animals is animals, no matter how you cut it

I received a truly horrific email today. It contained pictures of the whaling drive in the Faroe Islands in Denmark. This email has been doing the rounds for a while, and I've seen it before. But for some reason those horrific images of bloody water, dolphins writhing in the water having thier throats slit by massive hooks, and men cheering and beating their chests, those images disturbed me so much more today.

And the reason is not about the slaughter of these animals, but the slaughter of any and all animals. I have always known deep down inside that killing animals is the same no matter what the reason or result, but today it hit home harder than before. I can in my mind replace the images of those dolphins with cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, kangaroos and all sorts of other animals. Animals that are killed for their meat or their hide (cows for leather and cows for meat are two different types, one kill doesn't result in two products). I struggle to see how a cow or sheep is any different from a dolphin, any less sentient or lacking in worth.

This is why I chose to be vegetarian over 8 years ago. And I swore then that I would never be preachy, I'd never adopt a holier than thou attitude. I will never criticise someone for eating meat. I feel very strongly that it's a very individual choice. As I've indicated in previous posts, autonomy and choice are extremely important to me (as Voltaire once said, I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it). My partner eats meat and I have no problems with that because it's his choice. But I have to admit that I am partly ok with that because he grew up in the country on a sheep farm, he knows exactly where meat comes from. In his youth he helped shoot the rabbits on the farm that ended up as rabbit stew. The helped round up the sheep that went off to the abattoir and came back as chops. He catches fish and scales and guts them for the dinner table.

I think the reason the email today got to me was because so many people I know don't really understand or accept how their steak got to their plate. There seems to be a massive disconnect between the source and the result. Most people aren't stupid, they know that their steak was once a cow. But truly knowing and accepting that the cow was killed and chopped up for their consumption is a different thing.

To me the dolphins in those photos are no different to the cows at the abattoir. They are both sentient beings that are killed for our consumption (and yes those dolphins are eaten, check wikipedia for more info about dolphin drive hunting). It seems more barbaric because we can see the blood, we can see the men using their weapons, we can see the animals writhing in pain. In our modern society, we cannot. At most we see the big stock trucks go past us on the road full of animals, and come back again empty. The next time we see them, they are presented in neatly wrapped packages, looking very little like animals. We don't see them crying as they go to the gallows, we don't see them being shot or having their throats slit, and we don't see them being butchered into the cuts of meat that end up in the shops.

This is what I feel has led to the disconnect. This is what has affected me so much today. It's a very personal decision to eat meat or not. Today has reinforced for me that everyone's line in the sand is in a different place, and that that's ok, but it's better if that line is informed by knowledge and awareness. I may laugh when people say they're vegetarian then say they eat fish, chicken and sausages but not meat (yes really, I met someone who said that!), but really, everyone's got to do what's right for them. After today, I might be a little more bold if the topic comes up and remind people how their meat gets to them. But mostly, my line in the sand is reconfirmed for me. Animals is animals to me. Now hand me some tofu...