I was reading the Seattle Times online yesterday.  I know, it’s pretty random but I like to read all kinds of stuff.  Anyway, I noticed an article titled “Slaughterhouse on wheels aids ‘locavore’ movement“.  Well you know I had to read that!

It’s written by a Maureen O’Hagan.  She’s put a picture in the article that blows my mind, but we’ll get to that in a minute.  The article is about a “Mobile Meat Processing Unit…basically a slaughterhouse on wheels” and how that is going to help the “locavore”, a person who routinely looks for and purchases local goods, get their meat.  Because, if you didn’t know it, small farmers must ship their cattle across states away from the farm to get them “killed murdered processed“.  That means, extra $$ out of the farmers pocket and more time it takes to get to the consumers (that’s you).

O’Hagan says this in her article:

“Though the project may sound grisly, it’s seen by farmers as humane, by government as beneficial and by chefs and grocers as an opportunity to meet future consumer demand.”

May sound grisly?! Yes, it may sound grisly that a 45 foot stainless steel trailer rolls on into to town to kill things.  And of course the farmers see the whole thing as “humane”.  They have a product to sell, a livelihood to support.  But their livelihood depends on the slaughter of innocent beings, ones who are capable of feeling fear, loss, and pain.  I don’t consider that humane.  The “future consumer demand” is the “buy local” bandwagon that the consumers are jumping on hoping to be “green.”  It’s nothing more than an advertisement for the meat industry.

Yes, a trailer pulls up to a local “farmer” (I, personally, don’t consider an animal exploiter as a “farmer.”) and animals are loaded in and killed for profit.  Their dead bodies are then sent to local processing facilities and then to market, thereby being “local.”  Cheryl Oullette, known as “the pig lady”, presumably a pig “farmer” and leading supporter of the mobile killing trailers, claims this method is less “stressful on the animals” because they’re not shipped hundreds of miles away to be slaughtered at a large industrial kill facility.

The “pig lady” is concerned about stress on the animals?  What about the stress the pigs and cows feel when they’re torn from their families?  What about the stress they feel when they’re terrified of their impending death? She doesn’t care about those stresses because those concerns would interfere with her profit, her “way of life.”  And, if you want to get a visual for Cheryl that I think speaks volumes, please click here.  This photo really says alot, don’t you think?  It makes me nauseous even looking at the nooses…

Seth Caswell, president of the Seattle Chef’s Collaborative, says he and other chefs are looking forward to “getting a product I understand better and know how it was raised, what it was fed, how it was butchered, how it was processed. I’m concerned with that, as somebody who cooks at home, and also somebody who cooks in a restaurant.”

Well, if you really want to know the process of killing a domesticated animal for food, be sure not to ignore the most important details.  Details such as the science that proves these animals feel fear, loss, and pain.  “Get to know your product,” Seth.  Don’t just think of them as a “process” to your’s and your customer’s bellies.  Think of them as living sentient beings.  Think of how painful it would be to be ripped away from your mother when you were several hours old.  Or, the fear that must be felt when death is staring right at you and you have no escape.  That is the story of how animals used for food are raised.  From birth to death, they know nothing but fear, misery and pain.

Seth goes on to tell us that, “restaurants are using (buying local) as a selling point.  This is from such-and-such farm; we met the farmer.’ It’s a conversation piece. It’s something we can talk about. We can have a story behind it.”

But you’re leaving out a major portion of the “story”.  Try giving the whole story to your customers.  Try talking about the lives of the animals that died instead of the farmer that killed them.  Better yet, go before the slaughter.  Meet the animals you are eating, spend some time with them.  We have to stop looking at farm animals different than we look upon our dogs and cats.  They are all animals.  They all feel.  The debate about animal rights should end right there.  Animals feel.  And because they do, we have a responsibility to take care of them because we have the capabilities to do so.  This world should not be such a violent place, and it is.  When you think of the number of animals that are killed every minute of every day, well the numbers are staggering sickening.

I hope the “locavore” movement grows, I’m also a firm believer that we need to shop local.  But just as eating seasonally and locally makes environmental sense, so does eating vegan.  What could be more appropriate for a “locavore” lifestyle?  Yeah, that’s what I thought too.