Warning: Highly pretentious rhetoric ahead. It doesn't make for good dialogue and it will piss you off. But, I like the way it rolls off the tongue... You've been warned.
We dismember, bash, boil, and consume thousands of animals alive every day across the globe. It’s part of our global cuisine. Whatever your feelings may be, if your defense for this excruciating practice concerns theology or human superiority, I think you've greatly misunderstood the purpose of morality.
Morality isn't about who is bigger, stronger, and smarter. Nor it is about who more closely resembles our creator, if one exists.
Morality is about love. It’s about caring for the weak, the simple, and the small. It’s about ending unnecessary suffering. It's also about finding love for our enemies.
If love is our highest calling as enlightened, moral creatures, it shouldn't end with our own species. Creatures with the capacity to suffer deserve compassion and all the arguments about moral superiority ought to be set aside. You would never want cruelty for yourself. Why accept it and impose it on others?
Don't get me wrong. Death and killing are a huge part of how we survive as a species. We wouldn't be here without it. I can't advocate shutting down the industry or suggest we all convert to veganism. That would be absurd. However, I can suggest that we work towards eliminating as much suffering and death as possible. We'll accept what we must, but hope for something better.
Interesting read - different take than I was expecting from the title. I agree completely. I think people are largely ignorant of a lot of the facts regarding their food as a whole. I don't know if I mentioned but I used to work very closely with food imports into the US and got an eye-opening look into a lot of details about our food.
ReplyDeleteOne of the more relevant revelations was profit / cost of food as a commodity. If you hypothetically owned Ben's Chicken Farm (BCF) and you sell chicken at $5/lb, someone else also sells chicken at $4.65, they will get nearly all of the business. The purchaser does not take into account nearly any other fact about BCF's chicken, they couldn't car in the slightest. The price is all that matters.
BCF may be able to match it by cutting a better deal on bulk logistics or bundling distribution with another company, maybe invest in new or more efficient technology that saves money in the long run, but you'll slow down production and risk shipping delays by cutting rates with carriers. The only cost you can safely cut is the cost the customers aren't looking at - what goes into making that product. Now, you can reduce food because they still have to gain the same weight (you sell by the pound). The cages get smaller, the exercise is limited to prevent burning calories (and by extension, weight), the time each person has to do their tasks decreases, the very last thing anyone end up concerned about is how that chicken has been standing in chicken piss for 3 days.
Now image decades of this, each company undercutting the next. I am not trying to justify this, that is impossible, just shed some light on how we got to where we are today. American culture tends to focus more on quantity, price, and convenience above all else. The fact that a loser employee was trying to get half of the chickens "high" by spraying industrial disenfectant into the air duct of one of the chicken coops all day isn't a problem so long as you can pay them minimum wage so BCF can sell its chicken for $4.50/lb.
Very interesting. Seems economics has been the mother of many injustices throughout our history as we compete for bigger and better things. What you've described reminds me of two documentaries I still need to watch in full. Perhaps you've seen them yourself: Food Inc. and Earthlings.
DeleteI believe the first documentary delves into the heart of the food industry to show the very scenario you've described. I think the second addresses cruelty to animals in general. I almost can't stand watching films like these though. Too painful to watch and too painful to be reminded of the enormity of suffering in the world.
Hopefully we've got a better world coming. I hear they're working on lab-grown meat! That's something. And as soon as they invent lab-grown bacon, we'll know the days of animal cruelty are numbered.