Q. When slaughterhouses shut down, what to do with the billions of live animals no longer wanted for food? Serious replies.
There were 111 replies, a few attacking the question or the person asking it. The others for the most part didn’t come close to offering solutions. Opinions in the form of predictions were the most common responses. Maybe they hadn’t thought of it. Or that it didn’t matter. Stopping the slaughter was and continues to be the main focus of animal rights people, not what happens before or after.
It’s like the doctor going in to perform surgery. A trained staff already had the patient and everything else prepared. All the doctor had to do was the surgery itself, then walk away as other teams cleaned up and looked after the patient.
That’s somewhat of the elitist situation in animal rights – everyone’s the doctor.
What to do before and after has not been their concern.
It needs to be.
Recently a ban on plastic grocery bags was lifted until further notice giving the pandemic as a reason. Part of the real reason, that they failed to mention, was that those who pushed for the ban didn’t consider contingencies and accommodations for what happens before, during and after.
Their limited view of the world and how people deal with their personal trash wasn’t that big an issue for them – just take a few cloth bags to the grocery store with you.
But the grocery stores had to offer something in its place, which was paper bags. I envisioned lots of trees coming down. Now there’s a conflicting environmental issue. Use plastic or chop down all those trees. I thought the plastic was invented to save the forests. Nothing of an alternative nature was offered, but the stores continuing to use plastic would be sanctioned.
Big paper bags with handles were offered, thick bags so the moist food items wouldn’t break through the bag, but they did anyway. Staff weren’t schooled on how to bag in paper. They also didn’t take walkers into consideration. Lots of people take public transportation or walk to stores. Handles broke off, items spilled all over.
Then there’s the trash component. Grocery bags are the bag of choice in large apartment buildings, where trash needs to be discarded daily to keep the pest population down.
Buy a large black bag and keep it in your apartment for a week and you will see some critters you didn’t see before. Multiply that times two hundred units.
The alternative to these particular plastic bags wasn’t considered that big a deal, because people can still use the big ones. But those cost money and the grocery plastic bags come free with the groceries. What to do now?
All of these contingencies needed to be worked out and solutions implemented by the time the plastic ban went into effect. They weren’t. So the trial period ended prematurely and I haven’t heard anything about the ban on plastic grocery bags since.
That’s an environmental issue. In considering the animal rights issue no one has even agreed that the raising of animals for exploitation and the slaughterhouses or processing plants as they call them should be phased out. Since there is no agreement, there is no plan. If there is no plan there are no contingencies, before, during and after that they think they have to deal with. It’s a non-issue.
One might think that the animal rights industry would strongly disagree and formulate their own plan for the transition from animals to plants. Except for a few companies manufacturing plant meats and dairy, that have little to do with animal rights decisions made on a country by country or global basis, there is no real plan.
There needs to be and it needs to be now.
Finding alternative ways for all the animal abusing companies to earn income absent the animal is going to be the biggest obstacle to overcome.
A few companies have done it or have included a plant option in their product portfolio, so they at least know how to do it. But it’s not enough and not on a scale needed to push through this agenda. They’re hoping interest in plants wane and the animal again takes center table at every event.
That’s not going to happen and the sooner these companies realize it’s not going to happen, the sooner the public can be educated to transition rapidly from animals to plants.
It doesn’t help that many so-called vegans are against plant meats and dairy and make it well known all over social media. So who are they really shooting in the foot? Themselves? Or the animals they claim to care about?
The world needs solutions along with the goal. How do we get from animal to plant?
Do we make animal consumption illegal? Do we allow hunting? There are a multitude of questions that need answering.
To say it will all take care of itself is not an adequate plan. People who are raising, selling animals for exploitation, manufacturing products from animals and all those who consume them create a major problem, that will require every human who in any way participates, profits or benefits to be part of the solution.
So brain storm away. Break it down into its simplest parts. Start on a small scale in your mind. One town, for instance. Think detail, because when this happens everyone will be thinking detail.
It doesn’t have to be in sequence. Let your mind go everywhere – that’s what brainstorming does. Start at the periphery and work inward. Start in the center and work outward. Do both. Start anywhere your thoughts take you.
Don’t lie to people to get them to change. They’ll eventually know it and won’t trust anything else you say.
IN SUMMARY:
We could live in a place not too far in the future where suddenly no one could consume animals for a variety of reasons.
Frankly I don’t think it’s going to happen as slowly and as organized as most of you think. I believe it will be quite chaotic.
Stop raising them for slaughter was the obvious answer, and one I’ve given for decades.
However there has to be a reason besides, global warming and diet. Cut the production by 10% and that will be enough to reduce greenhouse gases to an acceptable level.
Also reduce electrical consumption and vehicle emissions and the animals are not much of a factor any more. Humans will find a way to keep the animals in play.
Re: diet, many animal eaters live long lives, so there’s no real motivation there.
That animals suffer is what’s left, and there’s not much interest, especially when vegans claim animals in factories are manufactured and not natural.
That leaves infiltration/invasion of the animals themselves, which would make them hazardous to eat or handle.
I believe that has already happened and we haven’t heard nor seen the worst of it.
Britain during the mad cow crisis, took all their infected cows/cattle put them in ditches and burned them alive. Will history repeat itself?
Some people are already transforming their animal farms to plants. They see what I and many others see, whether they eat animals or don’t.
Where there is no motivation to change the status quo, the universe steps in. It’s better that the people change themselves, but little has been done regarding securing the safety of our food supply and the safety factor is what I believe will bring the slaughterhouses to an abrupt halt.
When that happens, all hell will break loose. The world needs to be prepared with strategies. All cultures need to correct their harmful traditions, or the universe will do it for them.
Thank you for your comments.
Sharon Lee Davies-Tight, the Animal-Free Chef
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