Everywhere one turns, there is news of people suffering of diseases
or starvation or wars. Yet, it’s a rare person who makes the
connection between the widespread indifference and outright cruelty to
animals (other than selected “pets”) and the woes that befall
humanity. After all what we sow, we reap.
Almost daily we hear about the possibility of a bird flu plague, but
little is said about the horrendous conditions that bring about such
diseases. People talk about children suffering and dying of starvation,
but little if anything is said about the export of tons of grain from
poor countries to feed more and more livestock in wealthier countries
where factory farms and slaughterhouses process sentient beings day and
night in a never-ending nightmare.
The increasing demand for animal products around the world, resulting
in the degradation of the environment as more and more land is cleared
to grow crops for animal feed, and the pollution from animal excrement,
cannot go on forever.
Hardly anyone wants to get to the root of the problem: the herding
(hurting!) culture that we have all been brought up in.
And speaking of roots, here are two quotations that I think make a
lot of sense:
Georg T. Angell:
“I am sometimes asked, “Why do you spend so much of your time and
money talking about kindness to the animals when there is so much
cruelty to men?” I answer, “I am working at the roots.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American author, poet and philosopher
Quotation from Walden, his autobiography:
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is
striking at the roots.”
