Meat-Free

I'm a vegetarian, have been for just over six years now, and the longer I spend being one, the more I know that I will never be able to eat meat again. Now, even the thought sickens me, and I don't know if it's because my body has reached the stage where it physically would be unable to handle the meat, or because mentally I would be unable to accept the fact that I would be eating the flesh of a once living thing. I'm not trying to "convert" anyone. It's a personal choice, and a choice that I made for myself. Right and Wrong are subjective concepts. What's right to one person is wrong to another. I have no problem with people who choose to eat meat, and I would even prepare meat for someone if I had to. No, what I have a problem with is the fact that for most people who eat meat, the slab of flesh on the plate is completely disassociated with the animal it came from. It's "beef", not "cow"; "pork" not "pig"; "mutton" not "sheep"; and so on. For the majority of people, eating meat would be an entirely different matter had they to kill the animal themselves. Look the sheep in the eye while they slit its throat. Watch it suffer in agony as the blood drained out of its body. Strip its still warm body of its skin, and pull the flesh from its bones. No, I think that if most people had to do this, they would choose to go without the meat they currently believe they have a right to devour so greedily. Instead, the dirty work is left to the confines of the slaughter house where machines systematically murder animal after animal. Perhaps I should have used a different word. Is it murder when it's an inanimate object doing the killing? More importantly, is it considered murder when it's a "lowly" animal being killed? Replacing the animal with a human, could the operator of the machine be considered guilty of the murder? Yes, legally I believe he could.

What of the circle of life? The food chain? Don't animals kill each other in the wild for survival? True, yet do these animals have the need to use implements to kill? Does a lion use a gun or a knife when killing a zebra? No. He kills using his own strength, using the tools nature gave him; that is, his teeth and his claws. I wonder how far we would get if we had to kill using our bare hands? Perhaps a rat. Maybe a rabbit if we were lucky. I know, our superior mind and our natural dexterity meant that we were able to design tools to aid us blah blah blah. It's a neverending circle this debate, it really is, and I'm pretty sick of it at this stage. I've heard it a million times. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and mine is that every living thing is sacred. We are no more entitled to take away a persons life than entitled to take away the life of an innocent animal. I suppose what put this into my mind is that I just got home and on the way home my friends brother told us about the sheep they killed last weekend while camping in the desert. Yes, a group of guys decided to kill a sheep to eat it. Pretty normal stuff really, alot of people regularly kill to eat. Anyhow, the knife they used wasn't sharp enough and from what I could gather (I was trying to block out the conversation) it took a long time to finally kill the poor animal. Can you imagine the pain and suffering she went through? The torture, the agony. The madness until finally death eased the pain. I wonder if she was all eaten, or was most of her left to rot after they had taken their fill? I wonder alot of things, but most of all I wonder why we as a race find it so strange to think that someone could choose to live a life that did not advocate the killing and eating of animals.