This morning on my way to work, I pull up in back of a truck which has an immense sign on the back:

Broil 'Em
Bake 'Em
Grind 'Em
Make Them Beef!

...and a pleasant, country, day scene.

I pull to the left and drive up next to the 18-wheeler. Red light. We stop. I look through the small apertures scattered like Swiss cheese holes across the truck. One cow licks another cow's nose.

My anger washed away by a tidalwave of sadness, upset. Here are the Holocaust victims, Nazi Germany all over again. People realize the atrocity now - but don't they see the connection, the similarity? One cow trying to boost another nervous cow - all terrified of where they are going, knowing they are raised for the chopping block - no wonder cows turn mean.

The only right "meat" to eat is that which we kill ourselves, doing so in form of ritual, as the Native American did for centuries. To ask the animal for its sacrifice, to kill it with our own hands. We no longer call domesticated animals, "animals" - we objectify the term to "meat" - which is easy to do because we don't have to see the anguish as the animal is killed.

We take that pain and fear in when we chew that first bite.

Mad Cow disease - they treat it as if it's a disease, but it is just symptomatic of a greater wrongdoing - where we objectify and quantify everything - where certain lives are cheap, others not.

20.07.00

© 1990 - 2003 Katharina Woodworth