Food Justice

As I sit and read Robert Gottlieb and Anupama Joshi's Food Justice, I can't help but shake my head in disbelief. One of their sources was from a PETA website, www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com. Are you kidding me? PETA loves attacking the agriculture industry again and again, making themselves look like complete idiots. Most PETA supporters are cowards hiding behind the rights of animals. Why am I being so harsh? Mainly because of the extreme tactics that PETA goes through to get rid of animal agriculture. They even want to get rid of your dogs and cats. All domesticated animals have to go. “I don’t want to see another cat or dog born.” – PETA CEO Wayne Pacelle in Bloodties, 1994. 

PETA always posts the same videos of animals being abused before slaughter. They believe that animals should have the same rights as humans, more or less. If there is one thing I have learned when it comes to agriculture it's this:

This photo is from Keeping it Real: Through the Lens of a Farm Girl. I enjoy all her posts about agriculture. 

I treat my dog like a dog. I treat my horses like horses. I treated my lambs like lambs. I didn't abuse them by hitting them or not feeding them. I loved them by going out in zero degree weather and attending to their needs. I always made sure they had enough water to drink and food to eat. It took dedication and selflessness on my part to not give up when it was too cold or too early in the morning to take care of them. I am an animal lover. Any and all creatures. PETA makes it seem like I'm the bad guy. I encourage you to always do your research when it comes to an industry like agriculture. There will always be someone who dislikes what you are an advocate for. That is just how life is.

For my practicum class senior year of college, our group chose to raise lambs for slaughter. I was the only one among my group to not have experience with sheep or raising animals for slaughter.

I was nervous at first, not knowing how slaughtering a live animal would make me feel. Would it turn me into a vegetarian? Would it give me nightmares? 

I'm still a meat eater and I never had nightmares. 

Being very excited about my class, I would post pictures of my experience on Instagram and Facebook and always get negative comments. I posted a picture of the slaughtered lambs fully skinned and ready to be cut and one response was, 'hope u gonna die the same way." 

To me, that is just an ignorant person who is uneducated in the agriculture industry. The image may be disturbing, but this is life. If you eat meat and are completely grossed out by this image, I encourage you to experience slaughtering an animal yourself or look up the slaughtering process of a chicken. Here is a video of Joel Salatin processing a chicken. This is what happens if you are a meat eater. Educate yourself. After all, meat doesn't come from the freezer section of a grocery store. Oh and if you don't know who Joel Salatin is, look him up. You might like the way he farms.

Don't believe everything PETA says. Do your research. As for the source cited from Food Justice, Kentucky Fried Chicken doesn't run the operations that supply them their meat. If that video was true (I'm betting someone from PETA fabricated a video), the people running that operation should be at fault, not KFC. But of course, it's PETA's job to make everyone miserable who eats meat. I NEVER believe anything PETA says because of their poor reputation. 

But ask yourself this:

If it weren't for extreme animal rights organizations, who would keep the animal agriculture industry in check?