Consumption of animals for food needs to stop
By Lethbridge Herald on September 29, 2022.
Editor:
I just learned about World Day for Farmed Animals, coming up on Oct. 2 (Gandhi’s birth date).
It has been around since 1983 and is meant to memorialize the billions of animals abused and killed for food each year.
Like many, I always considered farm animals only as a source of food. But after recently watching the documentary “Speciesism,” I realized that farm animals are much like our family pets, deserving of love and respect. I’ve learned that farm animals get neither on today’s factory farms.
Male baby chicks are ground up alive or suffocated in garbage bags. Hens are crowded in small wire cages that tear out their feathers. Breeding pigs spend their lives pregnant in metal cages. Calves are snatched from their mothers upon birth, so we can drink their milk. The cruelty of factory farming drove me to replace animal products in my diet with plant-based meat and dairy items.
I have since learned that my cruelty-free diet is also great for my health and for the health of our planet.
Loren Hadden
Lethbridge
9-8
Sounds like to me you have eaten too many magic mushrooms or taken too much LSD… like WOW DUDE…. it is official, the world has gone nuts!
Maybe it is something they put in the water? No…. just too many people that are trying to push their crap on everyone else!
You’ve exquisitely expressed what is wrong with the world: people who don’t believe we exist in a complex and interconnected biospere or don’t care. People who ‘push their crap’ understand the ethics of being human in a society and in the world – we should applaud them and aspire to do better ourselves.
What is wrong is that we are fracturing our country, ripping it apart with all the special interest groups that are taking away our freedom to choose what we eat or how we enjoy life by pushing their own lifestyles on us, expecting us to convert to their lifestyle because they think that will solve all the issues of the world.
They are destroying this country!!!!!!!!!!
Sounds like someone is riding their wave of entitlement.
What these thinkers are doing is trying to preserve a healthy democracy and ecological systems that are a foundation to notions of freedom (and our very existence).
This lurch to authoritarian populism is a dangerous and reactionary response to supremacism and socio-economic entitlement. If you are looking for the problem, find a mirror.
YOUR dangerous lurch toward being “woke” or your full entrenchment in it should be a wake-up call for all of us! “Go woke go broke.”
Woke is what you confused ones call anything you don’t like. You should try expanding your vocabulary, maybe read a book instead of letting Yucker Carlson lead you around by the nose all day every day.
Oh! Then what DOES it mean Mr. Prof?
To be ‘woke’ is to be considerate of other people’s values and needs in a multicultural society. To mock this perspective is to support prejudice. To equate it to prosperity, as you did j57, is to acknowledge the economic exploitation of certain groups to prop up your own priveleges. Now, how would your mom want her little boy to behave?
Like an independent free-thinking un-woke man!
Any privilege I have is a result of a lifetime of hard work! Keep kneeling at your pedestal of wokeness sooner or later your dream of utopia should materialize even if it’s in your irrational dreams!
Everybody works hard (except the leisure class, if you’ve read Veblen). You are privileged if you are a white male Canadian. Ignoring the effects of prejudice is a characteristic of being privileged. Lacking compassion is a characteristic of being a jerk. My greatest fear is the extent that you and your ilk will go to preserve your privilege.
“Everybody works hard” No they don’t! I have never drawn a government cheque EVER to support me and mine! Have never been a liability on the system and have always paid my own way. If that makes me privileged, then I figure society needs more of us not less! As far as your “Woke” condition is concerned I hope you get the professional help you desperately need. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there and only the strongest and fittest survive.
Yes, j-dog, being able to get job and earn a living wage is being privileged. Many people, because of prejudice are not so fortunate. And the world works less by tooth and claw than by compassion, generosity, fairness and mutual aid. Only the most caring and cooperative survive.
“Only the most caring and cooperative survive” is this inside your utopian dream?
It is human.
Can you provide me any examples of this so-called prejudice that would keep somebody from working. If you can please keep it to Canada.
https://www.narcity.com/canada-ranked-as-top-racial-discrimination-countries-in-the-world-during-the-hiring-process
Interesting read! Wondering why they could not get more detailed info as to why these minorities were not getting a so-called fair shake. A more detailed breakdown would have been useful.
