Your Tax Dollars at Work — Starving, Torturing and Killing Animals
The Beet-Eating Heeb is back after a long layoff, tan and well-rested.
OK, purple and over-worked.
So what provoked BEH to start writing again?
This: http://nyti.ms/1AGgtZw
That is a link to the most damning, most disturbing, most important animal-related investigative story you will read this year. Yes, BEH knows it’s only January. But this is a real doozy.
ICYMI, The New York Times on Monday, January 19, published a startling front-page expose about the federal Meat Animal Research Center. Let that sink in for a second.
On its face, it’s absurd and offensive that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is conducting research on farmed animals for the benefit of the meat industry.
Once you learn what actually has transpired at that center, you’ll find that words like “absurd” and “offensive” are far too mild.
The Beet-Eating Heeb urges you to read the entire article. But, as a service to his time-conscious readers, he will summarize a few of the main findings. Brace yourself.
- Cows, which normally give birth to one calf at a time, were genetically re-engineered to have twins or triplets, resulting in an unusually high rate of still births and deformities.
- Newborn lambs were abandoned in open pastures, left to starve to death or to perish in harsh weather or in the jaws of predators.
- Pigs were bred to produce unnaturally large litters, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of piglets.
- In one case, a young female cow was placed in restraints so that a group of bulls could take turns mounting her. Her injuries were so severe that she died just hours later. All for a study on the sexual libido of bulls.
This is just a sampling of the horrors that have occurred at this previously obscure center in Nebraska.
Granted, the Standard Operating Procedure on America’s factory farms is not much better.
But that’s private enterprise. In the case of the Meat Animal Research Center, we’re talking about a taxpayer-funded, government-operated facility. This is being done in our name, with our money (if you’re an American).
The Center is a grotesque stain on the moral fabric of our country, a country that has the audacity to refer to itself as “one Nation under God.”
Excuse The Beet-Eating Heeb for pointing out that God insists we treat animals with compassion, respect and sensitivity, if the Torah/Bible is any indication.
In Jewish terms, the Research Center’s activities blatantly violate Tzaar Baalei Hayim, the prohibition against causing unnecessary suffering to animals.
It’s the heartless treatment of the little lambs that really gets to BEH. In our religion, the two greatest leaders in history, Moses and King David, were chosen by God because of the compassion they each showed for sheep in their care.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, in response to The Times’ article, has ordered his staff to produce an updated Animal Welfare Strategy within 60 days. The new strategy is to include the creation of an independent panel to review research practices, according to a Reuters report.
Sorry, Tom, but this tepid, bureaucratic response is wholly inadequate. Nothing less than the immediate and permanent closure of the Center will suffice. Something is rotten in Denmark, or Nebraska. If the people running the Research Center don’t care about the well-being of the animals there – and they obviously don’t – then the problems will resurface.
The vegan-advocacy/animal-rights community has taken notice. By The Beet-Eating Heeb’s count, at least four petitions and action alerts were in circulation within 72 hours of the appearance of the Times story.
But there is a real danger, even a high probability, that this issue will fade from our consciousness by the end of next week, if not sooner.
Sustained pressure must be put on Secretary Vilsack, President Obama and Congress to do the right thing and pull the plug on the Research Center. BEH would love to see our government leaders try to defend the continued existence of that hellhole. It cannot credibly be done.
You don’t need to be a vegan or vegetarian to get this one. What the Times’ reported will shock the moral conscience of all but the most hard-hearted people.
So just don’t sit there. Here’s a few things you can do:
- Respond to one of the Action Alerts. BEH recommends this one.
- Call the White House, your Senators and your Congressional representative to demand the immediate closure of the Research Center.
- Educate people by submitting a guest op-ed to your local newspaper, by posting the Times’ article or this blog post on your social-media feeds, and by telling your friends, family members, neighbors and co-workers about this situation.
- Finally, counteract this horrible misuse of your tax dollars by donating generously to nonprofits that are working to end the exploitation of farmed animals. If you’re Jewish, BEH suggests you join Jewish Vegetarians of North America.
You know if The Beet-Eating Heeb is back at it again, that this is a serious issue.
Will this shameful Research Center be allowed to continue its sadistic experiments or be mercifully shut down? The answer may well depend on us.
