Beneath the Four Walls: Human Rights and the Meat Packing Industry

Considered by the United States Department of Labor to be one of the most hazardous industries in the United States, the meatpacking industry has an injury rate three times higher than the rate of any typical American factory. Each year, around forty-three thousand meatpacking workers – which is one out of three workers – “suffer an injury or a work-related illness that requires medical attention beyond first aid.”. Although this data was compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the statistics understate the number of meatpacking injuries that actually occur, due to underreporting by meatpacking companies. With thousands of injuries and illnesses of the most dangerous industry go unrecorded and slip under the radar, there is already a huge violation of Article 23 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, where “Everyone has the right… to favourable conditions of work”, without even going into the details the jobs of this industry entail. Within the four walls of a meatpacking factory hides the bloodiest, most brutal lies when it comes to human rights. As a former employee of Monfort Meatpacking Company said, “Inside those walls is a different world that obeys different laws.” With companies unjustly concealing the horrifying truths that the industry chooses to ignore, men, women and children are constantly and continuously stripped of their basic human rights.

The brutal nature of the jobs in the meatpacking industry is physically dangerous to workers. Unlike the case for smaller animals like chickens, cattle can come in varying weights of hundreds of pounds. Therefore, machines and power tools often fail to effectively assist the meatpacking process of cattle. This is the reason why most of the work in America’s slaughterhouses is still performed by hand. These manpowered jobs include, but are not restricted to: the Knocker, Sticker Shackler, Rumper, First Legger, Knuckle Dropper, Navel Boner, Splitter Top/Bottom Butt and the Feed Kill Chain. The violence and brutal nature of these jobs are only suggested vaguely even with the explicit names. With lacerations being the most common injury, many workers often accidentally stab themselves or their coworkers. Other common health issues developed on the job include the development of tendonitis, cumulative trauma disorders, carpal tunnel, back and shoulder problems and “trigger finger” – “a syndrome in which a finger becomes frozen in a curled position”.

The assembly line speed also has to do a lot with the number of injuries on the job. The higher the speed, the more the production and the less the company has to pay the workers. However, with the line speed constantly increasing, the risks of workers in the line getting hurt is also increasing. To put things in perspective, in the early 1900s, meatpacking factories in Chicago slaughtered fifty cattle per hour; twenty years ago, the factories in the High Plains slaughtered one hundred and seventy-five cattle per hour; nowadays, many plants slaughter four hundred cattle per hour. “I packed hams for eight hours a day, 40 to 50 hams every minute. The processing line moves tremendously fast and doesn’t stop,” a former meatpacker in Nebraska, Teresa Martinez said. While the assembly line speed seems to be one of the most obvious cause of injuries, “cold temperatures and ergonomic problems” need to be fixed too, Andrew Levinson, an official of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration says. Thus, “any effort to prevent these disorders must take all of these factors into account, not just line speed.”

Not only does the nature of the job put the workers’ health in jeopardy, the inadequate treatment of the injuries also poses a health threat to workers, let alone the injustice that comes along with it. Meatpacking factories often under-report the number of injuries and the severity of them. Through the OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program, where “management, labor, and OSHA work cooperatively and proactively to prevent fatalities, injuries, and illnesses through a system focused on: hazard prevention and control; worksite analysis; training; and management commitment and worker involvement”, the number of recorded injuries in meatpacking plants did indeed go down. However, this does not mean that the number of people getting hurt is reduced. A main reason why the recorded number has gone down is because the Voluntary Protection Program merely encouraged companies “to understate injuries, to falsify records, and to cover up accidents.” It is also not uncommon for plants to keep two sets of injury logs: one complete record of all injuries, and one falsified record to provide to OSHA visitors. For example, the IBP beef plant in Nebraska kept two records: One recorded 1800 injuries in a three month period, and the one provided to OSHA recorded only 160, resulting in a huge discrepancy.

According to Human Rights Watch, compensation for work injuries and illness is a basic part of international human rights standards for workers. However, the United States meatpacking industry fails to recognize these rights by delaying and denying claims, “threatening and taking reprisals against workers who file claims for compensation for workplace injuries”, or even “instituted programs requiring workers who report injuries or accidents to undergo drug testing”, which adds risks to workers to report their injuries.

