A Sentience Article from All-Creatures.org

Q&A with Veterinarian Gwendolen Reyes-Illg: What You Need to Know about Farmed Animals and Pain

From Lex Talamo, LadyFreethinker.org
July 2022

“Everything we would learn in college and in vet school about farmed animals tended to be from a production perspective, which definitely didn’t resonate with me. I cared about them as individual beings.”

Veterinarian Gwendolen Reyes-Illg considers herself just another person who felt an early connection with animals and turned that compassion into a career.

But she was in for some surprises when she shifted her path from emergency medicine, mostly for cats and dogs, to farmed animals suffering within the animal agriculture industry.

She noticed the focus on compassionate care for companion animals, with minimized pain and discomfort, was lacking both within the industry and among many veterinary professionals who considered animals “food.”

“Everything we would learn in college and in vet school about farmed animals tended to be from a production perspective, which definitely didn’t resonate with me,” Reyes-Illg told Lady Freethinker. “I cared about them as individual beings.”

While farmed animals’ short lives in dairy and meat farms often involve painful procedures – including cutting off piglets’ tails or chickens’ beaks, or castrating male animals – the animals rarely, if ever, receive painkillers to help with their suffering.

When animals do receive treatment, the relief usually is only intended to last a few days at most – long enough to get the animal through the procedure, but not long enough to contaminate their meat for the journey from slaughterhouse to retailer or restaurant.

And while most people are quick to take notice of a pet in pain, a large sector of society is unaware of farmed animal suffering – and its massive scale.

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Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE.

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