Justifying Meat Eating – ridiculous things meat-eaters say

People who eat meat will say just about anything to themselves and to others so they do not have to face the reality of what it is they are actually eating.

For a start, they call it “meat”, rather than what it was before slaughter, a cow, calf, sheep, lamb, pig, fish, chicken. “Meat” puts some distance between what they are eating and the life their dinner used to have previously.

But the latest I was told recently was so bizarre, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

This person justified their eating animals this way….

A wise native person told me that we honour animals by eating them. They give up their lives for us. It’s the circle of life. When we eat animals, we gain nourishment, then when we die, we go into the ground and animals eat us

Oh.Your.God.

Where does a sensible person start with all the things so very wrong with that response.

For a start, the person telling me that was not a “native person”. So, my thought, is “so what?”. Maybe that is how things are for anonymous wise native people, but not for a white guy in the suburbs.

And we “honour” them? I honour my grandparents too, I respect them for what they have done for me. But, ah, I wouldn’t honour them by eating them.

I don’t see what is “honourable” with wantonly slaughtering a defenceless animal that has never had a chance to live and then eat it.

Want to know what is more honourable – Not eating dead animals!

After all, a dead animal is a corpse. If the idea of eating roadkill is so disgusting to people, what’s the difference between that and what is on their plate.

from the RoadKill archives

What about the whole “they give up their lives for us” – much like the similar “they sacrifice their lives”. Doesn’t this imply that the animals being eaten have some kind of CHOICE? That they have the option to live or be eaten, and choose to end their lives on someone’s plate?

No animal gives up their life. It is taken from them.

Now, about that “circle of life” – the whole circle of life has been severely disrupted over the past couple of hundred years. Industrialisation has changed things. Whereas previously people had to go out and hunt, and see for themselves the animal in their natural habitat, and watch as the life was drained from their bodies.

Modern industrial slaughter processes remove the killing part for consumers, so they don’t see the life and death.

This is an example of “cognitive dissonance”, where the mind denies what it already knows. People know where their food comes from, this is why they get squeamish if a vegan talks about “slaughter”. They don’t want to hear it, because then then would have to acknowledge what they are eating. They know, but the avoid, so can pretend they don’t know.

Humans have removed themselves from the “circle”, we are at the edge.

And as for our bodies providing nourishment for other animals – the animals that people tend to eat the most are not carnivores, they are placid herbivores.

I’ve never seen a cow chose to eat a dead human. I have never seen a lamb choose to eat a dead human.
Or a chicken, or a pig.

People eat far more animals, which necessitates the killing of huge numbers of animals, way more than their corpses would ever feed.

The excuses people make to continue their selfish greed of eating dead animals never ceases. They eat animals because they think it is their right.

*Oh, and, I know that all animal products involve cruelty and death, I am not saying that milk is harmless or eggs are harmless, because this post is in response to a comment someone made to justify their eating of meat.

Editted to add:
A comment on here, which I marked as spam, for it seemed like straight up trolling, criticised me for giving vegans a bad name for being militant. Um, moron, what exactly is militant about laughing at meat eaters. Seriously, dude, get a life, if you think that this post is militant, you clearly cannot be a vegan in the traditional Donald Watson Vegan Society definition of the word.

Tasha and her “meatgasms” – Vegan-No-More

Annoying the vegan abolitionists and the direct action vegans since March 2009.

Over-hyped Saga of the week:
Tasha (the blogger formerly known as “Voracious Vegan”) and her “meatgasms”

When Sally Met Harry: I'll Have What She's Having

After last weeks 15 minute outrage regarding Alicia Silverstone Is She / Isn’t She Vegan (see post: what do you call a cheese-eating vegan?… a celebrity) comes this little blog post that had the twitterverse a-tweeting.

Vegan No More

The former “Voracious Vegan” is now just “Voracious” (which according to Webster’s dictionary, is a synonym for “greedy, rapacious”.

After 3/1/2 years on a vegan diet, Tasha eats meat and is “moaning with pleasure and joy” (hence the title of my post).

The only appropriate response to this publicity fuelled confession, from Tasha, is ignore it until it goes away. But the online vegan community is small, we like to laugh at the ridiculousness.

My first bite of meat after 3.5 years of veganism was both the hardest and easiest thing I’ve ever done. Tears ran down my face as saliva pooled in my mouth. The world receded to a blank nothingness and I just ate, and ate, and ate. I cried in grief and anger, while moaning with pleasure and joy.

