Eating mothers and babies is not cool
A Meat and Dairy Industries Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Derrick Shadrack, Animal Agriculture and Climate Change
September 2018

It only occurred to me recently that we eat mothers and babies. Although it has been about ten years without meat for me, I just never really thought about it that way. We humans… we’re weirdly and creepily psychopathic.

It only occurred to me recently that we eat mothers and babies. Although it has been about ten years without meat for me, I just never really thought about it that way. We humans… we’re weirdly and creepily psychopathic.

But truthfully speaking, it makes rational sense (in the 21st century) to leave these folks completely off our plates, for many reasons and at many levels – from the ecological sustainability of earth’s resources and biodiversity, the severe public health implications (physiological, social and psychological), the global economic disparities such as global hunger and scarcity and so forth. Moreover, it really is a stark contradiction to the ethical and core moral values we acclaim so highly in our ‘civilised’ societies – peace, justice, equality, compassion, freedom and love etc. Values which are granted Nobel prizes, values which our political, religious and spiritual systems are, in theory, built upon but unfortunately lack in practice.

I don’t know how to tell the US, UK, Israel and others to stop the massacre in the Middle East, nor plead international corporations and European sanctions to can it on the economic exploitation in Africa and other historically undermined regions, and nor do I know how to tell Angela Merkel to stop vandalising the damn earth with coal energy and fossil fuels. Quite frankly many have asked and marched in this attempt, but it is clearly not within their interests to do so and I don’t anticipate much significant improvement with the likes of Trump in office. However, I do know how to tell myself not to pollute the earth, not to waste, and that to eat mothers, babies, and embryos is not rationally sensible, especially when it is absolutely not necessary. This means I, to the best of my abilities, knowledge and privilege can make choices that contribute less to the problems we have created.

As mentioned there are a host of things beyond our immediate control, but what we eat is literally a choice we make three times a day, maybe more, every day. And these simple choices have a direct and fundamental impact across the macro-environment and micro-environment we subsist in. It is powerful that that kind of agency is ours, by simple redirection of our economic agency, aka money and consumer decisions, we can actually practice these ethical and moral values in line with preserving the planet and the biodiversity, while nurturing the body temple and not participating in what is basically mass torture and murder (to express it bluntly). It is psychotic to raise billions of sentient beings who have the same propensity, sometimes more, to feel, experience, and have relationships as we do, yet cage, torture and mutilate them. We intuitively know there’s something fundamentally disturbing about that.

Amidst the madness of human conundrum it is an act towards conscious consideration, towards more humility, kindness, love and compassion, not perfection nor self righteousness. We will only have peace if we practice peace, we will only have love if we practice love. It’s nothing complicated and it need not be a big deal because ALL species want to live with little to no harm and strain.

I’ll conclude by saying… Your body is your temple, their bodies are their temples, and the Earth is our temple and these temples are worth nurturing because we are all LIFE in them, we all NEED them and most critically we all LIVE in them.

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