VIEWPOINT UNSUSTAINABLE DIET-RIBE

BY Priyan Rajapaksa

O, South Asian humans, hear our plea. We the elected body representing victimised animals appeal to your larger per capita brain. Some of you are moving legislation to make the killing of Bos taurus illegal.

We’re all animals sharing this planet, and accept that we eat each other to live and humans are the apex predator. Furthermore, we realise that humans have differences between themselves but please do not make us the victims of your dissimilarities.

It hurts our feelings to be the victims of discriminatory legislation that will make some animals inferior to others.

Our scriptures – regularly updated using your latest scientific knowledge and DNA – tell us that the world began about four billion years ago. All animals made slow progress from single cells to what we are now. You are also animals and have seized the reins of power after your descent from the trees.

We animals have been here millions of years before you and see that you’re seeking life after death. Take it from us – when you die, you die… period. Do not tear yourselves apart listening to philosophers who have too much time on their hands pontificating over life after death.

An accountant in New Zealand tells us that he has looked for 30 years but can’t find evidence of good credits cancelling bad debits after death. So it seems best to live the greatest possible life when able.

The legislation being drafted will make the killing of Bos taurus illegal but other animals will not have legal protection. We think it’s manifestly unfair to have selective morality.

It will change the social dignity in the animal world where all beings are equal. Let’s consider this animal to animal. Your choice not to kill animals stems from the paragraph of a philosopher who – some 2,500 years ago – said not to kill.

If you read the second paragraph, he also said not to kill any animal. The version we read said: ‘Do not kill or cause to be killed any living thing. All living things tremble at the fear of death.’

We think that this gives us safe harbour. There were no exceptions to the rule and he did not permit the killing of chicken, goats, pigs or fish.


The personal appeal of each committee member is appended. Bos taurus declared conflict of interest and abstained.

NANNY GOAT We goats will bear the brunt of this discriminatory legislation. Indeed, we goats are about a third of the size of a bull but have you seen our thighs? They are puny – akin to those of a Sri Lankan forward compared to an All Black.

A goat yields merely 25 percent of the edible flesh of a cow. As goats are eaten only by the poor, foreign sheep would suffer. Politicians and the wealthy will eat New Zealand lamb and mutton.

PORKY PIG We may not suffer as much as goats but might witness a marginal increase in our mortality rate.

Working in our favour is another philosopher who said we’re unclean and should not be eaten. We’re eternally grateful to him for the fake news. Imagine! If that lot of 2.5 billion ate us, we’d be close to extinction.

CHICKEN LITTLE Oh man, we are going to get it in the neck – big time. We’re fair game to all you guys and ponder whether it’s worth living like this.

We plan to borrow some H5N1 bugs for self-infection, mix it with salmonella and this new COVID geezer. Each chicken will be a walking virus time bomb. We will take some of you with us. It will be the mother of bird flus – you don’t know what’s going to hit you, baby.

TUNA TURNER On behalf of the big fish, the law is unfair and will affect us. You don’t get to eat many of us as the Japanese buy all our larger mates. So what we ask is to kindly stop defecating on the beaches from Point Pedro to Dondra on both coasts.

Man! We need goggles in the Indian Ocean. It’s hard to make out what to eat with one million tourists, faeces and tons of plastic in the water. You have made the ocean a sewer and it makes for a terrible dining room for us fish.

HAL MESSA On behalf of the small fish, come off it humans; do the math. If you try to replace the protein extracted from cattle with hal messas (sprats), we will be history.

After your main philosopher died, there are no claims of South Asians attaining nirvana. Is it because they ignored the self-made refuge not to kill and ate flesh? Your dead may still be roaming samsara paying off the karmic effect.

This may be the time for a spiritual revival in South Asia, converting to the new wave super-Brahmanism and becoming vegans.