Decisions

1446: 

Many people today are waking up to Animal Rights and adopting ethical positions towards their food, as well as refusing to be poisoned by what they eat every day.  After all, what’s not to be seen as attractive about food that is high in energy, non-fattening and easy on the conscience?  Especially the young are embracing plant-based foods for health reasons, but it's amongst this 'gentler generation' that animal cruelty is the big issue.  It’s the clincher.  It's not easy to forget what their elders are doing to animals down on the so called 'farms'.  So, here are the obvious questions they are asking themselves:  Would I deliberately eat second rate food?  Would I deliberately hurt animals?  Would I want to support an industry dedicated to hurting animals and producing crap food?

         

Of course, you might say that what I spend my money on is my business.  It's my choice what food and clothing I buy.  It's my right to dress as I wish and eat what I like, and my right to NOT have to know about the background to what I buy.  Concerning food, all I need to know is that it is safe to eat; then I can buy it and eat it and draw pleasure from it. Food - I know what I like and I know what food I look forward to eating.  I might call these foods ‘more-ish’, and like everyone else, I’m attracted to rich, yummy foods.  In the traditional Western diet (70% of which contains animal ingredients) by boycotting seven tenths of what the food shop has for sale, it makes life that much more difficult.  So, it's best to forget all that about 'animal cruelty'.  For the dedicated omnivore, life is made that much easier by simply indulging in anything that is on sale, and ignoring such things as Animal Rights, because everyone else does.  We all have our ‘little sins’, where we give in to our weaker side, even though we know we’re helping to hurt animals.

         

What it comes down to is that we either don’t give a stuff about animals (and continue buying whatever we feel like) or we care about them and boycott the lot.

         

Knowing about intensive farming or indeed animal-farming in general, as most of us do these days, we make a conscious choice as to how we react to ‘that sort of information’.  We either decide to act or we decide NOT to.  Core values, learnt from childhood, about rights and wrongs, and softness and kindness, either move us or they wash right over our head.

         

What if I couldn’t find a suitable ‘cruelty-free’ replacement product?  Does that mean going without it altogether?  Yes.  That’s what the boycott come down to.  And it’s quite a test of character!