My Thoughts: The Parallels Between Factory Farming and Sweatshop Consumerism.

I'm gonna open this blog post with a simple truth: there is an overwhelming amount of bad in this world.

I have yet to find a way of living that completely dodges causing some form of bad or another.

The decision to stop eating meat, for me, was easy. I felt like I was saving innocent animals from unnecessary cruelty and slaughter, which in my mind, is stopping one form of 'bad.'

But I can't help but cringe when I think about the exploitative sweatshops across seas that produced my yoga pants that I have on, or the exploited workers who built my laptop that I am typing on right now.

Here's what I want to touch on: consuming animal products from animals in slaughterhouses and factory farms and buying products that were constructed in sweatshops are not too different at all. Both involve humans abusing their power.

Okay, right off the bat, someone might argue that eating meat requires the unnecessary death of a living creature, and a sweatshop doesn't directly kill people or its workers. On purpose, anyhow.

But, hear me out here for a moment. Besides the aforementioned quite obvious and fundamental difference, I believe that factory farming and sweatshops are quite similar, in premise.

One of vegetarianism and veganism's strongest selling points is the notion of acting and making decisions on behalf of the voiceless and powerless animals. "Being a voice for the voiceless."

An innocent chicken can't do squat about its ill-fated life in a factory farm and later slaughterhouse. Does it want to live in cramped, unclean living quarters? No, but it's not as if it can simply walk or fly away from the place. Fun fact: many modern day factory-harvested chickens can barely even walk because their breasts are genetically designed by humans to be so unnaturally large that their legs cannot support the weight. Moving onto the slaughterhouse, does it want to undergo death through electrocution by being submersed in a body of water that has a running electric current? Does it want its throat slit, assembly line style? Definitely not. There simply is no way to ethically kill something that does not want to die. But the chicken doesn't have the means to escape the terrible system or the power to save its own life. It clearly can not fight back against the big worker with the bloody knife. Its only glimmer of hope is mercy from humans.

I believe that by killing animals, we are abusing our power as humans. I mean, really: how exactly can we justify killing so many other living creatures? It surely cannot be that we need their flesh to survive. It's beyond obvious that one can live, THRIVE, off of a vegetarian diet. I've tried and tried and have failed repeatedly to come up with a justification for the killing other than the fact that we are humans and we are more powerful than the animals, so maybe in some twisted logical reasoning that means we can do whatever we please to them. If they can't fight back, what's to stop us?

What if nature were reversed, and humans were the ones who were sent through death factories in a mechanical, methodical manner, by big and powerful animals? My proposition is that we would try and fight for our lives by disputing that just because the animals were bigger and more powerful than us does not justify taking our lives away from us.

Now to discuss sweatshops. In places like Bangladesh, sweatshops violate basic human rights on a daily basis. Workers are shackled by dangerous conditions, unspeakable hours, and minimal pay and protection. But, because there are no other work opportunities, impoverished people have no choice but to work at these horrible places. And then child labor happens because families need more money and therefore the children need to earn more money for the family just to stay afloat financially. So, goodbye to education and a future to these children, if these things were even available in the first place.

Large corporations have recognized the unbelievable lack of opportunity in places like Bangladesh and Taiwan and therefore exploit their power and take advantage of the lack of opportunity by outsourcing. Hello, cheaper production of revenue-building product!!

When we buy our yoga pants and our laptops, we are abusing our power as the privileged, are we not? By purchasing products that are produced in sweatshops, we are perpetuating the unjust, inhumane cycle. Just like chickens in the slaughterhouse, sweatshop workers do not have the capability or means to escape the unjust sweatshop work system.

What if the economic statuses of countries were reversed, and we were the sweatshop workers and people across seas were the ones with all the money and wealth of the world. Wouldn't we hope that they would speak up for us and find a better way to produce their posh possessions so that we could enjoy a real life and have the opportunity to pursue a future of hope and not a future fixed in dusty, grimy buildings and long, exhausting hours?

As a vegetarian and partial vegan, I am really wrestling with the thought that I am being the voice for the animals but not for the exploited workers in sweatshops. It's as if, through my actions and lifestyle choices, I am embodying moral hypocrisy. Gracing animals with innocence by not eating them but not providing mercy for sweatshop workers because I like my yoga pants and I like my computer. And it's not just my yoga pants and MacBook, obviously. Let's be real, virtually every possession I own was produced overseas.

What's the solution? At this point, is it even possible for us privileged people to stop doing so much 'bad' in the world? Our lifestyles seemingly cannot go on without taking advantage of sweatshop labor. We can't sew all of our own clothes and we can't go naked. Most of us as individuals don't have the expertise to build our own technological devices nor can we simply abandon technology altogether because it is so powerfully woven into the ways of our society.

I do not know how to become completely independent of the sweatshop system. That is what scares me. I can't stop being a part of the bad of the world, no matter how hard I try. And that does not sit right with me.