Suicide Food

I added this blog to my list of links the other week, but I feel that I owe it an actual post. Suicide Food displays ads that portray animals as happy or involved in their own death and consumption. What is more, the animals in these ads happily participate and/or welcome the process. I think this speaks to one of two things I blogged that society expects of a person: mindlessly consume animals (the second, being heterosexual).

More importantly, society justifies its large-scale consumption of animals to such an extent that the process is taken for granted. This becomes so standard that we imagine animals as happily participating. We are so detached from animal exploitation, death, and cruelty, that consumers will smile and respond positively to ads portraying animals as participating in their own unhappy ending.

The collection on Suicide Food is a cultural testament to the fact that our society does not value animals, or appreciate what we take from animals. If we were truly thankful, we would not exploit/abuse animals before we slowly and painfully slaughter them. We would not pump them so full of hormones that their limbs would deform and/or break. We would not pack them so tightly into trucks that some animals would suffocate under the pressure. We would not hurt animals pre-slaughter for amusement. We would not preach on the food pyramid and in dietary guidelines that a person has to consume animals to be healthy. We would ESPECIALLY not mock the death of animals by pretending that it is something cute for an ad.

We would not treat animals, their ecosystems, and the environment as dispensable--because none of them are.