First and foremost I need to apologize for the lack of posts over the weekend, I've no real excuse for Saturday other than laziness, (and getting caught up in playing Borderlands 2 again). In typical South African style, I had no electricity for around 8 hours on Sunday and so was unable to post then. The plan had been to reserve weekends for a more personal blog, discussing what I've been up to in the past week etc but I'm not sure if enough people would give a fuck to make it worthwhile writing about. As a result I think Saturday's will be up in the air, if anyone has any suggestions regarding content please let me know, Sunday's I will do a weekly roundup and catch-up of stories covered in that week.
So with the apology out of the way, let's have a look at some of the news from over the weekend. A pretty scary statistic is the fact that the number of refugees worldwide has reached over 65 million, the largest that number has ever been. I suppose it's not difficult to understand why, considering the rise of ISIS but it's definitely still a startling number, especially when you consider the burden on the countries that refugees are fleeing to. One needs only to look at what's been happening throughout Europe to know that this has had far reaching effects.
For those who don't know, the Lychee and Dog Meat Festival in Yulin, China is around the corner again, sparking debates around the world concerning animal rights and welfare. Now before I go on, I must confess to being a carnivore, there is little in this world as good as a good rare steak, I don't feel particularly guilty about the fact, humans are omnivores after all and whilst we are now able to survive without meat, provided that we take various supplements, I'm holding out on the vegan train until we can grow a decent steak in the lab, (we aren't too far off either).
On that note, I feel more than a little conflicted regarding the Festival. First let's assume that the reports of dogs being tortured or skinned alive are false, (though sadly these reports seem to be accurate) and that the animals are treated humanely, killed quickly and do not suffer. As a dog person my first emotional reaction is still to shout "...but you can't do that to man's best friend!!" but intellectually, I understand that there are people who keep pigs, (or raw bacon as I call them) as pets. They, I assume, feel just as outraged at my Saturday morning breakfast.
The point that I'm trying to make is that we need to separate the issue's at hand. For most the worst part may be the incredible pain suffered by the animals, but added to that is the species of animal the pain is being inflicted upon. Well, what makes a dog's life any more valuable than a pig or cow? The emotional connection is what leads the majority of us to feel disgust, but surely that makes us nothing more than hypocrites? My opinion is that provided that the animal is not endangered, and does not suffer unduly, there cannot be any animal "safe" from our plates, at least not until we can inexpensively grow good tasting meat in a lab for human consumption.
In more light-hearted news, did anyone else see the inflatable Donald Trump dressed up like a KKK member? To those that didn't it's a please :)
Right, That's me done for the evening, thanks again for reading and please remember to comment and follow.
Ta,
G
No comments:
Post a Comment