Reverence For Life

Last week, for the first time in 38 years, the United States government executed (as in killed) a human being. This week, I thought I’d let you take a look a violence. Sure, everyone was appalled that 168 people were killed by Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma. Columbine, and the school murders that followed, sent chills through Americans, while the thought of Jeffrey Dahmer munching down a young boy for dinner repulsed us all. We hear of violence and barbaric behavior around the world and are appalled. Yet you are, in fact, one of the contributors if you eat animals.

Last year, as a world, we killed 615 million hogs, 220 million cows, bulls and calves, 385 million lambs, 21 million goats and over 19 million metric tons of birds. Talk about violence! In this country alone last year we massacred over 150 million cows, calves, bulls, lambs and pigs and 3.5 billion chickens and turkeys. In a 70 year life span, the average American eats 11 cows, 1 calf, 2 lambs, 23 pigs, and 1,200 chickens and turkeys.

The wanton slaughter of animals in such huge numbers gives us an idea of just how violent our world has become, and just how little regard we have for life. Many people who eat animal flesh also profess a love for animals. Yet, can they really love animals, knowing that their dietary habits inflict pain and suffering on animals? The horrific way in which animals are treated in society shows a total disregard and lack of reverence for life in general.

If people were truly concerned about animals, they would never condone the barbaric hell animals are put through while alive, to say nothing of the being’s torturous death. The animals which find their way to your table do not enjoy the sunshine, or roam the field, or smell the fresh grass after a gentle spring rain. They are mostly isolated in dark cells, herded into tight quarters so that they can barely move, and there, are fed and maintained, while they await their death. Their life is like that of an unjustly condemned prisoner who lives out his last days on death row. Agribusiness has little interest in the natural instincts of animals…or your health.

People should know what they are eating. The Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy, a vegetarian, once presented a woman with a live chicken. She was told to decapitate and prepare it for cooking, since she had requested a chicken for dinner. She turned down the opportunity. Remember the last Survivor’s series on TV? If more people were aware of what is involved in "producing" meat, they would probably be much less enthusiastic about dining on hamburgers and hot dogs.

Children are taught early to recognize their barnyard friends—the different sounds and peculiar  habits of the animals. Yet, these kids think nothing of eating a juicy hamburger or chicken leg, until, and unless, they make the association between food and its source. (Big Macs grow on trees though, right?) That juicy hamburger is the friendly brown cow with the big gentle eyes, and the chicken leg is the same one used by a real chicken running in the yard the day before.

Nowhere is the reverence for life expressed more profoundly than in the philosophy of the vegan. Not only do vegans refrain from meat eating, they also shun diary products, eggs and using leather. After all, they reason, animals suffer in the production of these as well.

Mark Braunstein writes in Radical Vegetarianism: Diet, Ethics and Dialectics about the hapless hen--confined to tight quarters and forced into endless labor throughout its life. The hen, he says, "must forever count her chickens before they are hatched." And when she can no longer produce eggs, what is her payoff? Death!  A cow, he notes, is also treated sinfully. She is grossly overworked, and has only the most meager quarters. She is even forced to surrender her young calves to be put to death, to fill the barbaric demand for succulent young and tender flesh. Sounds like the diet of a child molester. Then she, like her barnyard friend, the hen, is put to death when her milk stops flowing, or she gets cancer of her udders.

We must wonder why this violence and abuse is allowed to continue in a civilized society. The Texas Cattle Feeders Association gives us a pretty good idea: "We, the cattle industry, are willing to produce any kind of animal the consumer wants." In other words, this situation persists because you, as a consumer, are not ready to give up your barbaric ways.

What might happen if we stopped this killing? An organizer of last year’s World Vegetarian Congress is convinced that vegetarianism must precede international peace. "The demand for vegetarian food will increase our production of the right kind of plant food. We shall cease to breed pigs and other animals for food, thereby ceasing to be responsible for the horror of slaughterhouses where millions of creatures cry in agony and in vain because of human selfishness," he said. "If such concentration camps for slaughtering continue, can peace ever come to the earth? Can we escape the responsibility for misery when we are practically killing every day of our lives by unconsciously supporting this trade of slaughter? Peace cannot come where peace is not given."

Peter Singer, author of Animal Factories, is likewise concerned about the animal carnage that we readily defend as a trade-off for human survival. "The root of the problem is in our blithely taking power over the lives and deaths of other creatures, whose suffering is in no way necessary for our survival. If we so easily take the lives of animals who are only a few evolutionary steps removed from us—of a different color, or speaking an unintelligible language, or "primitive" in their customs--can we expect not to kill similar humans?"

The exploitation of animals is nothing new to civilization. Its roots date back a good 10,000 years. But it has become a particularly perilous problem today in the presence of mechanized technology, antibiotics, hormones ...and mad cow disease. The great spiritual leader, Mahatma Gandhi once said, "...the greatness of a nation, and its moral progress, will be judged by the way its animals are treated."

The abuse of animals is just business as usual in the United States. The meat companies campaign for your dollars, the media supports their efforts, the consumer puts up the money and the slaughterhouses keep killing. It is all symptomatic of an unbalanced, if not distorted, state of mind, and of a growing atrophy of the human spirit.

All living creatures share a spiritual bond that, when broken, endangers their survival. We should cease the killing of animals because it violates their rights and defies our own spirit. The Bible says God gave us dominion over the creatures of the planet. It doesn’t say we should kill them! The Ten Commandments says, "Thou shall not kill." It doesn’t say, "except Timothy McVeigh, or cows for McDonald’s."

Once we let go of our barbaric nature, and spare the lives of innocent creatures, perhaps we can then call ourselves civilized…and then we might just discover peace on this planet.

Vegetarian Sites 
Vegan Information

Chattanooga Spirit
http://www.newfrontier.com/chattanooga

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