I’m outraged.
As I’ve mentioned before, lately I’ve been listening to Colleen Patrick-Gudreau’s Vegetarian Food for Thought podcasts. I really love her clarity and thoroughness in her efforts to educate about food choices and debunk myths about vegetarianism.
In one of her podcasts, Colleen mentions Heritage Foods, USA, an organization that serves as the sales and marketing arms of the Slow Food Movement. In the podcast she read a piece of their “About Us” page and it was so…insane… I just had to look for myself.
Here it is:
The farms and foods that once sustained our forefathers as they settled this great land are now endangered. Farms are going belly up every day and the foods small farms raise are being lost forever because they are ignored by industrial agriculture. Just as the Bald Eagle and Panda Bear are on the brink of extinction in the wild, so are numerous varieties of livestock like Bourbon Red turkeys, Red Wattle pigs, Tunis sheep, Barred-Plymouth Rock chickens and Iroquois corn flour. If we want to save them, we must eat them! And Heritage Foods USA exists to help accomplish this goal by selling foods from small farms to consumers and wholesale accounts.
Huh? If we want to save them, we must eat them???
Ok…if we eat the animals then we increase demand for them and so small farms will continue to manufacture them.
I get it.
But…
- Is continuing to torture and slaughter the Bourbon Red turnkeys, Red Wattle pigs, Tunis sheep, and Barred-Plymouth Rock chickens really helping them?
- We’ve manipulated domestic animals to the point that they are no longer natural. Should we really continue to treat these living beings as products to be harvested and manufactured?
- Does this mean we should start eating Bald Eagles and Panda Bears to help support the efforts to save them from the brink of extinction?
- Heritage Foods says they promote “humane production.” How is sitting down to eat the corpse of a defenseless victim “humane?”
- Isn’t this just propaganda to sell more “product?”
Ringing the necks of turkeys is considered "acceptable" by the industry
We need a paradigm shift.
We need to stop treating animals like commodities.
Animals are living, breathing, feeling, sentient beings.
If you have or have ever had a pet you know this to be true.
Ok. Rant over. I’d love to open up a dialogue about this. I’ve stated my opinion…what’s yours?