She eats one steak, and instantly her health is miraculously returned (quote: I had only eaten a small piece of cow flesh, and yet I felt totally full, but light and refreshed all at once) Hallelujah! Praise Jesus! Praise Buddha! Praise Allah! Praise Deity Of Your Choice…. Let’s get real

Oh my, tears are running down my face right now, from laughing so hard. I am almost literally rolling on the floor laughing. People in the cafe I am writing this from are looking at me, I haven’t laughed like this for a long time. Is this Tasha woman serious?

What kind of nutritional deficiencies are cured in an instant? Does this sound accurate to anyone?

Here is another, less funny, extract:

I delicately broached the topic of my ill-health with several vegan friends. I even made comments on other blogs and on twitter highlighting my struggles. The response was nothing short of shocking. In the span of just a few days I received an outpouring of emails from fellow ‘vegan’ bloggers, who told me in confidence that they weren’t really vegan ‘behind the scenes’. They ate eggs, or the occasional fish, or piece of meat, all to keep themselves healthy, but were too scared to admit to it on their blogs. I even received emails from two very prominent and well respected members of the vegan AR community. One a published and much loved vegan cook book author, the other a noted animal rights blogger, their emails detailed their health struggles and eventual unpublicized return to eating meat.
Vegan No More

She makes a few delicate comments and true celebrities vegans are pouring their inner most secrets out in an email? Does this sound logical to anyone?

People who make their living based on their vegan reputation would risk it all by confessing in an email to someone who is now clearly anti vegan (her quote: “I can no longer think it is wrong to eat animals” shows where her beliefs are).

And if this is true (IF!) name them. Go on, name names. Do not go around making baseless accusations, by throwing around these allegations, everyone is under suspicion.

Maybe that is what she wants. It’s a cheap shot, and I prefer to not believe her.

I do not want to go around suspecting everyone I read to be a pseudo-vegan. That is a Stalinist tactic that does nothing to foster cohesion and a sense of community, in what is otherwise a fragmented and fractious group.

Tasha has now giving up veganism, whatever that meant to her (it sounds like it was purely about diet), and has turned into a “feminist”…….. (Oh feminists – may the goddesses have mercy on your souls that this woman is speaking for you, how long before she decides she is really a patriarch and move on to the next cause de jour)

But on this, the abolitionists, the liberationists and the unaligned, all agree – hahaha, (hint: Tasha, we are laughing at you, not with you).

Vegan No More is great for a laugh, so is the responses, the blog posts, the gossip, the comments. I haven’t seen the vegan community so united in, well – ever!

The whole thing is a gift to the vegan community online, for once we could put aside our petty differences over which we fight so viciously, and get a great laugh at this nonsense, this completely laughably ludicrous self-serving, rambling, incoherent piece of anti-vegan propaganda.

And, while there are so many other things I would say, but I won’t, because I’m not a mean person. Instead, I’ll leave the talking to others. All these articles are well-worth following the links, and reading the original articles, and comments:

* From the dietitian
Do Ex-Vegans’ Stories Make the Case Against Vegan Diets? by Ginny Messina
“…….. In her more than 7,000 word post, she’s rather vague about these details, as is Lierre Keith in her book. I do know that a lot of vegans think they are eating healthfully when they really aren’t. And I believe that a lot of vegans get sick and return to eating meat when all they needed was more sound information about vegan diets and less misinformation from the pseudo-scientific anti-vegan world ………”

* Satire perspective
Omnivore: Fail by Vegan Feminist Agitator
“…….. The path from which I began straying from omnivorism was painful, difficult, heart-wrenching even. People might try to tell me that I did something wrong, that I just didn’t try hard enough, but they are mistaken: I tried with all my being to live as an omnivore……”

* the activist
A worthy reply to “Vegan No More”
“……….. I see incredible potential and use for websites, blogs, chats, forums as sources of information, connection points for activists, and means of fast communication. But when things degenerate into repetitive arguments, shit-slinging, defamation and egotistic posturing … well, time to turn off, both figuratively and literally. So that’s all the time I’m giving to this odd internet chapter which will be known as “Vegan No More” (after the ex-vegan’s blog post of the same title)……….”

