It is not their distress that the industry is concerned about, rather that by hurting each other, damaged bodies hurt profits. The industry sees the solution as ‘cutting off body parts’ where an animal rights advocate will point out that the solution is to stop farming victims as it’s completely unnecessary.
Image by
Jo
Frederiks, Animal Rights Artist
A recent post on Facebook was illustrated by the image below which is the work of the highly acclaimed animal rights artist and advocate, Jo Frederiks. The text read;
‘The distinctions we make between the species that we love as family
and those we persecute as resources are completely artificial. ‘Farm
animal’, ‘food animal’ and ‘pet’ are all made-up terms, invented by
humans, just like the laws that we invent to let us do what we want
to them. Our victims get no say in the matter, yet they all share
with us the quality of sentience, experiencing the world with minds
and memories, through their environment, their senses and their
interactions with others.
It is vital to understand that individuals whose lives and bodies
are ‘farmed’ are not regarded as feeling beings; if they were, they
would NOT be ‘farmed’ in the first place. To use any individual as a
commercial resource automatically denies any and all rights that
each has as an autonomous, feeling individual. They are kept alive
as economically as possible and used to make as much money as
possible until the ideal time for the sale of their corpses. Profit
is everything.
We would never dream, even for a moment, of doing to humans or the
cats and dogs who share our homes, the things that we readily accept
being done to the victims of our demands as humans who refuse to be
vegan. What we accept and condone without conscience when we are not
vegan, is the essence of the ugly prejudice known as speciesism.
All it takes is for us to say ‘Enough. Not in my name’. Why not stop
refusing to be vegan today?
Jo Frederiks’ image of a cat reflects standard procedures in the animal agriculture industry and was intended to illustrate how shocking it seems to us for some species to have this inflicted on them, while when the exact same things are done to the victims of nonvegan consumer demand, the majority turn a blind eye. Judging by the reactions, it seems that many have either no idea that it happens, or else fall for the official line that it ‘doesn’t hurt’ and it’s ‘for their own good’.
It’s rarely pointed out that the atrocity that is all animal agriculture has evolved conditions where the unnaturally close confinement of vast numbers of victims causes them severe distress and can result in their hurting each other.
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Read the
ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE (PDF)