27/1/10

Today we went and saw the chickens in the back carpark of greenschool. I wasn't surprised by what I saw, although a couple of others seemed to be. The chickens seemed fairly well-kept, in the sense that none seemed to be dying, and there was just enough space for them to move around. There were a few feed trays, although in one of the spaces there didn't appear to be any water. Some of the chickens were lying down, others were jumping about, up near the sides of the cage and stuff. I thought it was unfair that the grass and the outside world is so close to them, yet they're never allowed out. It seems.. mean. The older chickens looked less healthy, and started to appear a little sickly. I was a little shocked how some of the other students acted. They didn't seem perturbed in the least about seeing animals that would one day become food at the warung. I mean, some of them joked about it, and that makes sense, because jokes tend to cover insecurities. A personal conclusion I came to recently about me being a veggo is that where some people see Cow in a farm, and Beef on their plate, or sometimes even Beef in a farm and on their plate, I see Cow in a farm, and Cow on my plate, and I just can't bring my self to eat that. It surprises me how insensetive some people can be about all of that, espescially in our class, where we've watched movies on where our food comes from, and we see the cruelty perfomed towards both the workers and the animals in the industry, and still nothing is swayed. Everything in their head is lodged in place. Its like they feel no sympathy. I really would be interested to see how people's minds work about all of this, and how some of the people feel about animals and those issues in this unit. And if anyone has had to rethink any of their values at all after seeing Food Inc. And seeing the chickens in the carpark.