Dreadful Nonsense

I hate it so much. You’re right in the middle of updating the links, the webrings, thinking about your post, and then stupid blogger decides to totally collapse. It’s so damn frustrating.

Anyway… since reading Fast Food Nation I’ve been well and truly reaffirmed in my stance as vegetarian, and – to my horror – have also found myself preaching to other people as they try to eat. There is nothing, absolutely nothing in the world, worse than having someone else’s self-righteous, smug opinions lectured into your face while you’re trying to kick back with a burger, or enjoy your cigarette, or sink down a quick pint after work. And I’ve always been a very quiet vegetarian, not talking about it unless someone asks, not offering my opinion in to any great debates, not wearing the t-shirts or attending the marches, because it is my choice not to eat meat, and other people’s choices to go ahead and eat it.

But reading the chapter on slaughter houses in Fast Food Nation, that’s the bit that got to me big time. Not the details about the fact that intensive farming is destroying the earth. Not the bit about the poor working conditions in fast food restaurants, the tax dodging of the huge companies, the destruction of culture, the increase of obesity, the poison and toxins in the food… the bit that got me was the factual descriptions of what happens in the slaughter houses. These details weren’t put in the shock: no, the shock revelations come further down that chapter when he tells you about the way the meat is processed and what accidentally gets in to the food chain. But – once the nausea passed – I felt very smug in my coming-up-to-ten-years of vegetarianism .

Just to nail in the point, and because this kind of preachy posting is so unlike me, I think I’m allowed, here’s a little something I found this evening:

"The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men."
- Alice Walker

Scientists have recently reassessed the incubation period of vCJD in humans from ten to twenty years, so just as it looked like I was in the clear, my brain could soon become liquidised thanks to some dodgy meat I ate when I was a child. What a cheery thought for a Saturday night.

This entry was posted on 12 May 2002 at 12:03 am. 0 comments

Dreadful Nonsense

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