A comment on "Kid Finds Chicken Organ in KFC Meal"
“Food is one of the few pleasures we can control”. I heard this quote somewhere on YouTube the other day and thought it was interesting.
My first thought was, is the rest of our life so out of control that one of the only things we can control is what passes our lips? Surely the sum of the human experience is more than that.
What I also found interesting is the use of ‘control’ because on the part of the consumer, I do think our sense of control is false. And on the part of the suppliers, that is exactly what the food industry is about.
On the part of the consumer, we think we have control over what we eat but in reality, our sense of control is a false one. Sure, the choice lies with the consumer and our power comes in the form of our demands, but let’s look at control from another perspective. How many people say that it is impossible for them to become vegetarian, that they HAVE to eat meat? In that instance, who is in control then, you or the food? You or your cravings? Who makes the decisions? If we have so much control over what we eat, why can we not control and stop our intake of meat whenever we want to? Why is giving up meat (and I quote) impossible?
Then there is the control that the food industry imposes on the lives of animals who are unfortunate enough to be considered “food”. It controls when they are conceived, when they are born, how they are raised, who raises them, what they eat, how long they get to live and then when they die. I do not know about you but I see very little pleasure in that. And if food is pleasure, why does any living being have to die for the aforementioned pleasure? Hmmm…
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This is so gross. The whole process from start to finish is disturbing. The motivation is disturbing, the process is disturbing
How much do you have to desensitize yourself in order to benefit from this as a supplier? Just think – you’re benefiting from taking the life of another living being.
How much do you have to ignore regarding the realities of the meat industry, in order to participate as a consumer? It’s like what they say – if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would become a vegetarian.
The thing is, it’s not as though KFC or any kind of fast food, or any kind of processed meat forms an essential part of our diet. In most cultures, meat-eating was considered a weekly treat because to acquire it required a lot of time and resources. But the proliferation of cheap meats has led people to think that because they CAN eat meat everyday, that they deserve to eat meat and that it is an essential part of our diets. They forgot the most basic lesson of Economics 101 – “want” does not equate to “need”.
So no, meat isn’t an essential part of our diets. It is NUTRIENTS which are an essential part of our diets, and nutrients can be derived from numerous sources, and not just meat.
As Rinpoche wrote, there has been a push for more convenient food options and this movement has encompassed meat which has become cheaper and more convenient. There is no doubt meat has become more convenient, but convenient for whom? The animal? Definitely not.
I think the next time people want to eat meat, they should ask themselves:
1) if the price of their meal is the value they are placing on a life. Sorry but for this $4 meal of nuggets, an animal had to lose its life. A living being’s life and immense suffering was worth a measly $4…who put that price tag on there? The consumer did, when they demanded cheaper meat and told the company that’s all they would be willing to pay for it.
2) if they would bite it off the side of the animal (sorry if that’s a little extreme). If doing that would be wrong, gross, sick, disturbing, etc. how is it any less disturbing to pay someone to take the animal’s life first so you can eat it afterwards?
Just some stuff to think about…
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