I agree the details are wanting. The gist is that given two identical resumes, one signed Sophie Rogers and the other Sophie Rahim, the interview/job is more likely to go to the former. Even well-trained HR people have these biases (subconsciously, perhaps).
In another country, the privilege will follow the dominant male group. Its not uncommon, but it is unfair. Acknowledging that is ‘woke’. My anger about this is evident; mea culpa.
But I understand that you are motivated by fear and guilt – you are not alone in this. It would be healthy for you and other white, middle-class people to step out if your zones of privilege, to understand the barriers that ‘others’ face and that you don’t even know exist.
We should not be ranked – we are each and all linked, including to the natural world, to bring us back to the point of the letter. Slough off the mask of anger, open up. I would like to see you do some interpretive dance in Galt Gardens on the theme of Love. Go, johnny, go. Go, go, go!
Speaking of ‘privileged victims’, this article is worth reading (at the risk of ‘elfording’ too much):
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/opinion-danielle-smith-populism-playbook-1.6617059
The takeaway being: “Convince the brader public that the group is both a victim and too dominant to challege.”
I am too busy working my but-off to really care about the plight of others. When I retire “Woke” individuals like yourself will careless whether I have enough to get by on from month to month. Hopefully your hate towards white people will subside to the point that you understand we are all in this together on this planet regardless of the color of our skin.
Now, now, johnny57. It’s not all about you. What I don’t understand is if your life is so hard that you would resist a movement to make things more fair for everyone. You’ve chosen the wrong enemy, and you support the people who exploit you.
Now-now SophieR but it IS all about ME! Your feeble attempts to make me feel guilty about my place in the world are laughable at best. You might start attacking me from a superior point of view rather than your tired old woke (all white people are bad) narrative.
White, male, Boomers are not ‘bad’, they are privileged. Many acknowledge that privilege and act to correct the unfairness it creates (in hiring, procuring services, etc).
Tolstoy tells a story: “I sit on a man’s back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible… except by getting off his back.”
Do we dare enter the space of the white Female privileged? Can we even acknowledge that it exists? Without the woke spinsters hurling slurs and names. If you are going after one sex of the white human species, would it not be fair to put the other under your microscope as well?
Hmmm your silence on white human female privilege speaks volumes and all I need to know.
I thought I had covered this adequately above. If women dominated in politics and upper management in the corporate world, with the accumulated wealth that ensues. And if they used this power to maintain it, descriminating against other identities by limiting educational and employment opportunities, then you could likely talk about their privilege.
So sad you are taking a thin slice of the top white males and generalizing out to represent the whole white male population. When most are struggling. Women dominate University’s and are more employed than men now! You can only play that (Women are victims’ card) for so long and it really gets tiring.
My, my. It is a wonder how quickly this demographic can roll into a prickly ball of victimhood.
excellent information, accurate, and it comes with an approach that expresses one’s preference and heart without being impositional.
sophie provides a further honest perspective, while r.u obfuscates. r.u’s take is if one has a preference that differs from r.u’s outlook, it is thus intolerable. in support of r.u’s simple and controlling attitude, r.u makes ridiculous assertions about the writer’s drug use, and further conflates an opinion based on honest reflection with the idea of “pushing.”
the writer has not told anyone what they must do. each is still free to look away and pretend there is no animal abuse, or otherwise to support animal abuse.
not talking about the free range farmers here, but certainly about industrial feedlots and farms and the slaughter house monopoly cabal.
Well said, biff.
