Chickens, Tornado-Trophies and Other Twisted Ironies

This sea of white feathers and dead bodies is a scene from the devastation left by recent tornadoes in Mississippi. The article headline says "scores" of chickens were killed.  Then it continues that out of more than 220,000 birds "few remain alive". I'm not going to nit-pick this little inconsistency - But it's there. And this isn't the only "poultry" facility that's been destroyed. Tyson owns around 1,500 such warehouses in Miss. alone.

According to Meatingplace Tyson Foods has deployed cook teams to help feed the relief workers left to clean up the debris and corpses. The irony here of course is being surrounded by carcasses and eating them at the same time. It would be so helpful if Tyson served vegan meals instead. But you know that's not going to happen...

I landed on this other image at Weather.com as I was checking to make sure folks I love in the mid-west were okay... They were and are - Thankfully. But this scene struck me on so many levels... There's an irony to a trophy deer head that survives a twister, but whose body was ravaged by a single shot... There's also something perverse in wanting to save such an item that represents such loss. Loss from the sad killing and loss from the vicious storm. 

I also think what it must be like for countless nonhumans everyday whose habitat and homes are devastated by bulldozers and other razing machinery... And those who dodge bullets and live in fear of the human-made destruction. Surely we have made a wicked world for them. :/

Now all this is not to say that I don't have profound sympathy for human loss as well. Every which way it's tragic and that's just my point. With all that is unfair in life; With all that is unkind and violent in nature... Do we have to add to it? 

You can do so much to reduce and avoid the twisted harms in life by simply living as an ethical vegan. Thanks and safety to those who are living in such a way. 

Humane Meat? Thousands of Pigs, Cows & Birds Die in Heatwave

No one has escaped this oppressive heat.

• Certainly not the nearly 55,000 birds that have perished in Kansas and North Carolina.
• Or the 2500 pigs Missouri.
• Or the 4,000 cows in Iowa.  The thousand in Kansas. 1500 in South Dakota. 
• And in Texas the ones that don't get killed by the heat are being sent to slaughter all the sooner because there just isn't enough water or grass.

No big worries for these ranchers and harmers though... They get reimbursed through the Livestock Indemnity Program and all is well.


But... Just in case you are prone to eating any of these creatures - I suggest that you re-consider what "humane meat" is... Are you factoring in for the whole system that you contribute to?  Are you taking into account the torturous deaths to these animals in floods and fires?  Or are you just considering their happy deaths at the slaughterhouses?


There really is a cooler way to live...

CHRISTMAS ARK ANIMALS - SOME STARVE AT SEA

To encourage a plant based diet, I often say that we should stop fattening animals in order to fatten people. But starving 28,000 cows and sheep in the middle of the sea, was not what I had in mind. Not at all. And thinking about animals traveling by boat - I'm reminded of this Christmas decoration I recently unpacked... It's very delicate and makes a tinkling sound when it moves. It's quite lovely, I've had it for years. But with my current awareness and vegan views, I've come to see this ornament quite differently. You see, there isn't an animal on this ark that I can delight in, without remembering the exploitations this particular "species" is subject to: Elephants are chained, giraffes are penned, lions are caged, rhinos are poached and mice are murdered. Chimps are in labs... and every animal is in trouble. But the unicorns? They just got darn lucky I guess! Xmas ornaments - part 1 of 3