* the fair and balanced response
A vegan controversy
“……….. My problem stems from her reasoning. My problem stems from her complete reversal to proselytizing that vegans are the ones who are wrong. … My problem stems from her rejection of science in favor of finding a new moral high horse to ride. She no longer believes veganism isn’t right for her or the planet, so you shouldn’t either………”

* the vegan community weighs in
Your Daily Vegan: Vegan Defenders talk back
“…………..Oh, that vegan defector? Defector- is she implying that veganism is as horrible as life in North Korea? The movement she was once such a zealous member of was really just the same as living in a communist dictatorship? She’s a fraud. She’s a once-self-described vegangelist. What cause will she attach herself to next? Apparently the meat-eating cause. ……………”

[Side bar: Tasha claims to have received "death threats", my response to that is
honey, if you are receiving death threats, that is an issue for the FBI, or since you are living in an artificial oasis in the Saudi Arabian desert (which probably has a much bigger impact on the environment than a few grains, which you complain extensively about), try interpol. If you seriously believe vegans want to kill you, blogging about it doesn't really convey that seriousness.]

Feedback welcome.

The Myth Of Humane Meat

The Myth of Humane Meat
A video I created, not just uploaded to YT.

Former vegans and vegetarians use the concept of humane meat and welfare standards to continue to consume animals. The word animal by-product to describe milk and eggs is shown to also contribute to cruelty and exploitation. Features extreme graphic images of how animals become food. People who eat meat are entitled to know who their food used to be.

Taking one food as an example – the classic burger, this clip shows that for animals, it is not humane.

Music: Knocking On Heaven’s Door – Cold Chisel

VALA’s The Myth Of Humane Meat
Follow my videos on vodpod

Meat Kills

Meat Kills: Consolidated

Warning: Slight Graphic Imagery.

A spoken-word track by Consolidated, called MEAT KILLS from their Friendly Fa$cism (1991) album, is nearly 20 years old, but still as important today.

Consolidated: Adam Sherburne, Mark Pistel, Philip Steir

This is what is being said. Reprinted here, is in no way meant to impinge on their copyright, or suggest that they endorse this blog, its authors, or its themes. They are here, only to make clear the words being spoken on the video clip over the sounds of the slaughter house.

Meat Kills

The driving force behind the destruction of the tropical rain forests is the American meat habit. The rain forests are cleared then planted with grass for grazing livestock to create hamburger for fast food restaurants.

More than half of all the water used in the United States is used for raising animals for food. 25 gallons of water is needed to produce a pound of wheat. 2500 gallons of water is needed to produce a pound of meat.

Dependence on foreign oil is one of the principle reasons for US intervention in the Persian Gulf. The length of time the world’s oil reserves would last if all human beings ate a meat-based diet would be approximately 13 years. The length of time the world’s oil reserves would last if all human beings ate a plant based diet would be approximately 260 years.

Feedlots and slaughterhouses are both major polluters of rivers and streams. Filling them with poisonous residues and animal wastes. 250,000 pounds of animal excrement is produced every second in the US and there are no sewage systems to treat the wastes.

In 1989, over 40% of the world’s grain harvest was fed to animals going to slaughter. If the same grain was fed directly to human beings, there would be more than enough grain to feed the entire world. Over 20 million people will die as a result of malnutrition this year.

In third third world private and government money has gone to developing cash crops for export while food production for the poor majority is neglected. 80% of the corn grown in the US is fed to animals raised for food rather than going to hungry people.

On a purely vegetarian diet the world can support a population many times its present size. On a meat based diet the current world population could not be sustained.

Cattle ranching has always competed with wildlife. Coyotes and wolves would not be shot and poisoned by ranchers if people did not eat steaks and lamb chops. Destroying the rain forests to raise cattle is causing millions of birds, monkeys, snakes and other species to lose their homes and lives.

In the US this year alone thirty seven and a half million cattle, eighty five and a half million
pigs, five and a half million sheep, two hundred forty two million turkeys, four billion one hundred forty seven million chickens will be murdered for the taste of their flesh.

Pain, frustration, stress, fear, abuse, neglect, and deprivation are realities of the raising of animals in today’s factory farms. Animals are artificially inseminated, fed growth hormones, overcrowded, chained and caged.

Raising livestock for profit is a competitive business and being humane means costs will go up. These animals are kicked, prodded, electro-shocked, dragged, and finally transported to their deaths.

A vegetarian diet promotes superior health, endurance, and longevity.

Animal products have 3 nutritional disadvantages. They contain too much protein, too much fat, and no fibre.

