My teenage daughter’s recent purchase of a health/nutrition book has changed her life forever. One chapter was devoted to the topic of the cruel, inhumane ~ treatment of animals ~ at slaughterhouses. Well, this topic is enough to turn anyone into a vegetarian no matter how kindly it’s written. In this case it wasn’t written kindly at all. So, of course, she’s decided to stop eating meat and I don’t blame her.




Eating meat is not difficult if you don’t know the grizzly details of a day in the life of a slaughterhouse employee. You wonder who would want to work in a place like that but just be grateful that they do because meat is a staple in our diet.

So, I enlightened her by explaining that the production of our food is subsidized by the Government through our tax dollars and how that works. Suddenly, it came to my mind what our pets eat. I don’t have any pets at this time but I have had cats in the past. I fed them canned food … chicken, ham, beef, lamb. I’ve been noticing lately just how many people keep pets these days and how many people keep more than one pet. The Humane Society’s advertisements of animal abuse is seen often in the newspapers and TV and they encourage us to adopt a pet.



To think that a portion of these farm animals are being slaughtered to feed our kittens and puppies and, therefore, the Government subsidizes the production of pet food with our tax dollars. I wonder what they feed the animals at the ~ Zoos ~ across the Country? Is the Humane Society taking sides? By endorsing pet ownership are they killing farm animals and keeping people employed in slaughterhouses? Wouldn’t these slaughterhouse workers prefer working in forestry planting and cutting down trees or in the Post Office delivering mail?




Not too long ago I posted a ~ comment ~ on this blog from an article I read in the newspaper.

What can we do about this situation? Can the Government impose a limit on the number of pets we own in an effort to cut down on the number of farm animals sent to slaughter without enraging the public and provoking riots? Some apartments don’t allow pets. Maybe this will catch on thereby reducing pet ownership dramatically considering how many apartments there are in this City?

~ Maybe someone can start a trend? ~

~But who am I to tell anyone that they shouldn’t own pets?~



Then I remembered the Bible passage:

`

~Genesis~ 0l:26: And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

`

And so, as “Man” in the eyes of God, I feel an obligation to discourage people to own pets and to boycott
 ~ Zoos ~ because the slaughter of farm animals is cruel and inhumane no matter how you look at it.

Then, just when you thought you've got it all covered, along comes:

~ Another Point of View ~

Well, there's no argument about this one!  Just as people have their own carbon footprint, pets also have carbon pawprints.  The cows and pigs their owners feed them also have a carbon hoofprint.  Yes, even if the farm animals only breathe, eat and shit (which releases methane gas as it composts) they contribute to our planet's climate change problem.  So do our Zoo animals and so do all the animals that roam freely over the vast  hinterland across our Country.