Love Animals Curb Climate Change

Do you love animals? Do you have pets? I love animals and dogs, in particular. Here in America, it’s abhorrent to us that in some cultures people eat dogs and turn their coats into garments. (You’ve got to know – and care about – dogs to appreciate the magnitude of betrayal a dog – the most loyal creature on Earth – must experience in places where dogs are treated like livestock.) What kind of people are capable of such cruelty?! We would never…. HOLD ON!

Industrial livestock production (I’m talking about cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, etc.) – also known as factory farming – engages in the breeding, raising, and killing of animals for human consumption. 99% of animals raised for food in the United States are raised on factory farms. The animals are bred, born, and raised for the sole purpose of getting killed for food. The animals’ brief lives are spent in overcrowded and otherwise deplorable conditions. While being raised for food, many of the animals are mutilated for the purpose of “easier handling”. Most are confined indoors all their life. Their lives end in slaughter. (The way they are being killed is far from humane.)

Linda McCartney said years ago: “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, the whole world would be vegetarian.”

All of the torture and inhumane treatment of living creatures with one goal in mind: to feed us.

“Animal factories are one more sign of the extent to which our technological capacities have advanced faster than our ethics.” said Peter Singer

Here are a few facts:

– The current world population is about 8 billion and growing
– 9.76 billion land animals (that’s NOT counting birds!) were slaughtered for food in 2020

The United States population is nearing 334 million. According to Animal Clock to feed us:

– 9 billion chickens are killed annually
– 36 million cattle are slaughtered every year
– 124 million pigs are slaughtered every year

Factory farming has a huge carbon footprint; it accelerates environmental degradation and climate change. To give you a general idea:

– 14% of all greenhouse gas emissions come from meat and dairy production
– 30% of all freshwater is used for livestock
– 45% of all agricultural land is used for livestock (soil used for cattle grazing becomes too degraded for food growing)
– massive deforestation is driven by the need for more pasture space
– of course, loss of biodiversity, pollution, and water contamination belong on this list, too

Did you know that farm animals raised and treated like pets act just like your pet? A piglet, or calf (for instance) treated and fed well, raised with care, and surrounded with squeaky toys acts exactly like a puppy. Once grown that animal will have most of the qualities and behaviors of a pet dog.
Pigs are known for being intelligent, playful, and great pets. Cows are wonderful therapeutic animals providing comfort to people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety.

I dislike dystopia. I don’t want to think that we’ll all die soon due to climate change, overheating, thirst, hunger, or some horrifying natural disaster. But I’m also a writer capable of imagining the worst-case scenario.

There is a beautiful English word: “empathy”. That’s not feeling sorry for someone, but feeling their pain.

I can imagine circumstances under which human beings could be deliberately and forcefully bred, raised, and killed for some outrageous purpose. (For example, for food or organ harvesting.)

We could just as well end up being bred, raised, and killed to meet someone’s needs. We could be living the very horrors today’s “livestock” is experiencing on our hands. Lives filled with pain, deprivation, trauma, suffering, and tragedy. Lives without hope. Lives of absolute slavery with no way to rebel or break free.

As it is we, the people outraged by cultures that support raising and killing dogs for food, actively support torture, exploitation, and murder of other animals in a process that goes by such sanitized names as “industrial livestock production” or “meat production”. I’m tempted to compare it to genocide!

Life, not yours or mine, but ANY is sacred. Pain is pain and experienced the same way by any living being.

Industrial livestock production of animals is WRONG. Breeding animals for food is WRONG. Mass animal abuse and mass slaughter are WRONG. Eating a lot of meat is WRONG. Eating meat often is WRONG. Sacrificing 45% of productive agricultural soil to grow feed for livestock or use as pastures is WRONG.

No matter how hard we try to impersonate God, we are not God. We have no right to breed animals for food, mistreat them, kill, or eat them. We usurped that right. Now is the time to reexamine our moral values and dietary habits. We have the choice to become vegan or vegetarian or at the very least, dramatically reduce the amount of meat we eat. The factory-farmed “livestock” has NO choices.

Harvey Diamond put it well: “You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit. If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I’ll buy you a new car.”

What gives us the right to assign value or fate to other living beings? How can a person who loves his or her pet eat corpses of murdered animals, if the option of becoming a vegan or vegetarian – and helping to bring animal suffering to a stop – is available?

In the words of Mahatma Gandhi: “The most violent weapon on earth is the table fork.”

Back when I was a little kid, a tiger poster with a quote hung in my bedroom. Until now, I believed that the quote was Gandhi’s, but I’m unable to verify it. The quote said: “If you can’t kill an animal, you shouldn’t eat meat.” I can’t. Can YOU? If you had to kill an animal to eat, would YOU?

By design, we humans are omnivorous which means we can digest both, plant foods and animal foods.

Animal proteins provide the best quality proteins and all essential amino acids. But there are other ways to get proteins and amino acids in one’s diet. (For instance, quinoa, a grain, is a good source of protein that also provides all essential amino acids.)

Basically, it is possible to obtain all the needed nutrients from a vegetarian or vegan diet. Still, the combined total of vegans and vegetarians in the United States is a mere 8%, today.

We have no competition! There is no other specie as destructive, self-destructive, and immoral as the human being.

By eating meat we’re stocking the fires of climate change and inflicting unimaginable suffering on BILLIONS of cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, etc. every year. Considering the fact that the animals we consume guilt-free are sentient beings that experience love, family bonds, warmth, thirst, hunger, fear, and most notably, PAIN, the same way we do, one has to raise the question: WHO ARE WE?

There is such a thing as survival. Should any one of us suddenly lose everything and become homeless, our odds of surviving on the streets are near zero. When we as humans lose the Earth that sustains us, no one will survive. Yet, billions of people continue eating meat (supporting the inhumane treatment of animals as well as accelerating climate change). WHO ARE WE?

What kind of people set their own homes on fire? What kind of people are so deprived that they don’t hesitate to eat other sentient beings? (Would you eat YOUR pet? Don’t say that you’d eat me only because you don’t know me!)

A person who deliberately kills another person is called a “murderer”. People, whose dietary habits (the preference for eating meat) contribute to the torture and killing of other sentient beings are called… “consumers” with no ethical or legal stigma attached.

Maybe it’s time to ask WHO AM I?…..

 

 

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