I encourage everyone to read this book:
Collapse: How Societies Chose to Fail or Succeed
by Jared Diamond

Check it out: http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Choose-Fail-Succeed/dp/0670033375

In general, the individual state laws protecting farm animals are stated as allowing “customary practices”: if everyone does it, then it is legal, regardless of however cruel and unusual the practice may be.

It is illegal to fight dogs, but it is perfectly legal to slowly hack a living cow to pieces on an assembly line. One people call an outrage, the other people call dinner.

I’m looking forward to finding more ‘slow food’, locally grown and processed foods. I can’t help but imagine that a small, family owned and operated meat processor is going to take more care and humane pride in their job than some illegal who is making $20 a day in some slaughterhouse (like in Fast Food Nation).

As far as the ‘holier than thou’ aspect that gives man providence over all of god’s creatures, I agree…man has no special place in existence. We’re simply a clever animal who has advanced to the point where we can ponder moral issues like this. We have no right to take another creatures life, be it human or any other kind of creature.

The only thing that (you would think) could keep us in check is the fear of the collapse of our society…luckily for us (lucky from the standpoint that it allows us to sleep at night), we’ve proven to be AMAZINGLY short sighted OVER and OVER and OVER and OVER and OVER again throughout history. So we don’t see the man behind the curtain, we don’t worry about tomorrow, we don’t think about the future…so, no “keeping in check”.

Seriously, I think the only thing that is going to rein us in will be a substantial and severe collapse. It won’t be until after “it doesn’t work anymore” that society in general will reconsider the foolishness of feeding the vast majority of our food to animals for meat, losing 80% of it in the process. Not until people are starving wholesale that THAT little bit of absurdity will come home to roost. Starvation is something that happens to poor people in Africa, we don’t need to worry about aquifers or soil quality or pollination or fertilizer runoff or pesticide pollution or deforestation or overpopulation or sustainability…

Those are someone else’s problems. Someone who is “not me here-and-now”. Me of tomorrow maybe…fuck him though, I don’t care about him, I only care about me here-and-now…

For a long time I have felt bad for eating meat and it has troubled me to the point where I just feel sick thinking about it, all the billions of creatures that die to satisfy the human appetite….especially when it’s not necessary to survive (may it was back in the olden days, but NOT now).

For as long as I can remember, I have felt that I am no more important to this world than anything else, even an ant. (Ants are important so don’t laugh or think it’s silly). And after studying Buddhism I have a deeper belief that this is so. Just because humans are smart and are at the top of the food chain does NOT mean that we have the right to exploit, abuse, murder anything which lies below us. It’s sick. The way we think, the greed, the insatiable appetites…the lies and excuses we tell ourselves. It’s all propaganda and we’ve been force fed so much bullshit about what “we” need, what we deserve, how we are better, or more important.

How fucking important will we be when all the honeybees die off? How fucking important will the human race be when it self destructs to the point of no return. Yea, we’re so fucking smart, we are so fucking on top of the world, at the top of the food chain…eating our way into starvation, annihilation, mass murdering helpless creatures to fill out fat bellies all the while starving 3rd world countries who would thrive if they could only eat as good as our grain fed agriculture.

It’s completely sick and I no long want to be a part of it. I don’t want to put myself on a pedestal just because I am smarter than the other creatures who live on this planet. They are smart too and they all serve a purpose, and most important…they deserve respect. How can we not give the same when we ask the same?

FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK!

Whew, I feel a tiny bit better now that I got that out.

It’s not that there aren’t laws against the abuse of factory farm animals…they just are not adhered to. And big business is not in favor of adjusting their business because of the all-fucking-mighty dollar. People are not willing to make kinder choices because of said dollar, or because of laziness, or because they don’t know any better.

Something has to give. And since we humans are the “smart ones”…it would only seem appropriate that we step up.

Things a kid would go to jail for (torturing a cat, for example, by poking its eyes out or sodomizing it with a stick) are perfectly legal when done by the employee working with livestock. There simply are zero protections for the animal in the industry, they are legally considered a tool or a machine.

No one gives a fuck if you beat the shit out of your cordless drill, and legally no one gives a fuck if you literally beat the shit out of a farm animal.

I want to hug porcupines too.

On a side note (but also health related), my smoking is way down. When I lived with Kim, we were each smoking a pack a day. Now I am smoking a pack every 3 days.

I thought that I would miss too many foods but really I have to say that I don’t. Whenever a craving comes to mind I just squash it with the thoughts of animals being tortured just so I can have something that I think that I can’t live without, or something that tastes good (at the expense of living, sentient beings). I know that sounds depressing but it really isn’t. To me, having pride in myself about the choices I am making and knowing that I am not supporting an industry which tortures billions of animals gives me enough zest to continue living like I feel I should…living in a manner which actually aligns to my feelings and beliefs.

I honestly have to say that I do not feel that I am being deprived of anything. There are so many other non-animal food choices out there and you can always prepare favorite meals sans meat and still get enjoyment out of eating. Now if you are a huge meat eater or eat a lot of eggs or cheese this would be a much harder transformation. (I loved cheese, many times I considered cheese my “meat” and I loaded my salads and tacos with it, ate cubes of it as a snack, etc….I mistakenly thought that my life may not be worth living without cheese…especially pizza, toasted cheese sandwiches, mozzarella sticks, etc. Turns out I was terribly mistaken.)

I hate to sound like I am being preachy but I really think it is a very important issue which should be examined by everyone who thinks they cannot possibly live without meat. If nothing else, think of it in terms of an environmental issue..this way of factory farming cannot be sustained. It is terribly harmful to the environment. Not only that but because there is so much demand for meat in first world countries, it is literally starving third world countries… All the grain which is being produced to fatten up cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, geese, etc could be used to feed millions of poor people. We are literally causing starvation around the world all because we have been lied to and because we are programmed to be meat eaters. Perhaps in hunter gatherer days, eating meat was necessary but this day and age it is not. It is a want not a need.

Oh and I just recently read about the nasty journey sheep (used for wool production) take on ships from Australia to the middle east to be slaughtered for meat, throats slit and left to bleed to death. Very sad.

Okay I am done preaching. I’m sorry but I do feel very strongly about this issue and it is one that has tortured me for years…but now that I am actually living more honest with myself I suddenly feel this overpowering urge to share my thoughts. Please just bear with me everyone. ;)

Reading about cows being slaughtered alive, where they figure if only five out of every hundred aren’t ‘stunned’ and still conscious, that is “acceptable”, and the solution of adding a second stunner would have an imperceptible impact (as in, only an accountant would notice the additional $0.0001 per pound of meat that the stunner would add to the price)…makes me ashamed of the United States.

Kelley and I have had some, ahem, discussions about this, my viewpoint is that we want to reward baby steps and slow improvement with our money, we are voting with our purchasing habits. If you can find a source that is an ‘actual’ farm and not a factory, you should pay the premium for that product as it helps support an actual person, not some faceless megacorporation.

I also think that people like her who are taking the giant leap are also doing good, as they are pushing forward the boundaries of what it means to be human.

So, I’m going to wind down my meat consumption unless I can find a humane alternative. Hell, I bought some Egg Beaters a day or two ago and the thought of millions of chickens being crammed into a ConAgra cage little larger than a shoebox for their whole life, being considered not an animal but instead a piece of equipment in a factory…well, let’s just say my purchasing habits are going to be significantly different in the future, the more I read and know…

I have a full blog post in me about this, it’ll have to wait for some future time though…