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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nMeat<\/strong>: The flesh of a person’s body. The parts of an animal’s body, primarily muscle, that is often consumed for food. The food source for omnivorous and carnivorous species throughout the globe. But is it actually for humans?
The short answer to that is “no.” Humans actually are not meant to consume animal flesh, just as we are not meant to consume dairy or eggs, which I discuss further in other journals. Meat is not meant for humans for several reasons: The first being that humans simply are not physically designed to consume flesh, secondly because of the immense cruelty involved, and thirdly the destruction of the planet<\/a><\/span>. In this journal I will concentrate on just the meat industry and how it abuses animals and the harm meat does to our bodies. Other journals will cover the environmental issues of animal agriculture, the dairy industry<\/a><\/span>, and the egg industry<\/a><\/span>.
Humans are not designed to eat flesh or any animal products. Our physical built is proof of this from our short, blunt teeth, circular moving jaws, inability to swallow large chunks, weak liver secretions, long, lumpy walled intestines, lack of claws, and no prey drive. Humans are incapable of hunting prey without using tools of some short. Humans also lack the desire to hunt for prey. Children are taught to see animals as food, but even this takes time. Children cry when they learn animals are killed, and rather not eat them. If a child is placed in a room with a rabbit and apple the child will always play with the rabbit and eat the apple, never the other way around. And when children are conditioned to view animals as a food source, this brings about specieism. Specieism is when one species, such as dogs, are viewed as “friends” while other species, such as pigs, are viewed as “food.” Children grow up loving dogs and many other species, but for those few select species will see them as “food,” but even then most of the time know it’s wrong to harm them. Depending on the culture a child is raised in will change the animals they are taught to love and those they are told to hate. Which, if eating animals was natural for humans wouldn’t lead to these extreme differences. Humans would have natural prey animals that would be universal for all humans instinctively. Just as every house cat knows that the scent of a mouse, rabbit, or bird is prey, but when smelling a canine, horse, or elephant know that that is not something to seek after. Not even our ancestors ate meat or if they did it was very little<\/a><\/span>.
The argument that human canines are meant to tear flesh is utterly ridiculous. Human teeth<\/a><\/span> in comparison to actual carnivores such as lion teeth<\/a><\/span>, shark teeth<\/a><\/span>, and leopard seal teeth<\/a><\/span>, which are all true carnivores. Omnivorous animals have teeth such as bear teeth<\/a><\/span>, canine teeth<\/a><\/span>, chimpanzee teeth<\/a><\/span>. While herbivorous animals have teeth such as horse teeth<\/a><\/span>, orangutan teeth<\/a><\/span>, and pacu fish teeth<\/a><\/span>. Human teeth are closest to herbivorous animals. Canines are found in almost all animal species who possess teeth, even bovines. And some herbivorous species possess very massive canines such as gorillas<\/a><\/span>, fanged deer<\/a><\/span>, and hippos<\/a><\/span>. Nothing about human mouths is meant for meat eating<\/a><\/span>.
The long, lumpy walled intestines of humans is similar to other herbivores, allowing vegetation to slowly be digested and nutrients absorbed. While carnivores and omnivores have smooth walled, and short intestines to get rotten flesh out quickly before it can begin to rot. Human livers secret weak enzymes like other herbivores since breaking down vegetation is easier than meat. Carnivores, such as cats, secrete such powerful enzymes that if they do not eat after a period of time their enzymes will begin to break down their own organs. Humans are best built for picking plants and consuming them, rather than any animal products.
To top this, science continues to show us how animal products cause several severe illnesses in humans from cardiovascular disease, various cancers, diabetes, and many other illnesses, as well as bacteria causes diseases from consuming infected flesh. Meat consumption causes numerous illnesses.<\/a><\/span> Animal products have been linked to 70% of illnesses in humans. The causes of the illnesses is from the human bodies inability to properly process animal proteins, the high hormone levels, and other body chemicals found solely in flesh. The bacteria caused diseases are also very high<\/a><\/span>. The risk of developing cancer from meat consumption is almost a guaranteed promise<\/a><\/span>. Dr. Greger’s presentation<\/a><\/span> gives much more information on the reasons why animal products harm our bodies like this.
