James McWilliams
December 2013
“Happy pigs, scrumptious pork,” the farm promises. Note to farm owner (who claims with pride, “this girl brings bacon into the world”): you cannot have pork from a happy pig. Because the day you turn the pig into pork is the day you render all those belly rubs and ear scratches the act of either an Alzheimer’s patient or a psychopath, a psychopath bent on profiting from people who happen to be equally thoughtless and clueless.
It’s those lunatics who claim to care about the animals they kill, those who photograph their beasts in supposed bliss and use that pornography to sell the animal’s flesh, that turns my stomach and makes me sick.
“At Olive Hill Farms we believe that belly rubs and behind-the-ear scratches make better bacon.”
This is the maniacal sentence that pulled me into what turns out to be a mind-blowingly thoughtless and ultimately cruel website about a farm that claims to love pigs and then kills them. Check it out here.
“Happy pigs, scrumptious pork,” the farm promises. Note to farm owner (who claims with pride, “this girl brings bacon into the world”): you cannot have pork from a happy pig. Because the day you turn the pig into pork is the day you render all those belly rubs and ear scratches the act of either an Alzheimer’s patient or a psychopath, a psychopath bent on profiting from people who happen to be equally thoughtless and clueless.
Let me reiterate for the umpteenth time: you cannot have happy meat. There is no such thing. Sure, you can raise an animal and treat that animal well while she’s alive but when you kill the animal you kill the happiness, making all previous acts and intentions meaningless; when you eat the flesh of a sentient being you are eating the flesh of an animal whose interest in being happy was deemed less important than your salivating palate. And that’s sick. How hard is this point to understand? Evidently very much so.
In a way I have less animus toward mindless consumers who buy cheap factory meat at the Kroger, never once thinking that they are eating the flesh of a being who suffered (which describes the vast majority of meat eaters). It’s those lunatics who claim to care about the animals they kill, those who photograph their beasts in supposed bliss and use that pornography to sell the animal’s flesh, that turns my stomach and makes me sick.
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