Still organically dead.
the smoking vegan: The PETA conundrum
Should we all sleep better at night because KFC might make sure their nuggets-to-be get a dunkeroo in the ol' (and oh-so-humane) stun tank before they get their throats cut while they're still alive? Why does PETA focus on making the torture more humane as opposed to just fighting tooth and nail to stop it? Do you think the inmates of Birkenau would have died just a little happier if the Zyklon-B was mint-scented?
This has occurred to me in the past. At Providence's earthy-crunchy health food store, the late, somewhat lamented Golden Sheaf, I once asked the cashier standing in front of a sign touting "organically raised" turkeys for Thanksgiving whether they'd been organically killed as well. This was of course in the days when "health food store" = vegetarian.
That last line, though, is optimum snark.
Comments
I don't know, man. You ever hear Temple Grandin interviewed about these things? She's behind the humane slaughter thing. She helps design these things and she does it by putting herself in the place of the animals to be slaughtered. She has autism, and she believes it helps her think more like an animal. Sounds weird, but seriously, if you can find her interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, give it a listen. It makes sense. And it's not about mint-scented Zyklon B, it's about sudden death with as little pain as possible vs long minutes of terror and slow painful death....
Grandin thinks it's worth making the deaths humane if she can.
Posted by: Ed Heil | June 13, 2005 11:44 PM
Humane slaugher has mildly instructive value to people who don't want any more animals slaughtered: It's a foot in the cognitive door that forces people who think nothing at all of eating an animal to think briefly on the simple idea that the animal they're eating had to be killed.
That's not going to set the world on fire, because I suspect the vast majority of people who eat animals don't care, and probably even make jokes about the inherent superiority of their opposable thumbs, or assert their natural right to eat animals.
Some people, however, know better than to do what they're doing but have momentarily convinced themselves that the difficulties imposed by not eating animals (or the social pressures they'd face if they decided to stop) aren't worth living out. Many of that group will experience a moment of cognitive dissonance every time the "humane slaughter" argument comes up, or every time whatever euphemism ends up as marketing bling turns up on their box of organic, free range, humanely slaughtered pickled hog snouts.
Posted by: mph | June 14, 2005 10:04 AM