The bite-back

1622: 

Food is sensory not spiritual, so it’s usually just a case of ‘eat, drink and be merry, and be careful of your weight’. There is no ‘higher spiritual component’ to it - a stomach full of meat is a mind full of misery and murder.

We put our very sensitivity on the line when it comes to indulging in animal-eating. Both compassion and intelligence are compromised by the use of animal foods, specifically by our conniving with the enslaving and killing of animals for food.

We aren’t out there hunting them or risking our safety since these animals are behind bars and can’t fight back. Everything has been made easy for us. The wildness of Nature has been tamed – we imprison ‘food animals’, force them to be docile and then make sure they remain so. But the animals do bite back in a subtle and unseen way. The eating of their bodies and secretions is a creeping scourge - after eating them continuously we often put on weight and suffer the ill effects of diabetes and heart disease, and worse. If we are tied to animal-based cuisine, it will slow us down and in a subtle way weaken our affectionate nature, so that we no longer care for the beings for which we’d otherwise feel great affection.

The bottom line here is that we can’t resist eating them. So many delicious foods are animal-based. Why should we deny ourselves the enjoyment of them?

Because animals represent such rich pickings for humans, it would seem like madness NOT to take advantage of them. But by choosing to use animals, we bring out the worst in ourselves. The guilt or shame might be heavy enough, but being addicted to animal products and spending so much money on them, we fall prey to the chronic conditions they bring on. And it all adds up to a ‘slowing-down’ - our self development is held back by mindlessly consuming what are always the most ugly products in the shop.

The Animal Industries are happy to do our dirty work for us, rearing and killing and presenting the end product, just so long as we don’t make a fuss about it. The deal is that we do our best to turn a blind eye to the horror of their business while they conceal as much of it as they can - we, producers and consumers, conspire together to objectify the living being. The producer keeps us satisfied and we keep them in business.

Over the years we’ve executed billions of animals, none of whom have ever been guilty of any crime. This wash of cruelty and destruction has forced us to pretend to ourselves that what happens to animals doesn’t actually happen at all. We come to believe that we are not cold blooded killers, when it’s all too obvious that we know we are.