On Trusting Experts
Articles Reflecting a Vegan Lifestyle From All-Creatures.org

Vegan lifestyle articles that discuss ways of living in peace with humans, animals, and the environment.

FROM

There's an Elephant in the Room blog
November 2018

This time, our ‘experts’ are those who are making an endless supply of defenceless victims to sell to us. We are trusting those who want nothing more than our money.

When we stop paying for dead animals, the breast milk of four-legged mothers and the eggs of small hens bred to lay themselves to death, there will no longer be money to be made from this sickening bloodbath and it will stop.

When we are new to the world, parents and carers feed and clothe us. Most of us have little idea what we are eating, drinking, wearing or using. As children we lack even the ability to grasp the brutality of the systems that provide us with dead animals, the breast milk of four-legged mothers and the eggs of small hens bred to lay themselves to death. If we ask, the question is evaded or answered with half-truths. I’m a mother who was not always vegan so I know this. We get out of the way of questioning, because we are constantly reassured.

Looking up to our elders and the vast knowledge that they seem to have, nature programmes us to trust them. They are not always right but they do what they think is best because they want nothing more than our well being, care for nothing more than our health.

Comforting our concerns

When we grow and become adult, most of us STILL have little idea what we are eating, drinking, wearing or using. As adults the world has taught us concepts that allow us to grasp the brutality of the systems that provide us with dead animals, the breast milk of four-legged mothers and the eggs of small hens bred to lay themselves to death. We understand the concept of injustice when applied to our own species. We identify with it, and with the view of ourselves as ‘good people’.

But our use of members of the other animal species is so widespread that we doubt ourselves when we contemplate what is done to them to facilitate our use. ‘Such horror simply cannot exist; it’s inconceivable’. And as our thoughts fill with snatches of words that we’ve heard without understanding, words like ‘laws’, like ‘humane’, and like ‘welfare’, our momentary questions subside as we go back to the comfort of days when our mothers reassured us that all was well.

All grown up?

And now as adults, if we ask, our questions are still evaded and answered with half-truths – or even lies. This time they come from the individuals, the advertisers, and the vast businesses that provide us with dead animals, the breast milk of four-legged mothers and the eggs of small hens bred to lay themselves to death.

Professing expertise and arcane knowledge, chiding us for daring to question them, patronising our ‘foolish’ concern, the vast, powerful and influential industries that trade in slaughterhouse-tainted atrocities, deflect our enquiries with the deft skill of long practice.

And we fall into old habits of trusting those who tell us they know best, the ‘experts’. ‘Yes, experts know best’, we nod, reassured.

Only this time, we are trusting those who need to deceive us; those whose sole concern is their own commercial interests. This time, our ‘experts’ are those who are making an endless supply of defenceless victims to sell to us. We are trusting those who want nothing more than our money. We are trusting those who are committing atrocities in our name. And most tragically of all, we are trusting them to do what they do in a way that allows us to still feel good about ourselves.

Follow the money

It’s past time to ask questions. It’s long past time to challenge. For the sake of our trillions of annual victims, for ourselves and our beautiful planet, it’s time to stop trusting those who trade in brutality in return for our money. We cannot turn our backs on the things that are done in our name; the things that are done so that we can buy dead animals, the breast milk of four-legged mothers and the eggs of small hens bred to lay themselves to death to put in our shopping trolleys.

When we stop paying for dead animals, the breast milk of four-legged mothers and the eggs of small hens bred to lay themselves to death, there will no longer be money to be made from this sickening bloodbath and it will stop.

We can do this. We have to because everything depends on it now. Be vegan.

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