J u s t ice De n i e d
understanding have ceased
to be signposts to the
future and have become
minor obstacles to be
avoided. For instance, we
have known for 50 years
that smoking is the world’s
biggest avoidable killer yet,
until comparatively
recently, every high street
was littered with adverts
for cigarettes. We know
that a vegetarian diet is
much healthier than a
meat-based diet but it is
the livestock farmer who
receives all the subsidies.
We know that povertyMotherhood behind bars – pigs give birth in barren
destroys people but thestalls,denied the instinct to nurture their young
gap between rich and poor
grows ever wider at home as well as acrossand become bogeymen and women.
the world. Meanwhile, the genuine problems get
remorselessly worse while attention is
There is an age-old practice of leaders diverted from them.
refusing to accept responsibility for their
actions but lack of integrity has become anSo what has this to do with animals?
epidemic disease. They pass the blame for Everything! Animals are another cog in the
same process of denial. By
We know that a
pretending that animals
vegetarian diet is
have no real desire for
freedom, to procreate
much healthier than
naturally, to mother their
a meat-based diet but
young or even to experience
pleasure by lying in the sun,
it is the livestock
then it is so much easier to
use them purely as
farmer who receives
commodities – like so much
all the subsidies
iron or coal or steel – and
ignore their pain and fear.
their failures down the line – to singleSome might see it as a prime example of poetic
parents, to students, to travellers, to justice that our mass abuse of animals for food
squatters, to immigrants, to other is not only destroying our health but also the
nationalities. Part of the process is to planet. Again the United Nations, through its
stereotype each of these groups so they Food & Agriculture Organisation, has spelt out
cease to be a collection of ordinary human in terrifying detail the scale of this destruction
beings with the normal range of feelings(L i v e s t o c k ’s Long Shadow, 2006).
8
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