What Is the Blessing over Meat?
The Beet-Eating Heeb was asked recently if there is a Jewish blessing for kale.
Yes, there is, and it’s the same blessing we recite for all vegetables:
That translates as:
Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who creates the fruit of the ground.
You might be wondering, then, what is the Jewish blessing for meat?
Here it is:
It bears repeating. Here’s the blessing for meat again:
There is no mistake here. There is no specific blessing for meat in the Jewish religion.
There is a blessing for bread and grains. For wine. For fruit. For vegetables. But not specifically for meat.
What does that tell you?
If a Jew wishes to recite a blessing before consuming the flesh or secretions of an animal, he or she is to recite a catch-all blessing that doesn’t refer to food or sustenance at all. And that generic blessing is only to be recited after one has recited the blessings for plant-based foods.
Why is this the case?
Because the Torah literally describes meat-eating as an act of human lust, not as something that God wants us to do. In fact, the Torah tell us that God on multiple occasions sought to create a vegetarian, or vegan, world, only to be frustrated by the depravity of humans.
The rabbis of yore who developed our system of blessings understood that it would be inappropriate, if not an outright apostasy, to bless an activity that explicitly contradicts a Torah ideal.
If meat-eating reflected God’s will, you can bet your tuchus that there would be a specific blessing for it.
Lamb’s Blood Aside, Passover is the Perfect Time to Go Vegan
You might assume that The Beet-Eating Heeb dreads Passover.
After all, the very name of the holiday relates to the smearing of lamb’s blood on the doorposts of the Hebrews.
It would be one thing if the lambs had willingly donated a pint or two at the local blood bank. We all know that’s not how it happened.
Furthermore, the Ashkenazic prohibition on eating legumes (which is pointless) really limits The Beet-Eating Heeb’s diet. This means eating even more beets than usual. Not such a bad thing, but he really misses lentils.
Believe it or not, though, BEH looks forward to Pesach every year as a holiday whose main spiritual themes intersect with veganism.
You might find that to be quite a stretch, especially if your mother is making her brisket for the Seder again this year.
But hear BEH out.
Without further fanfare, or actually any fanfare, The Beet-Eating Heeb presents:
The Top 3 Reasons Passover is a Vegan Holiday
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At Passover, we celebrate our freedom, our deliverance from slavery.
It seems like a good time to abstain from meat, dairy and eggs, since the animals from which those products are derived are treated like slaves, or worse.
Actually, anthropologically speaking, the very motif of slavery comes from animal agriculture. (This may be the most intellectual sentence BEH has ever written.)
Allow The Beet-Eating Heeb to translate.
Buying and selling living beings, binding them with chains, and branding them with hot irons are all actions that we associate with slavery. And these are all actions that originated in animal agriculture.
In modern factory farming, what animals experience is even worse than slavery. BEH will spare you the details this time around. But suffice it to say, during Passover, it would be a little hypocritical to celebrate our freedom while participating in the confinement, mutilation and killing of other sentient, soulful beings.
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At Passover, we seek to free ourselves from our own personal mitzrayim, our bad habits.
And meat-eating is a very bad habit. Bad for your health. Bad for the planet. And very bad for the animal involved.
Pesach provides the perfect opportunity to make changes in our lives. Reducing or eliminating animal products from your diet is one of the best changes you can make.
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Humility.
Why do we eat matzah, the bread of affliction?
It’s not because we enjoy the feeling of constipation. (A feeling vegans rarely get, by the way.)
It’s because, spiritually, matzah is humble. It is unleavened. It has not risen.
We rid our homes of chametz and we eat matzah to remind ourselves to remain humble.
The whole concept of killing animals for food is based on the misguided notion that we are far superior to our furry and feathered friends.
The rabbis of the Talmud realized that humans would have a tendency to be anthropocentric. (BEH is on a roll.) Yes, anthropocentric. Look it up, if you have to.
Those rabbis found many ways to make the point that if human beings are superior by animals, it’s not by much. Take, for instance, the mitzvah of feeding your animals before you feed yourself. That’s humility, baby.
So, you see, The Beet-Eating Heeb has good reason to engage in vegan advocacy, right there at his Seder table.
If we take the spiritual significance of Passover seriously, then we must consider going veg.
The Beet-Eating Heeb 