Who Made You the Boss of Ewe?

Imagine a legal system that recognizes animal rights as inalienable, slaughterhouses closed because they deny life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Impossible.

Imagine a planet made uninhabitable by a singularly rapacious species.

A near certainty.

Can the impossible and the near-certain be reconciled?

 

once.you.eliminate

Why do we never refer to “farmed” animals as cadavers or corpses?

Carcasses get hung by hooks that slide along ceiling rails and transport them into a sequence of production stations. We don’t do such things to human beings because we value life. Where did you go to school anyway, Bill?

By the sixth day, the Bible identifies certain animals as livestock (alive, caged, enslaved, dispatched). Sentient beings with a central nervous system — one that transmits data from brain to spleen — are complex emotional bemichael-maslin-which-came-first-mom-the-chicken-mcnugget-or-the-egg-mcmuffin-new-yorker-cartoon_a-l-9179842-8419447ings. Pet “owners” know this, but they also “know” that a meal without meat is an oxymoron.

Apples and oranges, Bill. Pets are lovable family members. Meat is matter that doesn’t matter. Just don’t think about it and we’ll all be better for it. You’re obsessed with animal so-called rights. You need help. I hope you get the help you need. Pets are simply lovable. They are not dead meat. But why do they eat pets in Korea? That’s just wrong.

Apples and oranges are both fruits. Piglets and human children are both mammals.

No animal wishes to suffer lifelong torture, brutal death, family separation, mechanized dissection, mechanical separation, supermarket aisles with nutrition labels. A dead food-animal isn’t even graced with the nicer post-life identity of cadaver or corpse.

What you shun enduring yourself, attempt not to impose on others. You shun slavery—beware of enslaving others! If you can endure to do that, one would think you had been once upon a time a slave yourself. For Vice has nothing in common with virtue, nor Freedom with slavery. (41).

— Epictetus “Golden Saying of Epictetus” (as translated by Hastings Crossley)

us our they

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over

  1. the fish in the sea and
  2. the birds in the sky,
  3. over livestock and
  4. all the wild animals, and
  5. over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

so that“???

Did a God create mankind in his own image or was it the other way around?

  1. in the image of God he created them; 
  2. male and female he created them.”

Again, who made us the boss of them? Why is an animal killed by homo sapiens called a meat carcass, not a cadaver or a corpse?

Bill, did you know that Mannwich® is a meal? It’s not annimal fodder.

culture.mother.child

Control the narrative and own the outcome. The cadaver/corpse you ate yesterday, the corpse/cadaver you’ll eat today, the cadaver/corpse you plan to eat tomorrow. Eat all your fodder, son.

Animals don’t feel pain the way that WE do. Hunters know this. You should try hunting and you’ll know too, Bill

Certain faiths grant animals mortal souls. They grant themselves immortal souls.

Bill, do you recognize the difference between cannibals and meat-eaters?

Use them, consume them, tan their hides, chew their jerky. Search for even more markets that promise additional markets for each cadaver part, create a demand for a wide range of corpse parts.

Bill, you should read Rhys Southan’s blog “Let Them Eat Meat,”  a restful place for former vegans:

“As a meat-eater-to-be, however, this was more of an issue, because I would presumably need to stop caring about animals. How does one stop caring?

The answer to that question in my case was severe depression. I had always been prone to depression, and still am, but as a vegan I finally became so utterly indifferent to my own life that it led to this epiphany of sorts: “If my life doesn’t matter,” I thought, “a cow’s life definitely doesn’t matter.” Eating meat no longer seemed impossible to justify. If it had to be me or the cow… it might as well be the cow.”

Animals do not wish to be husbanded.  They do not enjoy a caged or crated existence. Freedom for me, but not for thee? Gaze into an animal’s eyes and see what those eyes scream back at you. Or don’t.

Why don’t “meat processing facilities” provide tours? Advertisers proclaim their thorough quality control, cleanliness and wholesome products. A family business for family folks.

From lip to anus He/we created them; male and female we/He created them.

A male calf cannot produce breast milk. Cow milk is calf nourishment.  A mother cow is a fellow mammal. She produces breast milk for her young in the same way that all mammal mothers do. She wouldn’t seek to divert her breast milk to supermarkets. Veal is a tender flesh that draws ever fewer consumers, and not because it’s illegal. A proxy agent crates them, force-feeds them, kills them, sells them. A product code triggers a beep.

A male chick does not lay eggs. This severely limits his value in a poultry processing facility. It yields marginal protein content and cannot be inventoried. If management doesn’t do something about animals who cannot produce eggs they get stuck with useless inventory. Fortunately, there is customer demand for pet food and school cafeteria fare. Male chicks serve this market. Once you have separated the egg-layers from the useless-as-bull-teat chicks you need to send them down a chute, pump the protein-rich slurry into tankers and truck them to rendering facilities.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

Barnyard-Animal Values

Humans are not the only Earth residents born with an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Homo sapiens are not the only Earthly beings born to thrive, to live long and prosper, to experience joie de vivre. They do not show up at your door intending to be killed and dissected for humane consumption. More likely, they will run as soon as you open the door.

comparative anatomy

Running for your life: is it instinctual?

