GAIA

Vegan secret agenda

A slew of recent articles are advocating the end to animal husbandry and eating flesh.

U of T Magazine’s Autumn 2010 “This Looks Like a Farm” eulogizes a farm animal sanctuary in Uxbridge, Ontario and how it has saved pigs from certain death. The 6 page spread ends with a long attack on the cruelty and barbarism of farming of pigs and other domesticated animals, and ends with a plea to end all animal farming as it is simply cruel and inhumane.

Put briefly pigs and other domestic animals have emotions and social needs, feel pain and are “not that different in kind [than we humans].” (p. 41)

The same line of attack is used in a Globe and Mail article of a few weeks back attacking the cruelty of fishing – any and all fishing. Starting with putting a live worm or minnow on a hook, hooking a living fish and battling it, often letting fish ‘drown’ in air once caught, or trapping them in nets where they can be left crushed together and unable to move for hours until the net is pulled up – at which point they are usually allowed to ‘drown’ in air –all steps too inhumane for the author’s vegan likings.

Put simply, he advocates an end to all forms of fishing – all over the planet.

Finally, articles on dolphins, dogs and other animals are appearing in magazines such as Time as researchers find more and more animals feel pain, go through emotional states and can think in more sophisticated ways than previously thought.

Put simply, the gulf between humans and the rest of the animal world is not as great as once thought.

The net result of all these scientific and humanist arguments is to piece by piece assault the human practice of eating flesh and proposing strict vegetarianism; that only fruits, vegetables and grains are acceptable food sources.

This defies human history as we have been hunters and gatherings since almost the beginning of time and this is still the norm in the cultures of tribal Amazon and Africa.
Our teeth have canines and semi-caninies specifically to tear at and eat flesh – so we are biologically designed for meat eating – among other things.

Most importantly, if these ‘bleeding hearts’ had their way, billions of people would be starving to death each year – because without the bounty of the sea and human animal husbandry, there is not enough arable land, not enough access to water and irrigation to feed the world’s over 6 billion people!!!

Think drought, think floods, think locus and you know how fragile the world’s agricultural food supply can be – and is.

To close, let me end with a response I read years ago by the late Lubavicher rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneeson. When asked if a Jew should become a vegetarian, he rephrased the question to “what is the purpose of animal life?”. His answer basically repeated standard Jewish belief that animal life is designed for mankind’s benefit and the eating of meat is a key part of this.