Carnism: Changing the Way We Think About Eating Animals

 By: Melanie Joy, Ph.D.

Without awareness, there is no free choice.

Growing up we were not given a choice, eating animals were given. 

When eating animals is not a necessity for survival then it is a choice and choice always stems from beliefs.

Carnism teaches us how not to feel - Denial.

19,011 farmed animals in the U.S. are killed each minute...yet how many farmed animals have you seen this week? This month? This year? Or in your lifetime?

Farmed animals are 32 times the human population, but where are they?

We don't see the animals that become our food because we are not supposed to.

Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act

"An act of terrorism for those who committed something that interferes the profits of animal enterprise."

Farm industry is 120 billion dollar business.

VICTIMS OF FARM FACTORIES:

1. ANIMALS ABUSED TORTURED AND SLAUGHTERED 

2. MEAT WORKERS 

OSHA reports numerous incidents of 1.) employee hospitalized for neck laceration from flying blade; 2.) employee's eye injuries when struck by hanging hook; and 3.) employee decapitated by chain of hide puller machine.

In 2005, for the first time ever, the Human Rights Watch issued a report criticizing a single U.S. industry - the meat industry - for working conditions so appalling that they violate human rights.

3. ENVIRONMENT

United Nations report animal agriculture is one of the most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems facing the world today (2007)

4. PEOPLE, CONSUMERS

Vegetarian diets, including vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases  - American Dietetic Association 

A huge amount of our tax money comes to billion dollar food industry that they have been widely criticized across the political spectrum. 

To eat animals, we have to shut down our sympathy and empathy, our ability to feel. We need to fill the gap in our awareness. When invisibility falters, we are left to justify why we eat meat.

3 N's in JUSTIFYING MEAT CONSUMPTION:

1. Eating meat is normal, natural and necessary. Why so? Because we have heard it all before. Much in the same way that male dominance is normal, natural and necessary, that heterosexual supremacy is normal, natural and necessary.

Carnistic norms have become such a social norm that they blind us to the fact that humane meat is a complete contradition to its terms. 

What is normal? 
The beliefs and behaviors of the dominant culture.

What is natural? 

The dominant culture's interpretation of history.

Our history only goes back to our flesh eating descendants and not out fruit eating origins. We only look as far back as where we can justify our current actions. Rape, murder, robbery have all been part of our history that we condemn, in the same history where animal abuse and slaughter have been existing.

What is necessary?

What's necessary to maintain or sustain the dominant culture.

The protein myth - the myth of meat approval prevails despite the overwhelming contradictions to it because they are so entrenched. 

When a system is entrenched, it means it's embraced and maintained by all social institutions. When we are born into the system of carnism we absorbed them as our own, into our system, as our way of life. 

Animal industry uses cognitive distortions that make us feel okay with meat consumption:

1. Animals = Objects

We refer to turkey as 'something' not 'someone'

We call a calf or a baby an 'it' not a 'he/she'

2. Animals = Abstractions

We see animals as lacking in their own individuality or personality and instead as abstract members of the group. (A pig is a pig and all pigs are the same)

We give them numbers, not names.

Personal interview conducted from a meat cutter regarding whether animals have individual characteristics: "I'm sure it does, but I'd rather not know it."

3. Animals = Categories

We put animals we eat in categories (we can eat chickens, pigs and cows but we treat our cats and dogs as pets)

"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." - Voltaire

When we look at the world through the lens of carnism, we fail to see the absurdities of the system. Carnism is one of many atrocities, one of many violent ideologies that is an unfortunate part of human legacy.

Although the experience of each consumer can be different, the ideologies are structurally similar, the mentality that enables such violence is the same. 

The mentality of domination and subjugation, of privilege and oppression. It's the mentality that causes us to see someone into something, to reduce a life to a unit of production. 

It is the 'might makes right' mentality that makes us feel entitled that we are in complete control of the lives and deaths of those with less power just because we can. We feel justified in our actions because we see them as nothing but animals, as savages...

Homosexual, women, animals - the mentality of meat 

If we fail to recognize the threads of violent ideologies, we will only recreate oppression in new forms. 

Eating animals is not simply a matter of personal ethics, it is the result of deeply entrenched oppressive nature. 

Eating animals is a social justice issue.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice anywhere." - Martin Luther King Jr. 

The opposite is the just the same. Justice anywhere is a threat to injustice anywhere. 

Why do we defend or deny our meat consumption? Because we care...we care about animals and we care about the truth.

Carnism is a house of cards, it's a vulnerable system that needs its strong fortress to protect itself from its very own proponents..us. So our caring is both the problem and the solution. Our caring is what makes us want to turn away from the truths but our caring is also what gives us the courage to face the truth, to bear witness.

When we bear witness, we identity with others, we empathize, we close that gap in our consciousness. We become more integrated to our values and that lead us to feel compassion, to feel the need for justice...

Throughout the history of mankind, atrocities were made possible because the people turn away from the truth. But at the same time, every social transformation and revolution was made possible because people face the truth and they demanded others to bear witness as well. 

It is the social movement that caused oppressors to deny their oppressive system and portray activists and witnesses as biased, extremists, overly emotional, apathy and sensationalists.

Despite the social pressure of dominant carnism belief, there are reasons to be hopeful:

1. Since 2008, the number of vegetarians and vegans in the United States has doubled.
2. A growing number of America's most powerful bosses have become vegan.
3. More leaders and celebrities are saying no to meat.
4. Vegan cookbooks, recipes, innovative foods, restaurants and medical doctors are springing up everywhere.


Moving beyond carnism enables us to step in a vibrant community of millions of people who celebrate life and cultivate compassion. 

Love, which is the highest form of connection, highest expression of justice shouldn't be limited by boundaries such as species. 

To love someone is to respect their being, it's to respect that no matter how different they are from how we are, they have a life that matters to them. 

"As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields." - Leo Tolstoy

For better or worse, we are all participants of this invisible system of carnism, so our choice is not about if we want to participate but how we participate. With awareness, we can choose to be active witnesses than passive bystanders. We can practice justice and exercise love.

We can lead more authentic and freely chosen lives and truly become, as Ghandi said, 'the change we wish to see'.

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"A better attitude leads to better actions and a better world..."