On today’s Food for Thought I’m speaking with Richard Deeboo author of The Meat Delusion about why we should be caring more for the animals in our world.
Richard is the author of 2 books, and speaks regularly on the case for not eating or farming animals, and we talk about the delusion that has been created by the meat and dairy industry. With currently approximately sixty billion land animals being killed on our farms and in our slaughterhouses every year, the number of sea-dwelling animals killed by us every year at best guess that we drag up and kill is one hundred million tons of sea-lives, and half the world’s wild animals have disappeared in the last 40 years. I don’t think the general meat eating public really consider the condition of the animals that they eat, the numbers we are actually killing and eating them in, with the meat industry and supermarkets creating a sanitised view of the world of prepared animal products, that create a distance from what is actually happening and what they are actually eating, Richard discusses how this is a form of enslavement that is more or less out of hand.
Ever wondered about the language of meat, no me neither until Richard makes really interesting points about the language that is used by the meat industry to disguise how the animal products we are eating are actually parts of animals, therefore allowing us to disassociate from what is happening. Few of us are prepared to go hunting, but this approach allows us to feel better about the animal we are eating as food. We discuss how they are trying to erase the animal behind the products made from them. Very much in the same vein of the news talking about collateral damage when in effect we mean human lives being lost. Sadly also many misunderstand the marketing spin that’s put on the meat and dairy industry, farm fresh, free range doesn’t really mean that the animal is really better treated as most people think, in fact some schemes have been found to be falsely saying that animal welfare is improved when it hasn’t been. We discuss how cruelty freer products are not really leading us to a world of less suffering, but of more selective consumption veiled in lies about how the animal has been kept and treated.
Most people have never seen these animals in any other environment other than a farm, in enclosures, in fact that’s the way we see most animals. Leaving people with little understanding that they should be free, and able to live out their lives. Should animals be allowed to live out their own lives and not just be kept for food? I discuss with Richard how I wonder whether we can truly expect people to have respect for animals when they are barbaric enough to rape, maim, and kill each other, and go to war regularly, so from my perspective animals seem to be just caught up in what we are doing to ourselves, ultimately killing ourselves?
Of course an interview with a nutritionist wouldn’t be complete without us talking about the health issues around consuming animals, and we talk about the emotional and psychological damage from eating an animal that has lived a life that is inherently unhappy, then is killed whilst being full of fear, and we are clearly consuming something that energetically isn’t good for the soul, never mind in enough quantity is shown to cause ill health.
Why do we get upset about Cecil the Lion, and the packs of dogs in cages in China, then ignore the most obvious elephant in the room, our own meat and dairy industries and animal enslavement on scales that are generally unimaginable? The emotions driven around these big game animals ignores that all of our animals our pets included have emotions, they are expressive, and can tell you everything you need to know, as Richard points out we must recognise how every life here on Earth is stunningly rare.
