watch tv, consume, obey

I was mad at Oprah today. Usually I watch the first fifteen minutes or so of her show immediately after I get home from school, specifically while eating some sort of fattening snack. It's good background noise: drama layered on top of fluffy subjects fit for the average consumer. Today, however, she had a show on puppy mills. You know, where those cute little puppies you see at the big-box pet store were first brutally abused and confined to cages so small they couldn't stand up straight? Anyway, yeah, it was disgusting and inhumane and made me want to cry.. but that's not the reason why I couldn't watch it. What about the other animals in the world? The animals we see as "farm animals", the animals the average American doesn't think are "cute", the animals that don't end up at a pet store and to a home in the end but rather are killed brutally instead?

I did a quick Google search about Oprah's involvement with the rights of other animals and I end with the result: more fluff. She did a show in 1996 about Mad Cow Disease which criticized factory farms in their practice of using dead cattle meat in food for the live cows. There was also an article (by PETA on their website, which makes me distrust its credibility) about her being a vegan for two weeks for some reason or another. Why not forever? Why not criticize other practices of factory farms that include keeping cows in compacted feedlots, practically on top of each other to save space, where the air is a delightful blend of bacteria and particulate matter? Or, you know, the fact that the average beef slaughterhouse kills 250 cows per hour to feed our disgusting obsession with red meat? I'm not even talking about the other kinds of animals that are no less important than cattle.

Why are we so selective in our choice of what animals we should be outraged by the inhumane deaths of? Puppies and cows and chickens and pigs and fish are all killed to serve our selfish want for more, more, more at cheaper, cheaper, cheaper prices. By the way, I just want to say that I've never seen any vegetables more expensive than meat, when compared at the same quality level.

You know, I guess I could be a hypocrite. I don't obsessively check ingredient lists for any trace of dairy product, and I do eat foods with eggs and cheese in them. I'm not hoping for an immediate, radical, upheaval and outlawing all meat consumption, but what about conscious consumption? Why not care about where the food came from that we're putting in our bodies? Why not think why not have control?

But I guess the wants of our flesh are too important that they trump our brain. Chicken nuggets are delicious.