The animals are for cooking

1257: 

There’s little comfort for vegans when we read about animals in media stories and see that they are always the victims of human lifestyle.  All we hear about is how conventional foods are being made more attractive, with cuisine making full use of animal body parts.  Cooking programmes are only ever about new taste sensations.  TV cooks are oblivious of the animals themselves, whose body parts they use.  Their exotic dishes are made to look like the extravagance-we-all-deserve.  They might say, “Don’t be so hard on yourself.  Spoil yourself”.  There’s never a thought given concerning the harm their new and exciting dishes may have.  Not only do these dishes, heavy with rich ingredients, do harm to human health, but they harm the animals who they so liberally use.  T.V. cooks may be good at entertaining us, even good for showing us different ways to use food, but they’re exemplars of mindless animal exploitation.  These TV cooks are the encouragers of indulgence.  They are the tools of the Animal Industries, who do very well out of these TV celebrities.

Our society is careful never to endanger this industry, which enjoys all the backing of Society it could ever wish for.  The fact is that killing animals for food is entirely legal and acceptable, despite the fact that what it produces is so harmful to health.

Because this vast animal-based food industry is such a vital part of our economy, there’s barely a mention of animals, only the products taken from the animals.  And to that end we give the product a special name, to divert us from the animal it came from.  Pork, veal, lamb, beef, venison, bacon, egg, milk, etc., - we’re hardly aware the product has any association with a live creature.  The animal falls into the background, unseen, unmentioned and forgotten, and this is why most vegans are so intent on exposing the perfidiousness of it.  However, there’s not much we can do to force a change of public attitude towards these much-used animals.  We have nothing coercive to fight with.

But that’s to our advantage, as a movement.  We have no physical power to stop this whole ghastly business – all we can do is expose it and make suggestions - we can teach but we can’t touch.

We are such a tiny minority against such a vast majority attitude.  Confrontation is never going to get us anywhere.  The odds are certainly against us.  But because we have no muscle we can't force anything - we must take up only non-violent forms of persuasion.  It might be frustrating for us, but it’s good training in being non judgemental, pushing us to try out new attitudes towards those who disagree with us.  It gives us an edge that wouldn’t occur to most people, and a strength which gives us some chance of impressing people, if only for it's unexpectedness.