Do not believe the protein myth. It was based on a study done by the meat and dairy industries to rats, animals who need 1000 times more protein in their diet than humans.

Feedback welcome.

Welfare Doesn’t Help Animals

It’s been said many times, that the difference between ‘animal welfare‘ and ‘animal liberation‘ is – welfarists want bigger cages, liberationists want empty cages.

And this is one reason why… (click free range chickens to see what “free range” is in reality).

Words such as “free range” may allow the consumer feel better with sentimentality about chickens roaming the paddock (a New Zealand word for field or pasture) at will, but, how does the egg-laying hen cramped in a barn never seeing sunlight or cow on the way to slaughter agree?

For example, the current campaign in New Zealand, Australia and United Kingdom, to oppose the religious exemptions for humane slaughter. This means animals are being slaughtered without stunning first. It does not matter how well the animal is treated during their unnaturally shorterned life, the use of any animal for any reason for food is cruel and exploitation. Humane slaughter is still SLAUGHTER.

(This religious slaughter is discussed at Ban Religious Slaughter in New Zealand,
and NEW ZEALAND GOVERNMENT overturns ban on hideously cruel ritual slaughter by Loredana Versaci, two change.org petitions, that are still open for more signatures.)

An abolitionist vegan would say, the world should be vegan, and to support the ban on overturning of exemptions would suggest that any slaughter is acceptable. And to campaign for more humane slaughter is a welfarist position.

A liberationist vegan might say that animals shouldn’t be slaughtered at all, and seek to “liberate” them from their cages. Or perhaps be realistic about a situation and know that until the world goes vegan, to ignore the lack of pre-slaughter stunning inflicts more torture and unnecessary cruelty until then.

Chickens raised for slaughter

Source: Farm Sanctuary at Flickr. “Feel free to distribute freely for not-for-profit use, but please credit Farm Sanctuary” (photo linked to Farm Sanctuary, but uploaded at photobucket.

But what is the effect of more “humane” methods of raising animals for food or methods of slaughter? (I am not suggesting there are degrees of humaneness, rather that is how these issues are foisted on consumers)

For the life of an individual animal, it might be bigger cages, or equivalent depending on the animal involved. For all animals it is a set back in terms of the fight for rights.

Shoppers opt for ‘freedom food’ chickens

Sales of the RSPCA’s Freedom Food chicken is up £55 million from £16.4 million to £71.6 million since March last year, compared to a drop of more than £26 million for standard chicken, figures from Kantar Worldpanel show.

The amount of Freedom Food chicken sold in supermarkets increased by more than 15 million kilos, compared to a decrease of 11 million for standard chicken, according to the research.

The result of this “freedom” foods”*, is an increase in the sale of dead chicken body parts, by four million kilos.

This effect of increasing sales due to consumers feeling less guilt is dealt with by Matt Ball, of Vegan Outreach, when he asks the question: Does working for or supporting welfare measures harm the longer-term goal of bringing about liberation?

In this essay, Ball quotes the Brazilian Landless Farmers (Subverting the current system to achieve more democracy): “Expand the floor of the cage before you try to break out.”

Matt Ball takes the position, how would you feel if it was you? In a cage being tortured for day after day. Would you want people agitating for change , no matter how small, and then keep fighting with every incremental change, Or would you prefer to have a hard-line uncompromising absolutist say, if the prisoner cannot be free all the way, then let them suffer until we win their freedom.

Fighting for incremental reforms may make one a “welfarist” (oh the horror!) but what is a label? if that person is still fighting for liberation, something the critics often fail to.

However, the fight must go on, even if reforms are gained, it is not as if liberationists give up the fight, they just know there are other battles, life and death issues that are out there, and will stay out there, until all animals are free, until all cages are empty.

——————————————————————————————————————–

*Freedom Foods, a label from the RSPCA on animal products. Welfarism in action. Regulating the cruelty, not preventing it.

Feedback welcome.

Can’t you just take the meat out?

Can’t you just take the meat out?: Just one more of the stupid things people say to vegans.

I know, in my soul, that to eat a creature who is raised to be eaten, and who never has a chance to be a real being, is unhealthy. It’s like… you’re eating misery. You’re eating a bitter life.”
– Alice Walker

It’s Mother’s Day, and to celebrate I went out with my boyfriend, MacLeod, and his parents to a rather up market restaurant, the kind where they charge you for the air you breathe. Owned by a relative of Macleod’s boss, we choose that place to support a new establishment.

