Eating Endangered Animals to "Save" Them

by Stephanie Ernst · 2009-11-25 08:24:00 UTC
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Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. If I were able to create sidebars, this likely would have appeared as one on the previous post ("Heritage Turkeys, 'Respectful' Killing, and Teaching Violence").

The Atlantic slideshow mentioned there starts out by noting a Slow Food USA campaign, begun in 2004, "whose purpose was to save endangered food species by getting farmers to grow them--and consumers to eat them."

Don't let this preposterous language fool you. When it comes to animals, saving "endangered species" and saving "endangered food species" are two very different matters, with two very different sets of intentions and goals. The first is an attempt to save actual animals (or species) to let them live and to let ecosystems thrive; the second is to keep a certain category of domesticated animals -- "food" -- around so that they can be killed and eaten by their so-called advocates.

The use of words such as "save" and "endangered" is intentional, to paint the practices with a false sense of altruism. It's all selfishness. It has nothing to do with concern for actual animals. It's all about concern for self-involved humans' "food." In this view, the animals are no more than products, walking slabs of specialty meats. We might as well be talking about Mr. Pibb enthusiasts calling on everyone to keep buying Mr. Pibb -- because they'd be so disappointed if the product were discontinued and no longer available to them.

When you're "saving" someone in order to kill her and eat her, you're not saving her at all.

Related: Hurry--Kill & Eat Animals Before They Go Extinct!

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Photo by Flickr user ExperienceLA

Stephanie Ernst wrote the original Animal Rights blog at Change.org until December 2009. She can now be found at Animal Rights & AntiOppression.
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