It is not uncommon to meet a person flaunting their vegan or vegetarian lifestyle as if this mere choice deserves a form of unanimous glorification. Many choose to take on these diets simply for the attention—to have something to tell others the first chance they are given after meeting someone new that separates themselves a little more from the norm. Though it should go without saying, regardless of their reasons for transitioning their diet, those who choose to broadcast their 'lifestyles' subsequently spoil the reputation of others who opt against such displays of bragging.
Vegetarianism and the like was originally meant to be adopted only by those who held a sincere concern in the well-being of animals. However, it was later found that these diets also provided extensive health benefits such as the potential to extend one's lifespan by 6-10 years in comparison to carnivores. In addition, vegetarians were found to have doubled their chances of preventing heart disease and significantly reducing vulnerability to diabetes, obesity, high cholesterol, and kidney stones by simply cutting meat out of their diet.
Moreover, allow us to delve deeper into the foundational reasoning for seeking a vegetarian lifestyle.
Cows: The kill floor is off limits to journalists and the curiosity of the public. What little information we do know about the cruelty that occurs behind those doors are only provided through the words of slaughterhouse workers themselves. Cows are coerced to form a single file line just outside the kill floor as they are brought forth to a conveyor belt that lowers them individually. Standing on the catwalk above, the slaughterer uses a stunner to inject a metal bolt between the cow's eyes and into its brain with the intentions of causing it to go brain dead. The cow is then chained and lifted by its rear legs as it is transported to a second terminal on the kill floor where its aorta is to be sliced causing the animal to be bled. Bill Haw, CEO of Kansas City's National Farms stated in an interview with Frontline that "animals come there to die, to be eviscerated, to be decapitated, to be de-hided -- and all of those are violent, bloody and difficult things to watch. So your first and foremost impression of at least the initial stages of the packing house are a very violent, very dehumanizing sort of thing."
Pigs: At six months old, factory farmed pigs are scared into submission by being beaten on their backs and snouts as well as proded with electrical rods that are shoved in their rectums. If packed too tightly as they are transported to slaughterhouses, some pigs experience their internal organs forcing themselves out of their rectum causing approximately 10% to arrive already severely injured or killed. Prior to their arrival, some pigs are found frozen along the lining of their transport truck or die from heat stroke due to extreme climates. Others may fall and suffocate to death or experience heart attacks if they become frantic and stuck between one another. Live pigs that are frozen to the truck upon their arrival are cut loose by workers wielding knives. They are then led inside the slaughterhouse where they are stunned similarly to cows and then bled before being taken to scalding tanks while many remain suffering alive and fully conscious.
Poultry: Upon their arrival to the slaughterhouse, chickens are shackled by their legs and hung upside-down. As they attempt to break free, many suffer broken legs from their rough handling. Carried by the shackles, the chickens are submerged in an electrified water bath that causes them to become paralyzed for easier bleeding. These chickens are still conscious upon the slicing of their aorta and millions remain alive for their scalding in the defeathering tanks.
Nearly all animals are denied food and water on their long journeys to slaughterhouses as many travel hundreds of miles from the farm they were raised. Most companies refuse to euthanize their animals because their local laws prevent them to sell the meat of a euthanized animal. Thus, despite the use of stunning devices that often fail to render an animal brain dead after the second, third, and forth attempt, countless animals remain fully conscious, their hearts still beating, their minds fully aware and feeling everything that is being done to them.
Therefore the question remains, how we can justify turning a blind eye to the gruesome, inhumane bloodshed of a factory farmed animal while pointing fingers and attempting to criminalize someone who so much as kicks an innocent puppy on the streets? What causes us to call one animal food while viewing another as worthy of being a family pet with privileges and rights against abuse? Though the Bible gives us little to work with, it declines to blatantly say whether eating meat is neither wrong nor right. It simply says that people did once sin was born and death entered the world. Swallow that for a moment. Perhaps the decision to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle was meant to be made in the eyes of the beholder. If one educates themselves on the journey and treatment of the animal that came to rest on their dinner table and recognizes that treatment as cruelty, perhaps it is wrong.
