A pig in a poke - Did you have bacon and eggs for breakfast this morning? asks Paul Sheehan in The Sydney Morning Herald. Then consider this: pigs live and give birth in concrete stalls so small that they cannot take more than one step. What's more, they are clinically depressed and often ill. You want to hold the bacon? As for the chicken industry, sorry, but it "replicates the cruelty of the piggeries." The truth is, we live in a "reality chasm" between the animals of "children's cartoon dreams" and the unmitigated horror of their real lives.
So perhaps we should follow the example of great French chef Alain Passard, who realised 5 years ago he "no longer wanted to be in a daily relationship with the corpse of an animal," and has not cooked red meat since. Or join Voiceless, an organisation which seeks to protect animals without the "shrill religiosity" associated with the animal rights movement. Its patron is JM Coetzee, whose alter-ego Elizabeth Costello is asked in 'The Lives of Animals' if she is a vegetarian out of moral conviction. "No, I don't think so," she says. "It comes out of a desire to save my soul."
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