Monday, January 15, 2007

Like silk; love silk; set silk free.

A few days short of six months since my last entry here. That's about long enough, isn't it?

For years now I haven't been eating meat, and having very little other animal-based foodstuffs; not many eggs, and then only free-range; not much dairy, and then only from cattle stocks with low-impact karma (basically, most dairy cattle are culled when their commercial usefulness has ended; I make sure all the dairy I consume comes from cows who are treated well in life, and allowed to die naturally). As well as that, I don't support other non-food industries that involve the suffering and death of animals: no leather, no suede, no furs, etc. I've only just discovered, however, that silk is another thing that should be in that list.

Of course, I was aware that silk was farmed from animals, but what I didn't know was that the harvest involved the death of the silkworm larvae. This is not something I can be comfortable with; it's especially bad as I'm rather fond of silk clothing. It was easy to remove leather from my life - shoes of rubber or canvas, bags of hemp, etc - but silk might be a bit harder to remove. Fortunately, synthetic silk is available, but it's one more thing to watch out for when shopping; one more concern to have.

Did you know that silk was formerly used as a type of armour? Because it happens to be the strongest natural fabric known to man, it proves itself useful in stopping arrows from seriously damaging a person: if there is silk being worn, the arrow would push in, still managing to break the skin, but the silk would not be damaged. This would facilitate the removal of the arrow, and also helped prevent infection in the wound. All those silkworms died to protect men of war.