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Letter: Animal lovers unite against advert for pet meat

Kelowna - “The ad is there to wake people up to their hypocrisy.”
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To the editor:

This is our response to a recent ad on buying pets for meat.

This ad certainly created quite the furor among people who condemn the eating of pets vehemently while they likely also think nothing of paying others to inhumanely raise and slaughter other sentient beings (baby pigs, calves, five to-six-week-old chickens and five to six-month-old baby lambs and goats, to name a few more common “food” animals) so they can eat them or eat their milk or eggs.

It clearly demonstrates the significant disconnect that the average person has for the pieces of flesh on their plate, the cheese in their sandwich or the hard-boiled egg in their lunch.

READ MORE: Ad looking for puppies and kittens to eat upsets pet lovers

So many people are up in arms when it comes to any sort of abuse to dogs and cats, horses as well.

But ask them to stick up for other voiceless beings and they fall silent.

Those other beings suffer no less than any dog or cat might in the same circumstances.

Do you think that sows feel humanely treated when they are in a farrowing crate that is barely big enough for them to lie down, let alone turn around?

Do you think that a young piglet willingly offers its tail to have it chopped off without anesthesia? Or have its eye teeth cut out of its mouth? Ears notched?

Many surplus piglets are thumped—slammed head first into the concrete floor to kill them.

Off to the gas chamber they go at five to six-months-old.

Canadian standards allow for animals and birds to be shipped for up to 52 hours, without food, water or rest, in even this extremely cold weather—for bacon, a known carcinogen?

How about very young chicks having their beaks burnt off so they don’t peck each other in close confinement?

Or the male chicks that go down the grinder with the egg shells moments after hatching?

Boys don’t lay eggs so they are essentially useless to the egg industry.

Or bull calves castrated without anesthesia?

Then there are the dairy cows who cry for days when their babies are taken away at birth so that humans can drink the milk that was designed for their calf?

Any mothers out there find that offensive?

Maybe that coyote didn’t suffer one iota in the trap set for him to die a slow death so people can have a coyote fur trim on their Canada Goose coat?

The ad is there to wake people up to their hypocrisy.

Most of the animals that humans eat (98 per cent give or take) are farmed in factories with little to no regard for their comfort and emotions, yet raised according to Canadian standards.

There are a few that are raised as this person described they would raise the dogs and cats for meat—humanely.

But they all end up dead and chopped into little pieces.

There is no such thing as humane meat, humane eggs, humane milk, humane fur.

Carnism is just another “ism” — a belief system based on tradition or culture, certainly not need.

People will do what people want to do. Our only hope right now is that at the very least, they do it with their eyes wide open.

An animal is an animal, they are all sentient meaning that they all have wants and needs, will fight to live, they all have emotions.

Any readers who consider themselves animal lovers should re-examine that notion if they are eating them.

There is no nutritional requirement for humans to consume animal or fish flesh, certainly not to eat dairy, and our planet, our health and the lives of animals will be positively impacted the sooner people make that discovery and become compassionate human beings.

Our primary regret is not making this connection sooner in our lives.

Check out the new Canada Foods Guide which is very much favouring a primarily plant-based diet over the former meat/dairy/egg focused guides of past decades.

Keep May 26 open in your calendar for the second annual VegFest Kelowna.

Dr. Moira

Drodovech,

Heather

Henderson,

Karen Stiewe,

Helen Schiele,

Dr. Judith

Samson-French

Animal Lovers

Kelowna