Final Fans

Archive for January, 2010

In our human blindness concerning the feelings, intelligence, and sensitivity of animals, there is one in particular about whom we’ve been most wrong. If it were possible to measure our misunderstanding about our fellow creatures on some giant scale, our ignorance of this particular animal might well be the greatest of all. This is an animal who has been abused and ridiculed by people for centuries, but who is actually a friendly, forgiving, intelligent and good natured animal when he isn’t mistreated. I am talking, you may be surprised to find out, about the pig.

The poultry producers consider themselves innocent of any wrong doing. They say they do what they do to bring down the price we pay for our eggs and poultry. To that end, they claim they are simply people committed to a well-defined sense of purpose, which is to raise “broilers” for the slaughterhouse and “layer” hens for eggs by the most cost-effective means possible. That this should happen to involve the brutalization of billions of innocent animals is, as far as they are concerned, irrelevant.
The agribusiness companies have their eyes firmly set on the bottom line. But they cannot see there is yet a deeper bottom line. Although they cannot see the more far-reaching consequences of their actions, these consequences nonetheless exist. None of us is immune from the repercussions of our actions and Choices. As we sow, so shall we reap.
“There is a destiny that makes us brothers, None goes his way alone— All that we send into the lives of others Comes back into our own.”
I don’t know what shall be the destinies of those responsible for the animal factories of today. But regardless of the future, it is already sadly true that they live in a heartless world. Treating animals like machines, they are profoundly separated from nature, deeply alienated from kinship with life. They are already in a kind of hell.
If we buy and eat the products of this system of food production, are we not colluding with them in creating this hell? Is that how we want to vote with our lives?