Vegan humans reject a conventional “wisdom” that deems beasts naturally occurring resources, food options, and fashion statements. NonVegan humans devise clever ways to subdue and conquer, to enslave, to transport “livestock” to butcheries, tanneries, renderers. Dominion (dominance) over animals is an arbitrary human conceit.

How many animals can you name that have intensely complex central nervous systems? Highly developed processes relay sensory and autonomic information to the brain. Gaze into a pig’s eye and know how much you share, how much you communicate, how much information transfers in the blink of each eye. Is it comparable to looking into a child’s eyes? That’s a loaded question. A barnyard animal’s heart was already beating prenatally inside her mother’s womb. Her fate was already decided, but not by her mother.

Does a pregnant cow know that her calves will disappear immediately upon departing the womb? Is she relieved at having her children separated from her teat so that bovine milk might be redirected into ice cream and casein? Is her boy prepared for a vealy good future?

Where are the bovine fathers? Insemination is artificial, so the point is moot. Long ago sets of bovine ancestors lived as nuclear families. Is this irrelevant information?

Does a sow wish her piglet a brutish life, an incarcerated existence and an early death?

plants.feel.pain

Anthropomorphism does not explain the enormous emotional and physical characteristics that humans share with barnyard animals. I envisage a book about such animals as a sanctuary that offers a refuge from the colossal carnage that occurs every second of every day.

Veganism is the only conceivable way to counter global warming. Many nonvegans recognize that reality but consider it unrealistic, unfortunately, the reality is as realistic as real can possibly get.

Q. Why did the chicken cross the road?

A. To get hit by the truck that conveyed her family to death camps: meat-processing facilities, if you will.

Please consider reading my earlier posts on vegan alternatives

Thanks for reading.

 

Anthony Bourdain: “Vegans Should Kill Themselves”

Gratefully reblogged from Amanda’s think&thrive blog. Worth your moment, I believe.

I was not a Bourdain follower and did not know how viscerally vegans repulsed him, but it should come as no surprise whatever. Sideshow geeks draw paying customers and repeat business.
Endless memorials and testimonials celebrate a life well lived if decadently conducted.  His views were highly respected and acknowledged, they have been immortalized. This video is the first negative review I’ve seen published, but vegan tails do not generally wag the dog, do they?

Dominion and Domestication News

Breaking news from our time-traveling reporters, recently returned from a special assignment for The Genesis Tattler and World Report:

The 26th verse of the 1st chapter of Genesis (NIV) declares animal rights alienable, subservient to the inalienable rights of mankind (the ones created in His image and likeness). In a single sentence, a sentencing I say, the English translation describes

  1. the creation of mankind,
  2. the wild creatures in the sea,
  3. in the sky,
  4. on the land,
  5. and the livestock.

So farmed animals get exiled from wild animals in one fell swath.

genesis.1.26

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

How about this logical leap: encaging every living being from tapeworm to giraffe between two commas — declaring the deed done in fewer than seven words. …Let us make mankind in our image

,in our likeness,

so that they may rule over…

I’m assigning another time-traveling team to the gates of Eden to report on the couple caught trafficking forbidden fruit: advice of a snake-oil-sales demon guised as a serpent, possibly a slitherer subservient (subserpient?) to the inalienably privileged pair. The devil is in the details.

Bill, if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all. 

It’s not really what I say that counts, it’s what I do. I DO VEGAN.

Speaking of saying something good, is it even possible to be a good person, to eat peas, live long and prosper? Not only to prosper, but to thrive without executing the calf and hardening the arteries, those tubes hat flow lifeblood into and out of your heart, possibly to head off an extinction event named after its instigator. While researching this article I happened upon a quite fascinating site that speaks to a potential extinction event : Misanthropocene

misanthropocene

A few thoughts for future posts:

The hegemony of man as misogynist.

Where do humans fit on the scale running from sadism to masochism?

Are humans a selfish specie?

One self-adoring philosopher, Ayn Rand,  is my choice for single most influential human responsible for stoking the boilers of the Anthropocene Express. Git ‘er done, Ayn. Here is a Rand quote from 1974:

They (Native Americans) didn’t have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using. What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their ‘right’ to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent.

— Q and A session following her address to the graduating class of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, March 6, 1974 – found in Endgame: Resistance, by Derrick Jensen, Seven Stories Press, 2006, pg 220

I sign off with the words of Anthony Douglas Williams:

When I look into the eyes of an animal, I do not see an animal, I see a living being, I see a friend, I feel a Soul.

The eyes have it.

Thanks for reading.