Some Cultures are Wrong

I stopped eating meat about a year and a half ago. It was Barbaro, that magnificent Kentucky Derby winning racehorse who broke his mind leg in the Preakness, that triggered the decision. It’s a personal decision and one that works for me at this point in my life.

I try to avoid the politics of it all but with Michael Vick and professional dog-fighting making daily headlines I guess the time has come to write about my decision and about this schism in our society.

It has been said that a society is only as good as it treats its poorest, most helpless citizens and I would argue that how a society treats animals is also an indication of the culture. On both these fronts I am afraid that the good old U.S. of A is not doing so hot.

It isn’t eating meat that I have a problem with – in fact I’ve eaten duck a friend of mine shot. I figure that the duck was living free and had a good life before it was killed. I would eat an animal if I knew it had been treated humanely, lived a good life, and been slaughtered in a conscientious manner. Instead most of the meat we eat comes from factory farms. The animals spend their lives in cages pumped full of antibiotics so they don’t die from infections that spread like wild-fire, scared and living in squalor. The separation between American consumers and what we eat bothers me. I think if most of us saw the inside of a slaughterhouse we would probably never eat meat again – and we know this. So what do we do? We generally do our best to avoid understanding where our food comes from. We are willfully ignorant about the fuel we put into our bodies everyday.

You know in my mind there is no doubt that animals feel. My wife and I are admittedly dog nuts. Our two dogs Billy and Pooh Pooh are a part of our family. To the extreme. They sleep in bed with us, they sit on the furniture. They have transcended the title of “dogs” and become little four-legged people who can’t speak properly and wear fur coats year round. But I know they feel. They get scared during thunderstorms, they get happy when we are happy. The can sometimes be anxious, lonely, or depressed.

I can’t imagine how these dogs who are forced to participate in dog-fights feel when the fight is over. Brutalized, torn apart, injured, dying – forsaken by the masters that they loved, trained, fought, and died for. And then these beautiful animals are just cast aside like trash. I just can’t understand it. I do understand the argument that dog-fights are part of a culture – but to me that just calls into question the character and validity of an entire culture. Saying it is part of a culture doesn’t make it right. Racism, sexism, and child molestation are all part of cultures –sickening and disgusting cultures that should be abolished. Some cultures are just dead wrong and a culture that brutalizes animals for entertainment is one of these.