I will admit to being in this group once before. It is all in the convenience of sitting in your car, ordering, paying and driving away from the window with a meal conveniently in a bag ready for consumption. The behind the scenes are obscured from our vision by marketing, colorful signs and packaging. Do you really think that “the happiest cows come from California”? 
“Some words,… like happy, mean the opposite of what they would seem. And some, like natural, mean next to nothing” (pg. 603/45). We choose not to think about the lives of the animals that feed us, for fear of feeling shame for adding toward the mass demand for more. These “happy” cows from California, aren’t so from what I have seen in clips from Earthlings. “Milking cows are kept chained to their stalls all day long, receiving no exercise… Eventually milking cows… collapse form exhaustion. Normally, cows can live as long as twenty years, but milking cows generally die within four. At which point, their meat is used for fast food restaurants” (Monson, Earthlings screenplay, pg. 573) So these the happy California cows are yet another marketing ploy to obscure the consumers view with images to cover the truth behind milk, and the meat used at fast food chains. “Shame is what we feel when we almost entirely—yet not entirely- forget social expectations and our obligations to others in favor of our immediate gratification” (Shame pg. 600/37).
“Some words,… like happy, mean the opposite of what they would seem. And some, like natural, mean next to nothing” (pg. 603/45). We choose not to think about the lives of the animals that feed us, for fear of feeling shame for adding toward the mass demand for more. These “happy” cows from California, aren’t so from what I have seen in clips from Earthlings. “Milking cows are kept chained to their stalls all day long, receiving no exercise… Eventually milking cows… collapse form exhaustion. Normally, cows can live as long as twenty years, but milking cows generally die within four. At which point, their meat is used for fast food restaurants” (Monson, Earthlings screenplay, pg. 573) So these the happy California cows are yet another marketing ploy to obscure the consumers view with images to cover the truth behind milk, and the meat used at fast food chains. “Shame is what we feel when we almost entirely—yet not entirely- forget social expectations and our obligations to others in favor of our immediate gratification” (Shame pg. 600/37). When Jonathan Foer was retelling his story of taking his son to the aquarium, I remembered a memory from my past. When I was around 4 years old, my father cooked shrimp for dinner. This was the first time that I had seen a shrimp and I wasn’t excited about the concept of eating something other than macaroni and cheese. 
To try and get me to try this new food, he referenced a favorite movie of mine, The Little Mermaid. He said “these are mermaid food”. In my mind, I thought he meant the we made of Mermaids… Long story short, I wouldn’t touch seafood for many years after that. “The shame of parenthood—which is a good shame—is that we want our children to be more whole than we are, to have satisfactory answers”. (pg. 602/40) In my case, my father could not explain the meaning of his words in a way that would convince me (at the time) that shrimp were not made out of mermaids.
To try and get me to try this new food, he referenced a favorite movie of mine, The Little Mermaid. He said “these are mermaid food”. In my mind, I thought he meant the we made of Mermaids… Long story short, I wouldn’t touch seafood for many years after that. “The shame of parenthood—which is a good shame—is that we want our children to be more whole than we are, to have satisfactory answers”. (pg. 602/40) In my case, my father could not explain the meaning of his words in a way that would convince me (at the time) that shrimp were not made out of mermaids. In this new fast paced world, where the restaurant that can deliver food the fastest wins the most customers, when will the masses step back and look at the realities of the world around them. In Iowa, “a company said it fired the manager of a hog farming operation where workers were videotaped abusing pigs… a video released… depicts workers hitting sows with metal rods, slamming piglets on a concrete floor and bragging about jamming rods into the anuses of sows” (The associated Press, October 24, 2008/ pg. 695) The stories continue, and pile up one after the other over the treatment of these animals. Though humans have eaten meat since our existence, it wasn’t until the industrial revolution that hunting and farming turned into sport and industry. “The details are important, but they probably won’t, on their own, persuade most people to change. Something else is needed” (Foer, pg. 599/35).
Warning. The following Video Contains images that may be too realistic and eye opening for some viewers.
Warning. The following Video Contains images that may be too realistic and eye opening for some viewers.
Images:
Video: Earthlings http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD7yKSk-DgA&feature=PlayList&p=9FD18926170ED901&index=2
