"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” - Rumi
As more and more people become aware of the suffering animals endure, the industries have come up with euphemisms intentionally designed to seduce the public into feeling better about their choice to eat animals such as humanely raised, grass-fed, free-range, organic, antibiotic-free, and more. This is all a marketing ploy. There is no such thing as humane exploitation or humane slaughter just as there is no such thing as humane killing or rape for anyone. It doesn’t exist.
These industries are embedded in our schools and are subsidized by our government with our tax dollars.
In 2002 an income-support program was instituted that guarantees that the government will buy any surplus milk to avoid prices from crashing (The Meaty Truth – page 97). The indoctrination is pervasive in the school systems. Handouts would come home from school emphasizing the importance of consuming animal products. The brainwashing starts at the inception of a school where workbooks and information are supplied by the industries to the schools. I remember my children’s school worksheets that had them connect the dots or lines from illustrated worksheets such as “Who gives us milk? Where do eggs come from? Who gives us beef?”
Sadly, consuming animal products is emphasized.
The reality is that animals don’t give us anything. We take what is rightfully theirs and what belongs to their babies. It’s embarrassing to admit that up until I became vegan, like most everyone else, I believed that the dairy and egg industries were just doing their job – milking the cows because they needed to be milked and just taking the eggs from chickens because they laid them for us.
Cows don’t give us milk, they have milk because they are mothers who have just given birth to their babies.
In these industries, it is a very different story. Female cows are artificially inseminated. When she gives birth nine months later, if her baby is a female, she is taken from her and put back into the cycle of producing milk when old enough. If she gives birth to a male, he is then, considered a by-product as males are of no use to the industry and these innocent newborn babies are disposed of – usually sent to slaughter for veal or discarded, or killed off in some other way. These gentle mothers have strong maternal instincts and bellow for weeks denied their natural nurturing instincts. Usually after four births, these exhausted, overworked and often sick mothers due to mastitis – a common painful inflammation of the mammary glands - are considered spent and sent to slaughter to be turned into hamburgers.
Like mother, like hen.
In the egg industry, similar scenario plays out regarding male chicks. Chickens are very protective of their young and most don’t even get to see their young. The eggs are hatched and newborn baby male chicks have their fate sealed that day. If they are male, they are ground up alive or suffocated. If female, she is put into the egg-laying system. Most oftentimes, unknowing people choose to be vegetarian mostly for ethical reasons unaware of the cruelty involved in these two industries. The dairy and egg industries are probably the two cruelest of all the barbaric industries.
The truth is out.
When people have gone undercover and filmed the animals at these ‘humane’ farms, we learn that there is simply nothing normal about the way these animals live. “Cage-free” chickens and turkeys are packed so tightly into sheds that even though they are not caged, they still have no quality of life and still can’t lift a wing. There isn’t a humane or kind way to harm anyone and if we choose to believe this, we fool ourselves.
Excellent documentaries are now available to watch such as Forks over Knives, What The Health, Eating You Alive, Plant Pure Nation, and more. They can be viewed on networks such as Netflix and shed light on the power of our food choices and how they can adversely affect our health.
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