This one is truly absurd. Right, so this woman makes a habit of protesting bearing witness outside pig slaughterhouses. That's all fine and dandy. She also started giving pigs water when the truck hauling them stopped at a light. Naturally, the owner/driver was rather angry. That's kinda wonky on its own, but don't forget to queue the truly absurd media tither and directly related slacktivism!
As it turns out, farmers really do know best when it comes to their livestock. Even today, an Ontario ministry of agriculture regulation recommends pigs aren’t fed for 12 to 18 hours before they’re slaughtered. This helps prevent contamination from, well, poop not yet pooped. It also keeps hogs from getting sick en route to the abattoir. And it’s proof that what might seem humane to a city slicker, might not actually be the best practice, which brings us back to the water and what we ignore when we talk about slaughterhouses.
When Anita Krajnc — who helped found a group called Toronto Pig Save that holds vigils outside abattoirs — shoved a water bottle through a metal truck to slake the thirst of a doomed pig, she actually could have been putting the food chain at risk of contamination.
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The story of a woman facing jail time for giving a pig water in the heat is so absurd it went viral, and, of course, perfectly reasonable people became incensed by this overreach of the law. I’ve even seen people bite into a double-bacon-burger with cheese while tweeting their outrage.
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As an aside, Krajnc wrote a Toronto Star op-ed this week as to compare livestock to approximately 12 million people who we chained, abused, dehumanized and shoved into boats and forced across the Atlantic in one of history’s darkest episodes.
“It’s wrong to see pigs as property, just as it was wrong hundreds of years ago to see human slaves as property and women as chattel — the property of men. The law needs changing,” she wrote.
You know what’s like the slave trade? The slave trade. That’s it.
[ZING!]
So whether you’re a carnivore, an occasional meat eater a vegan or someone who’s trying to cut back on the bacon for health or environmental reasons, if you really want to improve pigs lot on the way to slaughter, water bottles aren’t the answer. But advocating for practical solutions isn’t possible when you’re more interested in playing the martyr to angel pig slaves.
To be clear - I don't care about people's eating habits. I understand that there are vegetarians/vegans who are so because they reject everything about animals and agriculture. Even the angle that anti-anything people tend to wish to push their agenda on others more than pro-anything people (a sweeping generalization, yes, but it holds-up). It's the completely back asswards ways that people tackle things today.
People sometimes approach issues in such a completely all-or-nothing way that there is absolutely no hope of progress. I'm a meat eater, and I have grave concerns about factory pig farming and slaughter. I buy from a butcher who sources locally, etc. However, as the article mentions, part of the problem is the body of regulation around slaughter. At least the pigs I munch are not factory-raised, so let's chalk that up as incremental improvement. I encourage others to do so, if they have the wherewithal. I would really like to hear more people discussing these things, and look at how the system can be improved.
On the other hand, peruse through the comments to that article. You'll quickly see a pattern. Some folks bring-up facts and logic, which are summarily rejected by the all-or-nothing crowd (there's one particularly active person on there). At one point, someone talks about a scientist who has done tons of research into making the raising and slaughtering of animals for food more humane. The commenter instantly dismisses the scientist as a corporate shill. Another responds that they know the scientist personally, and she is the real deal, etc. The same 'all-or-nothing' retorts that no matter what incremental changes are undertaken, it's still the same (because - uhm - all or nothing!).
It strikes me that these people are, quite simply, boorish. Whether at a dinner table or on an airplane, they would be terrible to be stuck with. There is a relentless drive to push their beliefs upon anyone within earshot that puts them on par with the most unbearable people in any cause. Once someone declares anything to be the equivalent of the slave trade, the ringing in my ears drowns-out anything else that person might say.
The complete unwillingness to accept that maybe, just maybe, the approach is not going to work is part of it. Of course, someone who is all-or-nothing will outright reject any other approach, because extremes are built by self-confirmation.
In this case, Anita Krajnc decided that pigs should not be property after some sort of epiphany when encountering a truck full of pigs. To her, anything short of pigs not being property is wrong. Therefore, understanding the complexities of the industry - the farmers, the regulations, the economics, the choices people make and why they make them; indeed, why pigs are in trucks driving here and there - is of no consequence because they all stem from something that is wrong.
Here is the Op-Ed she wrote for Toronto Star:
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commenta ... water.html
It goes well enough until this passage:
It’s wrong to see pigs as property, just as it was wrong hundreds of years ago to see human slaves as property and women as chattel — the property of men. The law needs changing.
Before my court appearance, I was reading Tolstoy’s book My Religion: What I Believe. It had a most pertinent section on finding true meaning in life. It was not living selfishly and acquiring wealth, fame, and glory, but giving food to the hungry and water to the thirsty, living a life of service, and ministering to the suffering.
*sigh*
Anyhow, it comes down to, 'So I'm out walking my dog when I see this trailer full of pigs, and BAM, it occurs to me that owning an animal is like slavery!'.