Posts tagged ‘Stupid Humans’
What’s squirrels got to do with it?
I often hear people refer to vegans as radicals and extremists, and it makes me wonder just who it is that they are comparing me to.
Meet “The End of History” beer from Brew Dog:
Yes, that IS a taxidermy squirrel- you are right. Yes, it is indeed real. And no, it doesn’t matter that the company claims that the “packaging” is from road kill. From their mouths,
The impact of The End of History is a perfect conceptual marriage between art, taxidermy and craft brewing. The bottles are at once beautiful and disturbing – they disrupt conventions and break taboos, just like the beer they hold within them.
So who is it exactly that people are comparing me to when they say I’m “extreme?” Because this shit is pretty extreme. Just sayin’.
Let’s do the Math…
So Kate Gosselin has gone and got herself some chickens- because that makes perfect sense. Let me remind you that this is the same woman who has already gotten rid of her pure bred German Shepard dogs because “it’s not fair to the dogs to not be wanted in their own home” and, of course, the infamous “I’m too busy” line of BS.
And now she’s decided to get some chickens. Fantastic.
“I buy four, five, or more dozen eggs a week,” she said. “That’s it, we’re getting chickens.”
Right. Let’s do the math. We will just use five dozen eggs as our base, so let’s see…
5 x 12 = 60 eggs bought/used per week
60 x 4 = 240 eggs per month
240 x 12 = 2,880 eggs per year
2,880 x 16 = 46,080 eggs hypothetically eaten by the time the children turn 18.
As a way of celebrating their hard work and their first egg harvest, Kate decided to make a special dinner of egg salad sandwiches, deviled eggs and egg custard. The family enjoyed the dinner but it got off to a disgusting start when they went to retrieve the eggs and found a bloodied rooster.
Celebrating the loss of nearly three thousand lives. Yes. Lives. And even if you don’t care about the eggs “because you don’t have to kill the chickens to get the eggs,” those chickens are not living a natural or free life. They will be contained in a pen until Kate and the kids gets sick of them or don’t feel like taking care of them, then they will be killed for food. Oh, right. They won’t get eaten,
The boys, Collin, Aaden and Joel, enjoyed other things as well, like naming the chickens — Fluffy, Fuzzy, Furry — and pondering the concept of farm animals: “We’re never going to eat our pet chickens,” they decided.
And that, my fine fellows, is the whole crux of the thing, isn’t it?
Children are taught to place animals into moral categories. This animal is a pet, we don’t eat our pets. This animal is for eating, this one is for living at a zoo, etc. We have been desensitized to food production and it’s time we woke up.
A disillusioned vegan visits cattle feedlot and comes away impressed
Came across some bullshit on the internet today. It’s so full of poop that I don’t even want to post that much about it, but I have to because of twitter. Oh twitter, I love you so. I love your constant chatter, your interesting users, your ability to bring people together- I just think you’re rad. But sometimes twitter, you just annoy me. Like that time you lost all my followers, that wasn’t fun. Or the time you wouldn’t let me change my profile picture for months, that was mean too. But your most annoying habit is actually one of your best traits, the hashtag. Ah, the hash tag. For those who don’t know, a hashtag “helps add tweets to a category…(and) have the ‘hash’ or ‘pound’ symbol (#) preceding the tag…” I love the hashtag, just as much as I love twitter. This allows me to keep up on all the great vegan tweets out there simply by searching under #vegan.
So what’s the bitch about anyway? Well today my #vegan twitter feed, which is normally full of great people talking about vegan stuff, was clogged with poop like this:
Now, I know that Consumer Freedom has chief propagandist, Rick Berman, at it’s helm- and I know that the behind-the-scenes funding comes from, among others, Coca-Cola, Cargill, Tyson Foods, and Monsanto. So, needless to say, I’m not buying into what they’re peddling if you know what I mean. But the tweet? Yeah, that little bad boy was all over my twitter- as if this was a revelation.
Oh, normally I’d take this with a grain of salt- like I said. But, since it was there and apparently I had nothing better to do that click on a link that I knew was just going to piss me off, I read the the poop-filled article. The article is about a vegan, Ryan Andrews, visiting Magnum Feedyard, LLC- a USDA “family farm” and also a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation. A CAFO has more than 1,000 animals.) and his experience there. (Here’s a preview: he compares Magnum to a Holiday Inn for cattle.)
I really don’t want to drag this out, so here’s the best from the article:
When it started in 1993, Magnum had 4,500 cattle. Now they have 22,000. And operations are managed with 8-13 employees (depending on the time of year).
8 – 13 employees care for 22,000 animals. I have 9 companion animals living with me and it can get hairy caring for them on occasions. Imagine the care that 22,000 animals are receiving. Oh wait, Andrews addresses that.
Speaking of cleanliness, Magnum wants the cattle to be clean and comfortable. I know, I know, I can see my animal welfare comrades shaking their heads – but think about it. From a profit standpoint, if animals aren’t comfortable, they aren’t going to eat. If they don’t eat, they don’t grow. If they don’t grow, they won’t be much use to the dude wanting to buy a big steak.
Yes fellow vegans, think about the lives of those animals from a profit standpoint- insert ironic statement about being antithetical to the core vegan belief that humans have no right to use animals in any way here.
And this gem,
Magnum recently started composting manure and moralities (i.e. cattle that don’t make it). It’s gotten more expensive to send deceased cattle to processing plants that manufacture pet foods, so this was the next best option.
None of the cows make it. None of them do- all 22,000 will be slaughtered at some point.
Confusingly, Andrews goes on to say…
Now, to be clear, we don’t require meat in our diet. And I don’t think we should be using cows for food, doesn’t matter if the cattle are kept on a feedlot or chilling in a waterbed listening to John Tesh. But that’s my own value system and I’m well aware that 97% of people in the U.S. eat meat on a regular basis.
What the hell is he trying to say? If you can’t beat them, join them? I don’t understand not living to one’s values and going so far as to promote the very thing you stand against, I just don’t.
Then the whole article closes with this…
People want meat. And Magnum’s feedlot system is dialed in. They’re producing safe and cost-effective meat in, arguably, the most cattle-conscious way (short of opening up those pens and letting them run free). Rock on Magnum.
Andrews is apparently a vegan who is okay with the loss of 22,000 sentient beings. I’m not.
If you’d like to read the poop-filled article for yourself, you can by clicking here.