Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Cameras and Vegetarianism

A supermarket in Australia may start requiring its meat suppliers to have cameras in their sheds and slaughterhouses, in order to be sure they are following the standards for animal welfare, according to this post: Coles Supermarkets in Australia Wants Camera Surveillance In Supplier's Slaughterhouses, posted August 20.

Image source.

My first thought, upon reading this story, is "WHYYYYYYY would you want that?" Really? Cameras? Why would you want to digitally store footage of a bunch of pigs, so you can watch it and think, "All these pigs, which look quite alive in this video- they're all dead now. They were killed one by one and their bodies were cut up and covered in plastic wrap and sold."

That's horrifying. Why would anyone want MORE information available about what goes on in slaughterhouses?

But any line of thinking that says "the less you know, the better" is highly suspicious.

So here is my question: Do people who eat meat have a responsibility to know where it comes from?

In an ideal world, the right thing for me to do is become a vegetarian for now, do some research, decide what meat sources I'm okay with, based on how the animals are treated, and then only eat those kinds of meat. Right? Maybe everyone should try being a vegetarian for some short period of time.

But I can tell you I'm not about to do that. Being a vegetarian is incredibly inconvenient. And I have other things in my life that are more important than looking for information about slaughterhouses.

So I'm not sure what to conclude about this...

But here's another thing: Why is there this idea in American culture that eating meat is "manly" and vegetarians are weak and wimpy? And that caring about animals is just for crazy hippies? I've never tried being a vegetarian, but I imagine it's really hard- it's hard to find stuff you can eat when you're out somewhere, the vegetarian choices are so limited at restaurants, plus you have to deal with people thinking you're wimpy/over-sensitive/unreasonable for not eating meat. If anything, the vegetarians are the ones who are strong.

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