What's for Dinner, Honey?

Male calf immediately after birth, murdered

(if he was lucky), tossed aside like yesterdays

garbage, leaving nothing but a grieving mother behind.

Getting groceries for the family tonight? Stopping by the local market to pick up the delectable, meticulously shrink-wrapped, freshly red hamburger meat for fine barbecue grill dining? You’re not alone. The semi-conscious ingestion of the nightly dinner ritual equates to over 35 million beef cattle being slaughtered in the U.S. alone. And according to the Farm Animals Rights Movement, about 59 Billion—that’s billion with a capital “B!”—animals are killed for American consumption alone annually. Cows, pigs, goats, chickens, fish and even dogs. The genocide of these billions of animals affects, not only the animals, but the people and the planet. We’ve forgotten that we are all interconnected.

Most people don’t realize the horrors that go on behind the windowless warehouses where animals are slaughtered. Unconsciously, we mosey up to the meat section at the market and feel good about picking up the package with a graphic of a farmer tending happy cows. Sadly those days are all but gone. Instead cows are often still alive when strung up, dangling by one fragile leg as a warehouse worker (not farmer) laughs while cutting off tails and skinning it alive. This is especially true in the leather industry (no more Coach® purses for me, thank you very much). Oftentimes cows are too weak to walk to the slaughter area and are stabbed with forklifts and dragged to the slaughter area. Veal production is one of the cruelest. While still in utero, calves are ripped out of the mother’s body. While mother and calf cry for each other, the females are whisked away for veal use while the males are callously rendered as useless and murdered. All in the name of money.

Farm Sanctuary, an organization that celebrated its 25^th anniversary last year, is one of the strongest advocating agencies for changes in farm animal treatment. One of the key issues they have addressed in their recent National Conference to End Factory Farming is the effects from the massive production of farm animals for food consumption and its disastrous effect on the environment. The planet literally cannot sustain much more of the toxicity involved in food production. “The sixteen hundred dairies in California’s Central Valley alone produce more waste than a city of twenty-one million people,” said Farm Sanctuary president Gene Bauer, “that’s more than the populations of London, New York, and Chicago combined.”

There are ways you can help. Every time you purchase a grocery item and it’s scanned, you are casting a vote. Choose organic whenever possible. Buy regional products. Go to farmers markets and support your local farmers whenever possible. Look for cruelty-free foods and products.

Oftentimes, people feel disconnected to farm animals because they don’t consider they have emotions. All living things are sentient. Dog and cat lovers would be aghast at their beloved pet being crammed into a cage full of other animals and boiled alive or worse, yet dog meat is considered a delicacy in China and there is a high demand for the meat. Holly Cheever, a veterinarian and in partnership with Action for Animals, documented an amazing story of a cow who had given birth to twins. A farmer had called Cheever in to help with determining why one of his cows who had just given birth and was seemingly healthy and a severely depleted milk supply. Cheever tested the cow and determined her to be in fine health. It was a mystery. Several days later, the farmer called Cheever with an answer to the mystery. The cow, who had given birth four times previously, had had her infant taken away from her instantly for meat production use. This time she had given birth to twins. One calf she brought to the farmer. The other? She had hidden at the farthest end of the field and every morning, afternoon and evening she went to nurse the remaining calf. A mother’s love is not only human.

We are all connected. We’ve just forgotten that we were. Make a change next time you vote at the grocery store. An animal just might thank you.