As well-intended and as socially active as you might be, it is impossible to be a powerful “animal rights activist” while simultaneously supporting a system that enslaves, abuses and murders animals.

Maybe you are rescuing strays from the streets & maybe you are liberating the inmates of fur farms & maybe you are petitioning against whale hunting & maybe you are protesting against dolphin slaughter & maybe you are boycotting zoos & circuses (all very Good Things to do, by the way), and yet if you are also eating meat or consuming animal dairy then the hypocrisy of your diet is harming beings equally worthy of the ones you are striving to protect — and neutralizing the effectiveness of your “activism” to boot.

In essence, there is only one way to become a truly effective advocate for the animals, and that is to completely cease to treat ANY of them as commodities; and to begin to treat them ALL with the respect they deserve.

 

Current status of this Myth: Purified
Justification it provides for eating animals: NONE

 

“Hungry for dog, anyone? Well, if you eat the flesh of other animals, you often are … After all, what’s the difference? You can’t be truly against the killing and eating of dogs & cats & whales & dolphins if you are simultaneously for the killing and eating of other sentient animals. Right Action just doesn’t work like that. It’s either ALL wrong, or none of it is. Needless killing is needless killing … The species and the bodily form of the victim of that killing is irrelevant. It is time for all animal activities to break free from their hypocritical conditioning and drop their moral schizophrenia. To be vegan is to have the guts to deny the fairy tale of the ‘harmless animal product’ … To be vegan is to bridge the psychological distance between the flesh in the Styrofoam tray at the supermarket and the someone – not the something – from whom that meat came … To be vegan is to live fully and honestly with yourself about how animals are treated … And to be vegan is about your no longer participating in that exploitative system. Veganism is not only an affirmation about how we want the world to be, it is a lived form of protest, and our open & vocal reminder to others that everything is not at all right when it comes to how we currently treat farmed animals. Indeed, veganism is a form of everyday heroism in a world gone terribly wrong; it is your refusal to participate in a system that is ethically bankrupt. It is bold bravery & courageous caring in a time of feeble cowardice & callous apathy.” ~ inspired by Bob & Jenna Torres

 

By the way — of all the animals inflicted with acts of cruelty …

Filed under: Minimizing the Myths of Meat by Scaughdt