The End of Animal Husbandry, Part 1 of 2

Welcome to Part 1 of our 2-Part series, “The End of Animal Husbandry” where we’ll examine the frightening relationship between animal livestock raising and global pandemics. Since early 2020, much of the world has been on “lockdown” in a valiant effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus, COVID-19, one of the worst pandemics in recent history. By the end of April, 2020, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union reported that at least 20 meatpacking workers had died, 6,500 others had tested positive or been quarantined, and 22 major meat and poultry processing plants had temporarily closed their doors. In a Facebook Live interview, Dr. Gary Anthone, Nebraska's Chief Medical Officer, said, “If there's one thing that might keep me up at night, it's the meat processing plants." According to the US trade association Delmarva Poultry Industry, Inc., one factory farm recently euthanized two-million chickens deemed to be in excess. Political leaders from Iowa warned that if the state’s slaughterhouses remained closed, producers could be forced to euthanize as many as 700,000 pigs a week. COVID-19 has shaken our world. But, in fact, humans are not the only ones suffering from a pandemic. Recently, millions of domestic animals have also died from global virus-induced illnesses. Although these recent diseases are not transferrable to humans, they have been highly lethal for factory-farmed animals. In August 2018, the first case of African Swine Flu was discovered on a farm in China’s northeastern province of Liaoning. Over the next year, the disease spread quickly across much of the county, killing as many as 220 million pigs. What is all this death and destruction trying to tell us? Supreme Master Ching Hai has warned us many times that when we kill others, either animals or humans, we create immensely bad karma for ourselves. “The current COVID-19 pandemic is a direct karmic consequence of our actions. So this karma cannot be escaped. You can change it by taking dramatic counter-reaction. (Yes. What’s this counter-reaction?) It’s GO TOTAL VEGAN!”