As you will surely have realised by now, I'm pretty direct in the way I challenge people about their meat eating. When I do so, I'm not concerned with the effect their carnivorism has upon their ascension pathway. Everybody is where they are on their own route and it's their issue, not mine. However, I am worried about the plight of the beings they are needlessly causing the slaughter of, and that's why I push the agenda. My angst stems not only from the compassion I feel for helpless living creatures, but also from the 'steer' (no pun intended) I'm getting from a certain large archangel who has already made it abundantly clear about the etheric's perspective on the horrors we perpetrate.
When confronting others in my efforts to break them of their death dealing habit, I am most often met with lame assurances like “I am trying to give up” (to which I point out that ‘try’ means you haven’t decided); and far more frequently, “I only eat white meat now”. Apparently this makes their habit acceptable and not quite so bad.
If one explores the logic that this is a perfectly acceptable (if not commendable) mitigating course of action, it seems to be underpinned by the rather strange assumption that creatures possessed of white meat do not value their lives as much as those with red meat; that the white meat lifeforms are somehow less aware that they are being killed and don't mind as much; that magically, white meat beings don't suffer as much. Well that's good to know isn't it?
The only problem is, as an English person might say, it's utter bollocks!
What is true is that some animals are less sentient than others, but this is not a matter of capacity for comprehension of the world around them. It is a matter of the opportunities presented by the circumstances of the lives in which they find themselves caught. Certain animals, principally the white meat ones, have been, historically, kept in more confined and restricted environs than their red meat cousins. Chickens, turkeys, and ducks are most usually kept penned (notionally, often for their own protection from marauding foxes and the like) and may not wander the freedom of a field and experience the extended vistas, trees and topographical undulations that comprise the world of cows, sheep, goats and (to a lesser extent) pigs. Of course nowadays, it is just as likely that all of these animals have been raised in giant feedlots, never seeing the sky or experiencing unconditioned air until they are brutally driven towards the multi-tiered slaughter wagons that will transport them to their certain murder. And the white meat ones might not even get this tantalizing glimpse of a freer life that could and should have been theirs. For them the concept of any kind of world beyond the steel structures that have contained them for the duration of their wholly unnatural lives is less than a myth.
Yet we cannot seem to get past the notion that they are not intelligent and therefore of lesser worth and suffer less. We conveniently ignore the fact that we are the ones who are destroying their sentient experience. Even so, here are some basic facts about perhaps the most maligned of all white meat creatures, chickens. And you probably never knew…
Not convinced? Still don’t believe they suffer? Do you know how they meet their end so that you may enjoy tucking in to them?
Workers rush through the sheds, grabbing multiple birds by their legs and slinging them into crates for transport. Every year, tens of millions suffer broken wings and legs from the rough handling, and some hemorrhage to death. The journey to the slaughterhouse may be hundreds of miles long, but chickens are given no food or water and are shipped through all weather conditions.
After this nightmarish journey, the bewildered chickens are dumped out of the crates, and workers violently grab them and force their legs into shackles so that they are hanging upside-down, breaking many birds’ legs in the process.
The terrified animals struggle to escape, often defecating and vomiting on the workers. An undercover investigator at a Perdue slaughterhouse reported that “the screaming of the birds and the frenzied flapping of their wings was so loud that you had to yell to the worker next to you.”
Once in the shackles, the upside-down birds are dragged through an electrified water bath meant to paralyze them, not render them unconscious.
In her book Slaughterhouse, Gail Eisnitz explains: “Other industrialized nations require that chickens be rendered unconscious or killed prior to bleeding and scalding, so they won’t have to go through those processes conscious. Here in the United States, however, poultry plants—exempt from the Humane Slaughter Act and still clinging to the industry myth that a dead animal won’t bleed properly—keep the stunning current down to about one-tenth that needed to render a chicken unconscious.” This means that chickens are still completely conscious when their throats are cut.
After the blade cuts their necks, blood slowly drains from the dying birds. But many birds flap about and miss the blade. These birds may have their throats slit by the “backup cutter,” but workers testify that it’s impossible for them to catch all the birds who miss the blade. According to USDA records, millions of chickens every year are still completely conscious when they are dunked into the scalding-hot water of the defeathering tanks.
Still think they don’t suffer? Still think eating white meat’s OK?
Well of course there's always the other plea put forward by those who don’t mind participating in wholesale slaughter: "I only eat fish". And this makes everything OK too because as we all know, fish feel nothing, don't value their existence, and are only too happy to meet their deaths so that we can eat them. Surely they don’t mind?
Or do they? Here are some fish facts for you:
For some reason, the spectacle of watching fish meet their tortured ends, en masse, does not seem to disturb us. There can be few of us who have not, at some point at least (if only on TV), watched a fish being hooked on the end of a line or seen a trawled net expend its load onto the deck of a boat. Did you not recognise the frantic behaviour as they thrashed about, futilely gasping for the water that gives them air and struggling in terrified desperation to stay alive? Is it comforting for you that they can’t scream and cry like mammals, or did you simply not find their desperation as moving as that demonstrated by a pig?
