I recall reading an argument to support the ethical treatment of animals by *not* going vegetarian.
It went like this: If you stop eating animals because they are ill-treated in modern agribusiness then purveyors of such business will have a smaller market and will therefore have to increase efficiencies, possibly leading to treating the animals even worse in order to squeeze every last dime to pay the feed and rent on the farm.
If you instead research, seek out and patronize those farms and ranches that treat animals better, who feed them better and use as humane methods as possible to slaughter them - not only are you supporting these likely local and smaller businesses, you are telling the agribusiness that there *is* an alternative to the way they are working and that alternative is economically viable.
So, don't go veggie, just get educated about the sources.
Makes more sense to me than just avoiding meat altogether. If I take myself out of the customer category, then why should the business people pay attention to what I say? If I stand up and demand a different product and back that up with purchases, they had better listen to me or go out of business.
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branchandroot
Some thoughts on the matter, stolen from elsewhere
Date: 2004-03-21 12:03 pm (UTC)It went like this:
If you stop eating animals because they are ill-treated in modern agribusiness then purveyors of such business will have a smaller market and will therefore have to increase efficiencies, possibly leading to treating the animals even worse in order to squeeze every last dime to pay the feed and rent on the farm.
If you instead research, seek out and patronize those farms and ranches that treat animals better, who feed them better and use as humane methods as possible to slaughter them - not only are you supporting these likely local and smaller businesses, you are telling the agribusiness that there *is* an alternative to the way they are working and that alternative is economically viable.
So, don't go veggie, just get educated about the sources.
Makes more sense to me than just avoiding meat altogether. If I take myself out of the customer category, then why should the business people pay attention to what I say? If I stand up and demand a different product and back that up with purchases, they had better listen to me or go out of business.
Cheers,
Ekatarina