Have You Heard of Mike the Headless Chicken?

February 19, 2017 by hellobrigitte 4 Comments

Margaret Atwood has presented many interesting elements relatable to our current reality and society today. The author presents Oryx and Crake in a post-apocalyptic world, yet her chapters and sections select intriguing modern elements which she incorporates in her story. An example of such detail relevant to the theme of my blog is in section Wolvogs. Jimmy is introduced to a lab where chickens are grown without heads. A method as such avoids, most importantly, animal brutality. So, really, these chickens don’t need to have their throats slit if they are clearly headless. Over the holidays, I came over a Facebook account depicting the maltreatment and brutality of farm animals before they end up on our plates. I became obsessed with watching similar videos – kind of grim I know – and was deeply saddened about by how far mankind is willing to go…to obtain meat.

Here is a link containing a series of videos displaying how animals are tortured and killed (trigger warning: you might wanna hide your eyes, it’s bloody) :     http://www.peta.org/features/10-shocking-peta-videos/

 

It prompted me to change my eating habits, so I became a vegetarian. Needless to say, my courageous attempts lasted all of three days before I crumbled and went in on a steak burrito. I have concluded that I’m a meat lovin’ animal brutality hatin’ kinda gal. Instead of cutting meat out of my diet (I will definitely give it another go), I’d rather discourage their maltreatment. Realistically, I am contradicting myself, but every thing is worth a try. Funny enough, working at Mcdonald’s; the land of beef patties, angus meat, and chicken breast filets, imagining the slaughtering process is hard to ignore (especially when it arrives ‘100% Canadian Beef’ frozen boxes).

Question is do I believe in meat labs? Would I be more of an environmentalist if I did? If meat labs were to actually exist, would it be ethical to support it? A shock would definitely be associated with it similarly to how big my eyes opened when I came upon the passage. However, in our modern day, if scientists and researchers were able to grow perfectly healthy chicken or beef parts, it could be quite beneficial in many ways past the shock factor (honestly, I would finally stop feeling guilty about eating meat). It would be equally essential to analyse the consequentialist moral reasoning theory seeing as it primarily conveys the idea of what ever action is rightfully executed overrides the consequences that come along with it. Still in regards of meat labs, a theory as such holds great importance in my eyes, because hypothetically it could end animal suffering. Here is a short list of benefits:

1-Animals would not be painfully tortured and slaughtered.

2-Believe or not, animals could be allowed to pursue their future lives and desires.

3-Our ecosystem could be greatly advantaged

Lastly, I think we’ve all heard the story of Mike the Headless Chicken which is what I immediately thought and laughed at reading the passage. Either way, who knows, Mike could’ve probably been Crake’s chicken guinea pig.

 

 

 

 

References:                                                                                                                     http://www.orig03.deviantart.net                                                                                                 http://www.haberler.com                                                                                                                   http://www.bbc.com                                                                                                                                 http://www.idausa.org/campaign