Just wanted to share this video with you.
The video "Meet Your Meat", narrated by Alec Baldwin, covers each stage of life of animals raised for food. Seeing the inhuman conditions under which these animals are kept, waiting only for the day when they will be butchered, was a huge shock.
I sincerely hope that watching this makes you rethink if you depend on a non-vegetarian diet. You don't want to be the support mechanism for such organized crime, right?
I have shared this with many friends requesting them to go green and they often have a lot of questions before they take such a "big" step in their lives, after all there will be no chicken curry for dinner anymore...So here is a quick FAQ.
Q. Do you really want us to stop eating meat? I thought the message was more about preventing cruelty to animals - perhaps by killing them more humanely.
A. There is nothing called "humane butchering". Such terms are best suited to goons in Mithun movies.
Q. If you are asking us not to kill animals, is killing ants and insects equally bad thing...they are also living things and part of the environment, right?
A. It is difficult to say whether ants and insects are as important to the environment as pigs and cows. But they are definitely more important than you.
Q. I know cases where bullocks are beaten while they are made to plough fields. Following the same analogy ... All people who eat rice/wheat or any crop product should also rethink about it?
I am not sure if you were trying to be funny here. Since it did not make me laugh, I'll answer your question seriously.
I agree, there is a lot of violence in the world today. It's going to be a huge task to bring it down from 100% to 0% and will take a long time. But we can start sincere efforts to bring it to down as much as we practically can. Its upto you where you want to draw your line...70%...50%...30%...
Q. Lions eat animals, green is only for cows. I am a lion and not a cow.
For you I can arrange a duel with a lion. Let's prove once and for all that you are so brave. You don't have to resort to paying people money to kill chickens for you any more.
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3 weeks ago
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7 comments:
oye..u r trying to address the cruelty against animals? or non-veg food? i think u r mixing the two topics..my questions to U:
1)arent u disturbing the food chain? should frog think before eating insect, snake before eating frog, eagle before snake...etc etc..
2)if some people are earning their living by adopting cruelty, that is something, that needs to be addressed...
Well..killing the animals for food is something which can be a highly debatable topic..survival of the fittest as they say is nature's law..i dont find ur arguements convincing enough though i am a vegetarian myself...
-Mohit
ya but video is horrifying..from one of the worst places i guess..awareness about such practices is important..
-Mohit
dude...I am just saying don't kill animals for food when there are other good options. I don't want to disturb the food chain or want the carnivores to starve. Carnivores can't live without eating animals but humans can. In fact human digestive system is better off on veggie diet.
I don't know if I want to advocate one way of living over the other, to each his/her own, as they say - but I can certainly explain why I am a vegetarian as that is something I get asked every once in a while.
By being a vegetarian, I am being compassionate towards other animals. I like being compassionate as it gives me peace, fills me with harmony and other good feelings.
My thesis is that humans were omnivorous, to start with. Gradually, with the help of an evolving brain, we reached a stage where we no longer needed to kill animals for our survival, and could afford to be somewhat compassionate. Back at that time, not eating animals was a deliberate, well thought out evolutionary choice that some humans made, where it was possible, because they could afford to, and they saw some value in being kind towards other beings.
But it's not that easy and straightforward. Compassion doesn't flow ad infinitum. It gets a bit interesting when someone asks me why just animals, why do you not stop eating plants too? I reply back with, well why do you eat just animals, why not eat fellow humans too? What is it that holds you back from eating a human? If you are, in fact, ready to eat humans, would you make any exceptions and not eat certain humans? Why? In spite of being an omnivore, you don't think about eating your loved ones because, well, you love them. Your love/compassion for them is more important to you than making them your meal. In the same vein, I eat plants because I need to survive. It is a question of compassion vs. survival. Unfortunately, you can't take being compassionate to the extreme, because that starts threatening your existence. At that stage, survival takes over. It is a trade-off, and will remain so, till technology sets us free.
Mohit also raises an important point about disturbing the food chain. Firstly, I would argue that humans are not a part of any food chain (infact, we stopped being a part of one long time ago, thanks to our evolving brains), and in the particular case of humans ceasing the consumption of animals, no food chain would be disturbed as we artificially raise 90%+ of animals that we intend to consume. In the more general case of other animals not eating animals lower down in the food chain - well, if they evolve themselves for survival without eating other animals - more power to them. If they can't survive without eating other animals and still decide not to eat them, their species will perish. It won't be wrong or unnatural or against the nature in any sense - it would just be evolution at work.
Also, survival of the fittest doesn't imply that your survival is mutually exclusive to the survival of others.
Hi. I think your video does not apply to India as in India there are no big companies trading in meat. At best there are some poultry farms. The meat industry is still unorganised & depends on vendors who usually work from localities. Also, meat is a small component of the diet of Indians. The case that you are making at best can be called a case against unethical parctices by the meat industry in the West.It is precisely due to this reason that you now have a very strong "organic meat" movement in Europe & America (both North & South) in which they feed their livestock only organically grown vegetables & grass & do not keep them in pens/cages but leave them to graze in open land. You need to be more rational if you want to make a case against meat eating & also do suggest viable & affordable dietary options for people living in countries where meat is more easily available than vegetables as food.I hope you will take my comment in the right spirit.
Thanks Anonymous, although I usually like to know more about people who post on my blog.
I agree that this video is taken from the US and "meat processing" is done much differently in India. But trust me, I know people who have been to the farms and butcheries in India, and it is no different in terms of the amount of cruelty that the animals have to face. In fact in some cases it is worse than what you see in the video here.
If you say that meat is really a small component of diet in India,
unfortunately the trend is changing pretty rapidly and we need to educate people before things go out of control and we start aping the west in one more foolish act.
If you want a more "rational case" against meat eating, I would suggest you read the book "Food Revolution" by John Robbins.(some of the stuff there is also available at goveg.com) He talks in length about the health implications of a non-veg diet and the environmental rape that it is causing.
I assume you are from India and I don't think I need to talk about dietary supplements for you, they are available in plenty here and you already know about them.
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