Knowing that we would be dining there, I rang up several days before to check and double check whether they had any vegan options on the menu. They assured me that they did. I rang up again before we left for the restaurant, to make sure one last time.

When we arrived, and settled, it was a gorgeous place, so warm and inviting. I looked at the menu, and noticed two items specified as vegetarian. Everyone else ordered, and began discussing drinks, while and the vegans ordered last, so as to not make a fuss.

When the waiter described the ingredients in the “vegetarian” meals, we discovered the accompanying vegetable dish to the stuffed mushrooms was green beans which had bacon and home made mayonnaise and seasonings stirred through, and whole baby pumpkin hollowed out and filled with roast seasonal vegetables was cooked with chicken stock.

Of the two “vegetarian” dishes, neither of these was actually vegetarian, and neither could be veganised (although, I don’t know, do vegetarians eat chicken stock, or do they not care if they can’t see it?).

We asked perhaps they could put together a special dish for us, after all, we called the restaurant beforehand and explained that vegan meant no animal products, and they said they could accommodate our wishes.

The waiter consulted the kitchen and came back shortly after and discussed our meal options, which involved more questions. Other guests at our table were served their entrees, so we finally settled on fresh fruit and garden salad of green leaves, cucumber, tomatoes and vinaigrette.

Image via Wikipedia

My sister-in-law mockingly rolled her eyes and loudly complained about the embarrassing fuss we were making. Couldn’t we compromise, just for one meal, she asked. Ignoring the fact that we had compromised in the first place going to a non-vegan restaurant. “Can’t you just take the meat out?” well no, it doesn’t work like that, plus, I’m not sure how to take the chicken stock out of pan roasted vegetables.

This was a place that had assured us on several occasion they could do meals without any animal products, and when it came to the crunch, no they couldn’t. This establishment was suffering a serious case of “pants on fire” syndrome.

At the end of the meal when the discussion of desserts came up, the dessert list started “home-made toasted almond milk ice cream, leatherbox honey comb and banana brûlée” – at this point I stopped reading.

The night ended with lots of embarrassment, tension, an expensive meal which only some people could enjoy and others endure.

Lesson learned: if you want to eat the food, go to a vegan or vegetarian restaurant

Feedback welcome.

ETA
MacLeod was shortly after promoted. So it all worked out in the long term.

Is Obesity more socially acceptable than being Vegan?

There has been some discussion about this recently, about whether society (or the people/institutions in it) are more tolerant and accepting of an obese person than they are of a vegan. Since the the controversy It’s strange being in the eye of a media storm exploded regarding celebrity blogger Mia Freedman.

As a former fashion magazine editor and columnist, she caused a furor recently on a blog post about “gainers” Gainer blogs: Meet the people who think bigger is better.

Gainers deliberately gain weight, a lot of weight, super morbidly obese, not just lumpy, dumpy, chubby, but skin-melds-with-the-couch obese (so large that they can’t move, because their skin has fused with whatever bed or sofa they are sitting on).

Watching the attacks on Mia Freedman for her totally innocuous comments, from obese people who are offended by their choice to eat themselves to death questioned by someone who looks like she takes care of her health.

The critics went from defending an obese persons lifestyle choice to attacking the writer, Mia Freedman, not what she wrote. These Gainers defended their lifestyle like a mama lion defending her babies.

However as a friend noticed, where are the defenders of Veganism. Vegan get their children removed by government agencies for not feeding children animal products, equating veganism with child abuse, yet the woman at the centre of Mia’s article, is eating herself to death in front of her children.

Which raises the question, in our western society, it’s more acceptable to be Obese than Vegan? (side bar: is there such a thing as obese vegan?)

Vegans tend to be not overweight, I have never met a long term vegan who was over-weight, though some people take up a vegan diet (more correctly termed “strict vegetarian”) for weight-loss, and other are large to start with but gradually the weight comes down. The unofficial theory that has come up in talking with other vegan females about body image is: when you eat proper nutritious food your body settles at the weight it was always suppose to be.

Of course, if someone is super morbidly obese, their eating patterns have become disconnected from what their body is telling them it needs for nutritional requirements. For someone – especially a mother with young children (such as Donna Simpson, the woman at the centre of the article) – to set out to become 700 kilos probably needs some sort of therapy. This woman knows her eating will very likely kill her, leaving her children without a mother, yet, she goes on the internet, and allows strangers to pay to watch her eat.