Humans are not made to consume meat and it harms our bodies, as well as the planet. Now, the real victims of the meat industry are the animals being eaten. Bovines, chickens, pigs, turkeys, geese, ducks, dogs, cats, rabbits, sheep, goats, fish, turtles, frogs, lobsters, crabs, octopuses, dolphins, whales, horses, and deer are the most common species consumed by humans, but almost every animal species is at risk.
Animals are raised on factory farms, which lock them away in small pens, often chained. They are unable to turn around, living on metal grates and their own feces. Pigs are especially subjected to the life of gestation crates, where they will live for up to 6 years being constantly bred until they can’t produce anymore. While pigs can live to be up to 15 years old, they are sent to slaughter at 6 months to 6 years of age. Females are repeatedly artificially inseminated (raped) to keep them breeding, but are unable to properly care for their piglets, who most die before being old enough to ship off to slaughter. Pigs are beaten, electrocuted, shouted at, stabbed, anally and vaginally sodomized, spray painted, denied the outdoors, and injuries left untreated. Sows are bred so much and receive no exercise that their organs will even begin to be pushed out of their anus.
While dairy cows are all sent to slaughter once they are not producing enough milk, bovines raised exclusively for their flesh don’t receive better treatment. Cattle are kept in small pens, packed tightly together. Cows are raped often to keep them breeding, and all are killed at 2-3 years of age. They are fed a mixture of grains, ground up fish, and even other cows. Cattle live in their own waste, and even on large ranches the cattle are sent off to slaughter. Raising cattle also takes up much of the land and destroys the land for wildlife.
Chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese are raised in small cages or kept in barns so tightly packed they can barely move. Broiler chickens grow so quickly that at 42 days old they can’t even walk. That’s the same as a child weighing over 400 pounds. Here is a comparison photo<\/a><\/span>. They are then killed at only a few weeks old.
Animals are tightly packed into trailers and shipped off to slaughter. They are so tightly crammed inside that animals are unable to move, they are on top of each other, and many don’t make it to their destination. They can be inside these trailers for a few days even, suffering through temperatures over 100 degrees, to well below freezing, receiving no food, water, or loving touches. Some animals are shipped across oceans on ships, being packed together, cruelly hoisted by their necks off the ship, and left to drown when ships collapse-side.
At the slaughterhouse the animals smell the blood and death, hear the screams of those before them, and fear the horror of the place. They are electrocuted and beaten off of the trucks, and those unable to stand are dragged off by bobcat vehicles, forklifts, and other such equipment. The animals are forced down tight walkways and into a small room where they watch each other be killed, or forced one by one into a machine that flips them over, pins down their neck, and allows a worker to cut their neck open. Once they have their necks cut, they are hung upside down by a chain tied around a back ankle and hoisted up. Some slaughterhouses use a bolt gun before cutting the animals’ necks. The bolt gun shoots a metal bolt into the animal’s head when held against it. The gun is supposed to stun the animal, rendering them unconscious, but it is not always the case. Some animals need to have it done repeatedly, some are rendered unable to move while still conscious, and in halal and kosher slaughter they are never stunned.
