580:
At the heart of our collective mind-set is the
intractability of attitude about the treatment of animals. By keeping them as slaves
it lets us remain omnivores. It’s a worry for many people but they can’t shake
the habit of eating animal foods. The stuff is addictive.
Maybe the weight of worry we have
isn’t just in the magnitude of the problem, but in the cover-up that goes with
it. We’ve been tricked by the food companies into thinking that there is no
ethical component in food. As soon as we realise there is, we try not to think
about it too deeply, because if we did we’d start boycotting a few things and
end up avoiding many, many things. The logic behind ethical boycott applies to
innumerable food items. We fear that if we start along that road, soon enough
there’ll be nothing much left to buy (in terms of comfort foods).
Everyone knows about the amount
of animal exploitation going on, just by being exposed to TV footage about it. But
the footage only goes so far. If we look deeper at the statistics, we find that
an average Westerner eats twenty one thousand animals (in his or her lifetime).
That’s a lot of executions weighing down on our conscience. Each death is an
individual animal’s horror story which we consumers have been party to.
Just by writing this, I’m
conscious of saying something highly unpopular! But I hasten to add that all of
us, including present day vegans, are or were hardened animal eaters at one
stage of our lives. We’ve all got blood on our hands.
Once we can acknowledge this
‘plain awful truth’, and then stop doing what we’re doing (and promise
ourselves not to ‘go there’ anymore), we can start to repair, to atone.
But that’s just one thing. The
next step is to get off our high horse, judging those who still aren’t vegan,
because it’s a waste of time; our condemnations might make us feel better but
they only serve to alienate people.
No comments:
Post a Comment