1528:
Whether predator or predated,
an animal is a free-spirited creature and a self-feeding, social being. It isn’t interested in being confined inside concrete
and steel constructions or in helping to feed humans or in making our lives
more comfortable. But to many humans a
free animal is an animal wasted - a waste of good money. For those who earn their living from farming
them, it means nothing to have them incarcerated and eventually killed -
they’re just a resource to be exploited.
Every customer of animal
products helps to support that way of
seeing animals. Many humans say they
love animals, but almost all connive at hurting them, by supporting those who
take away their freedom of movement and take away their lives.
In a way, what we do to
animals we do to ourselves. We sell our
souls to keep ourselves fed, or more particularly over-fed with the rich foods,
that eventually end up making us ill and killing us. Our addiction to these foods makes us demand low
prices. So, in response to customer
demand, if the farmer wants to stay in business, he cuts every corner he can -
he only keeps them alive as long as he can maximise profits from them. He has no qualms about letting them suffer. If it means cutting off animals’ tails, horns,
beaks and testicles for the purposes of easier management, then that’s what is
done. Some are enclosed behind barbed
wire fencing, some are put behind bars, some are encased in glass boxes as
exhibits at zoos. 'Domesticated' animals
are caged, tethered, immobilised and generally reduced to the status of a ‘production
machine’. And yet it’s strange
how we also romanticise them (mainly for the purposes of engaging children’s
interest, or hoodwinking them). The farm
animal is part of the rural idyll. We like
to see them ‘contentedly grazing’ in the paddocks. We do NOT like to notice the barbed wire that confines
them.
It’s even worse for those
animals kept indoors, where they are subjected to an entirely unnatural
existence, imprisoned in sheds and cages, subjected to artificial lighting and
inadequate ventilation. The general public
is not privy to the conditions under which they are held - and we are never introduced
to the equipment used for mutilating them or for cutting bits out of their
bodies. We never hear the sizzle of skin
under red-hot branding irons. We never
take much notice of the double tiered trucks on the highway, filled with
animals being transported to the abattoir. We’re no more aware of their fate than the
animals are themselves.
On the farms and especially
on factory farms, the psychological torment suffered by the animals is
indisputable. But we city folk know
almost nothing about any of this. And we
don't make it our business to find out. We
remain ignorant of it or pretend to be. We
most of us rarely go to the country to visit farms or if we do, we only see the
charm of the farm buildings nestling amongst trees, surrounded by green
paddocks (along with those 'contented', grazing animals). It's not difficult to suspend our disbelief
as we take all this in and breathe in fresh country air. It would be impossible to suspend anything if
we ever got to see inside the sheds or breathe the foul stench or hear the
cries of the animals there.
If we ever do get to see, mainly
via TV, how the animals are kept, even then we might not make the connection
between ourselves and these fellow sentients - we don't immediately realise
that the food we'll eat for dinner comes from a place like this. Even when we do know about it, we don’t react,
because our mind is set to see nothing wrong going on. If we're in the countryside, it is a day out
or a holiday, so we're not there for anything but pleasure. Any curiosity is
not encouraged by the farmer. No one is allowed
(for bio-security reasons!!) to enter these farms, let alone check out
conditions. It's the same with abattoirs.
If you go down to the farm
today you’re in for a big surprise. If
you ever get inside one, it would certainly be a case of ‘once seen never
forgotten’.
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