Exploitation and Theft

1495: 

It’s a nasty trait, taking what isn’t ours.  We love what’s free, and we also love a bargain.  Domesticated animals seem like a bargain.  They’re easy to handle and cheap to keep, so the animal exploiter can treat them as machines and make money out of them for food or clothing.  Unlike our cats and dogs at home, the farmer feels nothing for these animals as individuals.

         

Not cuddly, not cute, these animals are unattractive.  We don’t have any affection for them - we see them as ‘beasts’ living in filthy conditions!  When the time comes these animals are transferred, like so many shares in a company, to the next owner.  They may have been in-care since birth, almost like a child in the family, but at the appointed time they are ‘let go’ without a second thought.  The animal is transferred to another person and thence to another place specifically designed to destroy them … money is exchanged, the deal is done, and if there’d ever been any care shown for them it is now forgotten.

         

To the farmer, it makes more sense not to show any care for them in the first place, so what they don’t know can’t be missed, and the farmer’s children are not encouraged to pet them.  They’re property, they provide the farmer with income - as important machines they’re looked after in the same way a valuable car is kept running smoothly.  The purpose of the animal is to lay eggs or give milk or to fatten ‘for market’.  As soon as an animal is no longer economically viable - when it can’t justify its keep - it gets the chop.  Any loving care lavished on animals at birth is turned off like a tap as they grow older.