Tag: eating animals

Developing a Taste for Animal Rights: For Our Health, for Our Planet, for Our Future

It’s Blog Action Day, and while I generally cringe at putting my name next to anything promoted as a “blog”, this is a worthy cause as the theme is “inequality.” As someone who has been a vegan and animal rights activist for more than 20 years, writing about inequality in our food system is a no-brainer. It’s an important topic to discuss. From the food deserts, to the high price for healthy food, to the tons of it going into the trash while millions go hungry. But no issue is more pressing and more ignored than eating animals.

U.S. Horse Slaughter Set to Resume: Are Horses ‘Food Animals?’

Horse slaughter is scheduled to resume in the US next month, unless pending legal action stops it. There are questions surrounding this issue that we need to ask and answer, about what exactly we’re up to as a society: what is a ‘food animal?’ Should we have horse slaughterhouses selling horse meat? What about dog slaughterhouses selling dog meat? Does anyone think the problem with our dysfunctional food system is that we just haven’t been killing enough animals? Recent US horse slaughter developments beg serious scrutiny and reflection, from anyone interested in connections between food, health, and conscience.

Burger King Horse-Meat Scandal: Why the Outrage?

Burger King admitted this week that one of their suppliers has a horse meat problem. To a non-eater of cows, the ‘scandal’ looks bizarre: if you’re okay with eating a cow, why not a horse? The horse meat hubub highlights the elaborate unconscious mental gymnastics so many people routinely perform, in order to justify eating some animals but loving others. The story shines a harsh and unflattering light on our tendency to selectively check our empathy at the kitchen door (or barnyard gate), when it comes to eating animals.