Violence-free fridges

1380: 

Every day I work in other people’s homes and often put my lunch in their fridge.  I can't help having a squiz, to see if I’ve stumbled on an animal-free content - a vegan fridge.  In thirty years of fridge-peeping I’ve had no luck.  How disappointing is that?

         

All too often, there they lie, the same old bits of dead flesh in nice white trays or cheese or cow’s milk or a pc-correct carton of free range eggs.

Here in the privacy of people’s fridges is evidence of how far we’ve come in making ethical progress.  What we eat at home is usually a secret – no one (but for a nosey person like me) is ever going to find out what foods one has spent money on and intends to consume.  So no one ever knows what humanitarian values are held regarding food animals, be they sheep, lobsters or chickens.  For the sake of keeping a well stocked fridge, most people ignore the ethics behind the stock.  What's there has been somehow magically transformed from something ugly, the killing of a live animal, into something beautiful, the product which when eaten will give so much pleasure.  The animals' treatment and death is not associated any longer with the food product.  But in truth, there would be no product without the violence, and so we must conclude that it is violence that so profoundly characterises our species.  And let it be said that if we are happy about the violence, and the mass death cult that results from it, then we’ll carry on behaving as usual, as carnivores and omnivores.  But if we aren’t happy about human violence, and if we can see a far improved world without it, then moving away from animal food and clothing is where a ‘transformation-of-the-species’ starts.

Animal-based food symbolises humans’ most uncaring attitude.  No caring where this sort of food comes from, represents a general acceptance of the hard side of ourselves.  The softer side of ourselves is drawn towards harmlessness and non-violence, and that’s what vegans are trying to emphasise.  This approach to life makes ours very different to other’s, because we buy different things to eat and consequently we have ‘violence-free’ fridges.