1334:
They say that if farms and
slaughter houses had glass walls no one would eat meat. More importantly, if we did know what was
going on and yet still chose to buy what comes out of these places, what then?
Surely, we could be seen as ‘cold hearted’, and most of us don't want to see
ourselves that way. But the lure of the product is very great indeed. The foods
and fabrics made available because of the work of the farmer and the abattoir.
It's difficult to imagine life without animal input. It's therefore very difficult
to imagine agreeing with vegans who argue that animals shouldn't be being used.
For public relations
purposes, we still call these places ‘farms’ and ‘processing plants’. They’re promoted as “efficient and humane
facilities giving the public the best in food provision”, which seems to fit in
with what the customer wants to believe. But this comes at a price. The well
documented truth has to be suspended, so the customer can continue enjoying
wearing fashionable shoes or visiting zoos or enjoying the finest cuisine.
By way of some nifty mental
gymnastics we allow ourselves to be navigated past the truth, and into a
fairy-tale world of benign happy chooks and contented cows grazing in pastures.
And all the time we know this is nonsense. But it allows us to buy abattoir
products without being reminded of their provenance. It allows us to enjoy the
foods which are animal-derived. But at
what cost? In the privacy of our own
mind it's not too comfortable, avoiding both the issue itself as well as those
people who want to talk about it.
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