Yeninko of the Umlaut

Friday, May 15, 2009

Live Free or Die

One of the ridiculous reasons I'm a vegetarian is a sense of general unfairness for the fate of farm animals. It boils down to this, billions of animals are raised in this country and they basically have zero chance at a full life, they either die on the feed lots from disease or accident or their lives are prematurely ended at the slaughter house. At the very least there should be some sort of lottery or death match event where one cow, or one pig, through intelligence, or brawn, or something, manages to secure it's freedom.

Which is why this story brings a sense of joy to my heart;

Last week, she [Molly the cow] successfully dodged her fate of being reincarnated as umpteen New York cheeseburgers when she bolted from a Queens slaughterhouse and proceeded to star in her very own wild west cattle drive up 109th Avenue.

...

For a moment Molly's life hung in the balance. Would she be returned to the slaughterhouse or rewarded for her hutzpah? Whether as a nod to her new found fame or as an act of true altruism, her owner relinquished the 400-pound dairy queen to animal-care workers and the promise of greener pastures.
Which reminds me of this incident of years gone past.

Labels: ,

2 Comments:

  • I agree completely, while still retaining my carnivorous voraciousness.

    If i were a farmer, I'd make it a priority to keep some of my best animals each year as breeding stock, even if it meant some cost and inconvenience.

    The other thing I keep thinking is, we ought to give the plains back to their rightful grazers, the buffalo. Lets eat all these cows and replace them with buffalo. I'm betting chemically they fit much better into the local food chain.

    By Anonymous Steel Phoenix, at 7:56 AM  

  • their rightful grazers, the buffalo

    What makes them rightful? American Bison and the relentless hunting and burning of Clovis era American Indians displaced the larger prarie dwelling animals that preceded the American Bison. And they, in turn, displaced their predecessors.

    When you adopt the longue durée view of things, its much harder to make casual moral judgments. After all, who mourns the mass extinctions of native europeans when their primary diet (megafauna) became extinct under the ruthless and murderous invasion of trees into idylic European savannahs in the Last Glacial–Interglacial cycle? Trees kill, man, don't trust them.

    By Anonymous Sony, at 3:43 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home