Never understimate the Opposition
Vegetarianism is now more popular than ever before and there is increasingly
widespread appreciation of the fact that a vegetarian lifestyle is healthier,
more compassionate and environmentally sound. However, despite growing awareness
of the many health advantages of an animal-free diet and the wealth of information
available about the dangers inherent in the use and consumption of animal products,
the impact of the vegetarian message is being significantly distorted by a variety
of commercial, political and religious pressure groups with a vested interest
in maintaining the status quo, the better to control the minds and pockets of
their potential customers or followers.
The BSE Crisis: Bad habits die hard
The recent beef scandal highlighted the need for fresh new strategies to confront
the lies and deception associated with the modern meat industry and its political
allies. Powerful marketing techniques are used to shape the minds and habits
of millions of gullible consumers, who are effectively being told what to think
and what to buy and are actively encouraged to ignore their own common sense
and to dismiss as mere scaremongering the now overwhelming evidence of the health
risks involved in consuming the products of modern agribusiness.
McSpotlight on Multinationals
The so-called pleasures or ravenous suicidal instincts, deeply rooted in human
ignorance, and the prevailing meat-eating mythology, still widely held as mainstream
and unquestionable truths, are being carefully nurtured by governments acting
as acolytes for the dubious but highly profitable business practices of giant
multinationals such as McDonalds, whose financial success at the expense of
the environment, the earths natural resources and the health of consumers represents
a serious threat not only to the countless animal and plant species being wiped
out by such practices but to the health of the human community worldwide as
life-giving forests and oceans are turned into wastelands and chemical sewers
incapable of sustaining life.
The excellent information campaign set up as a result of the McLibel trial in
the UK was described by The Guardian newspaper as the most comprehensive source
of information on a multinational ever assembled, exposing the ruthless social
and environmental practices of powerful multinationals. The publicity for the
trial, instigated by McDonalds to challenge a factsheet entitled Whats wrong
with McDonalds? may have helped to reduce profits somewhat, but sales nevertheless
rose by 14.2 per cent. in the first quarter of 1997, with profits soaring by
$344.5 million in the same period the previous year.
Meeting the Challenges of the Meat Culture
What untried strategies, we may ask, might hold some possibility of success
in our David and Goliath struggle to save what's left of our green planet? What
might be done to make it less rewarding to plunder, kill or destroy what is
unique and took millions of years to create? What can be done to avert the descent
of spaceship earth into final disintegration as a massive slaughterhouse and
waste dump? How might it regain some of its lost lustre and we our lost sanity?
As it is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate among the victims
of human folly, and as the misuse of knowledge has become dangerously widespread
in a robotic world increasingly concerned with cloning and tinkering with life
rather than with care and respect for the individual, it is in the interests
of vegetarians as much as non-vegetarians to adopt a more active and determined
role in seeking to become part of the solution rather than remaining, whether
through omission or commission, a part of the problem.
Breaking the Chains of Ignorance
Many scientists and doctors are acting as powerful antagonists and masters of
deception on issues about which they know very little. Whether through ignorance
or self-interest, or a combination of both, they set themselves up to mislead
and misinform the public on matters of health and nutrition, sometimes with
fatal results.
In a recent radio discussion on whether meat eaters were affected by the fear
experienced by animals at slaughter, I was confronted by a biologist and a doctor
whose mythical belief in the supposed need for animal protein made it well nigh
impossible for them to accept the possibility of an animal-free diet, thus bringing
my word and indeed my very existence into question.
Paradoxically, foods and animals are being genetically manipulated and modified
by so-called experts who themselves may need to alter their views and their
diet, who may be ignorant of the most basic principles of sound nutrition and
have much to learn about which unmodified foods are best suited to the human
organism.
Equally, animals are being cloned and manipulated because researchers have no
respect for their victims rights as individuals and cannot accord them their
true status as sentient beings because such respect for life would invalidate
both the need for and the acceptability of their own so-called research.
A truly genuine desire to establish a healthy and ethical relationship with
our food and our common physical and social environment would of itself do much
to bring about the changes required to prevent the human animal from succumbing
to apathy and self-deception and to help overcome the gross injustices and social
upheaval which threaten even greater environmental destruction.
- Francisco Martín, General Secretary