaf Farms was issued 18 violations and fines for unsafe practices including hazardous machines and chemicals, and a number of other unsafe procedures.

Child labour is a thing too. 57 Guatemalen under-age workers were found at a kosher meatpacking plant in Iowa. What the ACTUAL fuck?

Clearly, this industry is death for everyone: humans and non-humans alike.

These migrant families work in this industry because even an unregulated salary is better than no salary at all. The farmers not only have these people by the pursestrings but also by the heartstrings, as they are working towards a better life for their family than they had in their home country. Unable to legally enter the country for various reasons, they resorted to illegal channels and are forced to take whatever job is available no matter how abhorrent and with no safety net of lawful protocol with which to protect themselves.

So here is one way Animal Rights meets Human Rights.

By policing these industries and advocating for animals, we are also assisting humans caught in this cycle of oppression and suppression. We are educating the public at large not only of the great inhumane treatment of innocent non-human animals, but also the inhumane treatment of men, women and children caught up in this life or death system which functions right under our noses, in our neighbourhoods, down our streets, in our backyards.

Yeah, right there.

And we are blind to it, because we prefer to look away from nastiness and pretend it isn’t happening. Because we see our “food” (read animal flesh) packaged up nice and cleanly in open freezers with little fake parsley garland at the edges and Enya playing on the overhead speakers. Get those rose-coloured glasses off, peeps, there is as much inhumanity being perpetrated in our own country as in those we castigate as barbaric and condemn to outer reaches of civilization.

We are animals too; Animal Rights includes us all.

 

 

 

 

We Gotta Start Somewhere

I saw a meme today, peeps. It was on IG and it intrigued me because it seemed kind of harsh, but I’m kind of a softie, so I thought I would read what other people thought of it – and holy fuck! Some people are just MEAN!

This was the meme:

It’s basically saying people who choose Vegetarianism (as opposed to full-on Veganism) are doing more damage to the movement than those who eat meat, because their “partialism” (now I just made that word up and I think it’s a great new word!) causes people to think Vegetarianism is doing as much good for the animal world as Veganism – which technically it is not.

Are Vegetarians, as this meme indicates, no better than carnivores in the bigger scheme of protecting animal rights? Is it actually worse to be a vegetarian? I don’t think it is. I think it is a step towards a greater good. But let’s have a look at specific meanings first, shall we?

According to Wikipedia, “Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal products, particularly in diet, and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals.”

By contrast, Wikipedia says “Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat, and may also include abstention from by-products of animals processed for food. Vegetarianism may be adopted for various reasons. Many people object to eating meat out of respect for sentient life.”

That’s in a nutshell. There is wayyy more information for each on Wikipedia, and the links are there if you’d like to have a look.

So, I see both lifestyles may be adopted out of respect for sentient life, religious reasons, moral reasons, environmental reasons, and health reasons. Vegans choose to use or consume absolutely no animal products or by-products for ethical reasons, and Vegetarians might still use some by-products, such as dairy or leather. So far, so good – I can see Vegetarians perhaps don’t go all in, but surely their actions count for something – and surely they can’t be AS BAD as those who eat meat and utilize all animal by-products. Well there is a faction of Vegans who believe this is the case.

What the fuck?

I don’t think that’s right, and certainly it isn’t fair.

Personally, I don’t eat meat or dairy, and I don’t purchase new leather or other animal by-products BUT I still have some leather items in my wardrobe – things that I am not able to replace immediately – Am I a bad Vegan?

And wait – there’s more! As mentioned in a previous post, plant-based farming can result in the deaths of many wild animals through the use of traps, or machinery, destruction of habitats, etc. So knowing this, and choosing to eat plant-based foods, logic dictates that would make MOST Vegans bad too.

Where do we draw the judgmental line, peeps?

I’m doing my best, ffs! And so are a ton of other Vegans AND Vegetarians. We are bound by the constrictures of our society as to how effective we are, regardless of how committed we are to our beliefs.

I have nothing to be ashamed of in using my pre-purchased leather goods or eating foods in which unintentionally, an animal died. Field hands and farmers have been hurt and killed on the job – we still eat the corn or beans.

Shit happens, peeps!

So ethically, as a Vegan in the world, in this life, my behaviour is considered acceptable, but Vegetarians are not….hogwash and hooey, I say!

The comments on the IG post made it abundantly clear Vegetarians were not given the same sanction as Vegans who still use pre-purchased animal-based items – and I wanted to know why?

One word, peeps! INTENTION.

If the intention to do harm to another being is not there, then it’s all good. However, a Vegetarian still uses or consumes some animal products, possibly knowing the cruelty involved, thereby giving the idea that some animal oppression is acceptable. While I agree it is NOT acceptable to knowingly kill or hurt an animal for our personal use, I also agree Vegetarianism is a step in the right direction, and should not be vilified or maligned.

Statistics show a Vegetarian can reasonably be said to prevent approximately 100 animal deaths per year. A Vegan, according to Peta, is said to prevent the death of 198 animals per year. Although it appears a Vegan “saves” more animals, the 100 animal deaths prevented by being Vegetarian is not too shabby either. It’s 100 more PER PERSON than would otherwise be saved.

Could a Vegetarian take it a step further? Of course! And they just might – unless judgers out there turn them off of belonging to this niche. Who wants to connect with and be part of a group of nasty, judgmental, downright intolerant people? Whether the group is doing good in the world or not?

Humans are pack animals. We want to belong – we want our tribe to accept us, love us and protect us. We want encouragement to progress, not condemnation for not moving fast enough. So I made this point on the IG meme:

You see, my compassion extends beyond non-human animals – it encompasses all sentient beings. This is what I believe Veganism is truly all about.

There is enough cruelty in this world, enough conflict, enough abuse, without inserting it into our attitude towards and treatment of people who are AT LEAST making an effort to help. We all come to our truths at different stages in our lives and in different ways. We all have individual paths to walk, perhaps governed by an omnipotent power or perhaps predicated by a past life – WE DON’T FUCKING KNOW!

So we have to stop fucking acting like we have all the answers and try to teach each other better with kindness, compassion and by example. Humans are impressionable and perceptive. If we see certain behaviours are working – and some are not – we will figure it out, in our own way and in our own time. Successful movements don’t happen overnight. Someone has to make a start.

Someone has to refuse to move to the back of the bus.

Those 100 animals the Vegetarian saved are happy someone did.

We all gotta start somewhere to get to our destination. It doesn’t matter where we start as much as it matters that we do.