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“Thanksgiving, Christmas & Easter: A Celebration of Tradition or of Responsible Living?”
With
holidays and traditional celebrations , many look forward to family gatherings
and time spent with loved ones.
Memories of favorite meals fill our senses. But only few
stop to think of what it is like for the turkeys, pigs,
cows and other animals during this time of feasting and
celebration.
Never in all the history
of mankind has so much suffering been caused to animals
at our hands as is happening today in animal farming,
where victims of the modern meat industry are pressed
together in such close quarters that they attack each
other in fear and aggression, where these living
commodities are barbarically maltreated on animal
transports, or where they die under unendingly torturous
conditions in the slaughter houses. This horrible
treatment happens in countries that claim ethics and
morals as the basis upon which rest the fundamental
rights of man and which guidelines are based on
humanitarian principles. However, ever more alert and concerned people are
joining in the fight for the rights of animals and a
better world. One of their mottos is: “What Has Eyes,
People Conscious of Their Responsibility Do Not Eat.”
Keeping in mind that Thanksgiving, Christmas
and Easter are holidays filled with
family traditions, one could use this rather provocative
campaign statement to question these traditions. After
all, a very central part of these festivities is the
feasting that takes place – where people often gorge
themselves on wonderfully prepared, tasty morsels of
stuffed turkey, succulent ham, lobster, crab, leg of
lamb, just to mention a few of the favorites. And it is
especially during the holiday season that there is a
staggering rise in the numbers of animals led to the
slaughter bench to satisfy the palates at these
traditional feasts. Yet how many stop to think about
what it means to the rest of the world, and most
particularly to the living being that was slaughtered
for this purpose? And, what does this have to do with
responsible action? In looking at tradition, many people feel good, safe
and secure, and look forward to time spent with family
and friends, as they have done many times before. But,
in another viewpoint and looking more deeply into what
tradition means, someone once said that tradition is
actually the enemy of independent thought and action,
because it invites a kind of mindless repetition of
something that is taken for granted under the motto,
“it’s always been this way.” And how many people don’t
shrug their shoulders as they say this in answer to a
question raised? Perhaps it’s high time we take a closer look at our
actions and place them into question. Given the title of
the campaign slogan, “What has eyes, people conscious of
their responsibility do not eat”, we may be led to think
that this means that meat eaters are irresponsible. So
what does it means to be a responsible person. Individual responsibility means that I see to it that
what I do is done as well as possible, that nothing and
no one is harmed. It is clear that we also bear
responsibility for the Earth and for the animals – they
also belong to the Earth. Therefore, this means to see
that no harm comes to these animals. Until we stop
eating meat, we cannot exclude ourselves from the act
that comes before eating the meat, and that is that we
are basically giving the order to kill. This is not a
responsible way of behaving from an ethical point of
view – if we assume that animals are creatures of God,
that they are our little brothers and sisters, that
they, like us, bear the life in themselves. Because,
after all, ultimately we did not give life to them, so
what gives us the right to take their life? When one meets an animal and looks them in the eyes,
how could he bring himself to take a knife and kill this
animal? There is a story about Tolstoy, whose aunt
wanted chicken. He told her, “Okay, I will serve it, but
you must kill it yourself,” and of course, the aunt did
without the chicken. If we had to kill our steak
beforehand, the number of vegetarians in the world would
presumably rise far above what it is today. Isn’t it
then irresponsible to say: “I pass this task of killing
on to another” and then take the meat from the freezer?
Am I not also responsible for what I push onto others to
do for me? Being a responsible person also means facing
up to my actions and what they bear as consequences for
other living beings – whether people or animals. Another important aspect of this responsibility we
cannot afford to ignore are the effects of animal
farming on the environment. As the energy resources
become ever scarcer, one should ask: At whose costs and
under which suffering is today’s food produced? On our
planet Earth we have circa 3 times as many of these
animals as people, and they need living space. According
to a report, put together by the UN, two thirds of the
world’s agricultural land is used for livestock farming.
But on these pastures one could grow a lot of fruit,
grain and vegetables, which would produce enough healthy
food for everyone. On the other side, these animals take
a lot of food away from many people already. Just think
of the famine that takes place in Africa and other parts
of the world. We need enormous amounts of grain, soy
products and other fruits and vegetables to produce beef
and other meat products. For example, one third of the
world’s cereal harvest, 95% of US soy production and 73
% of corn grown – just to mention a couple – is fed to
farm animals. It is not for nothing that there is a
saying: “The rich man’s cow eats the poor man’s bread.”
There would be enough; Mother Earth gives us enough to
feed all people. So, purely on an ethical note – given
that today every second a person dies of hunger – the
consumption of meat cannot be justified. Factory farm animals are also a major source of the
greenhouse gases of methane and nitrous oxide, which are
causing the warming of our climate, not to mention the
ammonia from liquid manure that is a major contributor
to acid rain and pollutes the groundwater. What most of
us aren’t aware of is that factory farms are like small,
tightly packed cities of animals that generate huge
amounts of waste. For example, ten thousand hogs on a
typical factory farm will generate the water volume
equivalent to a city of 25,000 people. However there are
no laws on the disposal of such animal waste and the
common practice is to keep it in underground pits or
open cesspools until it is spread on the land as
fertilizer or dumped into local waterways. Water is
necessary for life, yet this resource is getting ever
scarcer and polluted in this way. According to the
United Nations, more than 1.4 billion people in the
world do not have access to safe drinking water, and
yet, 86% of fresh water consumed worldwide is used for
agriculture, and the amount required to produce 1 Kg of
grain-fed beef is 100 times the amount required to
produce 1 Kg of wheat. We know that we should economize
more with energy, and that it is inefficient to take
plant foods to produce animal protein and animal
products. This devours enormous amounts of energy
resources, enormous amounts of water. There are many more instances that could be mentioned,
but the bottom line in all this is that we cannot push
the responsibility for the state of the world – with
respect to the problems of hunger and the environment –
just on to the politicians and the laws, because with
his breakfast, lunch and supper, every person shares the
responsibility for the conditions of our planet as a
whole. Never was a statement more true today: What we
can change in ourselves could also change the world. The
American Indians already knew this when they said “We
did not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, instead,
we are renting it from our children.” This clearly
defines our responsibility. It is high time to focus on our traditions and habits
and ask ourselves whether they are the result of
responsible acts of conscience or the blind actions of
the masses. Let us ponder this throughout the year to really give thanks for
the gifts of life and of our beautiful planet Mother
Earth. Let us consider the following: If we truly are
thankful, doesn’t this mean that in our heart, in the
deepest part of our being, that we also feel responsible
to see that future generations also have a good basis
for a responsible and meaningful life?
Universal Life – The
Inner Religion P.O. Box 3549, Woodbridge, CT 06525 1-800-846-2691
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