Christmas's message of thoughtfulness sounds fine, but for most people, thoughtfulness does not extend beyond our nearest. Now's your chance: Replace the rib with nuts!
(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
This is a contribution to the «Engaged utterance» column in the weekly magazine Ny Tid, in print 08.11.2013. In the column come various idealistic organizations are speaking. The participants are: ATTAC Norway, Nature and Youth, Agenda X, Skeiv Ungdom, Changemaker, One World, The Future in Our Hands, Bellona, the Joint Council for Africa, the Norwegian Society for Nature Conservation, MSF and NOAH – for animal rights.
Pet food. Christmas is approaching with storms, and Ola Nordmann throws in again with traditional Christmas food long before Christmas has called in, often up to several times. Few stop and think about the animals behind the food we eat or what it takes to produce meat cheaply and in such large volumes as today.
Not long ago, meat was reserved for holidays. Now the "holiday food" has become the standard throughout the year. Norwegians eat twice as much meat now as they did 40 years ago, while prices have fallen drastically. In 1986, 1 kilo of chops cost 90 kroner, which corresponds to more than 175 of today's kroner, while the kilo price now in many places is 29,90 kr, also for ribs.
Christmas has become a time when, more than any other time of the year, we go in with cheap meat. Our high demand for meat has a downside, first and foremost for the animals who have to live their short lives in increasingly intensive operating systems.
Because farmers have long been encouraged to produce pigs, more than 5000 tonnes of pigs are expected to be produced next year, which gives us good prospects for continued milling in cheap pork. But behind every rib, pork and chop is a pig, a life. Over 95 per cent of Norwegian pigs should never experience anything other than a concrete binge, where each pig has about 1 square meter of space to move before being sent with the slaughter truck, only 6 months old.
Pigs are social and intelligent animals, just like the dog you give a piece of Christmas ribs to. They are just as much in need of unfolding as our family animals, but our greed for more and more meat has ribbed them, and other production animals, for quality of life.
Holiday for new traditions
How is it that we do not meet the needs of one animal and buy Christmas presents for the other? And on what moral basis?
Christmas's message of love and concern for our next is a golden opportunity to reflect on who this thought can and should include. Should Christmas just be about buying nice gifts for those we love (who often already have the most they need)?
Or is Christmas a time to show which traditions and values are important and worth continuing, and which should soon be replaced by something better?
More and more people are choosing to eat vegetarian for the sake of the animals, and there are plenty of good vegetarian food recipes online and in cookbooks, also for vegetarian Christmas food. The possibilities are many for those who want to celebrate the Christmas holidays with food that no animals have had to suffer for.
How about replacing Christmas ribs or stick meat with nuts? Or make vegetarian medicine cakes and Christmas sausages?
It is high time that we extend our consideration and moral responsibility to include animals, and what time is better suited than Christmas to replace old, outdated traditions? ■
(This is an excerpt from Ny Tid's weekly magazine 29.11.2013. Read the whole thing by buying Ny Tid in newspaper retailers all over the country, or by subscribing to Ny Tid -click here. Subscribers receive previous editions free of charge as PDF.)
