For years my vegan friend has told me animals are sentient beings
whose lives have their own trajectories like humans. But Oklahoma Joe’s
barbeque has distracted me from pondering this for myself. Now that I’m getting to
know a brace of ducks I’m troubled thinking these
birds my neighbor has named, based on personality, have tasty flesh I may
someday eat.
It’s not a huge stretch then to consider eggs a bit differently
also. They are potential ducks, after all, whose lives were aborted for my
ingestion.
What about other animals we’ve designated as edible? What about
cows, pigs, chickens? Surely they’ve personalities as well. And why does a
being have to demonstrate personality in order for me not to toss it on the
grill or squirt mustard on it?
It seems we humans are pretty arbitrary with which creatures
we’ll eat versus ones we’ll treat as family. When cat Felix dies we have a
memorial service but when duck Felix dies we google recipes. How do we make
that distinction?
I suspect some emotional and mental gymnastics allow us to be
selective flesh eaters.
We buy flesh in parts or cooked already, often without organs or
bones so it least resembles the furry, feathered, oinking being it once was. Advertising
sensualizes the meat we eat hiding the process by which we get it. Unless we work
in a CAFO, the slaughter of animals happens far
away. We therefore are never exposed to the sound, smell, sight of our pastrami’s
death. In fact, it is becoming increasingly harder to access information about
this process. What we eat doesn’t look like anything that nurses its young or feels
pain.
Like us.
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