![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lostspeciesday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/RyshkeLinnea8-1.jpg?resize=620%2C702&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Painting by\u00a0Linnea Ryshke<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dear Anton,<\/p>\n I need to introduce you again. Introduce again this practice of writing to you every day for 180 days, the industrial lifespan for your species, Sus scrofa domesticus<\/em>. I do it to come closer to your life. To try, at least. I began the experiment after finishing my book about pigs in industrial farming. I didn\u2019t know happens when you finish a book in which the subjects of your work are killed. I thought about getting a tattoo of you. I felt responsible. I knew I couldn\u2019t just leave you in the machine, treated as a machine. I needed to stay close; I couldn\u2019t just blow you out in my head like a candle.<\/p>\n So here we are. We\u2019ve got an audience. To recap, I\u2019ve told you already in these letters about: who you are, who I am; explained\u2014as poor as those explanations were\u2014what happens to you in the first three weeks of birthing; about my mother, your <\/em>mother; then onto philosophy, Thomas Nagel, bats, nature, nature writing, how the media represents you (badly); how I am planning to get you out of there.<\/p>\n Today I\u2019m writing about extinction. Specifically, the connection between where you are, in that factory farm in Iowa, or the warehouse-like hangar in China, and the global crisis of species extinction. Extinction, Anton, is the process by which a species, animal or vegetable (and mineral?) is completely wiped out. That it no longer exists, except in memory, fossils and books. Sometimes we humans say \u201cextinct in the wild\u201d to mean we still imprison other individuals of that species somewhere, usually in zoos, mostly so people can stare at them. I know\u2026 All of this is alien to you, as your species is caught in an endlessly renewed hell, a regeneration of billions of individuals every year, every half a year. It\u2019s what the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, a friend to animals, especially cats, a philosophical Doolittle\u2014(so much in that name, Doolittle, when it comes to animals)\u2014calls a perverse cycle of anthropocentric power, a constant re-birthing of life so we can kill it, and eat it. Eat you. And at ever growing cost.<\/p>\n Extinction, Anton, is relevant to your existence. Relevant, not least because of the massive numbers in which your species takes up the space of the ever dwindling numbers of other species outside the animal agriculture industry. (This is not your fault.) The question is not whether there is a link between extinction and the industrial animal agriculture that imprisons you, but rather how to make the existing bondage clearer.<\/p>\n Through statistics? What, by simply telling people that slaughter\u2014the violent killing of billions of individuals from a tiny number of unlucky species\u2014is the largest single contributing industry to the greenhouse gases causing climate change? By telling them that it is the major contributor to deforestation (91% of the Amazon clear cut for grazing and soy for feedlots) and loss of wildlife habitat? That it is the industry most responsible for water use and water pollution? That the industrial animal agriculture complex is the way we choose to prop up our growing global population\u2019s calorific needs, even though there are (much) more sensible and sustainable means? That industrial animal agriculture is our manifest sloth and greed: producing meat and dairy that no one needs? In fact, knowing what we know, that the consumption of animal products is slowly killing us through cancer, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, dementia\u2026? The links are all there, Anton. But telling people doesn\u2019t seem to work.<\/p>\n The species that is perhaps most surprisingly critically endangered by industrial animal agriculture, my friend, is us. We humans.<\/p>\n Not that that\u2019s any comfort to you. Quicker, you say. Quicker.<\/p>\n I can hear the arguments against this, Anton. It\u2019s all indirect. Industrial slaughter isn\u2019t directly <\/em>killing the white rhino. Animal agriculture isn\u2019t directly<\/em> responsible for the disappearance of the Asiatic cheetah, in the way that hunting was directly<\/em> responsible for the disappearance of\u2026 oh, so many. Okay, no. Industrial animal agriculture is only directly <\/em>responsible for the 80,000,000,000 (80 billion) land animals it slaughters per annum\u2014one of whom is going to be you\u2014and the 3,000,000,000,000 (three trillion) or so sea creatures. Mostly, they\u2019re replaced. See you next year.<\/p>\n Remember your mother, Anton?<\/p>\n You don\u2019t, I know. But I do.<\/p>\n This is where another concept may be useful: entanglement<\/em>. That is, we are all entangled in mind\u2013body\u00ad\u2013world relations, and that what happens to each one of us can both cause and be caused by changes to the mind\u2013body\u2013world realities of others. Including the nonhuman other. The philosopher Lori Gruen talks about \u201centangled empathy\u201d and that we need to give our \u201cmoral attention\u201d to the other bodies with whom we are already entangled. Perhaps an example: a person who eats the body parts of another is entangled with that other, yes? Benefiting from that being\u2019s energy? So the relation demands a moral attention, right? But when a human being eats the leg of a lamb these days, there is little moral attention given to the relation. Only economic attention. To convenience. Only the luxury of the taste. (I wrote this during #LoveLambWeek.)