This is Duncan. Gordon and I met him and his brother Duffy last year when we were in Maine. He is cute and very loving. He would not like to hear that his food might make him sick. He would also not like the way the pet food company is handling the situation. Here is an article I just read about the recall. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/308221_petfoodrecall20.html Now, I guess this is my problem. Menu Foods started receiving calls about this in December and now it's March and they've just recalled the food. In addition, they apparently lied to the FDA about when the calls started coming in so it looked like they just jumped right on the problem and started new testing a week later. To top it all off, that testing was done on 40-50 otherwise presumably healthy dogs and cats, exposing more animals to food that has obviously sickened a number of pets already... So maybe I don't know anything about figuring out if something is wrong with food or not, but if it were, say, shredded wheat and the company that made it had been getting calls for a couple of months, I seriously doubt it would be considered a good idea to just feed it to a test group of people for a while and then see how many of them died. And yet that's what this pet food company chose to do and nobody seems to be at all concerned about it. Pet owners are worried about their own pets, but where is the outrage over several news outlets reporting a line such as "1 in 6 animals died in tests..." I mean, how can we can read these articles and not be appalled? They already had plenty of evidence that the food was poisoning animals- isn't there some way of testing the ingredients in the food that they suspected might be the cause of the illnesses instead of feeding it to animals to see how many of them die? Am I crazy, or does this seem completely absurd and unnecessarily cruel? Is there another way to see this that I'm just missing? Any thoughts?
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I don't understand the whole thing. What took so long? Rocky, on the other hand, is qute happy with people food! He had broccoli & baked potato last night. He didn't like the broccoli so much.
Animal testing is I guess in a similar cultural category to meat eating - i.e. it is widely accepted as ethically ok. The fact that many pet owners probably don't care that much about animals that die in tests, yet show compassion and care for their own pets, is similar to choosing to eat meat (and supporting the killing of animals) while apparently loving your own pet. It certainly seems inconsistent to me, and the most obvious explanation I can think of is based on selfishness and proximity - I care about animals that I see daily and that personally give me joy (my pets), but not those that I don't come directly in contact with (ones I eat or that are killed for "research").
BTW, I enjoyed this illuminating quote from the article:
"Don't overreact, but don't underreact either," Nelson said.
True... I think it's a combination of "out of sight, out of mind" like you say, plus the fact that people are generally simply not aware of the cruelty and torture animals are subjected to every day of their lives on factory farms. I think people like to assume that the animals live normal lives and don't feel a thing when they are killed, but the truth is that they are unhealthy- 10% (about 900 million animals a year) die before they even get to the slaughterhouse from disease, stress, and injury- and the slaughter itself is brutal (many animals are skinned or gutted while still consious, etc). I know a little more about it because I have actively sought information, but I would say that most people have no idea what they are involved in when they eat meat. Add to that the fact tht people have been taught by almost every health textbook and food pyramid that they need meat for proper nutrition (which is completely false, by the way) and you can see why people still eat meat. I really do believe that people are generally decent- I think a lot of the inconsistency you mentioned would be cleared up if people actually saw where their meat came from or what an animal endured for their lipstick...
To be clear, that's 900 million animals each year in the US. (Info from HFA.org)
Then again, maybe I'm just too idealistic. Maybe a lot of the people who have pets and still eat meat or support animal testing, etc, know that they're torturing and killing innocent animals who are basically "living" in concentration camps but they just don't care. Maybe people are more evil than I want to think they are. =/
Yes, I agree that people are told that meat is part of a healthy diet and also that they might tend to assume that animal testing is generally for some "greater good" and is controlled and regulated (and not terribly cruel, which it oftentimes can be).
Regarding whether a lot of people are not educated or aware of animal cruelty in the meat industry, versus being aware but simply choosing to ignore it, I think the answer lies somewhere in between. I think a healthy dose of denial is also in effect - people do know that eating meat might sometimes be cruel to animals, but deliberately choose not to find out more about it. This is because of the feared consequences of finding out more - people generally don't want to do things that they perceive to be inconvenient, they don't want to open themselves up to criticism or the difficulties of choosing a lifestyle (or eating habit, however you want to look at it) that goes against the mainstream. I think this is what stopped me from becoming vegetarian (and then vegan) earlier than I did. Another factor at work is simply appeal to common practice/wisdom - "most people eat meat, therefore it must be ok, therefore I will eat meat". A lot of people simply don't like to challenge commonly held beliefs too much, and in fact it does demand a certain sort of thinking that some people haven't learned or been taught.
$0.02 <- that's my two cents!
First, what we don't realize about the meat industry or animal testing or whatever is that a lot of it is self-regulated. The pet food industry is described as self-regulated, which means that is is supposed to police itself. No wonder we ended up in this mess with the recall! What company is going to purposely lose money if it thinks it can just sneak something by the public? As for people food, the regulations that are in place for the meat industry in the US are both absurdly lax (we do all kinds of sick things that have been outlawed for years in other countires) and not often followed. Second, I totally agree with what you said about denial. In my circumstance, I had been vegetarian for a couple of years when I bought the book "The Food Revolution" by John Robbins. I was really excited about the book, but I let it sit on my shelf for about 10 months before I actually read it. I just wasn't ready. I wanted to stay ignorant because I knew that as soon as I read anything about the dairy industry I was going to want to be vegan. I already knew a little, and was purposely NOT educating myself because I didn't want to make that particular lifestyle change. I thought it would be really hard to give up grilled cheese and fettucini alfredo. (It wasn't that hard, after all.) But after reading the book and understanding what goes on and how my actions affect not only the animals, who are my main concern, but also the environment and my own health (crudely put, meat and dairy = heart disease and cancer), there really was no other viable option than to transition to a vegan diet. I am really glad I finally read the book. =) There's something amazing about knowing I'm living a life that is (for the most part) in line with my own personal values. I am much happier knowing that I am as far removed as I can get from factory farming. It took me 30 years to get here, which can be attributed to a combination of that denial, miseducation, societal norms- all of it. But I wouln't go back to that state of denial or ignorance for anything in the world. =) It's not about being perfect or holier-than-thou, it's about being in a position not to cause the needless suffering of living beings by simply not having cheese on my pizza. And when put that way, how could I choose anything different?
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