Warning. While this blog is necessary, it’s not altogether pleasant.
After 225 consecutive daily blogs, I have only devoted two of them to the disgusting topic of animal suffering. Now there will be three. In our book, we cover five categories of reasons supporting a plant-based diet: health, environment, energy conservation, world hunger and suffering of animals. I began my own journey to a plant-based diet for health reasons, but after eight years of eating this way, I am now perhaps even more passionate about those other four categories of reasons — especially this one.
We need a few billion more people on our team of promoting health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.
Driven by the availability of cheap energy, we have simply been consuming the wrong food (for our species) in great quantities for the past fifty years — and we’ve inflicted great damage to our own health and to the health of the planet in the process.
While disrupting the precious harmony of nature with our food choices, we’ve also been complicit in a violent process of bringing animals to market — a process that can never be a part of the inevitable restoration of harmony on planet Earth. And, if we can’t figure out a way to get it done, we’ll leave Mother Nature no other choice but to do it herself.
There are eleven chapters in our book and one of them is devoted to the suffering of the animals that we raise for our dinner tables. It is entitled “Hell on Earth” and it is titled appropriately. Not very many people have ever seen the inside of a factory farm and the meat, dairy and egg industry would like to keep it that way — because they are very much aware that opening their doors for public tours would be very bad for business.
So, I have arranged for you to have a brief tour of a factory farm that produces pork. When I found this video yesterday, I was required to sign in with my gmail account, then confirm that I was over 18 years of age. A short video at 2:41, I can honestly say that I didn’t make it past the first minute. The sound alone made me want to scream. Maybe I could’ve made it without the sound, but I simply decided that I didn’t want to see it and I didn’t need to see it. But the vast majority of our population does need to see it — because without their own complicity, this kind of process would not be happening — without them ordering sausage on their Domino’s pizza.
When we consume a product, we are complicit in every process that is required to bring that product to market. We may not know what all of those processes are, but as the ultimate consumer, we play a very important role in all of them. In a country where almost everyone claims to love animals, our out-of-sight, out-of mind attitude about what we’re eating is maddeningly unconscionable.
J. Morris Hicks, author and activist. Working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.
The Bottom Line. The world currently produces 60 billion animals per year in this kind of environment in order to feed just the wealthiest 2 billion people. Unless we reverse the current trend of a steady move to this woefully harmful, wasteful and cruel diet-style, that number will soon grow to 100 billion, then 200 billion.
Where does it end? Who can stop the madness? We can; by simply taking charge of our own health, we can become part of the solution — of promoting health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.
Oh, some will say that pigs suffer more than the other animals. Think that beef cattle have it pretty good? Consider this; when you’re talking about castration without anesthetic, there is simply no “humane” way to get that done. My two earlier blogs are provided here here for your convenience.
“Earthlings” — A documentary that we all NEED to see
Suffering of Animals — Remember Michael Vick?
If you like what you see here, you may wish to join our periodic mailing list. Also, for help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4-Leaf page. From the seaside village of Stonington, Connecticut – Be well and have a great day.
If you’d like to order our book on Amazon, visit our BookStore now.
—J. Morris Hicks…blogging daily at HealthyEatingHealthyWorld.com
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J. Morris Hicks, engineer. writer. big picture guy. 
That video was taken here in Iowa. Vets from Iowa State University investigated the facility and said that outside of a couple of things there was no animal abuse at this hog factory. In other words it was all white-washed, and it went away and everyone involved breathed a sigh of relief, though the other interpretation, the more depressing one, is that what you see here on this video is pretty much business as usual. If you were to argue this with the pork producers and most others in this state they would tell you “But these are FOOD animals, not pets!” That was the reply I got when I dared to argue that grinding up unwanted baby male chicks alive at an Iowa hatchery was horrific and immoral. These were the 50% of chicks from an egg-laying breed that you get in a straight run of chicks at the hatchery. They don’t gain weight fast enough to be worth the trouble of raising, so they just grind them up alive and send the remains off to be pet food.
They are trying to pass legislation in this state to criminalize under-cover people who sign on to work at these factory farms in order to film the conditions, and legislation has been passed on the federal level to prosecute anyone who makes enough of a negative statement about an industry so that it causes that industry to lose a lot of money as a terrorist. Remember Oprah saying that she would no longer eat beef, causing enough people to cut back on it that a slump in demand was blamed on her statement? She and Howard Lyman, who had been on her show that day, exposing the practices of the cattle industry, were sued and dragged to court by representatives of the beef industry. Then this federal legislation was pushed through so that if this happened again they could be charged as terrorists.
It is very sad and discouraging, and definitely overwhelming to be optimistic about changing any of it unless circumstances become such that they allow for no other choice but to force the system to change. One of those would be the demand disappearing.