<\/p>\n Where has moral attention disappeared to, Anton? Why did we stop feeling empathy for the infant sheep whose legs we eat? There is no moral attention given today, Anton, by 98% of the world\u2019s population, to the desires of those of you trapped in that interminable hell, where there is no living, survival is all. There is no recognition of the already existing entanglements between mind\u2013body\u2013world beings. And that\u2019s because no one wants to be re-minded<\/em> that there was an entanglement with not only the leg but also the mind <\/em>of a young lamb, skipping with delight, bleating for its mum. No one, that is, Anton (and this is the mess we\u2019ve got ourselves into) who wants to take direct <\/em>responsibility.<\/p>\n Anton, I feel that I\u2019m failing. I feel like I\u2019m not doing justice here to the issue of convincing people of the connection between animal agriculture\u2019s slaughter of billions, land and sea, year upon year, and that other slaughter of life: extinction<\/em>. Maybe that\u2019s because we\u2019re all failing, Anton. Failing you, failing the Asiatic Cheetah, failing all of the red-listed creatures. Do numbers work? They\u2019ve been shown not to. But it\u2019s all I\u2019ve got. Today 225,000,000 (225 million) of your domesticated brethren will be slaughtered for food; and 225,000 new humans will be added to the earth to eat that food; and 80 species will become extinct to make way. Just today. Tomorrow, again. Life shoved out by death. The monoculture of a species: homo rapiens, <\/em>as John Gray calls us.<\/p>\n So, okay. The connection between slaughter and extinction? Or rather, the connector? Imagine it this way. In the middle you have the Great Human Baby that needs feeding if it\u2019s to keep growing (growth is all!), its two grasping hands seeking sustenance. On one side you have a big pile of slaughtered animal products. On the other side you have a pile of those lovely wooden toys in the shape of animals, a child\u2019s Noah\u2019s Ark and its exotic megafauna. But the Great Human Baby needs to eat, so it grabs at either pile, indiscriminately, and like all babies, it will thrust whatever it finds into its mouth. Burger or snow leopard. Pork chop or parakeet. Cutlet or cloud forest. They\u2019re all being consumed by the same source. Consumption here as both literal and metaphor. The shameful thing, my friend, is that we, the parents, the adults, keep shovelling the animals onto the piles, keep loading them up, so the baby can eat and eat and eat. And aged two (remember: metaphor and <\/em>literal!) it is already obese. Already has diabetes and chronic heart disease.<\/p>\n It\u2019s too much for me, Anton. Too much. And what have I done for you today other than depress you? You in your metal cavern, in the ammonia reek of your middle-age, the waste-stinking runnels, your wretched Iowan life. How has any of this helped you understand the connection between the extinction of species and the death that is looming for you?<\/p>\n Agh. I can\u2019t give in to this helplessness. I am still looking for a way to help you escape. I know this is also what drives those who are working so hard, in conservation for example, to save individual animals who are, unlike you, part of a species not endlessly reproduced for its economic value.<\/p>\n Who\u2019s better off, though? Those endangered lemurs and frogs, or you pigs? And why do conservationists still smother apple sauce on your belly and legs?<\/p>\n It\u2019s a misnomer, isn\u2019t it, Anton, this word extinction<\/em><\/strong>? When all we really need to call it is killing<\/em><\/strong>. Then perhaps we can see a little more clearly the connection between the two: industrial slaughter and the wiping out of non-economic nonhuman animals and ecosystems. Because to quibble over directness or indirectness is to simply betray an anthropocentric comfort with the question.<\/p>\n Oh,<\/em> humans are saying, you mean the connection is us<\/strong>?<\/em><\/p>\n Oh, too miserable, Anton! Where have I gone with this?<\/p>\n I\u2019ll get you out of there. Ninety four days gone; I have eight six days left. You are over half-way through your industrial lifespan (not 1\/40th<\/sup> of your natural life expectancy) but I will use these days well. I just need to persuade 6,500,000,000 (6.5 billion) more humans that they\u2019re already entangled with you too\u2026<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Alex Lockwood is a writer living in Newcastle and senior lecturer in the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sunderland. He completed a PhD in Creative Writing at Newcastle University, exploring self-identity, psychoanalysis and affect. His book The Pig in Thin Air explores the place of the body in animal advocacy, and chronicles Alex’s journey around Canada and the United States in 2014, exploring animal advocacy and the animal rights movement there.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Painting by\u00a0Linnea Ryshke Dear Anton, I need to introduce you again. Introduce again this practice of writing to you every day for 180 days, the industrial lifespan for your species, Sus scrofa domesticus. I do it to come closer to your life. To try, at least. I began the experiment after finishing my book […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16,7,13,8,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-16","category-artist-projects","category-endangered-species-places","category-extinct-species-stories","category-grieving","without-featured-image"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7RX4u-68","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lostspeciesday.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lostspeciesday.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lostspeciesday.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lostspeciesday.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lostspeciesday.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lostspeciesday.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":383,"href":"https:\/\/www.lostspeciesday.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions\/383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lostspeciesday.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lostspeciesday.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lostspeciesday.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}