You Better Eat That: UMSJ 1

So a friend shared something on Facebook that I happened to see (I know, I see a lot...), but this one really bothered me.  It seems that South Africa has a few lion breeding centers that breed the lions simply so they can be shot by hunters wanting to bag one.

Lion hunter = douchebag

This offends me to the very core of my being.  It goes along with a friend of my husband's who goes to a farm somewhere they breed elk and he hunts them inside the farm grounds - are you kidding me?  How sporting is that?

Here's my opinion on hunting: You better eat it.

To hunt an animal that is enclosed, that has been bred to fulfill that purpose but is NOT a domesticated animal, is abhorrent.  You are a small human being when you engage in that sort of senseless behavior.

On the other hand, if you are a hunter and you hunt responsibly, taking only what you can use and hunting in some sort of sportsmanlike fashion, then I can deal with it.  If you take you bow out into the woods, hunt a deer, and turn it into sausage and steaks, I'm good.  If you go hunt an elk in a field so you can hang the antlers on your wall and you leave the rest behind, that's one big karmic check against you.

If you take the life away from another living creature, then that life must be used to sustain your own.  You don't get to go shoot a lion and hang the pelt on your wall just to say you did it - that's not how things should work.

Have I repeated myself enough?  Can you see I feel strongly about this?  And with fishing - if you fish for sport, so be it, but if that fish gets badly hurt in the process, you better eat it.

And I consider this social justice.  We're not the only creatures who are social, mind you, and all living things deserve our inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Who cares if their happiness is not the same as yours??  Does that make it less valuable?

Having just come back from safari, perhaps my opinions have strengthened in the past few weeks.  I watched elephants in the wild and they are most definitely social, loving animals.  They live in large groups, they interact with their siblings the way my own kids do, and they most definitely love their family.  Taking that away from them is horrible.

Domesticated Animals:

Shame on feedlot owners for having those animals live in disgusting conditions.  Shame on feed producers who use animal parts in the mixture, feeding cows to cows and chickens to chickens.  Not only does that pass disease (mad cow, anyone?), it is unnatural in the strictest sense of the word.  A cow would not eat another cow, even if it were starving.  Okay, a chicken might, but chickens are weird.

Feedlot - how can that be good for them?

Feedlots are a disgrace, which is why I try to ensure the meat I buy is free-range, not genetically altered, and led a relativelt normal life before it ended up on my plate.  Could I be a vegetarian?  Probably not - I do love meat.  meat is not the issue - it's the way the animals are treated before they die.

And that would be the end of my rant today.  I'm sure there will be more.