Brett the Vet - Supply and Demand

The consumer craze crippling our modern world has unfurled hurdles and burdens in the way of rational thought and voluntary action. Attraction to things beautiful, soft, tasty, convenient, fast, uniform, and cheap makes us susceptible to covert influences that manipulate our better judgement. The dangerously false sense of security derived from desirable commodity imposition leads to widespread complacency, cruelty, and dissatisfaction. Wants and wishes surreptitiously become needs and demands.

Until recently, food of animal origin was marketed as a healthy and essential part of our supposed omnivorous diet. Now in the age of excess and research, sinister details strike us in the form of heart attacks, allergies, obesity, aggression, ADD, and an array of other diseases. Apart from the obvious plagues associated with regular overindulgence, cravings for animal protein have driven farming into horrific realms of exploitation. Broad scale animal abuse displays blatant contempt for life not only in the way they are treated, but also through wildlife annihilation, deforestation, fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas escalation - all associated with frenzied factory farming.

Nestled in the art of the tourist industry fries the ubiquitous breakfast banquet of perfecting eggs, prized from mangled multitudes of hysterical hens crammed into chambers of tortured confinement. The golden jewels of cholesterol-saturated indulgence are flanked by salty slithers of pig flesh farmed in conditions of captivity featuring repulsively restrictive tight fitting crates. Pet hates are cruelty to animals and bacon not done crispy. The criteria of culinary acceptability exclude rude ructions on the destruction of moral accountability for the brief and miserable lives that become dead meat. Reaching for free-range makes the change.

People in town and country shocked and appalled by routine misuse of illegal poisons and gin traps lapse into tirades of varying shades of red and green helplessness. Fears are dispelled by undiminished spasms of delight at the sight of char grilled lamb loins spared by ensnared gnashing of teeth. Where freedom to roam is not enough for leopard or lamb.

It must be so because the happy advert and glitzy packet assert undisputed falsehood as truth. This one says ‘cat food’ so it must be for cat, getting so fat, sprawled on the mat, can’t catch a rat, bad teeth, scabby skin, and grating joints. That one says ‘dog food’ and who would deny the endless supply to hungry puppies who cry, never satisfied by gruel tastelessly dried. Besides, there’s no time to prepare real food so rare that doesn’t compare with packets of air.

The response to baffling popularity of Dachshunds stimulates intense inbreeding as fashion favourites. Resulting stumpy twisted limbs, fragile spines and stereotypical behaviour are considered cute as a cartoon freak show. Undermining the joy is looming knowledge that sooner or later a genetically feeble, life-threatening disc will slip the sausage of delight into a pitiful crisis of unbearable pain and distress. Hybrid vigour proves the plights of crossbred delights that dispel the farce and disgrace of pedigreed race. Passive acceptance develops demand for continuous supply. Inertia paralyses populations swamped by excess. But asking the right questions still has the power to transform the world by making informed choices.