This is a very simply test to check if you are an animal advocate or not. When you walk or drive past a butcher’s shop front do you:
- See the cut up carcass of a dead animal or
- See meat to eat?
OR
When you are watching television and you see a cook cutting up a chicken do you:
- See the flesh of an animal corpse being cut up
- See a chicken being prepared for cooking?
If you chose (1) in both cases you are likely to be an animal advocate. This is a personal test. I see (1) but it was not always that way. I have only been like this for the last five years or so.
By ‘animal advocate’ I mean someone who is genuinely concerned with the welfare of animals. I don’t believe that an animal advocate has to be a vegetarian but it certainly make sense if the person is. It also indicates a more consistent personal approach to animal welfare.
Update: I mistakenly typed (2) for me when I meant (1)! And I also mistakenly typed (2) at the beginning! Bad.
I guess this test is black and white and perhaps it is not accurate but I feel it is.
I mistakenly typed (2) for me when I meant (1). Obviously I meant (1). Silly. Getting old and careless.
I mistakenly typed (2) for me when I meant (1). Obviously I meant (1). Silly. I knew you’d chose (1).
For me I answered #1 to both questions.
When you walk or drive past a butcher’s shop front do you:
> 1. See the cut up carcass of a dead animal or
2. See meat to eat?
OR
When you are watching television and you see a cook cutting up a chicken do you:
> 1. See the flesh of an animal corpse being cut up
2. See a chicken being prepared for cooking?
Even though I consider myself a “cat advocate”, I’m a meat eater. My vegan friends consider this a contradiction. As someone with low blood sugar, meat or some good, easy to prepare protein source is important to me. I realize that there are many vegetable proteins that I could choose from, but I’m unable to spend the time it takes, the space to store those things, and my difficulty in standing for very long to cook food. These are my rational reasons for eating meat. My irrational reason is that I like the taste of meat fish and cheese.
I can’t remember the last time I saw carcasses hanging, except online. Neighborhood butcher shops are becoming a thing of the past. Instead we now have neatly packaged cuts of meat that hardly resemble an animal. Also, we see how those cuts appear after being cooked. It follows the old marketing advice to “sell the sizzle, not the steak”.
I did see something online that made an impression on me. It was an experiment done in a shopping mall. A man dressed like a butcher, was pretending to put a baby pig into a grinder, and have it come out on the other end as ground pork. People’s reactions showed disgust. But I don’t know if it actually had an effect on their eating habits or not.
I hope that my efforts to empower cat guardians and save cat lives will make up for my meat eating habit.
Sort of black and white. There is a middle ground between throwing red paint on every fur coat you see and screaming murderer and chopping up any animal alive to prepare it as food.