Honing in on Hypocrisy … (04/25/15)
“People like to talk crap on Asian countries because they eat dogs and cats. Yes, their slaughter methods are particularly cruel. We are swept up in sadness for the familiar eyes of those we call pets, who are but a meal where it is legal.
But if our slaughter house walls were removed, and the murders of cows, pigs and poultry were brought out onto grimy streets, we would finally stand witness to similar cruelties for the sake of our own Westernized palates.
I challenge those who weep at the sight of tormented familiar faces to stop turning from the sight of those who suffer here. While you point in judgment at a poor Chinese man, skinning a dog in a dirty alley, many Chinese activists are putting their safety and freedom where their mouths are. They are intercepting trucks packed full of dogs bound for slaughter.
Where are the activists here in the United States standing in front of trucks full of cows, pigs and fowl? Where are the lots full of rescued farmed animals awaiting adopting families?
This might sound far fetched. Where could I put a cow? Where could I house a rescued pig in city limits, where laws are strict? I wonder if people here began acting like those Chinese activists, stopping trucks with their own bodies, if suddenly our farmed animals might be seen in a different light? What if tomorrow, 10 trucks were halted and thousands of heads of cattle were protected by any means necessary by those who stopped the trucks? Might the public, for once, recognize that frightened, intelligent animals, tear filled eyes were being hidden within those fast moving rigs that pass by, unnoticed on the highways?
The reality is, we hide our sins, here. We tuck them away where we do not have to face them. We pay others to look our victims in the eye while their lives are taken, when we could simply just eat something else. We chuck stones through the transparency that others live in and feel the walls we have put up hide our own homes made of glass.
Surely, we can at least realize that today, we are not in a place to judge the meat eating and speciesist habits of another country when we have yet to set an example, ourselves.” ~ Sara Sunshine
P.S. For all you Michael Vick & dog-fighting bashers out there, please consider this as well …
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