It’s a long, boring story why, but I’m on a couple of mailing lists that have a lot of animal communicators on them — that is, people who say that they can speak with animals mind-to-mind, having conversations. I tend towards skepticism in most things, although I do think that there are more things in heaven & earth, Horatio, blah blah. We know that animals are capable of communicating with each other, & to some degree with humans, of course. To me it seems just as likely (or more, really) that there are some folks who can communicate on a deeper level with animals as it is that a guy could die & then come back to life 3 days later. But the latter belief is a respected & established one in American society, whereas the former gets you branded as a lunatic.
Anyway — that’s neither here nor there. The relevant bit is that there are people who believe they can communicate with animals. So, my question is, how the hell do they go on eating them? I can tell from the e-mails to the lists that many of the communicators are not veg*n: people have scorned the idea of animal rights & sent around those crazy right-wing links “debunking” the animal welfare groups, like HSUS, as being actually deluded enough to be for animal rights (ironic since most AR folks put HSUS firmly on the welfare side).
I am so tempted to ask them all if anyone has ever communicated with a pig on a factory farm. How about a cow on a rape rack? Or a free-range, organically-fed animal on a small family farm, right as it realizes it’s about to be killed at the whim of the farmer who treated it so nicely?
I suspect, if I got any serious answer & not just flamed, they would parrot something about the circle of life. Once there was a discussion about euthanizing animals at shelters, & someone said they used to have that job, & would communicate with the animals at the end. And that, apparently, the animals understood that they had to die, & it was okay, & they would still exist as Spirit & blah blah.
Okay, that has me skeptical. I could see an animal saying, “I hate living in a cage in this shelter where I’m giving almost no care or attention; I suppose death would be better.” But I feel like the person may be projecting zir own beliefs about the “necessity” of killing animals because there supposedly aren’t homes & we have no choice. To that, I’d say read Nathan Winograd‘s amazing book Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation & the No Kill Revolution in America (my review is here). And then check out the No Kill Advocacy Center.
Anyway — I know that my relationship with my cats was part of the final push that made me become vegan (after 14 years of vegetarianism & 7+ years of near-veganism, due to lactose intolerance). So I’m finding it unfathomable that someone claiming to speak with animals — in pretty much the same manner humans speak to each other; I mean, people post transcripts! — could feel okay about the entirely unnecessary act of eating them. Talk about cognitive dissonance.
Vegans of Color 
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