Rainforests are not merely the metaphorical lungs of the planet; they literally convert carbon emissions to oxygen. Burning the Amazon rainforest to scorched earth to provide feeding lots for cows can be compared to allowing a chain-smoker to direct nicotine into your lungs. Like burning live carrots on a bbq grate? No. It is not.
Yesterday, I encountered a baconist on Facebook who suggested these very points. By this morning, my response had been deleted. So I shall post my thoughts on this blog.
Pigs and cows are fellow mammals who possess spinal columns and complex nervous systems. They have the same sets of organs that they use to see the world, reflect upon it, experience the same emotions, and feel inflicted pain. Their reproductive systems are quite similar. Their eyes and ears work in the same way that mammals have employed since the Cambrian Explosion 541 million years ago.
Animals with eyes that developed in that Cambrian Explosion do not want to live in the squalor of a factory farm, to live short lives, to die violent deaths, to find out they are wanted because a supermarket scanner beeps when each dead animal’s product code is recognized. Under separate cover, I have suggested that the familiar beep be replaced by a scream. Specifically, the kind of scream it makes upon completion of its time in the slaughterhouse. At the kill station.
Currently, the non-mammal “food” animals eaten by discerning foodies with demanding palates are chicken and fish. These are touted as economical alternatives to “beef and pork.” Fish provide essential oils that you cannot obtain otherwise unless you happen to know about flaxseed oil. The center of a meal must be a dead animal in our society.
Speaking now of our educational foundations, why are school field trips never scheduled at the local abattoir? If bacon, another euphemism, defines the so-called most important meal of the day why does it not seem proper to schedule regular school trips to a slaughterhouse? See it happening firsthand, such that you may understand and learn that a homo sapiens’ personal predilection must never be associated with the blood and death of billions of land animals every year and trillions of fish per year. If only to exorcise something I learned in the Catholic educational system — a meatless Friday is canonically defined as a day when you eat no cows, no pigs, and no chickens. Fish must then have more in common with carrots. A healthy mind remains healthy when it questions presumed authorities. A fish has eyes that see in much the same manner as we do, but definitions can be heartlessly arbitrary. Does a fish have eyes in the way that a potato has eyes? An eye for an eye?
Critical thinking is something that gets thoroughly discouraged in Western society. Take a deliberate look at our food-processing system and ask yourself if it is a morally healthy and God-fearing kind of thing. You don’t need to visit a slaughterhouse to know what happens there, but the distance from the deadly source numbs your mind into submission at a critical level. Take a field trip to your local Kroger, the largest supermarket in the United States, and take a close look at every place where dead animals are to be found. Do not simply look at the bloody slabs wrapped in plastic on styrofoam trays. Look at the cans and the boxes and the frozen “foods.” Beeps at the checkout lanes determine if a reorder gets cut for more “products” from the slaughterhouse.
A final thought: slaughterhouses pay low wages to those whom we deem illegal. They dare not question the death-dealing, and no one applies for a job there. They do it because you want to continue to call the fellow souls that die there by a wholesome name: MEAT.
Thanks for reading.
billziegler1947 
Bill, I wish I could declare innocence. Except for the last two years, I have been a meat eater–cows, pigs, and fish–for most of my life. My dietary changes were due mainly to health issues and not for a deeper appreciation for the life of the animals we raise and slaughter for food. The smell of bacon being cooked–my sons are still meat eaters–remains alluring. Changing our diet as a species will not come easy. Like the baconist on Facebook, meat eaters will resist change until the collapse of our current food supply system.
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Thank you for this vivid comment, Rosaliene. Only a few percent of the US population become vegan. Even fewer consumers of my age choose this option, I did not begin the process until the 1990s. Becoming an advocate for animal rights drove me to this decision. The word “bacon” has also become a taunt directed at vegans to somehow rile them up or, as would a bully on a playground, to evoke it as a magic token.
The positive effect on my digestive system is striking, long intestines process food slowly. A carnivore does not need that much time to digest raw animals, so their intestines are remarkably short. Canine teeth in humans are designed to rip along fibrous plant food sources, they are not share enough to rip at raw tissue.
We leave deep carbon footprints every time that concentrated energy gets extracted from previous extinction events underground. Technological advances, particularly through passive energy sources such as solar, have improved and become much more efficient.
The 1.5 Celsius-degree threshold is not arbitrary, it represents a turning point at which the collapse of climate-as-usual becomes inevitable. And the difference between a 1.2 (where we are right now) and 1.5 represent a two-fold change.
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Excellent post. So refreshing to see some more vegan posts on here that are actually informative and educational, not just recipes. Thanks for standing up for what’s right. ❤
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Hello Amethyst,
Thanks so much for this kind comment. Your words are well received because I really do vet what I write. It is always an honor to hear from fellow vegans — may our numbers increase, and may kindness rule.
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