Earthlings movie review

As a student in KMLA, I eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner at this school. Every time I do, there is always meat to meet the nutrition balance. Similarly, most of people cannot imagine their meals without meat. The point is that the humankind is just accustomed to eating it, from the beginning of human’s existence. Though it wasn’t the same method, humans did hunt, feed, and enjoyed entertainment on animals in the long past. Thus, my opinion is that modern humans cannot blame themselves of feeding on animals. It is not a problem, and the mass livestock industry itself is understandable as the human population has increased massively nowadays. Instead, the issues I want to bring up are the inhumane, modern method of livestock industry, and people’s perception about these matters.

           The first serious matter in today’s livestock industry is the brutal method of it. Mainly, it can be divided into two parts: breeding and killing. To begin with breeding, animals are kept in captivity, inhibiting their will to move freely. Moreover, often, there is not much space in a cage, providing livestock extremely crowded and uncomfortable environment. Consequently, animals develop body parts humans want, and sometimes, one gets slaughtered without experiencing anything other than the cage. This fact that animals are locked up in a factory and get killed makes the relationship between animals and humans unfair. In past, the justification people proposed after killing animals was ‘coexistence’. Saying all animals are in the same position, humans emphasized that animal meats are just products of competition between species. They also mentioned that it is reversible, that animals can always take humans. However, is it really reversible today? Taking a glimpse at the livestock industry proves it is not. Technology has developed, and so did the weaponry. Along with the captivation techniques, weaponry allows human literally to control over any animal, and jail it. Such an unjust, cruel breeding method differentiates the positions human and animals are in, even inflicting tremendous pain to animals. If humans want to make an excuse for utilizing and feeding on animals, they should stop using these breeding methods, and let animals absorb into nature.

           To add, humans better choose alternative means to kill these animals when utilizing and eating them. As I mentioned earlier, humans breed these animals, so that they can do anything they want, whenever they want to. If that’s so, isn’t it the least courtesy to do kill them without pain? According to the movie, ‘Earthlings’, it is stated that due to monetary problems, livestock industries cannot adopt anesthesia in their process. Humans, therefore, are not even providing animals the least favor they can. As a result, animals are being massacred with such an enormous agony that humans can’t even think of. Moreover, there was this one killing method called, ’shecita’, in other words ‘kosher slaughter’, which is claimed to be religious and sacred. It uses special equipment for killing, which allows humans to drain the blood out first without touching it. The thing is, I’ve seen these kinds of equipment only in gore movies like ‘Saw’, not in real. I’ve never imagined such delicate, cruel equipment designed for butchery would exist in real. Such apparatus’s existence displays us the cruelty of human nature, suggesting how brutal humans can be if the subject is not humankind. This action, I believe, will not be limited to animals, and such violent nature has potential to cause lots of problems if it’s expressed to humans directly in the future. Consequently, these cruel equipment and methods of killing should be inhibited before more people get influenced through them. Ultimately, if modern humans want to make the least justification and not cause problems to overall society, humans should find less-painful means when slaughtering animals.

           Last, but most importantly, people’s perception about livestock industries must change. Some of the shocking scenes in the movie were that children and all people working in such industries consider animal slaughter as a natural process. Especially, it was surprising to see how children were considering killing dolphins as a spectacle. What such reality tells us is that problems I stated above are not being recognized by people, even the ones who kill animals. However, awareness is the most essential factor to fix these problems. If it doesn’t exist, the reality will continue until the balance between nature and humans collapse. It would be too late when we realize it, so humans must try hard to see the reality critically right now. Through various means such as campaigns, people should stop thinking brutal animal slaughter as a reasonable affair.

           Since humans walked on two feet and used tools by hands, they attained higher position than any other animals. The thing is, however, it does not mean they can breed, captivate, and kill them so brutally. Though people got accustomed to eating meat, they should never get used to doing these cruel things. Therefore, the movie ‘Earthlings’ is a great, extreme warning towards people considering slaughter as a natural work. As it suggests people to change their perspectives, not their eating habits, I firmly believe it is a well-motivating film to change the world.

No links used. All my thought! :)