Never-Born, Never-Killed Cows Don't Pass Gas Either

Yes, it's true--"dead cows pass no gas." Know who else doesn't pass any gas? Cows who were never forced into existence just so that they could be brutally slaughtered in the first place.

There's nothing inconsistent about trying to stop the killing of animals for ethical reasons while also trying to stop the raising of animals (for the purpose of killing them) as part of the effort to curb global warming. The animal rights movement isn't just about stopping the actual killing; it's about stopping the system of injustice and exploitation that leads up to and involves the killing. The multitude of cows being exploited on farms aren't here because their population naturally exploded. Cattle exist in such large numbers, consistently, not because they're out there procreating like mad. There are so many cows and bulls in existence only because we force them into existence.

Drastically decreasing or eliminating people's consumption of cows' flesh and milk wouldn't mean forever killing and letting rot an endless population of cattle to stop them from producing methane. Animal agriculture is a business--it follows supply and demand just like every other business. And if demand dropped, what else would drop? The number of cows forcibly impregnated, the number of cows forced into existence. Really, it's simple: just because one generation of cows is forced through the system and ultimately slaughtered doesn't mean another generation has to be too. Contrary to popular belief, animal rights advocates are familiar with logic and realism, and we know that most cows currently in existence are going to die at the hands of humans much sooner than they naturally would have died. That doesn't mean we have to continue supporting the breeding and slaughtering of future cows.

And though many animal rights activists would say that they're not bothered by the idea of a future without cows--because living a life of misery and exploitation until enduring horrible transport and slaughter isn't better than never existing at all--many others are bothered by that idea. But the argument that there's no way even a small number of cows could be kept alive if animal agriculture ended (because humans wouldn't want to provide for, or allow to live, animals they weren't getting something tangible or financial out of) isn't supported. For example, visit any number of farm animal sanctuaries, and you'll see just that--cows and bulls who escaped or were rescued from the system, one way or another, and who are now being cared for and allowed to live out their lives happily by people who truly care about them.

The implication that people who want to kill and eat cows somehow care about cows more than the people who don't want them to be born into exploitation and cruelty and then violently slaughtered at a fraction of their natural life span would be laughable if it weren't so offensive and absurd.

No, our problems, climate and otherwise, "are not the fault of dumb animals." In fact, they're not the fault of intelligent, sentient animals either; yes, that's right--I won't call animals "dumb" just because they are who they are, just because they're not humans--who are clearly superior (after all, look what a great job we, the smart ones, have done keeping ourselves out of catastrophic disasters!). As I made perfectly clear in my post yesterday, I don't blame cows, and neither does anyone else advocating for them. Nothing negative that results from humans' insistence on raising and killing cows is cows' fault. It's the fault of humans who are doing to and with cattle what we are.

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Stay tuned in the upcoming days for a thought-provoking guest post on "cattle culture," meat-eating, sustainability, and more from Farmer Harold Brown, who has far more experience and far greater knowledge on these topics than most others of us commenting on them do.