Netzingers -- Explicit coquina que est optima medicina.

The principle of disengagement is a simple strategy for eliminating animal exploitation.  Disengagement withdraws excess resources from animal enterprise.  Where there is a choice, choose the option that does not involve domesticated animals.  If there is no ready choice, seek one out and encourage its development.

There are more animal products in the food chain than ever before.  Humanity has never eaten like this before.  There is also no compelling reason to choose this diet.

Today, we have an uprecedented number of food choices.  Used to be, you ate what you had.  Growing up, you ate what your mother gave you, and it was whatever your parents could raise or barter for.  In this, an unprecedented time of global prosperity, options multiply with the ebb and flow of commerce.   In the supermarkets there are over 49 000 products, designed more for the profit of the retailer than the convenience of the consumer.  With choice comes the ethical burden of choosing responsibly, backing up your ethics and beliefs with the power fo commerce.  To leave this decision to those who choose suffering and death simply to make more money is an essential surrender. I choose not to surrender.

We get to vote with our forks. Three or more times a day, we can choose Italian bread over bagels, beans over beef, soy instead of milk.   No, we are not perfect when it comes to deciding what to eat, and no, we don't always get to choose - but when we can choose, when we can influence the choice - the burden is on us to minimize suffering.  Eliminating animal products is the obvious way to minimize animal cruely, since it not only eliminates cruely, but also the opportunity for cruelty.  Having no animals precludes  the horrors of animal killing, either intentionally or unintentionally.  There can be no slaugherhouses if there are no barns.  For every neck in every pasture today, there is a thirsty blade.  Free range or caged, there can be only one end to a farm animal - being bled to death.

I call for the establishment of disengagement zones - posted areas animal products are not allowed.  These areas will make explicit the restrictions on exploitation and killing, and put the issue in front of the public.  Eventually, such signs will become obsolete, as the economic reality sinks in.  Unethical behaviour is such for a very simple reason - it does not pay in the long run.  The older our society becomes, the more we learn. In time, animal cruelty will be recognized as a mortal flaw, one that threatens not only the individual, but a crime that threatens society at large and our species as a whole.

Someday, we will all learn to love life.