Whenever We Eat Animal Foods, We Are Being Exploited
Whenever We Eat Animal Foods, We Are Being Exploited
by Dr. Will Tuttle
which humans exploit animals for food. The vast majority of us go along with the internalized cultural narratives that justify this exploitation. We don’t realize that we are also being abused and exploited by the same system that is exploiting the cows, chickens, fi shes, and pigs. There’s basically one primary reason
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any of us eats animal-sourced foods: we do this because we’re following orders that were injected into us from infancy by well-intentioned people we trusted completely. This indoctrination is literally eaten in the most potent and pervasive of all social rituals, our daily meals. It’s important to understand that when we go to shops and restaurants and purchase animal foods, we are not only sustaining a system of exploitation of animals, we are also unwittingly fueling our own exploitation on many levels, and in feeding these foods to our children, we’re fueling their exploitation as well. Let’s take cows as a profoundly relevant example. Cows are clearly designed to thrive on grass, but they are fed richer and more complex grains such as soy, corn, oats, wheat, and alfalfa in order to boost milk production in dairies and increase weight gain in beef operations. This causes cows digestive distress and leads ironically to the proliferation of the E. coli bacterial strains that are deadly to human
he most obvious and non- controversial characteristic of animal agriculture is that it is a system in
consumers of undercooked hamburgers. However, cow exploiters don’t stop with grains. Agricultural scientists discovered long ago that if cow feed is “enriched” with fi sh meal as well as the rendered fl esh and offal of chickens, pigs, cows, dogs, cats, and other animals, this is even better than grain at promoting milk production and weight gain, and thus increased profi ts for the industries involved.
In sum, cows are fed foods that are not in their interest, but that are to the advantage of their exploiters. With us, if we are eating animal foods,
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it is precisely the same situation. Like cows, we are created and have evolved to thrive on the food for which we are designed, which in our case is whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and seeds. Like cows, we can certainly eat other foods, such as animal fl esh and mammary secretions designed for other species, and as in the case of cows, this harms our health on many levels, but the signifi cant point is that it increases the profi ts of our exploiters, and so it continues. The animal exploiters have stolen the sovereignty of cows, and so the cows are powerless to eat anything
26 Central Florida natural awakenings
but what the exploiters provide them. With both cows and humans, it is remarkably similar. Exploiters provide the foods that they want the exploitees to consume to maximize their profi ts and power, and the exploitees dutifully comply. They encourage each other by their shared example, and additionally in our case, we ironically police each other to ensure compliance. The benefi ts to the exploiters in these situations are vast. The disempowerment and harm to the exploitees are equally vast. Let’s have a brief look at the consequences of this exploitation on fi ve levels of our health. FIRST, OUR PHYSICAL HEALTH. Being compelled from infancy to eat animal-based foods, we are more likely to develop cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, auto-immune diseases, dementia, and the other chronic diseases which fuel hundreds of billions of dollars of profi ts annually for the pharmaceutical- medical complex, and the banks and fi nancial institutions in the background. This system, and the governmental, academic, media, and corporate complex that is tied in with it, requires a steady fl ood of reliably sick people. Feeding the population a diet based on animal foods, that concentrate toxins, accomplishes this. Most of the wealth generated concentrates in the hands of a powerful elite, while most of us endure economic injustices such as exorbitant medical costs that ravage our economy and well- being. Eating animal foods, we become unwitting cash cows for an aggressive medical-pharmaceutical complex. SECOND, OUR ENVIRONMENTAL
HEALTH. Animal agriculture is well recognized to be the single most environmentally-devastating human activity, destroying forests, oceans, aquifers, soil quality, climate stability, and propelling the mass extinction of species through rampant habitat destruction. Here again, we are being exploited when we purchase and eat animal-based foods. Because animal-based foods require much more petroleum, land, fertilizer, pesticides, and water, we are paying powerful and polluting petroleum, chemical, and agribusiness corporations and fi nancial institutions to not only devastate the precious air, water, soil, and life quality for ourselves and our children, but we are also funding their legendary political power to infi ltrate and
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