Yesterday, I saw the dutch news. Of course, I see it more often than that,
but something caught my attention. That doesn't happen every day.
There's the foot and mouth disease (thanks to Jaap Boender (hp: www.kerguelen.org) for the correct translation) which is hitting the Netherlands' farms. It's a terminal disease which affects pigs, sheep and cows to name a few (no danger to humans however). There's one good thing about this; finally there's some discussion over how our modern civilization treats the (farm) animals. Too late of course. Just like almost any debate about something. Memories are short and the future is scary.
The infected animals must be terminated, as must seemingly healthy ones. All this to avoid further infections to other farms (read: "for economical reasons as some major countries are very afraid of the disease (the `afraid' part actually does make sense)"). There're a lot of farmers on television now and almost all are in tears over their cattle being slaughtered (oh, sorry, of course I meant 'removed'). What's with those people?! The sole purpose they are growing those animals is for the animals to get slauthered!
"I wanted my pigs and cows to have a happy life and that's not happening now," is a common expression. Yeah rite, a happy life on 3x4 meters. 3x4 meters with milking equipment surrounding you, all your life! How on earth could that possibly be happy! Oh yeah, of course the cows may also walk around outside. Maybe the life of a cow is indeed better than that of a pig. Or a chicken in a 20x30centimeter cage until the chicken is too old to lay eggs. Or a chicken which has about the same room as the cage, but not encaged; in a room with hundreds of other chicken. Until the 2 months are up when the chicken is ready to be --ahem-- taken away.
Not only the farmers are to blame. It's also the customer. In the same news bulletin, I saw that a village in France (don't know for sure) was evacuated because a lot of ammunition from world war I and II which was stacked up somewhere in a modern bunker had to be moved to another location. (The ammunition has been found in the ground over the past fifty years and some of it contains the deadly mustardgas).
The operation seemed to take longer than a day or so and the villagers wanted to get back into the village to feed their animals!!!! How can anyone say (s)he loves his/her cat/dog/rabbit/whatever if they're abandoning their pets as they are driving to safe areas, possibly leaving their pets for dead 'cause some mustardgas bomb may start leaking all over the place!
Are we really this sick?
There's the foot and mouth disease (thanks to Jaap Boender (hp: www.kerguelen.org) for the correct translation) which is hitting the Netherlands' farms. It's a terminal disease which affects pigs, sheep and cows to name a few (no danger to humans however). There's one good thing about this; finally there's some discussion over how our modern civilization treats the (farm) animals. Too late of course. Just like almost any debate about something. Memories are short and the future is scary.
The infected animals must be terminated, as must seemingly healthy ones. All this to avoid further infections to other farms (read: "for economical reasons as some major countries are very afraid of the disease (the `afraid' part actually does make sense)"). There're a lot of farmers on television now and almost all are in tears over their cattle being slaughtered (oh, sorry, of course I meant 'removed'). What's with those people?! The sole purpose they are growing those animals is for the animals to get slauthered!
"I wanted my pigs and cows to have a happy life and that's not happening now," is a common expression. Yeah rite, a happy life on 3x4 meters. 3x4 meters with milking equipment surrounding you, all your life! How on earth could that possibly be happy! Oh yeah, of course the cows may also walk around outside. Maybe the life of a cow is indeed better than that of a pig. Or a chicken in a 20x30centimeter cage until the chicken is too old to lay eggs. Or a chicken which has about the same room as the cage, but not encaged; in a room with hundreds of other chicken. Until the 2 months are up when the chicken is ready to be --ahem-- taken away.
Not only the farmers are to blame. It's also the customer. In the same news bulletin, I saw that a village in France (don't know for sure) was evacuated because a lot of ammunition from world war I and II which was stacked up somewhere in a modern bunker had to be moved to another location. (The ammunition has been found in the ground over the past fifty years and some of it contains the deadly mustardgas).
The operation seemed to take longer than a day or so and the villagers wanted to get back into the village to feed their animals!!!! How can anyone say (s)he loves his/her cat/dog/rabbit/whatever if they're abandoning their pets as they are driving to safe areas, possibly leaving their pets for dead 'cause some mustardgas bomb may start leaking all over the place!
Are we really this sick?