Consider the Potato

      "The enormous, pungent, and extremely well-marketed" North Carolina Potato Festival is held every May on the state's very coast, meaning it is rooted to the second largest source of water in the world, the Atlantic Ocean. With more than 18,500 acres of golden, fresh-out-of-the-ground potatoes, the festival sees more than 35,000 potato-loving fanatics in attendance, seemingly just popping out of the ground(1)! At the festival, you can enjoy "Spudtacular rides", fireworks, a farm show, and the National Potato Peeling Contest. Need a ride? You can roll around with the "'tator shuttle"! More information can be found at www.ncpotatofestival.com.
        As a dish, potato can be saladed, souped, baked, fried, oven-fried, french-fried, Au Gratined, Hasselbacked, chipped, hash-browned, latked, skinned, tater-totted, gnocchied, roasted, and of course, mashed. Potatoes by themselves are nutritious and high in potassium, but also high in potential energy, always carrying a stoic, silent personality, even through the process of being yanked out of the ground, skinned alive, and chopped up. And it takes a lot of "intellectual gymnastics and behaviorist hairsplitting" not to see tumbling, sweating, and pot-thumping as behavior associated with pain. Once you mash the life away and add butter and milk, those values are "torpedoed" and cooked off, and you're impregnated with a starchy, glutinous amalgamation of fats, carbs, diabetes, gluttony, and a food baby.
       So I am curious as to whether or not this mass-preparation of potatoes every year is ethical. Do you ever think about how potatoes feel as their innards are transported to your innards? If not, what moral ground do you stand on that allows you to reject or dismiss such inquisitions? Maybe these queries are too abstract for you, and your assigned correspondent is just a crazy potato-respecting fanatic, who is too hopped up on animal products to form logical thoughts. But why do we share such disrespect for the potato? After all, we do end up planted in the ground, sharing the same bed as them.








(1) I say "potato-loving fanatics" to include the ignorant, half-witted, dead-eyed Americans (a representation would be the trending vine video of a lugubrious mistreatment of a common Russet) that consume, on average, nearly 1,996 pounds of potatoes per year, who show no regards for the billions of pounds of potatoes that are injected with GMOs, driven by the truckload, and cramped into 5 lb containers, literally skin to skin.

Sources

https://www.facebook.com/ncpotatofestival/?ref=br_rs

http://www.ncagr.gov/agscool/commodities/potkid.htm

https://www.ncpotatofestival.com/

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2016/10/26/best-ways-to-cook-potatoes_n_4097465.html

http://www.inspection.gc.ca/food/fresh-fruits-and-vegetables/quality-inspection/vegetable-inspection-manuals/potatoes/eng/1387374793841/1387374861996?chap=1