Ah back to the future Biff. Only if it is American beef BS.
and now, in addition to your desire to remain ignorant with regard to actual facts that have long underscored the sordid american approach to industrial livestock “farming”, you have further exposed yourself as being a simple and mere troll. is this truly how tiny you choose to be? hopefully, you can let go of that rag and try and enrich your being – if not for your sake then at least for the sake of the greater good. here is some evidence for you chew on with regard to usa animal cruelty: it does not just exist in secretive pharma labs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60g4fIbUR3E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3hoK_NZC4M
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-livestock-abuse-idUSKCN0T106020151112
the curious thing is youtube used to have very many videos that were taken via hidden camera and posted. however, youtube has demonstrated it has little desire to be used as a platform to promote animal rights. in fact, it is likely it has been castrated by usa gag laws that prohibit the uncovering of animal abuse in the industrial livestock system. might one acknowledge how corrupt and wicked must an industry be – in a country that calls itself free, no less – to find it necessary to create gag laws to shut down investigation and the exposure of animal cruelty in american livestock farming?
https://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/issues/307/animal-factories/ag-gag-laws-in-the-us
hopefully you might have a look – and maybe yo can move on and find something better to do with your day than present as a foolish troll.
Okay Biff…what bs. Keep posting your crap. Surf surf surf the net..your only source of info. I can rightly assume you know nothing of the Canadian food industry having never seen it first hand. So that makes you the man who knows everything right. What a load of horse dung. You are a comic script right out of Back to the future. LOL covered in dung.
Our all knowing biff who’s only knowledge of things is by armchair surfing of the internet proclaims he only eats meat from Canadian producers because of american farms corrupt cruelity. Such a hypocrite he is. Try this on for size and then think who is the foolish troll twit.
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2017/05/23/opinion/beaten-chains-hung-neck-canadian-cows-left-behind-law
More for your consumption troll
https://humanecanada.ca/our-work/focus-areas/farmed-animals/realities-of-farming-in-canada/
More for our most all knowing BTTF Biff
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/09/01/saskatchewan-cattle-owners-face-charges-related-to-animal-cruelty-case.htm
this link comes up for me as server error. nonetheless, the other two links say more than enough. it is my sense the “justice” meted out to the offenders is pathetic and not nearly effective toward being dissuasive or at all much of a punishment. our collective lack of empathy and decency thus soldiers on.
thanks for the very sad news, jim. notwithstanding your own issues, that are sadly and glaringly on display here, i am thankful that your armchair surfing has helped to share information that both underscores the writer’s valid concerns, while providing me with more resolve to further my move away from meat. i had long known of the usa’s sickening and gut wrenching cruelty, but i was not aware that we are not are not all too far removed.
about 15 years ago we reduced our meat portions while also sourcing from small and local producers. that was more costly but worth it. since retirement, whilst still eating reduced meat portions, we had increasingly come to simply buy what was on sale due to the increasing financial squeeze of recent years.
thanks for sharing – no longer being ignorant means we either knowingly support the cruelty or no longer support it. we will now choose the latter. the industry is far sicker, even, than the writer has shared.
I only posted links off the internet as it is apparently the only form of info you tend to recognise and did not really need to do so to point out your glaring lack of facts related to the food industry of both Canada and the USA. It is not unique only in the States by no means but is not indicative to boths animal food industry. Apparently you refused to believe my previous facts based on my own visits to beef/ pork/ mutten/ and poultry abattoirs. Places where friends and or family members have worked, and my own work related research studies during the avian virus outbreak in Abbotsford BC a number of years ago. End result in my having to use the internet for easy to find links to show your lack of info of facts to prove my point.
To formulate an opinion on animal abuse based on a few violators and state it is endemic of the industry, then paint all producers with abuse and therefore a reason to abstain from “meat”is obtuse and a weak strawman arguement. The same can be made with hunter base procurement of wild game.
Animal food industry violators in both counties are few and far between them and responsive producers in both, but since there are more producers in the US due to market size it only stands to reason that violators would be exponentially more yet as said hardly endemic.
As for animal abuse in science, there are a few cases, but animal care and ethics is practice with stringent rules regarding to animal testing in research. I know of one case at work where a scientist was called into question by my fellow scientists and was promply dismissed and his research decertified.
