The Irony of Boxed Bacon and Boxed Pigs

In this most depraved set of conflicted realities there's the ostentatious, limited edition, presentation of parts of a pig carcass delivered in a black velvet box.

There are three "elite" options: As pictured - The Commander, (note the "truth in advertising" disclaimer on the cash), The Matador and The Woodsman. I'll spare readers the narratives of each... For a chuckle you know where to find the pseudo-hyper-masculine bravado and pretentious video launched for this orgy of perverted, self-indulgent excess. (Ancient Rome anyone?)

Meanwhile... We have millions of pigs that live their miserable short lives enslaved in tiny boxes that are lined only with pain and despair.

The Oscar Mayer folks compare their pig-meat to the quality of diamonds citing 4 critical "c's".

Here's my 4 that count more: 
Consciousness, Consideration, Care, and Compassion 





It is so wrong to treat these innocent pigs so harshly when there are many other kinder options. 

Unbox your heart... Unbox the pigs... Thank you.

The Irony... Free Pig-Slaves vs. Industrial Pork

I assume everyone is aware of the correlation and comparisons of animals used as commodities to human slavery. The relationship is obvious and has been called upon as a cornerstone for those who seek abolition and an end to all oppression.

But what a twist... An irony of sorts. As it seems the small "happy-animal" growers are attempting to split hairs not on what system of agriculture is slavery but rather that the "breed" of victim is the criteria. 

The argument is: 

"Once one appreciates that the industrial food system has been based from the beginning in slavery, and that animals are the new slaves. A great deal become clear. Free animals must be gotten rid of and those trying to save them and our common heritage in biodiversity must be branded as felons. Those protecting the pigs, sheep, and other animals, and their crucial biologic diversity for everyone, are functioning just as people did during slavery, risking their own freedom to protect blacks seeking their own.

Our farmers are part of a new anti-slavery movement. Saving the animals, means saving our freedom of food, sustainable agriculture, and ultimately ourselves."

In their figuring - It's not only the industrial housing model that is vicious but the choice of which "pedigree" of livestock that is kept. It is their meat-making facilities that are the ones where the ancestrally "pure" pigs are "free"! And all because the genetics of these captive pigs haven't been manipulated. As if the pig's biological integrity has any consequence to the individual animals...

But in human slavery it doesn't matter what the ethnic group is... The oppression is equally wrong. Likewise it doesn't matter if the porcine "breed" is Gloucestershire, Duroc, Mangalitsa or feral... It also doesn't matter if they are behind close bars or in a barbed wire field... It's wrong to treat any of them as resources or as vermin! 

The "range", "heritage" or "wild" pigs held as a commodity aren't and can never be "free". The conditions of their captivity maybe different... But in the end... Even the "free" ones have their bodies altered in some way, they're movements are still controlled and restricted, each is made to produce more copies of themselves, families are still separated, and they all still meet the same end meant to benefit their keepers. I'm not seeing a difference worth the mention... In small or giant holdings, the pigs are denied  genuine control of their own lives. They are both enslaved to benefit the monetary greed and gustatory gluttony of someone else. The camouflage of the size of the operation or the "breed" of the animal, does nothing to alter the intent in the end... Both examples reduce living beings to consumable objects! No system of animal "agriculture" hosts any "free" beings! The only "free" pigs are those left outside of man-made traps.

That said, I think it's disingenuous, pitiful and ironic indeed that some slave-holders would call out other slave-holders for being the blacker kettle. The only true liberators are those who have removed themselves from the "animals as property" paradigm completely. They are vegan and not part of any system that uses other lives for their own gratification. Free the victims and yourself as well - Don't buy into "happy", "humane" or "free" meat - There simply is no such thing. 

"The pigs and other farm animals - they've typically just been used for domestication, sort of like slavery. We are just exploiting them for our own purposes - And nobody is stopping to realize there's someone behind that face." 
Judy Woods Founder of Pigs Peace Sanctuary A Home for Life

Black Meat - Female Meat - Cow Meat... Free the Slaves

The Slave Auction
BY FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER


The sale began—young girls were there, Defenseless in their wretchedness,
Whose stifled sobs of deep despair Revealed their anguish and distress.


And mothers stood, with streaming eyes,
And saw their dearest children sold;
Unheeded rose their bitter cries,
While tyrants bartered them for gold.

Auction Barn Jackson Lee Nesbitt Courtesy of Morris Museum of Art

And woman, with her love and truth—
For these in sable forms may dwell—
Gazed on the husband of her youth,
With anguish none may paint or tell.

