On Vegan Birthdays and Animal Fighting?
Welcome to Vegan Birthdays, an offshoot of Veganizing Your Guests and Friends by Cooking for Them, which is apparently my new calling. We have a 44 and a 50-year old, and of course my husband making his obligatory let’s-see-if-I-can-ruin-the-picture face. The other young gentleman is a new vegan as are his mom and sister, and his dad (pictured) eats fish sometimes. We shared a vegan meal (lo mein and massive amounts of veggies) and I made the famous ginger-macadamia-coconut-carrot cake along with chocolate cupcakes with ganache frosting (some of which were filled with raspberry cream) and coconut cupcakes with coconut frosting. My frosting technique clearly needs some attention, but other than that all went well and a yummy time was had by all.
As for animal fighting, I found it odd to discover that both the New York Times and the Washington Post published something (an article in the former, an editorial in the latter) about cockfighting.
If you’re feeling the need to be nauseated, check out the slide shows that accompany "Dominicans Say Cockfighting is in Their Blood" by Katie Thomas in the "Other Sports" section of the NYT.
"[I]n the Dominican Republic, cockfighting is celebrated as a symbol of the country’s warrior spirit. Nearly every neighborhood and country village has a gallera, or cockfighting arena, and the sport is legal and regulated."
I’ve been to the Dominican Republic on a humanitarian mission, and to Haiti as well. And I can tell you that I have rarely seen such disregard for the lives of animals in public. Of course, what we do here in the name of food is just as bad as what they do in the name of "sport."
Nevertheless, thanks to Michael Vick moral outrage over animal fighting is in vogue, whether or not it’s loaded with hypocrisy. Therefore, I do think it’s a great idea to jump on the bandwagon and make sure that the meaningless rational that "it’s part of our culture" is exposed for what it really is. As many animal rights activists are probably thinking right now, slavery was once part of our culture. Culture should never be an excuse to act without concern for the lives of sentient beings. And yet culture is often the only excuse we provide.
At the Post’s editorial, "Cruel but Not Unusual" states, the attitude toward animal welfare is changing (read: it’s starting to be taken seriously). And no one wants more suffering rather than less. However, what we need is not a change in our attitude toward animal welfare. What we need is a revolution in our attitude toward the right of animals to live their lives free of our domination, breeding, control, mutilation, enslavement and slaughter. What we need is to stop thinking that animals exist for our pleasure, whatever form that takes.
