Defend the innocent, join the dots
Articles Reflecting a Vegan Lifestyle From All-Creatures.org

Vegan lifestyle articles that discuss ways of living in peace with humans, animals, and the environment.

FROM

There's an Elephant in the Room Blog
February 2018

If we are not vegan, it’s not ‘other people’ who are responsible for the horror. WE are the ones who are responsible. And the huge irony in all of this is that when we are confronted with the reality of what we are doing, we struggle to comprehend the truth because in our own minds, our fictional narrative has convinced us that we are the kind of people who would never cause deliberate harm.

ALL of our use of the lives, bodies and reproductive systems of others, like the acts in the tales at the top of the page, is completely pointless, absolutely unnecessary; the deepest injustice imaginable, committed against innocent and vulnerable individuals who are powerless to defend themselves.

pig

Recently I saw a number of articles, images and videos that I found deeply moving.

  • A dairy cow with severe head trauma had been thrown into a dumpster to die. She was standing, face bloodied, hunched in agony, looking at the camera.
  • A cow of a breed commonly used for their dead flesh had escaped to live with a herd of wild bison. She had died of stress on being recaptured to be taken to a slaughterhouse to be killed.
  • A pig adopted as a pet from an organisation that had rescued and nursed her back to health, was killed and eaten by her adopters, rather than being returned to the rescue organisation for rehoming.
  • 48 roosters were handed over to an SPCA, defenceless individuals for whom places had been found with rescuers. Instead of releasing these 48 roosters to the homes that were ready and waiting for them, the SPCA had every one of them killed.

Now each of these stories provoked fury in the media and online. If asked to explain why these actions provoke such outrage, such anger and howls for vengeance, the majority of those people would say that they were distressed and furious because the acts were so completely pointless; they were so absolutely unnecessary; they were such blatant ‘cruelty’ to innocent and vulnerable individuals who were powerless to defend themselves. And they’d be absolutely correct, I can’t find much to dispute about that sentiment.

But the thing that is most significant in all of this outpouring of shock and grief and vitriol is that the vast majority of those expressing it were not vegan. So how is this relevant?

We’re talking about cows, a pig and some roosters. Let’s stop and consider from whom they needed to be rescued? From ‘bad’ people? From ‘cruel’ people?

No. Nothing nearly so fanciful. They needed to be rescued from ordinary people.

They needed to be rescued from ordinary people whose consumer demands are paying to harm and kill so that they can buy dead flesh, eggs and the hormonal infant nutrient known as ‘milk’ from the stores. ‘Demand for harm and death’ is simply another way to express the consumer demands of those who are not vegan.

So in fact, these defenceless individuals who won hearts and minds wherever their tragic tales were told, were in that position of needing to be rescued from the very people who were angry about what had happened to them.

And the other key thing? ALL of our use of the lives, bodies and reproductive systems of others, like the acts in the tales at the top of the page, is completely pointless, absolutely unnecessary; the deepest injustice imaginable, committed against innocent and vulnerable individuals who are powerless to defend themselves.

When we are not vegan, WE are the ones whose demands as consumers are directly responsible for each of these tragic tales. We’re not inherently ‘bad’ people. We’re not inherently ‘cruel’ people. But what we do need to do, is make the connection between those desperate creatures whose stories we hear, whose plight moves us to stand strong in their defence; and those whose systematic, normalised, horrific but equally unnecessary torment is conducted behind closed doors to meet our demands at the checkouts for their body parts, milk and eggs.

If we are not vegan, it’s not ‘other people’ who are responsible for the horror. WE are the ones who are responsible. And the huge irony in all of this is that when we are confronted with the reality of what we are doing, we struggle to comprehend the truth because in our own minds, our fictional narrative has convinced us that we are the kind of people who would never cause deliberate harm.

Think about it. Join the dots. Becoming vegan means that no one ever needs to be rescued from us again. Be vegan.


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