PEJ News - Debbie Ogrodnick - The other night I watched a documentary on slaughterhouses. In the past I did not, could not watch shows on television dealing with animal cruelty because I simply could not bare witness to such inexcusable suffering. This time, I felt I needed to. In the past I was a meat eater blindly choosing to ignore the blatent cruelty and torture that went on in slaughterhouse facilities because I could not see it, experience it or even touch it . Evidently I was completely sickened at what I saw. The video footage was from undercover work done at a Butterball turkey plant in the US . I will spare you the details but those turkey’s SUFFER and they SUFFER daily, every minute of their entire existence is unrelentless suffering, pain and agony. The video panned to a close up of a panting, cramped and broken turkey and as I looked into it's eyes I saw a reflection of myself. and remembered these wise words:
“What you do to others, you do to yourself.”
“What you allow to happen to others, you allow to happen to yourself.”
Those terrorized and ill treated animals are our brothers and sisters and each day we chose to ignore them, we ignore ourselves. We ignore our own voices, our own cries of pain at the injustices of the world. Some of us continue to feed the insane notion that we cannot possibly make a difference, that our voices will not be heard or perhaps we are afraid that they might...
Those organizations (slaughterhouses) would not exist if it wasn’t for us, we support them either directly by purchasing the meat products or indirectly for allowing them to continue because we remain silent. I am reminded as I sit and write that millions of tiny souls are needlessly suffering this very minute in cramped cages, with broken limbs, at the abuse of workers so they can be served on the tables of loving, caring families? There is something wrong with this picture. We can make a difference! How, by speaking up, by showing up. If you are a vegetarian or vegan, tell someone your reasons for not eating meat. If you are a meat eater, educate yourself, watch the documentaries, read the articles, visit a slaughterhouse, wake up and really ask yourself do those animals really deserve to live like that. Do you?
I will leave you with a story I heard a while back: A lady was walking on the beach at low tied and she came across a little girl throwing starfish back into the ocean, The women said, “there are thousands of starfish stranded on the beach , how can you possibly make a difference!” The little girl picked up another starfish and threw it back into the water and said, “There, I made a difference to that one” We can make a difference!
Namaste, Debbie Ogrodnick
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