| Pain on Your Plate |
| Part IX -- Who is Responsible? |
The owners of these operations are simple businessmen in pursuit of the "American dream."
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While they certainly can't be accounted guiltless, they are nonetheless simply supplying a demand.
"Taking orders." Taking orders from whom? From you, if you're a meat-eater!
What's the first thing they say to you in a "fast-food" line?
May I take your order?
When you order a hamburger you are the one behind the suffering.
You are the one ordering it to be done. The meat industry is simply taking your order.
People who eat meat often supress their guilt with the following rationalization:
Since they didn't kill the animal themselves, they are not responsible for its imprisonment
and death. In this way they try to pass the responsibility onto those who follow their orders.
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During WWII, Nazi's were simply "taking orders" too.
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Similar to the meat industry of today, those orders involved inflicting suffering and death on those considered "inferior."
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Hitler didn't kill Jews himself; he ordered others to do it for him.
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Following the meat-eater's line of logic, then, he should not be held responsible.
Here is the dilemma: if you say Hitler was just as responsible for the murder of the Jews
as those Nazis who "just took orders," then, if you eat meat...
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...you are just as responsible for the suffering and murder of the animals
as is the man with the knife at the slaughterhouse.
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Isaac Bashevis Singer summed it up best when he said:
To animals, all humans are Nazis.
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