Vegetarian Star

When a 19-year old woman slammed her sister’s pet hamster onto the floor, ASPCA animal police arrested her, charges were filed and she spent a night at Riker’s Island prison.

Yet this type of behavior occurs in farms around the country routinely. One group’s random undercover cruelty investigation found abuse in all 10 of the chosen farms or slaughterhouses it chose to visit.

Mark Bittman discussed this irony in one of his recent New York Times column, “Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others.”

Bittman blames the routine abuse and neglect of farm animals on “Common Farming Exemptions” that vary from state to state that allow a farming practice to continue as long as it’s common.

Jokingly, Bittman compares this law to giving burglars power to define trespassing based on how their fellow thieves are doing it.

But thanks to Common Farming Exemptions, as long as I “raise” animals for food and it’s done by my fellow “farmers” (in this case, manufacturers might be a better word), I can put around 200 million male chicks a year through grinders (graphic video here), castrate — mostly without anesthetic — 65 million calves and piglets a year, breed sick animals (don’t forget: more than half a billion eggs were recalled last summer, from just two Iowa farms) who in turn breed antibiotic-resistant bacteria, allow those sick animals to die without individual veterinary care, imprison animals in cages so small they cannot turn around, skin live animals, or kill animals en masse to stem disease outbreaks.

All of this is legal, because we will eat them.

Rob Eshman on his blog Foodaism at The Jewish Journal weighed in on this discrepancy and suggests part of the problem is we define animals as property, leading to the accepted notion that owners are free to do whatever they want with them.

Perhaps there is a legal path toward redefining the use of animals as a privilege. Why not put animals in the same category as rental cars, where we have the right to derive benefit from them, though they belong to someone else, and we must pay dearly for their abuse. From Hormel to Hertz— that would be a huge step up in animal welfare.

Eshman feels religion could play a huge role in how our society treats animals, given some of the major religious groups feel God gave them the animal kingdom to control. This dominion over animals could be redefined and vegan Russell Simmons briefly touched on this during a visit to discuss his book Super Rich to high school students.

“Man being given domain over animals doesn’t mean we have animals birthed, only to overfeed them and then use them for our needs,” Simmons said.

Photo: PR Photos

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