Let's Talk About It

There's a major problem in this country when it comes to communication about animal usage. It has become completely taboo to talk about animals as commodities and tools anymore. Usage of animals for human means is spoken in back rooms in hushed tones nowadays. To talk of selling or using or slaughtering or euthanizing an animal is to put your neck on the line. You never know who you might offend with talk like that.

The problem with not talking about practical use of animals for human means is that the uses for the animals become out of our control once we stop talking about them. If we do not talk about slaughtering animals for meat, then we lose all control we have over that part of the food industry. Now most meat animals are raised far away from public eyes. Most Americans never ever see where their meat comes from, how it is raised, and how it is processed. This is beyond completely taboo, it is borderline illegal right now. There's laws in Congress that may come to pass that will make it entirely illegal for pictures and video depicting CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) and large slaughterhouses to be seen by the public. If we cannot see what goes on inside there, then how will we ever be able to change it? If we shield it from ourselves and only see what the companies that run these places want us to see, how will we ever know the truth?

I think along with the "buy local" food movement, there should be a "grow and process local" food movement. If there was a slaughterhouse in every town, people would be more interested in the safe and clean operations of it and take a vested interest in the animals that where processed there. No longer would we be eating mystery meat from Monsanto that was processed God knows when by God knows who. Instead, we would be eating fresh meat from a farm down the road and processed in a local slaughterhouse run by people we know. Wouldn't that be a wonderful idea?