Another unjust and dangerous aspect to the meatpacking industry is the horrifying treatment towards women workers. Women are often manipulated, objectified, harassed and even raped by male counterparts in the plants. The sexual abuse of women in meatpacking plants dates back to as early as the 1930s and till this day, women who work at various plants reported that their bosses frequently “expect sexual favors in exchange for favorable working condition.”. A female worker at an IBP plant filed a lawsuit and testified that her coworkers had “screamed obscenities and rubbed their bodies against hers while supervisors laughed.” In another lawsuit against a Monfort plant in Cactus, Texas, fourteen women testified that their supervisors “pressured them for dates and sex, and that male coworkers groped them, kissed them, and used animal parts in a sexually explicit manner.”Although most sexual relations at these slaughterhouses are forced upon women by men, the physical intimacy between many supervisors and women who are paid by the hour “are for the most part consensual.”These women engage in such relationships in hopes of gaining better and safer position in the assembly line, if not a green card for a stable residential status in the United States. Having a safe work environment is considered as a basic human right by the United Nations, yet these women have to put themselves in an even more vulnerable position to regain their safety.

Not only are women objectified in this industry, children are also often abused due to the illegal prominence of child labor. Not only is child labor itself illegal in the meatpacking industry in the United States, to expose young children to the brutal nature of this industry is extremely immoral due to the exposure to hazardous chemicals and the requirement of them to work with deadly tools including knives and saws. In May 2008, the U.S. Government raided a meat plant, exposing huge child labor law violations. At least twenty-four children from Guatemala as young as thirteen years old were arrested. After the raid, young workers said “they were forced to work long night shifts of up to seventeen hours a day with no overtime pay.” They also said that they were “put to work on racing production lines using knives to cut meat and poultry with little or no safety training.” Forced child labor is a grave human rights violation and that the meatpacking industry hides under its facade.

The mental toll is often overlooked when compared to the physical danger in this industry. Often times, workers find that they just have to force themselves to not care about the animals in order to kill them. A former slaughterhouse worker says that, “The worst thing, worse than the physical danger, is the emotional toll. If you work in the stick pit [where hogs are killed] for any period of time—that let’s [sic] you kill things but doesn’t let you care. You may look a hog in the eye that’s walking around in the blood pit with you and think, ‘God, that really isn’t a bad looking animal.’ You may want to pet it. Pigs down on the kill floor have come up to nuzzle me like a puppy. Two minutes later I had to kill them. … I can’t care.”  There is a strong correlation between the “presence of a large slaughterhouse and high crime rates in U.S. communities” –  a criminology professor at the University of Windsor, Amy Fitzgerald, proved this hypothesis. She argued that “Slaughterhouse workers, in essence, were “desensitized,” and their behavior outside of work reflected it.” The strong connection between this industry and crime rates proves that the aggressive nature of these jobs, mentally disturbs the human mind.

It is saddening that all types of slaughterhouse workers are constantly being taken advantage of and stripped of their basic human rights. Men, women and children are unjustly exploited for over seventeen hours per day. Though jobs related to the meatpacking industry are considered the most dangerous jobs in the United States, the frightening truth of these occupations are buried deep within the four walls of the factory.

 

Bibliography

Biron, Carey L.  Carey L. Biron to  Mint Press News newsgroup, “Meatpacking Workers Fight “Unacceptable And Inhumane” Conditions,” March 27, 2014. Accessed May 1, 2017. http://www.mintpressnews.com/meatpacking-workers-fight-unacceptable-and-inhumane-conditions/187409/.

Fink, Deborah. What Kind of Woman Would Work in Meatpacking, Anyway? World War II and The Road to Fair Employment. September 1, 1995. Accessed May 1, 2017. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1210&context=greatplainsresearch.

“Is the meatpacking industry getting safer?” A Voice for Working America. Last modified January 10, 2012. Accessed May 1, 2017. http://www.ufcw.org/2012/01/10/is-the-meatpacking-industry-getting-safer/.

