Last year, I wrote a great deal about the rise of “ventilation shutdown plus” (VSD+), a method being used to mass kill poultry birds on factory farms by sealing off the airflow inside barns and pumping in extreme heat using industrial-scale heaters, so that the animals die of heatstroke over the course of hours. It is one of the worst forms of cruelty being inflicted on animals in the US food system — the equivalent of roasting animals to death — and it’s been used to kill tens of millions of poultry birds during the current avian flu outbreak.
As of this summer, the most recent period for which data is available, more than 49 million birds, or over 80 percent of the depopulated total, were killed in culls that used VSD+ either alone or in combination with other methods, according to an analysis of USDA data by Gwendolen Reyes-Illg, a veterinary adviser to the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), an animal advocacy nonprofit. These mass killings, or “depopulations,” in the industry’s jargon, are paid for with public dollars through a USDA program that compensates livestock farmers for their losses.
Though I have opinions, I will not take the bait, as it is not relevant to my point whether humans distancing themselves from nature is “good” or “bad.”
I think my signal is pretty clear - Your “it’s natural” argument fails entirely when one picks and chooses the aspects of human life to which they apply it.
As an example - you wake up in your climate controlled house, put on your synthetic fiber clothing, jump into your Ford F150 Pickup Truck, Drive to a gas station, pick up a mountain dew in a plastic bottle, and buy a slice of pizza - in all that context, your big brained argument is that it is more natural for that pizza to have animal pepperoni and dairy cheese, vs plant-based alternatives.
Tell me, who is the clown in this situation?
It’s you. You’re the clown.
Our body still is natural by all means. And omnivorous diet is natural to our body.