Would you eat them?

A hypothetical* question for carnists: Were hybrid dogpigs or catcows to be created, would you eat them? Why or why not?

* And rhetorical, both because I’m closing comments and because I hope people give some thought to their reasons.

I'm with Esther.

I was equally enthusiastic.

Connotations

Connotations

Dead pigs’ heads, feet
bought from a shop
left on a lawn
tossed in a mosque,
a meat assault.
Symbol of hate,
a drunken prank?
Connotations
point to a crime,
a cold warning.

(References: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8)

The MFA billboard campaign

“[F]armed animals are no less intelligent or capable of feeling pain than the dogs and cats we cherish as companions.”

The Mercy For Animals blog is featuring billboards recently erected in Las Vegas:

Ham on the lam

Last month, I happened to catch a segment of Today in which Jenna Wolfe and the other hosts laughed it up over some video of policemen in China trying to capture several pigs who were trying to get away after the truck they were in overturned on a highway. They seemed to find the video and Wolfe’s “this little piggy” remarks highly entertaining. I haven’t been able to find the Today segment online, but I did find this ITN report



and another post about it that captures the same tone.

Ham went on the lam in China when a truck carrying piglets overturned on a motorway.

Hilarious cellphone footage shows traffic cops struggling to contain the stampeding hogs as they desperately made a break for freedom.

The pigs are clearly terrified. The one the video shows being pulled from under the truck is literally screaming in fear and pain. They’re being captured to eventually be killed. And the response the policemen, the reporters, and the people commenting on the story think is most appropriate is laughter.

Compassion for those about to be killed

From Free from Harm:

During Toronto’s torturous heat wave this July, with temperatures soaring to some 40 degrees Celsius (that’s 110 degrees Farenheit), activists from Toronto Pig Save have mobilized to give water and watermelon to severely overheated pigs on their way to slaughter. The gesture is the last— and, likely, the first— act of kindness that the pigs will ever know. When the sweltering trucks transporting the animals to Quality Meat Packers pause at a stoplight just outside the slaughterhouse, volunteers slip watermelon through ventilation holes in the trucks, and pour water into the mouths of as many frantic pigs as they can reach. It’s not enough. It’s never enough.

But just being there is important to these activists. It’s part of the larger project of bearing witness that is at the heart of Toronto Pig Save.... It’s also a refusal to turn away from the needless violence and death inflicted on animals exploited for food....

Sometimes I despise my culture

And this is one of those times. Since the technical issues I (and some of my thoughtful and generous friends) have been dealing with for the past several months have now been resolved, I’ve been able to resume reading my small set of feeds. And they’re contributing to my misanthropic, alienated mood.

James McWilliams shares a recent piece from the New York Times – “The Proper Way to Eat a Pig”:

I’m not going to analyze the piece because, unless you are a psychopath, it’s sufficiently self explanatory. In its gonzo glorification and stylization of violence it will inevitably offend most omnivorous gazes with its inherent creepiness….

The woman holding the pig’s head looks like evil incarnate. The kids, and their teacher, are smiling at death and dismemberment. The “look” on the pig’s face is Orwellian. Vegans should praise this sensational brand of journalism because, although the topic itself is morally offensive, the portrayal, although intending to be an example of responsible writing, reflects an almost comical attempt to promote the dubious virtue of no-waste carnivorism. My sense is that most meat-eating readers—certainly those who realize that a clean murder is just as wrong as a messy one— will not be motivated to go out and eat pig stomach. More to the point, they will find the suggestion so absurd they might look at its paler reflection through a new lens.

Sadly, I’m not so sure. Maybe the worst part for me was the butchery teacher’s description of her emotional response to killing nonhuman animals:

The first animal Davis ever slaughtered was a chicken. After that, she killed a rabbit. “I’ve never figured out how to fully articulate what happens,” she said. “I don’t feel guilty and I don’t feel bad. It is a pure and intense experience, but it is the most complicated experience you can have in terms of living and dying.”

This is a perfect blend of the statements of Nazis who led mass slaughters and the sort of mystical descriptions often heard from serial killers. Is it in any way possible, I wonder, that future generations won’t see things like this and think we were monsters? I hope not.

Meanwhile, Will Potter reports that a US district court has dismissed the lawsuit against the ALEC-influenced Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA), while ag-gag laws continue to mount across the US. Although his analysis of the decision itself is fairly optimistic,* the juxtaposition of the story above, in which basic compassion is pushed aside and even insulted in the celebration of killing, and this one in which compassionate people who trespass, take and release videos, rescue animals, and “go beyond the terms of their employment” are labeled “terrorists” is truly horrifying.

*And someone in McWilliams’ thread mentions an interesting piece in the New York Times – “Open the Slaughterhouses.”