McWilliams, James. “PTSD in the Slaughterhouse.” The Texas Observer, February 7, 2012. Accessed May 1, 2017. https://www.texasobserver.org/ptsd-in-the-slaughterhouse/.

New York Times (New York City, NY). “Meat Packing Industry Criticized on Human Rights Grounds.” January 25, 20015. Accessed May 1, 2017. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/25/business/meat-packing-industry-criticized-on-human-rights-grounds.html.

“Occupational Safety and Health Administration: Voluntary Protection Programs.” United States Department of Labor. Accessed May 1, 2017. https://www.osha.gov/dcsp/vpp/.

One Green Planet. “The Human Cost of Factory Farming.” One Green Planet (blog). Entry posted April 25, 2012. Accessed May 1, 2017. http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/the-human-cost-of-industrial-animal-agriculture/.

Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001.

United Nations. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. December 10, 1948. Accessed May 1, 2017. http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/.

Nervous System Complexity and “Humane Slaughter”

I have the utmost respect for Dr. Temple Grandin’s work, and it is absolutely amazing that she strives to promote humane killing for animals. I also admire her work with the Autism rights movement. However, I do disagree with some of her most principle ideas behind her reasoning for humane slaughter. In a paper she wrote presented to a discussion about whether animals should be considered property at Harvard University in 2002, A View on Animal Welfare Based on Neurological Complexity, she states that her “basic principle is that development of the nervous system as a major determinant of the welfare needs of the animal.” Instead of promoting equal rights for all animals, she picks certain types of animals to promote for – depending on their level of intricacy in nervous systems.

While I do not have the educational qualifications to debate about nervous systems, I do have some opinions about the value of life that contradicts with her principles. For example, Dr. Grandin says, “Advocating for the rights of oysters is something I think is silly.” However, I believe that all creatures have an equal right to live. An oyster has the right to strive and live out its life, just as a dog does or a human does, and that human beings are not in the position of deciding who is to live and who is to die. To decide for oysters that their lives aren’t as valuable is a case of speciesism – “a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species”, as animal rights activist Peter Singer would say.

When it comes to animals with more developed nervous systems however, Dr. Grandin does have some very strong points that I completely agree with about their actual vs. percepted worth by humans. “Human babies are given full protection even though a newborn’s cognitive abilities are less than the abilities of mature farm animals. They are given this protection because they will grow and develop into people. A mentally retarded child and a cow may have the same cognitive abilities. I can sell or kill the cow but I am not allowed to do this with a retarded child. Why should the retarded child or human newborn have more protection than a cow?”, she states in the essay. In this quotation, she acknowledges the value of a cow’s life justly by comparing it to the worth of a human child. Although the basis is dependent on the cow’s complex nervous system, she does rightfully recognize its life worth.

Her argument about animals’ ranging neurological complexity is not completely wrong however. While it true that all species have different neurological complexity, thus as some might say, “feel less pain than others”. This is not mean that one animal has less life worth than others, as we all have feelings and varying “emotions language”. Just because human beings do not understand other species’ language to understand their emotions, or that some species simply might not be physically able to express their emotions, does not mean that other species have “nonlinguistic modes of communications” that we can choose to ignore. In Jane Goodall’s study of chimpanzees, In the Shadow of Man, she argues that human beings’ “nonlinguistic modes of communications… are not specific to our own species.” These communication signs like “a cheering pat on the back, an exuberant embrace, a clasp of the hand” are “basic signals we use to convey pain, fear, anger, love, joy, surprise, sexual arousal, and many other emotional states” that we have and definitely share among many other species.

As much as I disagree with Dr. Grandin’s principles and motivations behind her animal rights work, I will not ignore and discredit her grand contribution to reduce animal suffering. Afterall, while no slaughter at all is best, I cannot disagree that humane slaughter is better than the horrors of the current American slaughter procedures.

