We love our animals here on Daily Kos. Pooties and Woozles abound (while I have two cats and one very ancient dog, I have to admit not knowing which one is a pootie and which one is a woozle!). I have to wonder, though, how many Kossacks really consider what a diet based on animal protein does to animals, our bodies and to our environment.
Today there were two editorials in the New York Times that caught my interest. Nicholas Kristof wrote an article about the growing movement toward animal rights or relief of animal suffering. He basically catalogs some recent legislation, including the California ban on battery cages and confining premises and the trend in Europe toward increasing animal rights. While I sense that Kristof is slightly skeptical towards animal rights (this is just my feeling from some of his earlier editorials relating to farming and meat-eating), I applaud him for given the subject his consideration. 10 billion animals a year are slaughtered in our country alone, certainly some consideration of the ethical implications are warranted.
There was another article, however, that also caught my eye. It was called Iowa's Family Values, and the author spoke eloquently about how Iowa's progressive history toward interracial marriage was a precursor to the Iowa Supreme Court's decision to allow gay marriages in their state. While I was born just across the Mississippi River from Iowa in Illinois, I understand Midwestern values well. With factory farms, family farms and roadside slaughterhouses dotting the landscape, I do know that animal rights will be hard fought in these states. I remember when visiting my grandmother seeing her consternation when I said that, no, I could not eat her pot pie by just "picking out the meat". She was flummoxed at the supermarket shopping for my visit, unsure of what kind of pizza to buy since none said explicitly "vegetarian pizza".
Slowly people are coming to understand that animals do, indeed suffer, and laws in various states reflect the desire of the people to minimize animal suffering, however it does not go far enough. Kosher slaughter is a brutal affair, and Agriprocessors has inflicted great pain and distress on many a farm animal. It is impossible to watch any of the exposes on their slaughtering methods and be unmoved.
Yet people who voted for Obama, who are strong liberals, who drive Prius's, will be completely unapologetic about eating meat. Why? They care about the environment and global warming is an important issue to them. Do most people not realize that livestock production creates more greenhouse gases than automobiles? A 2006 UN Report called Livestock's Long Shadow delineates the various ways in which animal production is destroying our water, eroding our land and polluting our air.
Is meat similar to guns: "You'll have to pry this burger out of my cold, dead hand, Impygirl"? Faced with the knowledge that a)our bodies are healthier without consuming factory-farmed, antibiotic-laden (that in itself would be a diary), hormone-filled meat; b)our environment cannot sustain the tremendous amount of greenhouse gases produced by livestock, our landscapes are being permanently altered for and by grazing, streams and aquifers are polluted by animal waste runoff; and c) kharmically, brutally slaughtering 10 billion sentient creatures every year is evil, and on par with any human rights issue such as torture which affects a far fewer number of people with a less permanent result; why do progressives continue to steadfastly hold onto their meat?