These videos don't necessarily reflect my viewpoint on these issues; I definitely disagree or feel unsure about several things they discuss. In general though, I do think that industrial meat production is environmentally devastating and normalizes structural violence as necessary to the functioning of society; veganism, vegetarianism, or just deciding not to buy industrially produced animal products seems to be the easiest, tastiest way for the individual human to take themselves out of cruel, ethically and environmentally destructive systems.
Check out these perspectives, and decide for yourself:
Anthropocentric or Environmentalist arguments Wikipedia: Environmental impact of meat production The Farm Animal's Perspective Farm to Fridge - The Truth Behind Meat Production from Mercy For Animals Wikipedia: Ethics of Eating Meat | 0 buffaloes 0 camels 4 cattle 790 chickens 42 ducks 6 goats 0 horses 21 pigs 8 sheep 10 turkeys Based on 2007 statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations' Global Livestock Production and Health Atlas. From The Abolitionist Approach |
Food is family. And families can change what they eat.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a child our everynight dinner menu was a meat, a starchy dish of noodles,rice or potatoes and a green and a yellow vegetable. In the 1970's concerns about cholesterol motivated an O'Brien family tilt towards less beef, more chicken and fish. In the 1980's concern over feed hormones and antibiotics and the higher price of 'better' meat bought at the Puget Consumers Coop moved the O'Brien-O'Reillys towards smaller portions and using meat as a flavoring condiment.
Then we learned about animal factories; most cows and pigs and chickens aren't singing "Old McDonald's Farm." So our new way of eating, spurred by health and economic factors, was then accelerated by disgust. And by our children's ethics.