Empathy is quite different from compassion.
Compassion reacts emotionally and creates a desire to help and sets out to help.
Empathy is feeling aware of others’ emotions and then understanding how they feel but does not act to help.
When pet owners think of how they feel for their pet, which is an animal, they could not ever imagine anything harming it, or someone taking it away to slaughter. You see where I am going and no, I am not vegan, I am however aware and have compassion.
Moving along – Americans consume 30 Billion pounds an 8.7% increase. This does not account for seafood and fish.
The normal average for how many land animals are slaughtered each year for food is 80 billion, but given the 8,7% increase from last year, that figure will be much higher.
A wide range of animals is sentient beings, meaning they experience positive and negative feelings, pleasure, joy, pain, and distress. All animals with a backbone (vertebrates) according to the Animal Welfare League, they further state that other invertebrates (animals without a backbone) decapod crustaceans, and cephalopods have complex central nervous systems, one of the hallmarks of sentience. This includes Crayfish, Grouper Fish, Sea Otters, Dolphins, and more.
Lobsters, crabs, and octopuses are recognized as sentient beings.
If you live in the United States you may not be aware of how many animals are classed as sentient beings because the US refuses to fully do so even though a majority of states are committed to animal sentience.
Let’s look at Beef – Cows – which are all sentient beings who suffer and feel pain – yet in the US 30 billion pounds was consumed last year of sentient beings.
That is just beef, if you are inclined look up other sentient beings, look up chicken, goat, and sheep.
I’d never tell you that what you eat is wrong – you need to figure that out for yourself – I am a meat eater and more and more I find I can’t eat it off my plate if I focus on it – what’s that tell me? Well – for ME, it tells me this does not set well with my soul, consuming the trauma, fear, and pain of another sentient being. It also begs the question in me, can this meat affect my body and my emotions? According to this vegan website (don’t balk at their knowledge, unlike us, they have done the research and carefully choose what they will put in their bodies).
They state and I quote from the article
Eating meat might increase cortisol in our bloodstream. Is it because the animal experienced stress before they were killed? Because of limited data, we still can’t make a solid conclusion. However, we can see the glimpse of light we have so far. Many studies have noticed how animals experience stress before being slaughtered or even from the way they were raised. Cortisol levels in these animals increased as well.
They “may experience fear, dehydration, and hunger; increased fatigue” (4), and it impacts the meat quality itself. “Severe meat quality defects, bruises, and hemorrhages, and the increased spread of pathogens have been linked with severe pre-slaughter stress.” (5) And talking about food safety, there are pathogens found in meat that can have negative health impacts on humans. Those pathogens are “Salmonella spp., Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, …” (6) So there is a risk of eating meat from animals who experienced stress before being killed. Therefore choosing plant protein over animal-based protein can be a much safer option.”
I would say that an animal that is a sentient being would experience stress without a doubt – visit a slaughterhouse if you don’t believe me and then imagine it was you and your kids, mother, and father in the line to be next with the smell of blood in the air, the sounds of pain and panic – etc. Stress is an understatement that is traumatic and would be unnecessary if we all showed some compassion, restricting our meat intake and making these institutions unnecessary.
I read something once it said “If your meat was processed with glass windows the whole world would be vegan” I believe that.
The only thing I would add here is to stop eating meat without respect for the animal that died in such a horrific way – if we believe in “humanely” killed, we buy into marketing, and also let me ask, imagine what it would be like, what situation or circumstances to humanly do that to us? Can you think of any??
We can’t plow down meat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner too. That is over indulgence and also in gluttony -as one of the components of gluttony is habitual greed/excess. We need to learn how to cook and we won’t need to buy meat for every occasion.
My mom had 5 kids and worked as a nurses aide 6 days a week (Very hard physical work)and cooked a meal EVERY night and rarely did it include meat, she couldn’t afford it. You might get a sprinkle of ham in a homemade scalloped potato dish. We had spaghetti without meatballs and we didn’t care. Sometimes she might make a meatloaf or chipped beef on toast- it was not often – we had cereal or egg/ toast for breakfast and school lunches, on weekends we would have soup and grilled cheese, leftovers from the fridge warmed up, pancakes, eggs, and in the summertime, salads like macaroni and potato salad, carrot and raisin salad, etc she was either creative or that is how she learned, either way, we never went hungry and her food was delicious. And, it was not often that it included meat.
I’d like to imagine and see a world where everyone RESPECTED the animals and acknowledged their immense suffering and DEMANDED the FDA crackdown on these mass slaughters and we Americans decide that “over the top meat indulgence is enough, we are cutting back as a nation and showing the rest of the world it can be achieved and in doing so look what we do for our planet!”
Anyway – if you want to be who you are inside, take off the masks, turn off the tv and go visit a farm that slaughters in-mass, a real farm doesn’t do that. Look into the cow’s eyes, connect with them, and pet a chicken, or any other land animal that is there for your consumption.
See how you feel then?
I hope like me, realizing that we need to change.
Lisa
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