Sometimes animal rights activists reach such new lows that it is difficult to believe that sane people actually believe such things. Such was my reaction to an editorial in the October 2001 edition of Animal People which actually compared the plight of the flight attendants who apparently had their throats slit by terrorists to the fate of animals in slaughter houses.
The unsigned editorial, “Osama bin Laden on meat and denial,” notes that among the effects of the terrorists was a training manual of sorts which advised the terrorists to look upon the killing of human beings in the same way they might look upon the ritual slaughter of animals. That people willing to commit such horrendous terrorist acts would have no problem with this is obvious, but the Animal People editorialist also finds the analogy to be a sound one. According to the editorial,
That terrorists might slash the throats of some jet riders to intimidate others, without causing them discomfort, en route to murder thousands, is self-evidently preposterous. Yet bin Laden obviously did manage to convince the hijackers that their deeds would have no more negative moral consequence than killing animals for meat. Many and perhaps most of the nine billion animals sent to slaughter in the U.S. each year, as well as the billions killed abroad, have at least as long to sense doom as did the September 11 victims. Neither are the animals’ last cries as unlike the cell phone calls made by some of the September 11 victims as the typical meat-eater would like to believe.
Equally disturbing to meat-eaters might be awareness that doomed animals, too, often put up frantic resistance, like the passengers who tried to retake United Airlines flight 93, saving countless lives by causing the hijackers to crash the plane far from any target.
The editorial then goes into a long-winded specious argument that meat eating is, if not the sole cause of violence in human societies, then at least a major contributing factor, or as the editorial sums up its case, “The horror of September 11 was a reflection of human attitudes toward meat. You don’t have to take our word for it. Take the word of Osama bin Laden.”
There is, of course, an alternative explanation which is that there are only two groups, to this writer’s knowledge, who insist on devaluing human life to the point of seriously comparing the death of a cow in a slaughter house to the death of a woman who has her throat slit by a box cutter — terrorists working at the behest of Osama bin Laden and the animal rights extremists.
Source:
Osama bin Laden on meat and denial. Animal People, October 1, 2001.