 

Sources:

http://www.grandin.com/welfare/animals.are.not.things.html

Animal Liberation by Peter Singer

Joy in Pain

As I laid in bed weeping and shedding streams of tears down my cheeks while I watched the most raw, honest, and brutal documentary Earthlings directed by Shaun Monson, I grew more and more furious towards the human race. When I saw the infinite clippings of the killings of the animals that Monson filmed using hidden cameras to expose human exploitation of animals, what disturbed me the most was the ruthlessness and enjoyment the slaughterers took upon inflicting pain on the animals.

One of the clippings shows workers in a chicken slaughterhouse called “The Hang Pen” in Moorefield, Virginia, jumping up and down on live chickens repeatedly and throwing and slamming chickens against the wall just to pass time. Doing more research after this clipping left me in shock, I learned that this slaughterhouse was owned by Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation – the country’s second-largest poultry processor, with Kentucky Fried Chicken Corporation being its largest customer, buying seven hundred million chickens per year. In fact, it won KFC’s ”Supplier of the Year” award in 1997. This video was released in 2004. It was not until an animal rights group, PETA, taped a video showing the horrifying treatment, when KFC and the spokesperson of Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation expressed disgust and intoleration of the situation.

Another clipping in the documentary shows slaughterers threatening pigs by repeatedly beating them with hammers while yelling and screaming explicit curse-words at them to chase them out of their pens. They would beat them even more if the pigs did not run out within one second.

The animal entertainment industry also does not hold back when it comes to the treatment of animals. A circus elephant trainer was taped when he was teaching a new trainer how to treat the elephants. He stands in the circus tents with him along with three large elephants, saying, “Hurt him, don’t touch him. Make him scream. If you’re scared to hurt him, don’t come into this room. When I say rip his f*ckin’ – you know how I am about touching him, right? So if I say rip his head off, rip his f*ckin’ foot off, what does that mean? Cause it’s very important to do it, right? When he starts squirming too f*ckin’ much… Both f*ckin’ hands – BOOM! Right under that chin! Sit, and he better back up. Then when he f*cks around too much, don’t grab that leg… you f*ckin’ sink that hook, and give everything you’ve got… and when it’s in there go… And it’s gonna start screaming. When you hear that screaming… then you know you got her attention a little f*ckin’ bit. Right here in the barn – can’t do it on the road. She’s gonna f*ckin’ do what I want. And that’s just the fuckin’ way it is.”

These slaughterers and trainers enjoy inflicting pain upon animals. In the clippings, they are very eager and disgustingly enthusiastic about hearing the animals screech and cry. While people might think that they are so far removed from this situation since this treatment only exists in extreme environments like in slaughterhouses, that is not true. The hunting hype in America only proves them wrong.

Hunters find joy and proud in tricking, trapping, shooting and killing animals. In fact, wildlife conservation in the United States was “established by hunters for hunters because of hunters.” (Kemmerer 90). In the late nineteenth century, when Theodore Roosevelt raised concerns about commercial hunters decimating wildlife because less “market” hunters benefitted when hunter-target species are stripped from the nation, he founded the Boone and Crockett Club in 1897 “to promote the conservation of wildlife, especially big game, and its habitat, to preserve and encourage hunting and to maintain the highest ethical standards of fair chase and sportsmanship to North America.” (Kemmerer 91)

It is estimated by the Maine BowHunters Alliance that fifty percent of animals shot with crossbows are wounded but not killed. A another study of eighty radio-collared white-tailed deer, showed that out of the twenty-two deer that had been shot with “traditional archery equipment,” eleven were wounded but not retrieved by hunters. This statistic shows that while some hunters hunt for food – which is not a justifiable act itself either – many hunters just shoot and injure animals for pleasure.


It is absolutely horrifying that human beings take joy and pride in inflicting pain upon other living beings. While hurting animals is already a huge animal rights violation, we are still ignorantly debating amongst ourselves whether animals feels pain, or whether they deserve to die because of the animal hierarchy we developed ourselves – when the bigger question is the reason why we choose to kill, and why we justifying our brutal actions towards animals.

