There's No Such Thing As Free Meal...

Michael Twining

I once tried to write down everything I ate or drank for an entire month in order to get a better idea of my diet, and how unhealthy most of my eating habits were/are. I didn't do this 'exercise' to find out how much manufactured meat I ate, but looking back on it now, it definitely put things in perspective for me. I am constantly eating meat: chicken, beef, pork. It is the way I was brought up, and it is something that I have done for the past 21 years, so "meatism", if you want to call it that, is something that is pretty deeply rooted in my life. My thoughts are opinions on meat-eating are pretty strong, but they aren't what I want to focus on here. Instead, I want to take a quick look at the Humane Slaughter Act and its effect on the food industry.


The HMSLA essentially says that an animal must be "stunned" before it can be slaughtered and processed for meat. This act addresses a major ethical question of the food industry: how should we be tr(eating) our food before it ends up on our plates? "The HMSLA is also criticized because despite being the only US law designed to protect livestock, it only focuses on the last few minutes of animal's lives, and has no effect on how they are treated beforehand, even as they are going to slaughter." (690) The HMSLA fails to establish a code or standard for the treatment of animals before they go to the chopping blocks. This is highly disturbing to me. I feel that if you are not opposed to the idea o eating meat (like me), you should at least want the freezer-bound animals to be treated humanely as they mature into fully grown livestock/poultry/fish. The sad part to me isn't that the majority of people WANT their animals to be brutalized in life, it is just that they don't really know about it. This is why movies like "Earthlings" and "Food Inc." are so shocking and disturbing to viewers. "Factory farming's success depends on consumer's nostalgic images of food production- the fisherman reeling in fish, the pig farmer knowing each of his pigs as individuals, the turkey rancher watching beaks break through eggs- because these images correspond to something we respect and trust." (599) The natural public understanding of the food industry is that it is the same homely, friendly, rancher-supplied Meat-Store-from-the-homestead kind of market as it was in the late 19th early 20th century. Companies like Hormel and Tyson have completely abandoned the ethical approach to raising livestock for food, and have focused entirely on minimizing costs and maximizing gains.

In his screenplay Earthlings, Shaun Monson says "Since we all inhabit the earth, all of us are considered earthlings. There is no sexism, no racism or specieism in the term earthling. It encompasses each and every one of us: warm or cold blooded, mammal, vertebrate, invertebrate, bird, reptile, amphibian, fish, and human alike. Humans, therefore, being not the only species on the planet, share this world with million of other liver creatures, as we evolve together". (690) I do no at all believe that humans and animals are equal beings. That being said, however, I think that humans have a great responsibility to care for the earth and for all of it inhabitants. It is our duty as beings of intelligence and compassion to deal with ethical issues in a responsible manner. It is cheaper to be cruel, and it always has been.



THE END.