The animals always struggle to live, trying to flee, trying to hide, and sometimes are just too terrified to move. Just like humans, animals are able to cry tears, and it is often they do so. As the bleeding animals are taken through the slaughterhouse, suffocating as they bleed out, many are still alive and conscious. They are then dumped in boiling water, the live ones screaming from the searing, agonizing pain. If they survive that, they are then gutted and have their legs removed. The head is cut off, they are skinned, and their bodies sent off to have more done to them in preparation to be sold. The slaughterhouse is always filled with the hellish screams of the dying, their fear, and the horrendous pain they suffer as they are killed and beaten. “Humane” slaughter simply doesn’t exist for there is NO humane way to kill someone who doesn’t want to die. Animals can’t be euthanized for that leaves the euthanasia chemicals inside of their flesh, and as discussed in my journal on hunting<\/a><\/span>, shooting in the head doesn’t always guarantee an instant death, or even death. To add to this, whenever someone dies feces, urine, and blood is released throughout the body, so all flesh consumed is filled with these as well.
The corpses are sent off to be changed even more so that consumers won’t associate the packages of meat bought with the killed animals. Carbon monoxide is pumped onto flesh to turn it bright red when in reality dead flesh is a dark, brownish color which starts to turn green in a couple of days. Liquids are added to chicken bodies to make them appear larger, and the corpses are purposely cut to not resemble bodies.
Fish are sentient and feel pain. They are caught by the billions every year, emptying the oceans, and killing millions of other sea life that gets caught in the nets, and starving from their prey being taken away. Scientists predict that in the year 2048 all ocean life will be gone. Most fish are fed to livestock, oddly enough, and even more are accidental catches, so are dumped back into the ocean often dead. Even fish caught with hooks don’t fair better for they feel the pain in their mouth similar to how a human would if they had a hook put through it.
In some countries domesticated cats and dogs are consumed. They are either bred on farms, but usually are stolen off the streets or from people’s back yards. In China, it is believed that the more a dog and cat are tortured the “better” their flesh will taste. They are boiled alive, burned with torches, beaten, hung to death, and skinned alive. The Yulin Dog Meat Festival is held once a year in China where thousands of dogs are brutally killed in a matter of days. Dogs and cats have their paws tied together, often behind their backs, stuffed into tiny cages, and treated worse than trash. These animals are also eaten in the United States and other countries.
To add to this the meat industry uses up so many resources and so much money trying to lie about their cruel product that government bailouts are needed to keep them running<\/a><\/span>. The chicken industry also needs bailouts<\/a><\/span>. And here<\/a><\/span>.
To top this all off, non-human animals are sentient, intelligent, feel pain such as we do, and simply want to be loved. Animals feel<\/a><\/span> and it doesn’t take studies to see that in action. Animals befriend each other regardless of species as we see here<\/a><\/span>, they protect and love their offspring, they solve puzzles, communicate in their own languages, and adapt to new challenges. Animals will even sacrifice themselves to save their young, use sex for pleasure as well as breeding, and even learn the routines of humans to better steal from trash cans. To deny non-human animals can think is simply foolish. Humans are animals after all, so why would other animals not also think, love, and suffer? Simply, animals feel and think<\/a><\/span>, period.
While eating animals may have been a necessity in extreme survival situations, in today’s time with modern technology it is not. The amount of meat eaten in a day by the average person is the same amount of meat eaten in several months’ time by those hundreds of years ago. Meat has always been the food of the rich, with peasants relying only on crops for survival. Gladiators were vegetarians, and Japan actually never ate red meat, or really any meat, until after white men begun to trade. Yes, ninjas and samurais were vegetarians. Only with modern refrigeration has consuming animal products become so commonplace.
In fact, some of the most brilliant minds were vegans and vegetarians such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Galileo, Leo Tolstoy, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, Confucius, Van Gogh, George Berndard Shaw, Voltaire, Pascal, and many, many others. Here are some vegan celebrities<\/a><\/span> as well as some vegan athletes<\/a><\/span>. Here is also vegan bodybuilder Frank Medrano<\/a><\/span> showing how you don’t need animal products to be strong and fit.
If you can live a healthy lifestyle without harming anyone and still eat delicious food, why wouldn’t you? And, no religion doesn’t support eating animals, either<\/a><\/span>. And as for Lab Grown Meat see here<\/a><\/span>.
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