 

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/20/business/kfc-supplier-accused-of-animal-cruelty.html

http://money.cnn.com/2004/07/20/news/fortune500/kfc/

http://www.nationearth.com/earthlings-1/

http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-in-entertainment/cruel-sports/hunting/

Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics & Dietary Choice by Lisa Kemmerer

 

My Pets at Home

As I watched the videos clips of killer whales in SeaWorld on Blackfish while trying to understand the different narratives and perspectives about the life of this creature, I could not help but contemplate the idea of pet ownership and what it entails. In the documentary, SeaWorld is claiming that they are the true parents of baby whale Kalina since they provide Kalina with food and a home and most importantly, she belongs to them because SeaWorld claims ownership over her mother, Katina, since they captured her. And since SeaWorld owned Kalina, they also have the ultimate right to decide her fate – they decided to ship her all the way to Florida, away from her mother, during a nursing time where she especially needed her – for the benefit of the company.

The whole separation procedure was devastating process to both the mother and daughter. Both of them had high signals of stress when they were taken away from each other. The mother, especially, created sounds never heard before by killer whale expertise. These sounds created by Katina signaled extreme depression and anxiety, yet, SeaWorld chose to disregard and continue on with the process.

I have seven dogs at home: three Spanish Malinois, one German Shepherd, one Bichon Frise, one Pomeranian and one Shiba Inu. This documentary made me think: Just because I purchased these dogs at a pet store, do I really own these dogs? Are they MY dogs? Even the combination of these five species living together as family in the same house seems off since they originate from different parts of the world and would probably never have met if it were not for my family. By technically forcing these seven dogs to live together, has my family disrupted the social chain and dynamics these dogs were supposed to belong to? This might even sound extreme but by purchasing these dogs, is my family ultimately playing the same role as SeaWorld’s by deciding their fate?

Same thing goes to the two goldfish I bought when I was five, two bunnies I bought when I was seven and the five turtles I bought over the span of three years when I was a young child. I really did not have to purchase these animals as my pets. The only reason why I wanted them was because they looked cute.

I reflected on the idea of pet ownership over the weekend and read several vegan blogs on pet ownership to see what other vegans had to say. “Pet ownership inherently perpetuates the idea that other animals can be “owned” like objects and as such the laws protecting these animals are little more severe than laws protecting physical property” says Salad in a Steakhouse. However, this blogger also brings up a good point about the motives and goals of pet ownership, “On one side, we cannot buy meat because of the implications of supporting the meat industry and thus indirectly causing suffering to animals. On the other, we cannot not adopt a cat, because if we choose not to, we may be indirectly causing suffering to that animal.” Therefore, if there is a stray animal desperate for shelter and love, it is true to the vegan agenda to bring the animal home and provide a safe environment. Ultimately, Salad in a Steakhouse argues that “owning animals is often the lesser of two evils since there is nothing we can do about their existence at this stage. It would actually be contrary to animal rights to deny domesticated animals the comfort of living in a good home that would care for them, just because we are against owning pets, in principle.”

This is an interesting point that is brought up because one of the motives of veganism is to slow down or even halt the meat industry that is constantly injecting hormones into animal mothers to give birth to more babies, resulting in more meat produce. By going vegan, the effort is put into prevent the birth of more innocent animals that will undergo cruel deaths. However, healthy pet ownership is providing a shelter and love to animals that have already be birthed.

Of course, there is also a difference between buying pets from pet stores and adopting animal from animal shelters. Perhaps the motive of some pet store owners is just to earn money while disregarding issues on animal rights, making animal adoption the ideal way to bringing pets into homes. On my part, even though I do not personally know the pet stores where I purchased my pets, at this point, what I can promise and provide is a loving and safe home to my animal friends at home.

 

Source:

https://saladinasteakhouse.wordpress.com/2012/03/18/can-vegans-own-pets/

A Painless Death

“Death, though never pleasant, need not be painful” – Peter Singer, Animal Liberation

For one second, let us just say that all problems with eating meat is demolished. Let us just say that eating meat is okay. In this case, perhaps all of people’s attention concerning animal rights would be directed towards the killing method of animals – whether there is a painless way of killing.

