Meet Your Meat
“The cruelties of modern factory farming are so severe that you don't have to be a vegetarian or animal rights activist to find the conditions intolerable and a violation of the human-animal bond.” John Robbins
“Factory farming wasn't born or advanced out of a need to produce more food — to 'feed the hungry' — but to produce it in a way that is profitable for agribusiness companies. Factory farming is all about money. That is the reason the factory farm system is failing and won't work over the long term: it's created a food industry whose primary concern isn't feeding people. Does anyone really doubt that the corporations that control the vast majority of animal agriculture in America are in it for the profit? In most industries, that's a perfectly good driving force. But when the commodities are animals, the factories are the earth itself, and the products are physically consumed, the stakes are not the same, and the thinking can't be the same.” Jonathan Safran Foer
“Even if you don't work in the meatpacking industry or eat meat, you are not immune to the consequences of the practices of the animal agribusinesses with which you share the planet. Meat production is a leading cause of every significant form of enviromental damage: air and water pollution, biodiversity loss, erosion, deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, and depletion of fresh water.” Melanie Joy
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| VA 1.242.285 Tape (Yura Kollektief, 1986) |
Diverse Artiesten – To What Price?
Get it here.
“The vast majority of the animals we eat are not, as those in the animal agribusiness industry would have us believe, 'contented cows' and 'happy hens' lazing amid grassy fields and open barnyards. They are not sleeping in spacious stalls with fresh hay. From the moment they are born, these animals are kept in intensive confinement where they may suffer from disease, exposure to extreme temperatures, severe overcrowding, violent handling, and even psychosis. Despite what the prevailing imagery of farm animals suggests, small, family-run farms are largely a thing of the past; today the animals are in massive 'confined animal feeding operations,' or CAFOs (sometimes called 'factory farms'), where they reside until they are shipped to the slaughterhouse.” Melanie Joy
Le Sang des bêtes (Georges Franju, 1949)
“The meat industry understands that the more people know about what happens on the kill floor, the less meat they're likely to eat.” Michael Pollan
“Human beings cannot be human (much less humane) under the conditions of a factory farm or slaughterhouse. It's the most perfect workplace alienation in the world right now. Unless you consider what the animals experience.” Jonathan Safran Foer
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| VA Sub Pop 5 Tape (Sub Pop, 1980) |
All Night Movies – Slaughterhouse
“A diet based on industrial fast food is contributing mightily to escalating rates of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and cancer. And factory farms are contributing massively to global warming, deforestation, and species extinction.” John Robbins
“It might sound naive to suggest that whether you order a chicken patty or a veggie burger is a profoundly important decision. Then again, it certainly would have sounded fantastic if in the 1950s you were told that where you sat in a restaurant or on a bus could begin to uproot racism. (…) Deciding what to eat (and what to toss overboard) is the founding act of production and consumption that shapes all others. Choosing leaf or flesh, factory farm or family farm, does not in itself change the world, but teaching ourselves, our children, our local communities, and our nation to choose conscience over ease can. One of the greatest opportunities to live our values — or betray them — lies in the food we put on our plates.” Jonathan Safran Foer
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| God Is My Co-Pilot I Am Not This Body CD (Les Disques Du Soleil Et De L'Acier, 1992) |
God Is My Co-Pilot – Animal Rights
“Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn't motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn't enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?” Jonathan Safran Foer
Ja Ja Ja – I Am An Animal
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For further reading, please check out Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and Gail Eisnitz's Slaughterhouse.
