Hey, human Earthlings...here's a wake up call!

So, I finally got up the nerve to watch “Earthlings” last week. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the movie, “Earthlings” is a documentary that displays graphic images of animals being used and exploited, in various ways, for human gain. I have seen countless videos of panicked and suffering animals being abused or killed in the factory farming, medical testing, breeding, and fur industries. I have read numerous stories about domestic animals being neglected, abused, and even tortured. I became a vegan at in September 2008, because I knew that I needed to make a larger commitment to doing my part to end animal suffering. I didn’t need or want to see anymore footage. I thought, and still think, that “Earthlings” is a movie for people who don’t already know what’s happening to the animals they eat or wear for leather and fur. But, I forced myself to watch it, because if I am going to ask others to watch it, I felt it only fair if I’d watched it, too. I knew I would cry, so I had my box of Kleenex with me. The movie was done as tastefully as possible, given the imagery. There were things I’d seen before, and images that raised my horror to a whole new level. At some parts I remember crying and wailing, “WHY???” My sweet husband comforted me as we continued to watch. He wanted to turn it off, but he’d never seen any of this type of footage and I thought, “We HAVE to finish”. We HAD to open our eyes to what is going on. We HAD to bear witness to the millions of miserable and dying animals. I felt that he especially needed to watch it because he still eats meat.

I fully expected my husband, as a caring and empathetic person, to turn to me after the movie and say, “That’s it. No more meat.” When I asked him about his reaction to the movie, he said he was shocked and very sad. I asked if he was going to give up meat and he replied that he wasn’t. I was stunned and disappointed. I asked him how he could continue to support that kind of cruelty to animals, now that he knew it existed. He couldn’t articulate his answer. He became defensive, claiming that he was already mostly a vegetarian. I demanded to know why he wouldn’t just give meat up. I so desperately wanted to understand the psychology behind it. I reasoned that if I could understand why he doesn’t care about the torture and suffering of animals, then I could surely understand why millions of other good, decent people in this country don’t care. He couldn’t answer me.

For those people who do insist on eating meat, I have more respect for a hunter than I do for the person who buys an anesthetic package of meat from the grocery store. If you’re going to eat meat, I believe that you should kill it. You stand there and put a knife to the throat of a pig who is happily rooting in the dirt and living out his divine pig existence. You shoot a beautiful, golden steer with his warm grass breath and peaceful brown eyes. If you cop out and buy a lifeless, plastic-encased slab of red flesh, you lose your empathy for the living being that it used to be a part of. You lose your connection to the fact that YOU are the reason for this animal’s death and countless others. No matter how you slice it, YOU took this beautiful creature’s life whether you did the direct killing or not. YOU are responsible for the pain, fear, and torture that he felt in the hands of the people whom you paid to kill him.

When you were a child, did you ever hug a baby farm animal at a petting zoo? Have you ever regarded a non-human animal with respect and awe? Do you have a pet at home who you adore? Would it occur to you to cause excruciating pain to one of these animals? Would it occur to you to subject one of these animals to prolonged, mental torture? I don’t believe that it would. So why do you condone this type of behavior when it is directed toward the animals you eat? The animals who provide your meat are NOT “put to sleep”. They are NOT humanely euthanized. They are literally tortured and slaughtered in every brutal aspect of the word. They are slaughtered. They are butchered. They are massacred. And through every moment – as they are bleeding, beaten, boiled, butchered, electrocuted, plucked, and skinned alive---they are crying, kicking, struggling, screaming, panicking, and futilely fighting for their very life, as you would do under the same circumstances.

The “Earthlings” movie draws comparisons to other persecuted populations: Jews murdered in Nazi Germany; Africans forced into slavery; women denied the same rights as men. We are asked a poignant question: just because we can dominate and exploit other living beings for our own pleasure and gain does that mean we should? Or as the dominant animal on this planet, are we obligated to show mercy, compassion, and restraint in a world where our dominance destroys countless human and non-human animals each and every day?

I am of the opinion that, as modern omnivores, we do not need to eat meat any longer. We have a wealth of nutritional information and unprecedented access to varied types of protein. So much land that could be used to raise crops and feed the world several times over is wasted on raising food animals. I also believe that a fair match between game and hunter no longer exists. Our sheer masses and our advanced weapons and technologies allow us exploitative advantages that no specie on this earth was ever meant to have. The most critical component of a successful Earth is balance. There are opposing forces in nature that are designed to keep any one thing, specie, or element from getting too powerful. These checks and balances are meant to preserve the planets resources and to spawn and maintain diversity and continuity. Consider the deadly diseases that are creeping into our food chain due to overcrowding and the profit-maximizing animal husbandry methods. Are the avian flu and mad cow diseases biological accidents or are they nature’s way of correcting a gross imbalance of power? We are wise to remember, while we may be the dominant animal, that Nature is the most powerful force of all and she has a special knack for leveling out the playing field.