MOC #221 – How Corporations Create Animal Cruelty

7 comments

1. so, i’m really late on replying to this, but i just want to throw in that i’ve been vegan for about 15 years ( with an additional 5 years vegetarian) . i think that anything that people can do to alleviate animals’ stress from cruelty is more than worth it. eat less meat, check the sources, visit the farms, eat more veggies. because of our population, it’s become a necessity that we all try to eat more conscientiously.

2. Great social commentary Lee, love your work 🙂

   I eat in accordance with my ayurvedic constitution. Pretty much an all organic and mostly vegan plant-based diet. I eat organic ghee (clarified butter) and occasionally biodynamic feta cheese and local organic raw milk.

   I’ll eat meat maybe a few times a year if I feel that I need the grounding (only organic, preferably from a local farm, having lived a life with it’s physical/social needs met and killed quickly) and then with a short blessing ala many indigenous cultures. Eggs also on occasion, store bought organic free-range and hoping that organically raised chickens have reasonable standards of living.

   In autumn and winter lots of grounding foods like root vege soups, plenty of good oils like coconut oil and safflower and olive oil. In summer more raw foods.

3. And that being said, nothing intrinsically wrong or right with being vegan, vegetarian, omnivorous or carnivorous or anything else. Everyone is perfect just the way they are. You wanna eat meat? Go right ahead, you wanna not eat meat? That’s fine too. If there really is some health benefit to one or the other then I’m sure evolution will take that course eventually as it would be more physically advantageous and thus stop the arguments.

   Until then I will eat my meats gleefully knowing that one day I’m going to die and get eaten too and it probably won’t be pleasant.

   I really gotta stop writing forum essays on here >_>

4. The logic written mathematically by the way is:

   Group X has Attribute A

   Group Y lacks Attribute A and/or has Attribute B

   Action [a] can be performed on groups without Attribute A or possessing Attribute B

5. Veganism is purely a personal nutritional choice and nutritional only. Claiming it as some sort of moral schtick is aberrant and dishonorable and here’s why.

   It is hypocrisy and dishonesty of the highest order to consider being a vegan somehow less cruel and less murderous than eating meat. Because when you get right down to it the only reason vegans claim higher morality in eating veggies is because you can’t hear a radish scream.

   If everything we knew of as chicken meat actually grew in the form of a tumorous mushroom of some sort whereas what we know of as avocados had little mouths and voiceboxes and squealed when you cut them off their vine and dismembered the little tendrils they’d use to hold on and move around then everyone would see eating chicken as “Not murder” whereas avocado would now suddenly be “murder.”

   No matter what you need to murder something in order to keep yourself alive. That’s just a fact, we’re all vampires. Some of us even sparkle a little bit on occasion. So instead of creating this ridiculous double standard that “killing a pig is wrong but killing a tomato oh that’s totally different” and telling myself I’m somehow now innocent or better-than I just eat with full awareness that something died so that I could live. Vegan moral logic can be expressed another way, “Raping a young woman on the way home from work is a horrible act! Raping a young woman who’s in a coma? That’s perfectly acceptable.”

   I have no problem if someone just doesn’t like meat. My girlfriend gets confused for a vegetarian all the time but in reality she just does not like the taste of most meats. But to try to attach an implicit claim that vegans are somehow morally superior to non vegans is very disgusting. I would in fact argue that if a vegan became a vegan because of that contrived moral fallacy it in fact makes them even less moral than someone who is fully aware that they are killing animals and plants alike in order to eat them instead of saying one’s superior to the other.

   Again I could rewrite the exact same logic to say that white people are superior to black people and so killing a black person is not murder. Or that men are superior to women and so treating women as property isn’t cruel. No matter how you slice it that’s exactly what vegan “morality” is. Just another iteration of the same age old bigotry we all know and hate.

   I may not be able to hear that carrot stick scream, but I can’t hear my mcnugget scream either. So it all balances out.

