2: Friends or Food

Early this week, our class was visited by a guest speaker. This presentation was about meat. In greater detail, the journey the meat takes to get to our plate. In this presentation, we were shown amazingly powerful images, like the one below, that would make any carnivore think twice about what or rather, who they are eating.



Here are young dogs that have been captured for selling as food in Chinese markets. We were asked why this thought and image made us uncomfortable, compared to a similar image, shown below, where some of the audience barely batted an eye.




But to me, this was a serious thought provoking idea. The presenter told us that pigs were in fact smarter than dogs. This was brand new to me. It started to feel as though there were no differences at all in the slaughter of pigs and dogs. Why would only one seem horrible when the other is just as, if not more capable of making the same strong connection with it's human counter parts.

Then she turned on to the environmental facts. Did you know, factory farming of animals causes more pollution and harm to the earth than all transportation methods on earth combined? Cause I did not. I was blindsided by this. So now not only was I killing a smart and fully aware animal like this,

 
 but also causing an unbelievable amount of harm to the planet. All this so I can have bacon in the morning? I don't think so. So I guess you could say I took the bait on the presentation. So much in fact I've stopped eating pork entirely. I know one person not eating pigs isn't going to change anything, but maybe one day the rest of the world will realize how much damage factory farming is doing, and jump on board. So until next week, that's all I have to have to say.

-Trevor