677:
Where is your
cut-off point? Unless you feel a strong enough empathic connection with the
dairy cow (or Animal Rights) it’s likely you’ll make a decision to keep using
animal by-products. If you feel strongly about liberating animals in general
(from being used for food) dairy must be tackled first.
Because people
have most difficulty in giving up dairy products, they don’t look at the ethics
of milk production. It’s because of that reluctance that Animal Rights can’t
get a foothold. Unless a by-product boycott is established, no amount no-meat-eating
will free farm animals.
In the end it all comes down to denouncing
all animal cruelty, not just some of it.
Milk and eggs are a big part of daily life,
along with cheese, butter, yoghurt, cream and various confections. The animal by-products are regarded as benign,
as if anything so useful or so delicious could ever be tainted, and yet ethically,
if not also nutritionally, these products are dangerous. The animals who
produce them suffer as do the humans who ingest them. Certainly, behind the
production of both milk and eggs is an ugly system of animal abuse.
Dairy products
particularly are hard to ignore because they’ve insinuated themselves into so
many food products. For example, if you read the ingredients label on almost
any commercial cake or biscuit, you’ll find ‘milk products’ (and/or ‘egg
products’) have been used. Read the ingredients list. I once counted over two
hundred supermarket food items which contained milk or egg. I suspect that most
people would not be prepared to deny themselves that many food items for
ethical reasons.
Today we may be well informed, but
temptation is great. Few people boycott dairy products or egg ingredients
because of the way cows and hens are treated. Most times we remain uninformed
purposely; we choose to remain ignorant to avoid the inconvenience of ruling
out certain foods.
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