These last few months I have not been reading as much as I like to, instead I’ve been watching more of Netflix. On Saturday evening I watched Seaspiracy, on Netflix. It was certainly eye opening and if you aren’t aware at just how much damage commercial fishing is doing to the world’s oceans, you will be after watching this documentary. For us urban dwellers, who go to the supermarket and buy pre – packaged fish and and animal meat, we are only seeing the end product. We don’t see firsthand what happens to animals on their journey to the supermarkets and ultimately onto our plates. We live in willful ignorance and even when we are confronted with evidence about the damage commercial fishing (on a massive scale) is doing to the oceans, we tell ourselves it’s our decision to eat what we want. We would rather just put our heads in the sand – because we’ve grown up eating fish and meat, because it tastes good, we don’t want to change our lifestyle, we don’t want to ask ourselves hard questions and make the decision to go vegetarian or ideally vegan. I’ve also just watched Cowspiracy – also on Netflix and also similar to Seaspiracy, which is about how damaging cattle farming/animal agriculture on a large industrial scale is. The main cause of the Amazon deforestation is because of cattle ranching. There are no fish being caught in a truly sustainable manner anymore – likewise it’s the same with the mass produced beef, lamb, pork and chicken that is so readily available in our supermarkets, that are often given antibiotics, and reared in often poor conditions, i.e feedlots. At the end of the day, it’s also about the fact that there are nearly 8 billion people on the planet, so many of whom believe that consuming mass produced animal meat and products like milk and eggs is normal. If you eat meat, these two films will make you question why you do. If they don’t make you question your meat/fish consumption, you may well be choosing willful ignorance and not wanting to admit just how much we are damaging our land and oceans because of mankind’s consumption of animal products on such a large scale. Likewise, watch David Attenborough – Life On Our Planet to understand just how much wild habitat mankind has destroyed in the last 100 years in the name of progress. For an intelligent species who can send space craft to Mars, we are pretty stupid when it comes to looking after our planet.