The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet by Alicia Silverstone Read Free Book Online Page A

longer memories than we assumed (months as opposed to seconds), the capacity to learn, and that they transmit their knowledge to other members of their school. He’s even teaching fish raised in hatcheries how to respond to predators before being released into the ocean so they have a better chance of survival. So next time a fish looks at you from inside a tank at a Chinese restaurant, read his lips; he’s probably yelling, “Get me out of here!”
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    If you can tell me you honestly believe there is a difference, then you’ve probably never hung out with a cow. I encourage you to go to an animal sanctuary and hang around with a few. They will love it, and so will you. Roll around with the pigs. Tell me that they don’t love living and that they don’t feel pain. Every single creature wants to live fully. That’s what God designed us to do. That’s our purpose. Who are we to take that away unless we have to? And these days, where’s the “have to”? We used to think that slavery was okay, but we got over that. Why can’t we get over the needless torture and killing of animals for our sensory satisfaction?
    Meat production is downright cruel: The meat industry has also brainwashed us into thinking that we are eating happy cows from peaceful green pastures and that the mom-and-pop farms they come from are part of the great American dream. In truth, the vast majority of the meat you eat comes from corporate-owned factory farms, and even the moms and pops have to go “factory” in order to compete. Yes, there are farms that embrace more humane practices, but they are few and far between.
    And it’s not just the pigs and cows who suffer. Farm-raised fish are kept in cages with 40,000 other fish, enjoying the equivalent of half a bathtub of water each. Every egg has an abused chicken for a mother. People like to tell themselves that the animals have been treated decently during their lives and are then slaughtered relatively humanely, but their lives are not lives in any sense that we could relate to. From maternal separation to forced feeding of antibiotic- and pesticide-laden grains to being locked in ridiculously small quarters and being pumped so full of growth hormones that they can no longer support their own weight, their lives are pure torture. But the real price is paid in a way we rarely consider; the chicken, born with wings to flap, never flaps them. Her beak, meant for pecking the earth, is cut off. The cow, meant to roam, is confined to a stall carpeted in her own waste. Sixty-five million pigs are raised in confinement factories where they never see the light of day until they are trucked to slaughter. These animals experience lives tantamount to humans being strapped into straitjackets, locked in cells, abused by jailers, awaiting nothing but death. Their God-given instincts are repressed and their very beings denied.

    And by the end, they know what’s coming. Don’t kid yourself. They can smell the blood. They can sense the fear. They can hear the other animals moaning. Wouldn’t you understand, in their position? Denial would have us equate slaughter with having a pet “put down” at the vet. But that’s just a comfortable delusion.
    Facts:
     
90,000 U.S. cows and calves are slaughtered every day.
14,000 chickens are killed in the United States every minute . 46
Over 300 million male baby chicks are killed in this country per year—more than one for every person living in this country.
    Although the Federal Humane Slaughter Act is supposed to keep certain practices in place, the law is rarely enforced. In 2000, a videotape was leaked out of workers at an Iowa Beef Processors (now Tyson Foods) plant in Washington State. Cows were routinely “stunned” by devices that didn’t work, left to experience their painful ends with sensitivity and consciousness intact. The video showed cows being skinned alive, kicking for freedom as their legs were cut off. Employees who were willing to talk