In the current day, what is considered the most humane way of killing, is to have animals “stunned by electric current or a captive-bolt pistol and have their throats cut while they are still unconscious” (Singer 150). Perhaps this method of killing does not give any physical pain to animals. However, no matter how painless the death is, animals do feel anxiety leading up to the killing.


When these animals are loaded up into the truck and are being taken away from their normal hypothetical healthy grass fields, or when they smell the scent of the blood of the animal killed before them, can’t they feel fear and uneasiness leading up to their slaughter?

This brings me to a question that has been bugging me for a while since I started doing my readings for this IP: How are different religions so sure and keen about specific types of killing? If their goal of these methods of killings is to do no harm to animals, how are they certain that these animals do not feel mental pain? Is there any way to find out? If not, are these killing methods just a way to justify our evil humanly needs?
Eager to find answers to these questions, I interviewed a Muslim student, Zahra Marhoon ‘17, who is on a strict halal diet. “Halal diet is the way that Islam advises to eat. There are certain kinds of food that you cannot eat and there is a specific way that the animals that you eat have to be killed in order for you to eat them,” Zahra says. “We believe that if you bless the animals, the animals are not afraid and are willing to die.” When I asked her whether vegetarianism is popular among Muslims because that seems like a more humane diet, she responded by saying that “a lot of people go vegetarian because they cannot find Halal meat in where they live.” What still remains a question to me, is the true motive behind the Halal diet because it seems to me that the diet is based on the self-satisfaction and assumption of painless killing and the availability of such meat. Are religious diets that claim to reduce animal suffering legitimate excuses for consuming meat?

The Corn Empire

“The fact that people need to write a book telling people where their food comes from shows how far removed we are.” – Food Inc. documentary

I am very shocked by the mass impact the corn industry has on the meat industry. Cattle are evolutionarily adapted to grass-fed diets, but because feeding corn to cows is a lot more economically friendly than feeding grass to cows, the meat industry has dangerously altered the DNA of them. “Cattle have complex digestive systems, consisting of the rumen, the reticulum, the omasum, and the abomasums, which allow them to digest cellulose and hemicellulose found in grass blades” (Lake Forest). Adding corn to the cattle diet “changes the chemistry of (the cattle) digestive system and leads to serious illnesses, including bloat and acidosis” (Lake Forest). These illnesses are extremely painful and brutal to cattle and completely violate the rights of animals. Moreover, feeding cattle a corn based diet is extremely dangerous for human consumption, with E-coli being one of the most prominent bacteria that ends up in the human body, causing uncontrollable deadly diarrhea. Even with obvious negative impacts that is brought to humans, the problems of corn-fed cattle have been overlooked for years.

“According to the British group, VegFarm, a 10-acre piece of land can feed 60 people when used for the production of soybeans, 24 people when used for wheat, 10 people when used for corn, and only a mere 2 people when used for cattle” (Blog EPA). This statistic shows us how much more sustainable land is when used for vegetation rather than cattle. However, the sad truth is, with most of the corn perhaps the vegetation of corn crops is equally as harmful to the environment as cattle farms are. According to Scientific American, “today’s corn crop is mainly used for biofuels (roughly 40 percent of U.S. corn is used for ethanol) and as animal feed (roughly 36 percent of U.S. corn, plus distillers grains left over from ethanol production, is fed to cattle, pigs and chickens). Much of the rest is exported. Only a tiny fraction of the national corn crop is directly used for food for Americans, much of that for high-fructose corn syrup”. With the majority of the corn production being fed to cattle, we are wasting our human food resources to animals that cannot even digest such food healthily nor properly; We are fueling cattle with food that uses up more land than any other plant crops in America. This land could have been utilized for more plant crops for American people, instead of further wasting natural resources just to grow corn for cattle and causing human diseases. The corn industry uses “5.6 cubic miles per year of irrigation water withdrawn from America’s rivers and aquifers” and “5.6 million tons of nitrogen” for fertilizers (Scientific American). The fertilizers are then washed into “the nation’s lakes, rivers and coastal oceans, polluting waters and damaging ecosystems along the way” – an iconic example of this is the Gulf of Mexico (Scientific American).

