KILLING IS DEADLY

A favorite trope of anti-vegetarianism is "You care more about animals than you do about people" - the concept being that meat-eaters put their caring where their mouth is, and value the welfare of humans more than "animal lovers" do.

This is BS, of course: The underpaid, highly stressed humans - mostly immigrants -who have to do the most dangerous job in America in order for the meat industry to exist are as invisible and objectified by meat-eaters as are the animals that are killed. And in addition to the routine injuries from blades of one sort or another, the CDC has just identified another ailment derived from work in pig slaughterhouses, one that looks to have afflicted thousands of pork plant workers over a decade.

The fact that slaugterhouse workers are treated "like animals" is not a coincidence or an unfortunate system glitch that needs to be rectified: It's part and parcel of a system that, above the lives of human and non-human animals, values nothing more than profit; it's also an intrinsic part of the Western "taste" for cheap, plentiful meat. Quite simply, anyone who eats meat values their own taste buds more than they do other people's lives.