Or is it just convenient to believe that white meat beings are less conscious of the vile and unnecessary deaths we inflict upon them?
As I’ve confessed before, for years I accepted the scientific myth that fish do not feel pain, and I was a 'pescatarian' for years before going totally vegetarian and then vegan. I was this way in part because nobody told me otherwise. But at the same time I was stupidly prepared to turn the blind eye of convenience to what I recognised at an innate level as cruelty, suffering, agony and terror. Why on earth would we assume that there would be a cheapening of the value that ANY being places upon their existence, irrespective of whether their bodies are possessed of red, white, pink or purple meat?
I wish somebody had put me right decades ago. I wish my parents had never fed me meat. I wish I had not been complicit in the horrors perpetrated upon countless innocents. The instant I wised up I realised that there could be NO possible excuses and I stopped my part in it from that moment onwards.
Have you?
When confronting others in my efforts to break them of their death dealing habit, I am most often met with lame assurances like “I am trying to give up” (to which I point out that ‘try’ means you haven’t decided); and far more frequently, “I only eat white meat now”. Apparently this makes their habit acceptable and not quite so bad.
If one explores the logic that this is a perfectly acceptable (if not commendable) mitigating course of action, it seems to be underpinned by the rather strange assumption that creatures possessed of white meat do not value their lives as much as those with red meat; that the white meat lifeforms are somehow less aware that they are being killed and don't mind as much; that magically, white meat beings don't suffer as much. Well that's good to know isn't it?
The only problem is, as an English person might say, it's utter bollocks!
What is true is that some animals are less sentient than others, but this is not a matter of capacity for comprehension of the world around them. It is a matter of the opportunities presented by the circumstances of the lives in which they find themselves caught. Certain animals, principally the white meat ones, have been, historically, kept in more confined and restricted environs than their red meat cousins. Chickens, turkeys, and ducks are most usually kept penned (notionally, often for their own protection from marauding foxes and the like) and may not wander the freedom of a field and experience the extended vistas, trees and topographical undulations that comprise the world of cows, sheep, goats and (to a lesser extent) pigs. Of course nowadays, it is just as likely that all of these animals have been raised in giant feedlots, never seeing the sky or experiencing unconditioned air until they are brutally driven towards the multi-tiered slaughter wagons that will transport them to their certain murder. And the white meat ones might not even get this tantalizing glimpse of a freer life that could and should have been theirs. For them the concept of any kind of world beyond the steel structures that have contained them for the duration of their wholly unnatural lives is less than a myth.
Yet we cannot seem to get past the notion that they are not intelligent and therefore of lesser worth and suffer less. We conveniently ignore the fact that we are the ones who are destroying their sentient experience. Even so, here are some basic facts about perhaps the most maligned of all white meat creatures, chickens. And you probably never knew…
- Leading animal behaviour scientists from around the globe know that chickens are inquisitive and interesting animals whose cognitive abilities are in some cases more advanced than those of cats, dogs, and even some primates.
- Like all animals, chickens love their families and value their own lives. The social nature of chickens means that they are always looking out for their families and for other chickens in their group. People who have spent time with chickens know that they have complex social structures, adept communication skills, and distinct personalities, just as we do.
- They can complete complex mental tasks, learn from watching each other, demonstrate self-control, worry about the future, and even have cultural knowledge that is passed from generation to generation.
- Chickens comprehend cause-and-effect relationships and understand that objects still exist even after they are hidden from view. In this respect, they are more cognitively advanced than small human children.
- When in their natural surroundings, i.e. not confined to factory farms, chickens form complex social hierarchies, also known as “pecking orders,” and every fowl knows his or her place on the social ladder, remembering the faces and ranks of more than 100 other birds. Scientists agree that chickens’ complex social structures and good memories are undeniable signs of advanced intelligence comparable to that of mammals.
- People who have spent time with chickens know that each bird has a different personality that often relates to his or her place in the pecking order. Some are gregarious and fearless, while others are more shy and watchful; some enjoy human company, while others are standoffish or even a bit aggressive. Just like dogs, cats, and humans, each bird is an individual with a distinct personality.
- Researchers have also found that chickens have a cultural knowledge that they pass down from generation to generation. In one study at Bristol University, chickens were fed a mixture of yellow and blue corn kernels. The blue kernels were tainted with chemicals that made the birds feel sick, and they quickly learned to avoid the blue corn entirely. When these hens hatched chicks, yellow and blue corn was spread around the farm (this time harmless), and the mother hens remembered that the blue corn had previously made them sick, so they carefully steered their young away from it.
