I was once associated with CETFA, Canadians for the ethical treatment of farm animals. There is nothing ethical about nurturing any animal for the sole purpose of it arriving, eventually, on your dinner plate. The same may be said for nurturing children so that they may become productive for society. Animals and children should be nurtured so that they may, simply, exist. Further, it is probably defensible to argue that both animals and children, if they are lovingly and compassionately nurtured, will automatically "contribute" to the welfare of each other.

However, numbers come into play here. It is not defensible to raise for slaughter, or for any other reason, ten billion animals in the Western World. It is not defensible to birth millions of children a year for any reason whatsoever. Think of the cycle that this causes. More children require more animals for food requiring more food for animals, ad infinitum. Close your mouths and open your eyes.

Last night two of us had dinner at a small restaurant in Burnaby. Two Vietnamese Canadian ladies run this cruelty-free business. I want you to know that you cannot tell the difference between an eggroll and an egglessroll. You will have difficulty deciding whether the chicken, pork, beef and shrimp are "real" or not. I could go on, but I won't, sufficing to say that the food is tremendous. There were no battery cages required for the "production" of the chicken. No pens of any kind for the pork. There was no urine run-off from any cow for the "production" of the beef (I refer here to the billions of litres of urine that the Earth must deal with from the billions of cows raised for milk and slaughter.) In fact, there was not one item on the menu that had to be dealt with ethically prior to arriving on the dinner plate. By the way, are you aware that it requires four to five pounds of vegetable protein "to produce" one pound of animal protein?

There you have it. The Swiss may have advanced in their ethical treatment of chickens, but that advance is entirely unnecessary. We, meaning humans, do not need billions of chickens. In fact, the billions of chickens are killing humans. If there ever was irony, this is it!

At the opposite end of the mall that houses Paradise Vietnamese Vegetarian Restaurant, in front of god and everyone, is a KFC. Stick that in your battery cage and smoke it!