What I found interesting about the whole Gainers controversy was the overwhelming numbers of fat people, obese people, mostly women, who attacked Mia Freedman for her comments, without taking the time to understand them. They have some kind of Obesity Pride movement going on. Size acceptance. Forcing society to treat people who set out to gain weight as a minority group who have been deprived of their rights. The effect is that super morbidly obese becomes normal. (And the effect this will have on a generation of children obese from birth will be disastrous in terms of health consequences.)

If an obese person is told to buy two plane tickets because they take up two seats, they raise hell like their civil rights have been denied. Hey, people! if you take up two seats, the airline can’t sell the second seat, you are depriving them of income and you act like that is equal to having your right to vote or free speech taken away? And, if you think that is bad, try getting a vegan meal on a flight. Last time I did that, despite ordering and checking, and then double checking, the best I got was “we seem to have misplaced the vegan meal, would kosher do?” well, looking at some kosher slaughtered meat (which causes intense suffering because to the animal, pre-stunning is not allowed) on my vegan tray, I would have to say No! It will not do! And yet the super morbidly obese person two rows ahead of me got full on pampering because they would not shut up about being made to pay for two seats.

Let’s talk about clothes shopping – my local chain store starts their sizes at 10 (Australian 10 = UK 12 = USA 8). All the media focus on is the super morbidly obese complaining they can not find clothes that fit. Not in my experience. I shop in the children’s department to find something that fits, because large chain fashion stores are more interested in catering to their obese customers. Far from not having options, obese people have more options than non-obese.

Yet, when it comes to clothes shopping some obese people act like they are being discriminated against because they have to pay more. If their clothes use up twice the amount of material as average sized clothing, why should they not pay more to reflect that.

Eaten out recently? Plate sizes that banquet sized. Meals that could feed a family of four served to one individual. Meals that contain a weeks worth of salt, sugar, saturated fat. And yes, everything has Fries with That. It’s not Small-Medium-Large anymore, it’s now Large-Extra Large-Super Extra Large. With extra cheese. Ok, now try finding a vegan meal at a chain restaurant.

Vegans are called extreme, have their food choices question, have their motives attacked, compared to “Peta terrorists” (as I heard recently), meanwhile society is being Super-sized, we have given up on the war on obesity. We seem to have accepted that obese is the new normal and instead of looking at ways for people to reach an acceptable healthy weight, we are just making everything bigger.

However, as Adventures Being Vegan shows, vegan is slowly getting the message across. Things are being to change.

Obese-defenders will say that being morbidly obese is a health issue while being vegan is a choice. I’m sorry, but to me it is not a choice. Faced with causing the slaughter of billions of animals for food, clothes, entertainment, porn, Mengeler science “experiments”, cleaning products or personal care products. I don’t see it as a choice.

“If you don’t look after your body, where are you going to live?” Donna Aston

Feedback welcome.

Related Articles

• Veganism and Fat-Phobia (animals.change.org)

Super Size Me (full-length): Morgan Spurlock

Super_Size_Me_, posted with vodpod

Morgan Spurlock’s expose on McDonalds as an example of Fast Food restaurants which have contributed to USAmerica becoming one of The most obese nations on earth.

Receiving an Academy Award nomination for this 2004 documentary which follows the film maker for 30-days during Febuary 2003 which he ate Only McDonalds food. He gave himself the following rules, eat only McDonalds, eat only products on the menu, eat three meals a day, consuming every item at least once, And, if offered the option to supersize, he took it. This documentary follows his journey and the impact of this diet on his lifestyle and health, both mental and physical.

He consumed an average of 5,000 calories (the equivalent of 9.26 Big Macs) per day during the experiment.

Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together

Isaac Bashevis Singer: Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.

The author, Isaac Bashevis Singer, wrote in The Letter Writer:

“In his thoughts, Herman spoke a eulogy for the mouse who had shared a portion of her life with him and who, because of him, had left this earth. “What do they know – all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world – about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.”

Sometimes, when people here the Nazi / Animal Cruelty comparison, they think that Animal Rights people are going to far… however, Singer knew what he was talking about, as a Jewish person who fled Nazi Germany.

A life is a life, regardless of what the body looks like, as a vegan I would no more eat the corpse of a person or drink another woman’s breast milk… and yet, consuming animal products is normal to most of the world.

Time to see animals for what they are, independent beings that are alive, and not walking food… which someone put a price on their dead body, rather than a value on their life.

Feedback welcome.