Soul food

1584: 

You say we shouldn't be eating animals? “But they have no souls, so it’s okay”. “They don’t feel things as we do”. “They can’t reflect on their situation or see what’s in store for them”.

Whether any of that’s true or not, it doesn't matter. There's so much information today explaining why it is safe to eat solely plant-based foods, so why not simply do just that? Admittedly, we all live in a world of misinformation. Who to believe. Most people don't dare to change to an ethics-based diet. They go back to the same food Mum served, and on the subject of animals, they continue holding the same attitudes they held as kids - that animals have no souls and that meat is good for us. Or that, “We’ve been eating meat for two million years so why stop now?”

But now, there's been a lot of fundamental questioning. It's touched sex, religion, politics, and because of these breakthroughs we’ve moved on in so many important ways. We are no longer Neanderthals. But we're still predominantly ‘carnivores’, and cruel with it. We already know we can safely survive without animal-derived foods. We already know how cruel 'the system is towards making money, and animals mean business. 'Animals', singular, is about producing certain foods from 'animal'. And businesswise, it’s easy pickings. Indeed the only pickings if you live in rural areas. Animal farming is a big industry, happening all around the world. But the world is now a global village, we all trade with all. And because entrepreneurs are setting up intensive farming operations anywhere in the world, the products from any animal farm face competition. We have price wars, which spells danger by way of lowering husbandry standards, in order to lower costs, and undercut competition. Hell hole factory farms aren’t designed as punishment camps, but simply based on the cheapest way of growing the product, in order to stay in business.

We no longer chase and hunt animals to kill them for food. Instead we keep them locked in private chambers, and treat them like machines. Since the early part of the last century, the wealthy Animal Industries have been intensifying animal husbandry, and quoting from J.S. Foer’s Animal Eating: “Modern industrial agriculture has asked what hog farming might look like if one considered only profitability – literally designing multitier farms from multistorey office blocks …”. The ruthlessness is in the design of the implements of intensification; they reflect the worst imaginable outcome for the animals themselves. Perhaps the worst is the caging. And the customer goes along with it. The customer doesn’t want too much detail. They pay and thus empower Agribusiness, and it's not so very different to years gone by, when the lord of the manor, held his serfs in his inescapable maze. And today, Agribusiness provides for our 'needs', letting us earn money which can be spent at the shop which is working for Agribusiness.

The Animal Industries have been successful at cementing-in our shopping habits, by giving us what we want. But, at the same time, they've been messing with our minds. Effectively, we let them do our choosing for us. They do it by brazenly tempting us and spreading misinformation. By subtle and subliminal means they secure our loyalty to their product – and we, the customer, support them in order to ensure supply of said goods. Apart from noticing vegans, have you ever noticed anyone routinely NOT wearing animal skins somewhere on their body or NOT eating abattoir-derived food for dinner? And you don’t need to look too closely to see that most adults over the age of 40 are already losing their sense of well-being. Many are already ill from their life-long use of this so called 'food'. Need one say more? Have you ever seen The Biggest Loser on television?

By using misinformation to draw the spending dollar from peoples’ pockets, the Animal Industries also screw up the future of the planet. How did they get so much power? Perhaps by learning how their customers think, and by not giving a stuff about those values most of us observe. But double standards are everywhere, in us all - we take what they give us even though we know we're their playthings - they will play us with whatever it takes, to maintain their advantage. As conservatives, they conserve what they own. And always act within the law since they effectively ARE the Law. They disregard ethics but take care to protect themselves by never being accountable for what's being done. They're removed from the action of farmers and abattoirs and may be found inhabiting offices in cities. And they play with figures all day. They never openly act against the interests of humans since they wouldn’t want to draw that sort of attention to themselves. They know the customer. For all their stealth and careful image-making, they know their customers don’t need to know too much. They know they don't really care about what’s being done to ‘non-humans’. As long as the good times keep rolling.