The Light of Day

Vegging Out
KeithHandy posted in Uncategorized on October 26th, 2006

I’m a wayward lifetime meat lover (i.e. “What do you want on your pizza?” “Lots of MEAT, any kind of MEAT.”) who is strongly considering altering my lifestyle in some way out of respect for animals. What exact way, I don’t know.

I am not a member of PETA. I am a person for the ethical (compassionate would probably be a better word) treatment of animals, just not a Person for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. While I fully support the why of PETA, I object to some of the how, particularly their excessive reliance on what I call “MPC” (or “Making People Cry”). Being a fairly sensitive and empathic animal lover, it does no good to disturb and upset me with graphic descriptions of cruelty that I don’t have the direct and immediate power to stop. Appealing to people to be more empathic only upsets the already empathic folks, while alienating (or amusing) the cold and detached scumbags.

Let’s step away from the drama for a moment and lay out some simple facts:

• Putting a piece of meat into your mouth DOES NOT HURT AN ANIMAL.
• Chewing on that same piece of meat DOES NOT HURT AN ANIMAL.
• Swallowing, digesting, passing, pooping and flushing that piece of meat DOES NOT HURT AN ANIMAL.
• Even going to the store and buying a shitload of meat DOES NOT DIRECTLY HURT AN ANIMAL.

Going to the store to buy shitloads of meat on a regular basis DOES increase the chance that the store will occasionally bump their meat order up to the next notch, and if this happens often enough, the slaughterhouses eventually need to increase their overall output volume, thus (cue dramatic music) …

… hurting more animals. It’s not a simple one-for-one deal where you save a chicken by not eating a chicken, but you have to admit that we have to be either very desensitized to or very detached from the way our food is made to eat it with an entirely clean conscience. I can’t speak for you, but it’s always been in the back of my mind nagging me.

For me, it’s not about the killing. If it were feasible for farmed animals to live a happy life and then be killed quickly, painlessly, completely (”partially dead” can’t be terribly pleasant), and respectfully, I wouldn’t even worry about it.

Sure, there will always be suffering in the world, both for people and non-people. It’s just that not all of it is necessary, just like it’s not ultimately necessary for so many of us to spend 40 hours in cubicles (we’re just slow at figuring out a way out of it).

Incidentally, how does PETA find such sadistic slaughterhouse workers? Simple — it’s a good sign, actually — the fact that most sane people, even those who eat five servings of animal flesh a day, would not consider taking on such a job, even temporarily. We couldn’t do it. So we pass the job off to the sickest and most twisted fucks on the face of the earth. If they can treat chickens that way, they probably don’t treat their wives and kids too well either. If they all lost their jobs at the factory farm, they would probably just venture into the woods and find other critters to torture. Or they would break into your home and rape your cat.

I could see myself being scorned by PETA for promoting animal rights with a seemingly flippant attitude and not presenting the issue with enough SERIOUSNESS. But I don’t think compassion requires guilt. I think there are other, more creative, and less alienating ways to raise awareness and point humanity in a more humane direction.

I haven’t gone total vegetarian, and at the very least I will finish all the hot dogs in my fridge, since it’s my stomach or a landfill. As I try to eat less meat, I will probably be fairly lenient with fish and dairy. I’ll probably consciously avoid eggs (egg-laying chickens are treated pretty badly), bird meat of any kind, and pork. They haven’t sold me on milking or fishing being terribly cruel (I was born on a dairy farm and we used the same automatic milkers they show in the pictures), and it figures that those are both tossed in as afterthoughts in most animal rights literature. Some of the more strict vegetarian diets strike me as more fanatical than rational. Rather than focusing on the obliteration of meat consumption during my lifetime, I can speak out in favor of extending animal cruelty laws to include birds, which they currently don’t, and for better treatment of animals bred for food. At the very least, I can put this post up and give you something to consider yourself — since I’m not a veggie yet, maybe you’ll take me more seriously and not chalk me up as a nutjob.