Be Kind, and Read this Seven Times

October 25th, 2005 by Vihar Sheth
Posted in Environment, Responsibility, Society

My girlfriend Katie and I attended a book signing Monday night at Left Bank Books, “the only independently-owned, full-service bookstore in the greater metropolitan area of St. Louis”. The guest was Ingrid Newkirk, president and co-founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and the book was Making Kind Choices: Everyday Ways to Enhance Your Life Through Earth - And Animal-Friendly Living. I haven’t read the book yet but it’s moved to the top of my list.

The event was well attended; about twice as many people as chairs filed into the store to hear Newkirk speak (the chairs didn’t file in, they were there already). She started with a brief introduction of herself, the organization and her experience collecting and compiling tomes of information over the years. This collection made the book “easy to write” - a claim that admittedly puts her in the minority of authors. Newkirk then described newspaper articles she clipped in airports and hotel rooms over the past few months on the book tour, describing the amazing abilities and grotesque abuse of animals around the world and in our own back yards.

Her anecdotes light-heartedly described her current book tour, which has taken her everywhere during only cold weather, and more serious situations, like a trial in Las Vegas between PETA and an entertainer who was caught beating chimpanzees with a metal rod before every one of his shows. PETA had exposed the abuse and the entertainer had sued the organization for invasion of privacy. I guess if you beat your children or your spouse in private it’s acceptable; just don’t do it in public. Our very own Tony LaRussa, founder of the Animal Rescue Foundation, even made an appearance of support during the trial.

I asked her a philosophical question regarding what it takes to stay motivated and empower oneself to make the leap from leading a principled life to compelling others to do the same. Newkirk replied indirectly, which she admits is one of her faults (someone earlier asked her for a one-line answer to a question and she said she didn’t know how to give one-line answers). She spoke of the suffering of animals for our greed and the scarcity of time itself. She said that we must embrace the responsibility to fight for those who can’t fight for themselves and told a story, which I’ve paraphrased below:

Imagine yourself sitting in a bookstore like you’re doing now. Three armed men barge in, round everyone up and throw them into the back of a truck. It’s dark, cramped and you’ve been made certain by a more knowledgeable individual among the group that everyone will, without a doubt, be murdered upon reaching the truck’s destination. Everyone is frightened. The road is bumpy, and through some dumb stroke of luck the back hatch of the truck flips open just for a minute. You fall out and it shuts again, leaving everyone else trapped. Their eyes are stuck on you and they wish with all their might they could be on the ground next to you. You hide as not to be seen and then take off running. They suspect you will call for help and tell the world your friends were taken and are going to be killed if nothing is done. Instead, you go home, sit on the couch and do nothing, letting them die. You go on about your business, knowing you could have done something but didn’t.

You could have - should have - done what your friends thought you would do but you didn’t. Apathy is not an option for those with the ability to affect change. Killing animals for food, leather and other product may have been acceptable in the past when civiliation was developing, but it is no longer. We have evolved past that. Being lazy and turning your cheek is inexcusable. Ignorance truly is bliss, especially when there’s a dollar to be made. Feeding the world carcasses at a lower cost everyday results in some of the most heinous crimes imaginable. Eating meat isn’t going to become taboo overnight, but in the mean time people need to fight for the humane treatment of the animals who are sacrificed everyday to make us fatter, lazier and more wasteful.

Check out these videos and pictures in PETA’s Media Center to see what actually happens to these creatures before they become your food.

A woman in the audience asked, “How do you know you’re making a difference?” Newkirk responded that sales people are taught people need to hear a message seven times before they process it. You could be the first, third or even tenth person to expose the cruelty of animals to an individual. Keep spreading the word because you’ll never know how many people you’ve actually influenced.

From National Geographic:

To provide enough beef, chicken, and pork to meet the demand, the livestock industry has moved to factory farming. Producing eight ounces of beef requires 6,600 gallons (25,000 liters) of water; 95 percent of world soybean crops are consumed by farm animals, and 16 percent of the world’s methane, a destructive greenhouse gas, is produced by belching, flatulent livestock. The enormous quantities of manure produced at factory farms becomes toxic waste rather than fertilizer, and runoff threatens nearby streams, bays, and estuaries.

The arguments that hunting and the murder of animals for food controls animal populations is flawed. Population control though regulated breeding is a much more humane option. Spay and neuter your pets. Protect the wilderness so that animals can live their own lives and control their own populations through natural selection and survival of the fittest (undeniable concepts that are currently being challenged).

Remember - the goal isn’t to convince every person eating meat or using animal products is wrong and should be stopped. The goal is to convince enough people so that the odds tip in the favor of the kind and using alternatives make more sense. Once this threshold is reached, the world will begin to change its habits. The dollar may drive its decision but either way, less suffering will occur each day.

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