   And now here’s “Carrot Juice is Murder” by the Arrogant Worms:

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmK0bZl4ILM&feature=player_detailpage#t=0s

6. Lee you rock! Moments of clarity indeed. But I feel I need to clarify something: the only way to eat cruelty free is to be a vegan. No matter how well treated the animal, how much space it has to roam “free”, in the end it’s going to be murdered. Murder is cruel, no? Is murder too strong a word? Not when you consider that the ONLY reason we (in affluent societies at least) eat meat or any animal product is because it tastes good.

7. When I was 26 I backpacked around Europe for almost a year and when I ran out of money, I went to Isreal, where I worked on a kibbutz picking grapefruit…and working with the chickens. I guess you could call them free range, as there were no cages, just a huge tent like building were they all ran around in one huge flock. My job, after they were corraled into one corner, was to pick them up, by the leg, three at a time, and inject them with antibiotics. The chickens were so frightened that those at the back of the flock frequently got crushed. Eventually they were stuffed into crates…many with broken legs, and taken to slaughter. Luckily I never had to do that.

   I am now a vegetarian, but I guess it’s to late for me and the zombie chickens. Some of them will definately be looking for me….

   I have flirted with vegetarian fare most of my adult life…that is after I got over being anorexic. In fact, I went straight from that to macrobiotics…but once I got a straight job, that sort of suffered.

   These days I eat 70 vegies, the rest is nut butters, feta or goat cheese, whole grains (mostly buckwheat and brown rice with beans in winter/soba noodles and couscous in summer. I steam the vegies in cold weather and eat them raw in warm weather. (This is a little feedback from my mbacrobiotic days) I also have a vitamix, and so sometimes I liquify things like kale, chard, sprouts, dandelion greens…stuff like that, with a splash of apple juice. I eat small amounts of “sprouted bread”. Probably some other stuff I can’t think of right now.

   I dump a healthy serving of Annie Chuns Thai Peanut sauce on almost everything, if I don’t make my own dressing with tahini, garlic, miso, vinegar…and other stuff.

   Sometimes I fast on lemons, maple syrup and cayenne…the master cleanse fast….although I have not done so for a long time…my jeans will testify to this. I am contemplating a vegie juice fast, but can’t decide if I want to use my vitamix (which leaves the pulp in) …or buy a juicer. At least, that is what I am telling myself.

   Lest you think I am some kind of a fucking saint…I love chocolate and make sure I have some every day. I also love ice cream, danish, pie, cake, candy…the list goes on. I try to limit myself to ice cream made from coconut milk, but that dosen’t always work out. I also try to control myself (but wow…that frozen greek yoghurt..) but if I died and woke up where sweets equaled health food, I would definately think I was in heaven. I make a lot of muffins in cold weather too…but I give most of them away. I swear.

   As far as eggs go, I am eating them less and less, but when I do I buy them from a small farm. Or at least I think I do. I eat raw salmon once or twice a year, but I make sure it is wild. I avoid Whole Foods, as they are in bed with Monsanto…and when I do shop there I am selective in what I buy. (There danishes are terrible….to sweet.) I am humbled by their buffet however, although I don’t partake.

   Mostly I shop at Moms, a small chain that I have been told, have some of their own farms. Their vegies are amazing.

   I drink green tea, black tea, yerba mate (brewed like coffee) and sometimes actual coffee. All sweetened with flavored soy creamer. I do love my sweets! I also drink rice milk, juices…and I’ve been told not enough water. I used filtered water.

   I just heard about something called “golden milk” which is a drink made from milk (…goats or almond) tumeric, back pepper and calendula flowers, and a bit of honey, sprinked with black cumin oil. I intend to try it. It’s supposed to be REALLY good for you, and it puts you to sleep. (Sometmes I need a wack with a sledge hammer to get to sleep). You can google it.

   Do you want to know what my dog eats?