Squirming

You take any man or woman on the street and ask them if they know what factory farming is. They will squirm and struggle and pretend not to know. But of course we don’t go up to people on the street and ask them this sort of question, so there’s very little squirming going on. But there are a lot of ugly decisions being made that affect others. Most are blocked off from animal information when choosing what to do and then, once made, we effectively back ourselves into a corner, or rather we’re backed up, along with everyone else, in a long traffic jam of habit. To get out of it we need a root and branch choices change.
It sounds a bit like anal retention, all this ‘backing up’ and blocking off. Like an awareness filter, shielding us from memories of things we’ve done and regretted. Feelings associated with those memories we’ve experienced. When we had broken love affairs, when we feasted on ‘thanksgiving turkey’ - a hard lump that won’t settle, linked with unresolved questions. And what’s so galling is that our most damaging mistakes may be down to ‘false intelligence’, mistakes which are costing us although still profitting them. Our health is being damaged by those who add dangerous chemicals into animal feed and tthence into our own systems. Our ethics damaged by what is done to get this food to us. By taking part in it, consuming dubious products we make regrettable mistakes.
As an example, take the egg sitting on the breakfast plate - it’s the first thing we see in the morning, reminding us of where this egg came from so it doesn’t look like food. Instead this is biologically forced from a hen in a cage which is an unattractive thought and a constipating experience anyway. Our blocked up system and the grimness of the egg trade reminds us to examine what we do. And again another grim reminder when we’re eating a steak, to know that this meat is from a castrated bullock, who had the knife taken to his private parts when young and another knife taken to his throat when older and fatter. Our animal food has to involve this murderous process, but because it is done by others, by people down the road who get paid to do it, we reckon not to care about it. It’s not the blade of the slaughterer but our dinner knife that’s the main threat to a hen, cow, pig or sheep.