The Bible says in Genesis 1:26 that God said, “…and let them (mankind) have dominion over (animals)…” Mahatma Gandhi said, “the greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”According to Daniel Goleman’s bestseller, Emotional Intelligence, animals with a well-developed limbic system in their brain, have emotions. All mammals, which includes most farm animals, have limbic systems and therefore have feelings and fear, are joyful and love. Animals also have varying degrees of intelligence, but most importantly, they feel pain and suffer. As such, what right do people have to support their being tormented, suffering, and dying gruesome deaths?
Former “Beatle,” Paul McCartney, said “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian.” In plain English, if people could see the horrific slaughter of animals, many would find it difficult to eat anything with a face. I’m the son of a butcher who went with his father most mornings to a few slaughterhouses to purchase the meat we sold at his butcher shop. While there, I saw animals slaughtered, some humanely, some cruelly. I therefore have firsthand knowledge of what happens in slaughterhouses.
You may think that farm animals are just dumb animals. However, if that were true, how do you explain Priscilla the 3-month old pig, who in 1995 was inducted into the Texas Veterinary Medical Association’s Pet Hall of Fame for saving 11-year-old Anthony Melton from drowning by swimming to him, oinking to him to grab her harness, and then swimming with Anthony hanging on, to shore. This story was reported in the book, Animal Miracles, and it is not unusual; it happens frequently.
In addition to slaughtering animals for food, we hunt them for sport, experiment on them causing needless suffering and pain, train them to fight each other for our amusement, do not neuter our pets to the extent that there are an estimated 100,000,000 homeless stray and feral cats alone in the U.S., most of which will eventually starve, freeze or thirst to death. I had my own cat shelter for ten years in Denver and “trapped, neutered, and returned” (TNR) about 100 feral and stray cats and therefore know of what I speak.
Aside from the ethical considerations in dealling with animals, too much red meat (beef, veal, lamb, pork) is bad for your health, except that meat is high in quality protein. Chicken (loaded with antibiotics) and fish (containing PCBs and mercury) are not good routine food choices either, although both are healthier than red meat. So what should one eat for optimal health, nutrition, and ethics? Joel Fuhrman,
M.D., author of The End of Diabetes, says basically “beans and greens,” and all other vegetables as well and that meat should be used only for seasoning.
Many animal rights advocates are considered fanatics. However, Abraham Lincoln, definitely not a fanatic, said “I’m in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of the whole human being.”
Finally, getting back to Mahatma Gandhi, if his assertion is correct that “a nation’s greatness is judged by the way its animals are treated,” is the U.S., or any nation on Earth, great? It appears that many people in most nations have abused their dominion over animals.
