The Blood On Our Hands: How You Can Go Vegan To Help The Voiceless & Save The Planet In The Process

Aadesh Wickrematunge

Last month, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa submitted a proposal to ban cattle slaughter in Sri Lanka. The Parliamentary Group of the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) approved the prime minister’s proposal. The following article makes an impassioned case not just for the non-consumption of meat but brings to light the horrors of the dairy industry and why human beings should adopt a vegan lifestyle. ‘While we take care of our pets and wince at videos of animal cruelty, we also condemn innocent cows, chickens, pigs, lambs and fish to the slaughterhouse to be cut up into pieces, drained of their blood and sent to the supermarket in neat packages for us to enjoy. We may in our hearts truly believe we love animals, but what that means is we’re suffering a kind of cognitive dissonance where our actions don’t align with our beliefs. Not only do we not intervene in this morally reprehensible crime, we pay and fatten up the industries that are causing it to happen, so that they continue the torture on our behalf.’

By Aadesh Wickrematunge –OCTOBER 9, 2020

Each year some 77 billion land animals and over 100 billion marine animals are murdered for food around the world. It is a holocaust, and it is the longest, most colossal holocaust in all of history. And on what grounds do we, as consumers, justify our contribution to this holocaust? 

Taste pleasure, convenience, personal choice, tradition, because animals eat other animals etc.

On what other issues would we ever even entertain, let alone accept, such asinine justifications? 

The core of the issue is this – if it’s unnecessary to kill and eat animals to survive, what justification do we have for doing so? Animals have been victimised by man to such a massive degree that they aren’t even considered victims anymore. They are mere commodities with number tags, stripped of the inherent value of being a sentient being. But in reality they are living, feeling beings just like us, and they are the most oppressed beings ever. What they are going through is a holocaust of proportions unparalleled. And for what, other than to indulge an insatiable greed for taste pleasure? 

In issues of injustice, we must always see things from the perspective of the oppressed, not the oppressor. Remove yourself from the perspective of a human and for just a moment try to imagine being a prisoner from birth, being torn away from your loved ones, living a miserable life denied of freedom, and then, finally having your throat slit so that someone may feast on your flesh for some momentary pleasure. A taste pleasure that costs that animal its entire life. This is how it is for factory farm animals, and for any other non-human being reared for its flesh. How do we morally justify doing these things if it’s unnecessary? Are your taste buds worth more than the entire life and wellbeing of an animal? 

Some might be offended by my usage of the word holocaust. Yet the dictionary definition of holocaust is exactly descriptive of what factory farming is – slaughter on a mass scale. Take it from Isaac Bashevis Singer, who escaped Nazi occupied Poland. ‘’What do they know?” he asks. “All these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world, they have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation, and all the animals were made for us to be food. To be tormented and exterminated. In relation to animals, all humans are nazis. For the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka.’’

That anyone would dispute this, from an actual holocaust survivor, is a testament to how deeply indoctrinated we are, and to how far gone we are, in order to justify our unappeasable animal eating habits. Justifying this, is justifying a holocaust. 

Now you might think that your decision to consume animal products is a personal choice, and being a personal choice, vegans should stop condemning animal eaters. Live and let live, as they say. Well, vegans ought to stop condemning people for their choices once animal eaters stop condemning animals to slaughterhouses to have their throats slit open so they can enjoy a burger. Or a mus curry. Something is no longer a personal choice when there’s a victim involved, just like a killer may think they are making a personal choice when deciding to kill someone, or a rapist when deciding to sexually assault someone. Should we condone the behaviour of rapists and murderers and their decision to cause unnecessary suffering to others, on the basis of the sensory pleasure they derive from this? We wouldn’t even justify the torture of child molestors and murderers, and of our own worst enemies, yet we come up with whatever justification we can, so that we can do it to the most vulnerable and innocent of beings. 

The animal agriculture industry knows how horrific their industry practices are, and that if we, the consumers, had any idea of the horrors that went on behind walls, we wouldn’t buy their products. That’s why they give us marketing labels and advertisements of ‘happy cows’ to distract us from the grim reality, so that they can make a profit off us, and a profit off exploiting animals. A good example of this is the term ‘free range.’ When we see those ‘free range’ labels on eggs in the supermarket, we assume the hens that produced those eggs live a good life, wandering around freely, and most importantly, living without fear, exploitation or pain. However, it is very much the opposite. Free range hens come from hatcheries where male chicks are thrown into a blender to be macerated alive within moments of their birth, all because they are viewed as a waste product. Female chicks are oftentimes de-beaked, and egg-laying hens are shoved in small cages with such little space that they can’t even turn around or lie down. Ultimately, all free range hens end up in slaughterhouses to have their lives ruthlessly snuffed out. Do not fall prey to the marketing ploys – free range is a fabrication by the animal industry, designed to ease our conscience as consumers, so that we can continue to be complicit in this mass atrocity. 

Let’s also dispense with the ‘humane meat’ and ‘humane slaughter’ crutch many choose to lean on to justify their meat-eating. The definition of humane is to show compassion and benevolence. But how can one compassionately and benevolently murder a being who doesn’t want to die? Simply put, ‘humane slaughter’ is an oxymoron, because you can never justify taking the life of another being when they don’t need to die, and therefore slavery, cruelty, torture and murder can never be compassionate or benevolent. 

But only refraining from consuming meat isn’t enough, for the dairy industry is just as cruel, if not more cruel and horrifying than the meat industry. For a dairy cow to produce milk, she must be pregnant or have recently given birth. Cows will be forcibly impregnated by dairy farmers who will shove their arm into the animal’s anus, and then inject her vagina with bull semen. This is more or less rape and the cows will suffer both physical and psychological distress. It is even performed on an apparatus that is commonly referred to in the industry as a ‘rape rack.’ Once the cow gives birth after a 9-month pregnancy, her baby is snatched away because, heaven forbid, one simply cannot have a baby cow drinking the milk that we humans want. When her baby is taken, the mother cow will bellow in extreme anguish for days, sometimes months, even returning to the same place where she last saw her baby. The terrified calves who are pining for their mothers are dispatched to the slaughterhouse, shot in the head with a bolt gun and have their throats slashed open so someone somewhere can salivate over a veal parmigiana. The female babies suffer the same fate as their mother, spending their life being hooked to milking machines until years later, when they are completely exhausted and cannot provide milk anymore, they are sent to their deaths.

Fortunately, we as intelligent beings possessing moral agency, can change this. Next time you are in the supermarket, you can either choose dairy and contribute to the unimaginable suffering it causes to a mother and her calf, or move your hand a few centimeters away and pick up an alternative such as rice milk, coconut milk, almond milk, soy milk or oat milk. At least one of these options, if not others, will be available.

Earthlings, a 2005 documentary about the human exploitation of animals

Many of us consider ourselves to be animal lovers, because we genuinely love our dogs and cats. But this doesn’t really make us animal lovers, it makes us speciesist. Just like racism is the discrimination and prejudice directed towards people based on an ethnic group, speciesism is the differing treatment and moral consideration we give beings based on the membership of their species. We think we have the right to enslave, torture, mutilate and murder any non-human being. While we take care of our pets and wince at videos of animal cruelty, we also condemn innocent cows, chickens, pigs, lambs and fish to the slaughterhouse to be cut up into pieces, drained of their blood and sent to the supermarket in neat packages for us to enjoy. But if it was dogs and cats in those cages being hacked to pieces, we would be outraged. We protest something like the Yulin dog meat festival, but what moral difference is there between a dog and a cow? None, other than that we have arbitrarily decided some are okay to care for, and others to be bolt-gunned in the head for a burger. 

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