Food for thought

[redalert]

         Took the kids to a farm fair this weekend, the egg farmer had a display set up and was answering questions about egg production.  I asked him how many eggs a hen lays? He said that when a hen is 13 wks old they begin a one year cycle of laying eggs, in this cycle a single hen can lay an average of 320 eggs. The eggs are unfertile and will not produce a chick, a different process was used when it was necessary to replenish his stock of hens. I have been 99% vegan for over a year and at this point in the conversation I was considering relaxing my attitude towards eggs in my diet as this process seemed quite natural and he seemed to care a great deal for his animals and was such a good natured fellow. I then asked him at the end of a hens laying cycle do they take a break (get a holiday) and then repeat another laying cycle? His demeanor changed instantly, his face tensed up, and he seemed quite agitated, he said that the eggs in the next laying cycle were substandard for the egg market, and the meat on a hen at this stage of her life was unfit for human consumption, the hens were shipped to the pet industry. Not to become pets for children but to become food for your pets.

         I would love to hear from anyone who has experience with a family farm, and to know if this process is any different? It seems that in order to meet human"s consumption needs animals are taken to their physical limits and then just ground into food. Just being around the animals on the weekend was so healing and I left feeling as though something is seriously missing in city life. This was confirmed when exiting the barn, we were treated to a display by the Canadian military, A large artilery gun was set up for the children to climb on, and many soldiers dressed in fatigues were on hand to teach the kids to load a giant bullet into the gun. Afterwards you could get your picture taken with a machine gun.

        I feel embarassed to be human at times, everyone is chasing $$$, and the whole system seems very umbalanced.

     
       

[Matthew]

red,

The system is unbalanced ... yet those of us trying to swim upstream will win out over ignorance, desire and hatred in the end. This is because man is currently fighting his own nature .. and thus fighting nature itself. Such a situation can not prevail .. everything comes to an end.

Don't get too disheartened,

Matthew

[redalert]

   Cheers mate

[Stefan]

I feel embarassed to be human at times

  yes I know exactly how you feel ...

but then, that's the point, isn't it? If you were born as an angel on the planet "Tinkle", there wouldn't be much of a motivation to sit on a cushion ... 

hindi mythology delivers a good picture: this planet lies in the middle of universe, half way between heaven and hell. Demigods choose to get incarnated on earth because here the lunatic confusion of duality (yes-no, white-black ect) is very strong, and this confusion seems to be the best stimulus for a meditative life throughout the seven heavens and hells.
In the hells ("no no no"), the ego-tension is very strong and hinders to "vi passana" (=see things as they really are). In the heavens ("yes yes yes"), the everlasting joy is overwhelming, so there's no pressure to "vi passana". But on earth there's this dizzy roller coaster called duality, all those yes' and no's, ups and downs, good and bad, sun and rain, joy and pain, loss and gain, all closely mixed together in this mindboggling triptychon of a planet. here we NEED to sit and "vi passana".

unbalancedness of any external system here on earth is the natural state since it originates from duality (and you would expect unbalancedness on a roller coaster). unbalancedness is the main force for us to move on, to try and see things as they really are.

***

when it comes to mass-production of food, the ride on this duality roller coaster may cause nausea ...