My comments are in black.

Meat as art: Boston-area gallery presents unique exhibit
By Ann Bagel Storck
for the Meatingplace.com

7/3/2008

An art gallery in Cambridge, Mass., has set out to show that meat can be
more than just a meal, it can also be a masterpiece.

Isn't it bad enough that we kill animals for food when we can survive perfectly well without eating meat? Now we kill animals just to play with their dead bodies as "art"?

The Pierre Menard Gallery is hosting "Meat After Meat Joy," an exhibit
featuring artists who work with meat as material, subject or both.

The title refers to a 1964 performance by Carolee Schneemann, which this
show displays as a projected black-and-white video that depicts men and
women frolicking amid plucked chickens, sausages and dead fish.

To me that is only one degree below people frolicking amid dead human bodies. Depraved.

The exhibit, which the Boston Globe called "viscerally unnerving and
occasionally daring," includes pieces such as a raw meat sculpture of an
American flag (with lard for the white stripes) by Betty Hirst...

I suppose it is fitting that the country which kills the most animals, about 10 billion per year, should completely waste some of them to reproduce its own flag. Yes an American flag made of meat says it all ... we are the cruelest nation to animals of any in the world ... and proud of it. Sigh.

Terry O'Neill on Animal Rights

In a recent article in the Vancouver National Post Terry O'Neill says:

"Along with its decadence, the drive to confer human-like rights on animalsis also both obscene and trivializing: obscene in its misguided focus on dumb beasts at a time when there is so much human misery in the world; trivializing in the fact that it elevates the fight for animal personhood to the same level as that of the Famous Five or, for that matter, pro-lifers’ continuing campaign to have unborn children declared legal persons. How ironic and sad it would be to see animal rightists succeed where pro-lifers have failed."

What's wrong with a "human-like right" for sentient creatures to live their lives without being killed for the pleasure of someone else?

And as for "dumb" beasts, does that mean mentally handicapped humans shouldn't have a right to their lives? Denying the right to live its life to another creature just because it is a different species is called speciesism. It is just like denying rights to others of a different race (racism) or gender (sexism).

And why care at all about animal rights when there is "so much human misery in the world"? Well how about the misery of 800 million starving humans? Do you realize that the world would have plenty to feed those people if so much food didn't go to feed livestock? It takes many pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat -- so meat-eaters are contributing a lot to human suffering.

And is it really trivializing to compare the plight of 20 billion (yes Billion) land animals raised in horrible conditions and killed every year just for human pleasure to the struggle for women to get the right to vote?

Earth to meat eaters, what are you thinking?

Hey, meat-eaters, don't you know that you are damaging your health, making the world's food shortage worse, fouling up the environment, and causing misery and suffering for animals?

On health the evidence is clear. Check out T. Colin Campbell's book The China Study (http://www.thechinastudy.com/). The people who eat the most protein, especially animal protein, get the most heart disease, cancer, and obesity.

Milk and cheese are just as bad. No other animal drinks milk past infancy, and it is even more bizarre to drink the milk of another species! Nature designed cow's milk for baby cows. It has three times more protein as human milk, and much of the protein is in the form called "casein" which is commonly used as glue and is difficult for humans to digest.

Cow's milk also contains many hormones including a very potent growth hormone called IGF-I that happens to be identical between cows and humans. The high level of this growth hormone is nature's way to cause the calf to gain hundreds of pounds in its first year. All those hormones are concentrated in cheese because it takes 10 pounds of milk to produce 1 pound of cheese. Americans are eating more cheese than ever. No wonder so many are obese. There is also considerable evidence that IGF-I promotes the growth of cancer cells. What would you expect when humans adults consume powerful hormones designed to promote very rapid growth in infants? There are many other problems with milk as Dr. Kradjian outlines nicely in his famous "Milk Letter" to his patients: http://www.notmilk.com/kradjian.html

And of course, as Dr. Milton Mills has shown, the human body has all the features of a dedicated herbivore, not an omnivore and not a carnivore. You don't even have to read the article, just check out the table summary at the bottom. See: http://www.vegsource.com/veg_faq/comparative.htm No surprise that if you put lots of meat into a body that was designed to eat plants you get a lot of colon cancer (the number two cancer in the U.S. and other countries with high meat consumption).

That's all that I have time for now. I will be back soon to address the world food shortage, the environmental impact of animal agriculture, and the ethics (karma) of needlessly killing animals just for one's pleasure.

Compassionate carnivores?

I have just noticed an article by Joanne Laucius in the Ottawa Citizen on Monday April 28th entitled "Meeting your Meat - Being a Carnivore is Back in Fashion as Long as It's With a Conscience".

In the article she talks about Susan Bourette's coming book called "Meat: A Love Story" and other people (some former vegetarians) who now think it is OK to eat meat as long as the animal has been treated decently and slaughtered "humanely". She mentions a $30 million showcase farm where the "free range pigs dine on slugs and acorns".

Sure, that is a lot better than antibiotic-laced animals eating cheap feed who never see the sunshine in factory farms, and the much higher price of such meat would certainly cut way down on meat consumption, at least for most of us non-millionaires, but is it really ethical to kill an animal just because you like how its meat tastes? I don't think so!

Suppose some aliens came to the Earth who were as far advanced beyond humans as we are beyond cows or pigs. Would it be OK for them to kill teenage humans just because they liked how humans tasted? How about if they fed the children a fine diet and let them have "free range" until their 20th birthday? What if they waited until the humans were 40 or even 60 years old before killing them? Right, it doesn't matter. If the aliens could survive on other plant or "replicator" food then it would be wrong for them to kill humans just for their enjoyment.

The human body is that of a committed herbivore (see http://www.vegsource.com/veg_faq/comparative.htm) so humans clearly have no ethical excuse for killing any other sentient beings just for pleasure.