It could have been a fact or fiction, but this is the story, about a prisoner in Siberia. For months and months, he had been eating porridge and potatoes. boiled by himself. He could no longer tolerate it; his soul was craving for meat. At the end he pulled a knife, in a jiffy; carved a piece of flesh from his own thigh and placed the pulsating morsel in a pan to be grilled. But he did not have the luck to consume it, as a shocked prison guard gunned him down instantly.
Fig. 1 What a craving for roasted flesh !
It is not difficult for us to sense the pain of the self inflicted torture. Billions of
cows, lambs, pigs and birds daily feel a similar pain when their throats are slit. As the
most intelligent living specimen in the world today, it is our prime duty to take concrete
steps to prevent or at least curtail such brutal, vulgar ways of producing food. Descending
from an ancestry of fruit and leaf eating primates the humanoids have at some stage,
probably due to a long term drought, got into the habit of supplementing
the eating of roots and yams, by hunting. Hitherto ‘hunting’ became an important social
activity which brought immense joy and a thrill for the savage like tribes. When they fail
to capture wild species they started killing their gentle pets and progressed even to
‘cannibalism’.
There isn’t much of a difference between the killing of a man and a large animal such as an elephant or a whale. Both will experience the same sort of agony. There are some animals that have to be destroyed; disease causing mosquitoes, pests and bugs. Some love their pets so much that they look after them as their ‘own children’, but they can consume the minced meat from a young gentle lamb without blinking an eye lid. The excuse is that “the act of killing has been invisible to them”. What a lame excuse!
The mental powers of the human being is in a highly advanced state. The education imparted
to them from early childhood have produced a generation where the majority has a good sense
of values possessing the attitudes beneficial to the society and the planet. They very well
know the cruelty to animals is directly proportional to the amount of flesh we consume. But
the habit of eating fish and meat supersedes all good intentions.
Except for a very small minority who feel that animals are there for us to eat, most human
beings would like to stop being cruel to all living things. It is not easy to change from
the state of a ‘carnivore’ to a ‘herbivore’. A drunkard cannot be a teetotaler overnight.
So you have to achieve it in steps.
Fig. 2 Are we the only food for humans?
“The pheasant, partridge and the lark
Flew to thy house as to the Ark.
The willing Ox of himself came
Home to the slaughter with the lamb
And every beast did thither bring
Himself to be an offering” Anonymous
Copied from Climbing mount improbable by Richard Dawkins.
A question often raised is, “ If we don’t eat meat and fish what is there for us to teat?”
The tastiest dishes, usually come after the main meal; as desserts. These are usually sliced
juicy fruit laced with ice crème. Colourful salads that adorn a table would be tomatoes,
cucumber etc. and not chunks of meat. Even among a menu of chicken sea food etc, a cashew
curry, devilled mush room and fried potatoes will have the pride of place. Fish and chips is
a popular dish. Many children love the potato chips more than the fish part. So it is only a
case of getting used to a vegetable diet.
Abstinence from eating flesh is only one way of curtailing cruelty to animals. There can be
other options too. It is a well known fact that only the plants can synthesize food. It is
only a percentage of the food made by plants that come to us when we consume animals.
Animals are an intermediary group. If research is undertaken the day scientists make
synthetic meat and fish could not be far away. Soy products with the meat flavours are
already available. It is high time some of the big companies to invest in producing better
quality food using grains and yams. Then the dairy farmers will produce the milk the sheep
farmers will produce the fur but the food will come from the vegetable stuff.
Fig. 3 We are herbivores. Let us live in peace.
Slaying animals for food is not the only instance where we are unkind to our dumb friends. Sometimes flying animals with highly aesthetic plumage are shot just for the sake of shooting. Among some heartless barbaric tribes shooting ducks and deer is a sport, Angling is considered as a suitable pastime for some gentle folk in some supposed to be highly civilized states. Towering majestic Jumbos are rifled down just to get precious tusks that go to make ivory ornaments. A grenade would be exploded inside the mammoth body of a pregnant blue whale giving a flimsy excuse, to get over a legal clause.
Fig, 4 My plumage has taken me to a high risk group.
Bengal tiger is murdered to extract the colourful coat which may adorn a drawing room of a gentleman. What a gentle conscience he must be having to encourage killing by the act of buying such an artefact ? A powerful rhino would be killed to get a horn with the belief that it would be a good aphrodisiac. Even the introduction of Viagra does not seem to have curtailed this illegal practice.
can a person with a heart shoot them?
These are merely a few instances where humans act in inhuman ways. It is up to you to build up a clear conscience and take steps to cut down the killing and torturing all living things in a haphazard manner. Laws and heavy fines are not sufficient to curtail the massive destruction of wild life in the world. If we cannot play an active role to reduce the destruction of wild life we can easily boycott the items produced by the killing of animals.
Even after it has been proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the smoking is bad. the
tobacco companies still make a big profit at the expense of our health. So it would not be
an easy task to make the mankind give up the sadistic ways of killing and torturing
beautiful birds and docile lambs. Yet a start has to be made to make the Homo sapiens a
Proper human being.