The same can not be said by the fraud Dr Oz
https://www.inquirer.com/politics/pennsylvania/mehmet-oz-puppies-dog-animal-abuse-research-senate-20221004.html
As for me ……I like my meat of all types (other than mutton), and like my steak blue rare thank you very much🤪
where we do not agree: i see the abuse as widespread and widely under reported; for example, baby chicks (typically males) are routinely tossed into grinders, alive; the raising of livestock of at least fowl, beef, and pork is largely, save for many small producers, is abhorrent (and no, i will not take your word or your interpretation of what you determine to be humane), from the raising to the transport to the slaughter; you take on the use of sentient creatures for “medicine” and physiological and psychological “learning” is, to me, rather unevolved and repugnant, even: the animals endure suffering and death as a consequence…for example, with regard to “medicines” derived of animal suffering, the animals are made ill – suffering – and then they must further endure “trials” of drugs that will further make them ill – and suffer still more – on the way to making “safe” drugs. all for what, to prolong the lives of buffoon humans that are so callous as to believe they are so entitled to live off of the torture of other species? you and many others see this as ok, ethical; or, choose to look the other as if that is ok?
indeed you like your meat blue, and i see further that you like your heart cold.
So then I assume you do not take any or all medicines and will refuse all medical treatments where medicines and medical procedures (ie. heart/cancer etc.) for life saving or ailments are perscribed or required now or in the future. I also assume you do not wear or use any leather or byproducts that are derived from any or all animals including fish.
curious that you seem to seek a justification for your choices through what others might be doing. do you, and whomever is the simpleton (no thoughts expressed) that has given you a positive and added a neg to me, feel that to perhaps discover an inconsistency with another will justify your support of cruelty? is that not evasive if not entirely childish?
i do not use nonrecreational drugs – every prescription my doctor has scrawled over quite the last number of years i have told him to keep; i will not prolong my life due to the needless suffering sick “scientists” inflict on sentient creatures. i find it alarming – unless a typo – you use the word “required” with regard to medicines and medical procedures; however, seeing as how you supported the egregious stepping on the most fundamental freedom of all – each having the sole right to their body – whereby you were happy to see that stolen away by govt and even lowlife employers, well, i expect you would support forced drugs and “required medical procedures.” i would also expect the monkey-types that just neg and plus entries without any thoughts would also support such a totalitarian approach, and even find a way to spin it as freedom.
you also mention fish – thanks for bringing that up: another sick industrial enterprise by and large, what with over fishing, drag net fishing that destroys massive reaches of habitats whilst further killing sundry fishes, hacking off shark fins and tossing the sharks back to die, fish farms that further screw up our water ecosystems…you support all that, too, do you?
So you are a total vegatarian then and if not your a total hypocrite. And if you ever need medical treatment for any and all health issues you will choose none in the future. But I would suspect you would op for the procedures/treatment when the chips are down because as with food your the all knowing hypocrite period. Keep using your recreational drugs🤪
let us say, for a moment, biff is the world’s foremost hypocrite. would that be any basis for the likes of the jim0s of the planet to support animal torture and numerous of other unsustainable, reckless and callous human approaches to the life systems of our planet? it would then seem to me, such an outlook would overlook all the power that each has to make a positive difference, simply through one’s choices and actions, and further, would give over all that power to the likes of hypocrites. monkey see and monkey do is hardly the basis of intelligent and compassionate living.
question: did the word oxymoron exist before “military intelligence,” or, did military intelligence necessitate the need for the word oxymoron?
I think your point, biff, about hypocrisy is important. One is not a hypocrite pointing out an injustice by the society/economic system in which one lives.
If you are on a speeding train and point out to the people around you that the bridge ahead has collapsed, are you a hypocrite for being on the train?
Pointing out that our treatment of animals can be unethical, or that we emit pollutants to support an affluent lifestyle, does not make one a hypocrite – it is the train we are on. The point is to try to do better.
“The point is to try to do better.” well said, and exactly the point.
and yet it seems so difficult for people to step out from under the thumb of societal conditioning and “norms.” hard enough it is to see through the issues, and then quite another battle still to overcome the enormous pressures that induce one to heed the ignorance and/or indifference that is simple conformation.