Why we should eat more beans and less meat--the cruelty of factory farms.

https://www.rollingstone.com/interactive/feature-belly-beast-meat-factory-farms-animal-activists/ When Florence hit North Carolina I read of the 100s of pigs and 000s of chickens killed and "how to clean up the animal waste" i e dead animals. One commentator wrote: I don't know why they just didn't open the doors so the animals could fend for themselves. When I was young, we did this. They always came back to roost." I thought then, maybe they are all in cages and so genetically engineered they can's stand up, let alone walk or fly. Well, this article shows why. I've seen footage of workers thrashing turkeys, holding them by their legs. Of turkeys so fat they break their legs, or sheep with so much wool they fall over if one side is sheared first, as it always is. I got to this article by Googling, after reading Upton Sinclair's The Jungle online. It's about the meat packing industry. The Dalai Lama says, "At least eat less meat. Too many people treat meat like a vegetable." And now we know even plants can feel pain. I am not a religious fundamentalist nor a textual person who prays and washes her feet 5 times a day. Nor do I believe the future savior will come out of a well. The Buddha, (previously Prince Siddhartha in an important city state in Nn India, like many ancient Indians, ate meat. After his adult life of walking all over Nn India and preaching, he died at age 80 of diarrhea,brought on by eating either pork curry or truffles--the confusion is due to conflicting translations of ancient Maghadi, the language of his city state Maghada. When I wrote this in one of my Burmese radio pieces, my "editor" a man supposed to be very learned in Burmese literature, said, "But that's the language of animals, Sayamagyi." No, it's not. It's a written language, just like Jesus spoke Aramaic. -- So anyway, I found the Rolling Stone article because I wish to write about a monk, a veteran of the Saffron Revolution, who gained asylum in 2007, but then had to disrobe for economic reasons and work in a chicken factory. But as I am writing it as fiction, I don't need any real names of anything, in fact, I already have the name of the main character in my head. -I live near a subway station and a bus bay, and I often see buses go by with ads on their sides for art exhibitions and plays and movies. The ad for the movie Lincoln was in the station itself. There was an ad for the artist Ralph Stegman who illustrated Orwell's Animal Farm. There was an ad not to eat pork showing piglets in cages. Due to Hurricane Florence and continuous rain,I ate all the food stores I had and was down to one can of beans when the sun came out enough to go grocery shopping. There weren't that many supplies,compared to a normal day, but still a lot compared to say,a bazaar in Burma. I bought a big tray of chicken thighs --10 of them for 6 $$. That's 60 cents per piece, and they were each the size of a small pigeon or Burmese chicken. They were covered by a thick skin of yellow fat, which I read once are created by feeding the chickens marigold petals. Method invented by Perdue. No one asked if chickens like marigold petals. In Thailand the male Burmese refugee students in camps developed breasts due to eating the chicken tails. So we need to be animal as well as human rights activists and advocates. "At least eat less meat." Kyi May Kaung. 9-20-2018