once again i'm NOT preaching

i read these articles (and actually have seen some HORRIFIC things) and i think to myself, how can we consider ourselves human? do most people know how their steak actually gets into the supermarket? do most people who bring their kids to the circus know the elephants are jabbed with big hooks (and of course all of the other animals are mistreated too). there is a woman at work who wears the pelts of dead bunnies. i CRINGE every time i see her in that horrid bloody jacket. i wonder to myself if she knows how those bunnies died.

i know not everyone agrees with me here, but if one mistreats animals, it's a very small (tiny, miniscule) step to mistreating one another. it is ugly business. our consumption of animals. first this article i found in the wapo today and second an article forwarded to me from justin goodman was in sunday's ny times. the second article is NOT about abuse. it's about our consumption of dead animal flesh (and organs)

Video Reveals Violations of Laws, Abuse of Cows at Slaughterhouse

By Rick Weiss Washington Post Staff Writer
Video footage being released today shows workers at a California slaughterhouse delivering repeated electric shocks to cows too sick or weak to stand on their own; drivers using forklifts to roll the "downer" cows on the ground in efforts to get them to stand up for inspection; and even a veterinary version of waterboarding in which high-intensity water sprays are shot up animals' noses -- all violations of state and federal laws designed to prevent animal cruelty and to keep unhealthy animals, such as those with mad cow disease, out of the food supply.
Moreover, the companies where these practices allegedly occurred are major suppliers of meat for the nation's school lunch programs, including in Maryland, according to a company official and federal documents.
The footage was taken by an undercover investigator for an animal welfare group, who wore a customized video camera under his clothes while working at the facility last year. It is evidence that anti-cruelty and food safety rules are inadequate, and that Agriculture Department inspection and enforcement need to be enhanced, said officials with the Humane Society of the United States, which coordinated the project.........

Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler
By MARK BITTMAN
A SEA change in the consumption of a resource that Americans take for granted may be in store — something cheap, plentiful, widely enjoyed and a part of daily life. And it isn’t oil. It’s meat.
The two commodities share a great deal: Like oil, meat is subsidized by the federal government. Like oil, meat is subject to accelerating demand as nations become wealthier, and this, in turn, sends prices higher. Finally — like oil — meat is something people are encouraged to consume less of, as the toll exacted by industrial production increases, and becomes increasingly visible.
Global demand for meat has multiplied in recent years, encouraged by growing affluence and nourished by the proliferation of huge, confined animal feeding operations. These assembly-line meat factories consume enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant greenhouse gases and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy and other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths of the world’s tropical rain forests.......

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