What's the connection?
You may ask what is the connection between the topics listed in the title of this blog.
Well, it so happens that my career in veterinary medicine gave me an insight into the private lives of animals and a personal decision to follow a vegetarian lifestyle gave me an insight into the philosophy of vegetarianism.... a connection that I hadn't made for 20 years of practicing as a veterinarian and contributing to the systematic exploitation of animals.
Let me explain. My original degree in Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry gave me a decent basis to formulate my own concepts of how the workings of animals differed from, but more significantly, were similar to those of humans. A masters degree in Poultry Nutrition started me along the path of animal exploitation for our gluttonous palates. I inadvertently contributed to the suffering of countless beings but the one process that still sickens me today is the cruel destruction of male chicks from the laying lines, which are ground up alive into MCM - which stands for Male Chick Meal.... yes protein to be fed back to livestock, most probably to their mothers themselves to be re-packaged into menstrual waste ovoids we enjoy usually sunny-side up!
After aquiring a DVM and re-focussing my work ethic to helping pets, I realised that all I was doing was catering to another selfish segment of society who decided to domesticate and dominate pet animals for their own enjoyment. I was a pawn in the pet animal industry, myself exploiting a charged emotional attitude to animals called the Human-Animal-Bond. It started becoming more obvious to me that I was dealing with people who had absolutely no idea how ridicously differently they were treating different species of mammals. Without thinking twice about it, they could easily consume the flesh of one while cringing at the sight of a small flesh wound in the other. The amount of money spent on a companion animal was out of proportion to the amount of money spent on the dead flesh of a domestic animal. But it was the emotional toll that was the most surprising.
We are no longer exposed to the mechanics of livestock slaughter to the extent that many school kids today don't associate the meat in their plates with a live being. We pay workers, who have become inured to the plight of livestock, to stun, slaughter, process and package our dead flesh so that by the time it comes to actually handle it, it has been sanitized, wrapped in shrink film and labelled for sale like some commodity that never lived before. And our mindless consumption of these meats extend to seafood that is wontonly over harvested from the sea by trawlers that sweep the oceans clean, discarding more than 60 percent of their catch as 'waste'. Shrimp trawlers are even more destructive, damaging sensitive sea beds in their short-term plunder of the ocean beds for scavengers of the sea which would be similar to land cockroaches. These sensitive ecosystems may take decades to regenerate their life-forms which are offered as 'all you can eat' items at Red Lobster!
Well, it so happens that my career in veterinary medicine gave me an insight into the private lives of animals and a personal decision to follow a vegetarian lifestyle gave me an insight into the philosophy of vegetarianism.... a connection that I hadn't made for 20 years of practicing as a veterinarian and contributing to the systematic exploitation of animals.
Let me explain. My original degree in Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry gave me a decent basis to formulate my own concepts of how the workings of animals differed from, but more significantly, were similar to those of humans. A masters degree in Poultry Nutrition started me along the path of animal exploitation for our gluttonous palates. I inadvertently contributed to the suffering of countless beings but the one process that still sickens me today is the cruel destruction of male chicks from the laying lines, which are ground up alive into MCM - which stands for Male Chick Meal.... yes protein to be fed back to livestock, most probably to their mothers themselves to be re-packaged into menstrual waste ovoids we enjoy usually sunny-side up!
After aquiring a DVM and re-focussing my work ethic to helping pets, I realised that all I was doing was catering to another selfish segment of society who decided to domesticate and dominate pet animals for their own enjoyment. I was a pawn in the pet animal industry, myself exploiting a charged emotional attitude to animals called the Human-Animal-Bond. It started becoming more obvious to me that I was dealing with people who had absolutely no idea how ridicously differently they were treating different species of mammals. Without thinking twice about it, they could easily consume the flesh of one while cringing at the sight of a small flesh wound in the other. The amount of money spent on a companion animal was out of proportion to the amount of money spent on the dead flesh of a domestic animal. But it was the emotional toll that was the most surprising.
We are no longer exposed to the mechanics of livestock slaughter to the extent that many school kids today don't associate the meat in their plates with a live being. We pay workers, who have become inured to the plight of livestock, to stun, slaughter, process and package our dead flesh so that by the time it comes to actually handle it, it has been sanitized, wrapped in shrink film and labelled for sale like some commodity that never lived before. And our mindless consumption of these meats extend to seafood that is wontonly over harvested from the sea by trawlers that sweep the oceans clean, discarding more than 60 percent of their catch as 'waste'. Shrimp trawlers are even more destructive, damaging sensitive sea beds in their short-term plunder of the ocean beds for scavengers of the sea which would be similar to land cockroaches. These sensitive ecosystems may take decades to regenerate their life-forms which are offered as 'all you can eat' items at Red Lobster!
posted by Kevin Saldanha at 6:12 PM
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