- Their communication skills are just as impressive. They have more than 30 types of vocalizations to distinguish between threats that are approaching by land and those that are approaching over water, and a mother hen begins to teach these calls to her chicks before they even hatch. She clucks softly to them while sitting on the eggs, and they chirp back to her and to each other from inside their shells. Chickens who survive the horrific conditions of broiler sheds or battery cages are transported to the slaughterhouse.
Not convinced? Still don’t believe they suffer? Do you know how they meet their end so that you may enjoy tucking in to them?
Workers rush through the sheds, grabbing multiple birds by their legs and slinging them into crates for transport. Every year, tens of millions suffer broken wings and legs from the rough handling, and some hemorrhage to death. The journey to the slaughterhouse may be hundreds of miles long, but chickens are given no food or water and are shipped through all weather conditions.
After this nightmarish journey, the bewildered chickens are dumped out of the crates, and workers violently grab them and force their legs into shackles so that they are hanging upside-down, breaking many birds’ legs in the process.
The terrified animals struggle to escape, often defecating and vomiting on the workers. An undercover investigator at a Perdue slaughterhouse reported that “the screaming of the birds and the frenzied flapping of their wings was so loud that you had to yell to the worker next to you.”
Once in the shackles, the upside-down birds are dragged through an electrified water bath meant to paralyze them, not render them unconscious.
In her book Slaughterhouse, Gail Eisnitz explains: “Other industrialized nations require that chickens be rendered unconscious or killed prior to bleeding and scalding, so they won’t have to go through those processes conscious. Here in the United States, however, poultry plants—exempt from the Humane Slaughter Act and still clinging to the industry myth that a dead animal won’t bleed properly—keep the stunning current down to about one-tenth that needed to render a chicken unconscious.” This means that chickens are still completely conscious when their throats are cut.
After the blade cuts their necks, blood slowly drains from the dying birds. But many birds flap about and miss the blade. These birds may have their throats slit by the “backup cutter,” but workers testify that it’s impossible for them to catch all the birds who miss the blade. According to USDA records, millions of chickens every year are still completely conscious when they are dunked into the scalding-hot water of the defeathering tanks.
Still think they don’t suffer? Still think eating white meat’s OK?
Well of course there's always the other plea put forward by those who don’t mind participating in wholesale slaughter: "I only eat fish". And this makes everything OK too because as we all know, fish feel nothing, don't value their existence, and are only too happy to meet their deaths so that we can eat them. Surely they don’t mind?
Or do they? Here are some fish facts for you:
- Earth is home to more than 30,000 known species of fish, which is more than all the other species of vertebrate animals combined.
- Fish are fast learners with long-term memories and a keen sense of time.
- They recognize other individuals, can keep track of complex social relationships, and work cooperatively with other species. They are inquisitive, perceptive, and personable.
- Fish are the most misrepresented and misperceived animals. It is commonly touted that they have “a three-second memory” yet it is a fact that migrating fishes, such as salmon, remember their way home years later and from thousands of miles away. Others, including goldfish, can learn and remember skills. One is even noted for it in the Guinness Book of World Records.
- Contrary to popular myth, mounting scientific evidence proves that fish suffer fear and pain.
- Far more fish are exploited than any other category of animals, and they are subjected to the worst abuses. Yet, they have the least legal protection and receive the least concern for their well-being, even from the animal protection community.
- Globally, an estimated one to three trillion wild-caught fishes and 37 – 120 billion farmed fishes are killed commercially for food each year. Hundreds of millions more are killed for “sport” each year in the U.S. alone.
- Fishes are also increasingly replacing other animals for scientific experimentation. Approximately one-quarter of all the animals used for research and education in North America are fish.
For some reason, the spectacle of watching fish meet their tortured ends, en masse, does not seem to disturb us. There can be few of us who have not, at some point at least (if only on TV), watched a fish being hooked on the end of a line or seen a trawled net expend its load onto the deck of a boat. Did you not recognise the frantic behaviour as they thrashed about, futilely gasping for the water that gives them air and struggling in terrified desperation to stay alive? Is it comforting for you that they can’t scream and cry like mammals, or did you simply not find their desperation as moving as that demonstrated by a pig?
Or is it just convenient to believe that white meat beings are less conscious of the vile and unnecessary deaths we inflict upon them?
As I’ve confessed before, for years I accepted the scientific myth that fish do not feel pain, and I was a 'pescatarian' for years before going totally vegetarian and then vegan. I was this way in part because nobody told me otherwise. But at the same time I was stupidly prepared to turn the blind eye of convenience to what I recognised at an innate level as cruelty, suffering, agony and terror. Why on earth would we assume that there would be a cheapening of the value that ANY being places upon their existence, irrespective of whether their bodies are possessed of red, white, pink or purple meat?
I wish somebody had put me right decades ago. I wish my parents had never fed me meat. I wish I had not been complicit in the horrors perpetrated upon countless innocents. The instant I wised up I realised that there could be NO possible excuses and I stopped my part in it from that moment onwards.
Have you?