"If these organic farm animals have such great lives, isn't the more humane thing to eat a cage-raised, industrially processed chicken? At least we'd be putting it out of its misery." -Jennie Yabroff.
When I read this, printed in Newsweek (01/11), I just stared at it with my head cocked to one side for a few seconds. Is she serious? Did she seriously write that? Why yes, yes she did. Yabroff also wrote, "While it's true that sustainably raised, grass-fed beef may be better for the consumer, it's hard to argue that it's ultimately better for the cow... No matter how 'lovingly' the cow was raised... he gave up that life to become dinner."
Miss Yabroff, we are all going to die, and we are all, in a way, going to end up as dinner. Cows get eaten by humans; humans get digested by the soil in which we're buried. Or we get consumed by fire, if so we choose. So, since cows die and apparently therefore deserve horrific lives, well then, we should lead horrible lives, too. So that we're all longing for the end.
This is dangerous thinking. This idea that a living thing should be abused because it is supposed to die is dangerously, dangerously misguided. If we really define life by death, then we've got a big, big problem.
No butts about it, Molly the cow supports organic farms.
Posts
I could NOT believe it when Margaret read that article to me. You can probably imagine how I was sputtering and fuming about what an unbelievably stupid conclusion that woman drew. It sounds like people BSing in a bar -- not a writer for Newsweek. You assume that she has actually THOUGHT about what she wrote, rather than just flew by the seat of her pants.
ReplyDeleteThat Newsweek quote is ridiculous. Did it come from a full article? I can't believe it; if she had stopped and thought for 1 minute about the implications she could never have written it, and the same goes for the editors/publishers. It's like saying we should buy sweat-shop-made clothing and hopefully those kids will work so hard they are saved from a long miserable life by an early death. Or hey, just abort every baby that was going to be born below the poverty line. It's SO STUPID.
ReplyDelete