And not only that, but even when the corn fields are dedicated to the human diets, the corn is often processed into other unhealthy forms like cellulose, saccharin, polydextrose, xanthan gum, maltodextrin, and most importantly, high fructose corn syrup.

It is horrifying that the average American does not know the story behind what is on their plates. We are so far removed from the actual origin and production of our food – which a huge percentage is from corn – that we continue to consume large amounts of harmful foods to our body and contribute to ever-growing problems of obesity and other food-related illnesses.

Sources:

https://blog.epa.gov/blog/2010/04/living-without-meat/

https://www.lakeforest.edu/live/files/1135-graberreviewaprintpdf

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-corn/

 

Snake Soup

When I was eleven, my grandfather invited our family to a restaurant for a feast of snake soup. The waiter set the porcelain bowl in front of me. It had thick handles, as if to emphasize the grandness of what it held. When I looked inside, I saw strips of white worm-like objects floating around in a thick, yellowish-brown mixture. As I stared at it, I thought, “Is it even right to eat this?”

“Claudia! How do you like the soup?” my grandfather asked.

My grandfather had been battling cancer for three years. He grew up penniless, worked as a child laborer and only had six years of education. Despite his tough beginnings, he was able to establish the world’s largest golf course. If he could give so much to our family, then I could drink snake soup for him. Closing my eyes, I flushed it down my throat.

“Grandpa, I love it!” I said in a cheery tone with my soup-drenched teeth, while feeling the slices of snake meat slither down my tight, rejecting throat.

There is a Cantonese term called “sik sik,” which translates to “knowing how to eat.” To be “sik sik” is to be so experienced with different cuisines that one appreciates all types of exotic food. Most of my family are “sik sik” and they always take pride in ordering the most atypical food like fish head or frog meat. I used to eat fish eyes to prove I was “sik sik” too.

Last year, when I came across a video about animal cruelty, my complex feelings about animals were put into structured thoughts. These thoughts that had passed through my mind throughout the years had all pointed to veganism; I just hadn’t put them together yet. I’ve been a vegan for eight months now. My uncle, who is the most “sik sik” in the family, makes fun of me for my new lifestyle. Whenever he slurps down his favorite shark fin soup, he shakes his head and says to me, “You can’t have this…so sad.” “Sik sik” means something different to me now. To me, it means understanding food production on an intellectual and compassionate level, and learning how to advocate for the voiceless. Perhaps my feelings in the restaurant were the voice of my future vegan self yelling to the preteen me that it is okay to feel disturbed by something when everyone else feels it is perfectly normal.

Becoming vegan is my apology to the snake I ate; it is a representation of my love and respect for my grandfather. When I was reading Animal Liberation by Peter Singer, this story of the snake soup immediately popped into my head when Singer made the argument about how human beings eat animal flesh long before we are competent to understand that what we are eating is the dead body of an animal. Even though most children’s natural instinct is to reject meat, eating animal flesh is a habit developed at a young age by parents, who mistakenly believe that it is healthy for their bodies. The mass media also allows us to be ignorant of the truth behind the animal farming industry – where “the average viewer must know more about the lives of cheetahs and and sharks than he or she knows about the lives of chickens or veal calves” through documentary television shows(216). Perhaps this is the reason why it felt wrong to me to have the snake soup – because I learned from the television that snakes are powerful wild animals. Typical television shows often are more aware of what they show about farm animals, since meat-eating viewers have an ignorant “don’t tell me, you’ll spoil my dinner” attitude (217).  My favorite food back then were honey wings – I used to have ten wings for a meal. Never once did I question myself if it was okay to have chicken. I did really think about where the wings came from. I knew they were from chickens, but I did not know much about chickens to care about their emotions. Just like Singer mentioned, the most children are normally exposed to farm animals are probably through children songs like Old MacDonald.

As Singer explained the short history of speciesism and how the “Man’s Dominion” came into being, I became very ashamed about how egocentric human kind is, especially after the emphasis on self-discovering during the Renaissance (198). As I continue on with this Independent Project, I am looking forward to embark on a journey of self-discovery on the true meaning of coexistence with all animals alike.