The human who couldn’t change personal habits

1801:

Anyone who instinctively sees an urgent need to do something about the way we treat food-animals is up against it; one has to ignore what’s previously been taught about food, go against tastebud-advice, against the advice of corporations, governments and educators, and turn to oneself for advice.

The issue of using animals in the food and clothing industries sits like a lead weight on our collective conscience - what we do to animals makes monsters of us. I’m ashamed of what I did for so many years. I didn’t care about animals being slaughtered. I didn’t care about hens being imprisoned in tiny cages.  But the more I learned the more critical became the situation inside my head. I discovered that newborn calves are snatched away from their mothers (and shot soon after they’re born). I found out that sows are kept restrained in stalls, and cattle are mutilated without pain killers, always for very practical reasons, of course. The list of horrors goes on and on. Each one reflects on the farmers, the producers and the consumers who support all this, who buy the animal produce.

         

Now all this might be true enough, but nearly every one of us is involved. But it seems that we can switch off, for no one will notice. We don’t have to talk about it. Or think about it if we don’t want to. This is where and why we’re stuck, and can’t move forward, because we’re all the same in so many ways. My taste buds are like everyone else’s. I respond to my favourite foods as you do. If I’m more sensitive then, these same foods just weigh more heavily on my conscience. I enjoy the advantages of being a ‘free-thinker’ or a ‘deep-thinker’ but it hurts me only because I find it more difficult to effect a numbness to it all. I can’t get it out of my head that sentient animals are suffering.

I can’t rid myself of the fact that animals are born and kept alive only to be eaten. Or used as machines for producing wool or milk or eggs. They’re held in prisons and live in terror, and die in the most ugly way imaginable. And many people who believe they are sensitive make brave comment on all this, “it’s outrageous”, but then carry on eating them all the same. By way of some nifty mental gymnastics we can relax at the dinner table and eat what we’re given. Minds closed, mouths open.