Unknown

And men, whose sole crime was their hue,
The impress of their Maker's hand,
And frail and shrinking children too,
Were gathered in that mournful band.


Ye who have laid your loved to rest,
And wept above their lifeless clay,
Know not the anguish of that breast,
Whose loved are rudely torn away.

Cattle Auction Wayne Grindberg

Ye may not know how desolate
Are bosoms rudely forced to part,
And how a dull and heavy weight
Will press the life-drops from the heart.

Now I know many will criticize the dreaded comparison... As for me, it's crystal clear that the analogies fit.


886 cattle and calves and a Young Farmers’ Club slave auction were just some of the highlights at Bakewell auction.

© FARMERS GUARDIAN Farmer's daughter Steph in the slave auction.

And when even the industry folks make it part of their "livestock" show -
Whose to say it shouldn't be so?


There's much to correct on the disturbing and dangerous systems that peddle flesh as a commodity. 

Free the Slaves

Violence Justified - Against Legal Terrorism

This isn't the post I was going to write about direct action... But it will more than do for what point I was hoping to make.


Like most who seek compassionate alternatives in their lives I would never think of "forcing" anything on anyone.  In the first place, I know that any authentic changes people make must come from their own desire in order to be lasting.  Secondly... "force", destruction and violence just isn't my style. Oddly enough even before I became aware of hidden injustices that I was participating in... I still always thought myself to be a "peace-nik".  If there was conflict, I consistently sought out a rational way through it.
  
After all, violence is never rational...  Or is it?


Now there are a few occasions that I recall using physical means as protection... Once even against a large, vicious dog that was attacking my vulnerable dog Midas.  It hurt me to do that... I actually kicked the aggressive dog in the face for him to release his bite from my dog... I felt ill at the force that was necessary for me to use.  


Even earlier than that... As a tween I remember being over a friend's house whose father (drunk I suppose), took a belt to her in a wild fit of rage.  The strap clapped on her small body, even tinier than my own, when a giant, confident voice of indignation rose from within me.  With all the strength that my 70 pound body had, I grabbed the man's hand and demanded: "Stop! You're hurting her!"  I think he did out of shame...

I think many times injustice requires stern confrontation to put wrong doing in it's place.  In the defense of ourselves and of others there is a line we all have that will tolerate "No more!".  But with nonhumans it's different.  Those lines we all have, become obscured or erased - as these beings who we know are being violated in the most brutal ways - are "possessions".  And society's rules and laws say because they "belong" to someone, it is not any one's place to interfere with that "legal" ownership... No matter what they do to their "property".

But society has been wrong before... And not all "laws" are right.  So how is it that the best among us still do not come to the direct aid of innocent victims, labeled as "food animals", "lab animals", "fur animals", "production" or "entertainment" animals?  How and why do we remain civil with such atrocities going on?


I think I know the answer and it is found in part in these articles.  Ironically, the first - Do We Need a Militant Movement to Save the Planet (and Ourselves)? is co-authored by Lierre Keith the writer of the Vegetarian Myth. And the other is written by Mikey Z: Our way of life is the problem
In both articles the agreement is that most of us live comfortably where the risks and possible sacrifices incurred in "illegal" dissent might be more than most of us want to make... 


Perhaps Peter Young speaking at the 2011 Animal Rights Conference touches on some truth when he suggests we might not fight so hard for nonhumans because of unacknowledged speciesism... 

But some do engage in direct action in spite of the consequences:  Like Daryl Hannah, the SHAC 7,  Kumi Naidoo, Tim deChristopher, and less famous others...  And most recently it is Steve Hindi founder of SHARK who was assaulted a few nights ago - Hit by a vehicle whose driver was caught attending the shameful Berk's County Pigeon massacres.  This is not the first time Hindi has been assaulted.  Clearly animal rights activists risk personal safety, their very lives and liberty.  It's true... The blood shed goes beyond the nonhuman victims and to the activists themselves.


I hope that it is here that I can admit to sometimes being cautious for my own safety and that my courage lacks the follow through that I know the victims deserve.



But like many, what I do as an activist or what happens to me by being such, affects others in my life...  When you're alone - You can do what you want. When others love you - It's not that simple...  I can't and don't do what my heart tells me I should.  I stay within the laws even though I don't respect them... This I think for everyone - Is the hardest thing about knowing what justice is but not taking direct action to make it so. 


So... The point I wanted to make was that none of us really knows what will be the catalyst or the breaking point that lets us cross "that line" beyond lawful (peaceful) advocacy... But  for those who do - I hope we all support them as the heroes they truly are!