A Fond Farewell to Bacon?

I guess I've ignored the novelty of my new blog already. Honestly, I'm more comfortable with the extreme of either fun/superficial musings or intense/private ponderances. My goal of the mixture is likely to be a failure. Ah, well.

Actually, I think it would be significant to mention that I've decided to make a lifestyle/diet change. Lately, I've been thinking about animal cruelty. I remember that last semester someone was passing out pamphlets about it on campus, and I actually read through it. The discussion was primarily on the treatment of animals in the food production industry (i.e. pigs and hens in over-crowded pens). Usually, I am not swayed by these sort of pamphlets, as often times the language is biased and accusatory, which negates the credibility of a message that is already smothered with all sorts of fallacies (e.g. appeal to emotion and the "straw man" principle).

However, this particular pamphlet was persuasive by appeal to emotion, yet remained respectable and objective. The best part was a reasonable and effective solution. Eat less meat. Ah, "less" they say. No, they don't want everyone to suddenly become vegetarians or vegans. That's pretty crazy. But if everyone seriously cut down, the industry wouldn't be forced to meet such high public demand, and thus it would be much easier for more humane animal treatment to be implemented.

I remember that I considered following that advice. Apparently, the pamphlet wasn't enough, though. So what has happened lately that makes me seriously want to become supportive of humane animal treatment? Nothing significant. I just like to read Brian May's blog, and he is a huge animal rights activist. His target is more an attack on the animal suffering that results from scientific experimentation, but he also mentioned the benefit of eating less meat in the effort to reduce it.

Now, if we honestly needed to eat meat everyday, and needed to experiment on animals because there was no other way, it would be another matter. But we don't! We like to eat meat often, and it is convenient to experiment on animals. In my opinion, conveniency is one of the most threatening snares in beneficial guise. That's what gets to me, that we sacrifice ethicality for convenience and profit. I like to remember a comment that the character Malcolm makes in Jurassic Park. "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could; they didn't stop to think if they should." Honestly, the spotlight of that disgust just happened to land on this particular issue for me recently. Are there more important issues of social morality which I could recognize and advocate? Probably...and I'll be happy to hear about it, as long as there are no blatantly obvious fallacies involved.

So, I'm going to start eating less meat, and choosing eggs from cage-free chickens, etc. I'm sure there are a lot of products that I need to become more familiar with as well. I also want to keep up with current events surrounding animal experimentation, and support the alternative efforts in any way I can. We certainly have the way, and though the will may lag behind, it is gaining momentum. Here are a few of the links that I found in Brian's blog:

Environment News Service
eNews 2.0
Animal Tests

You know, I really need to subscribe to some sorta science magazine. What? Who still reads those, you ask? Haha...I like tangible things! And I don't have my own computer to browse articles at my convenience. Oh...am I a hypocrite now? Well, not as long as reading magazines is unethical. Oh...the trees that went into making all those issues! There's no escape!

I just noticed how incongruent my last post is with this one. Maybe if the fish were confined to tiny kiddie pools in warehouses and weren't so neurologically primitive I would spare mentioning the tolerability of gutting them. But maybe I am a hypocrite. C'est la vie.