The disconnect

1513:

Because the law allows us to exploit animals, it is therefore not a crime.  Whether it’s a zoo which cages exotic animals, or vivisectors cutting up mice or factory farmers enclosing pigs in iron pens, the law says it’s all quite acceptable.

There’s a ‘disconnect’ between our ethics concerning cruelty to animals and our food cravings or need for safe pharmaceuticals. Where most suffering is caused, by the exploitation of billions of captive ‘food animals’, this is where people are most unlikely to make objections. Animal-based foods are central to what is considered to be 'human lifestyle'. It’s these foods to which most of us are addicted, for they're attractive to both the educated-rich and the less well educated-poor. All are seduced equally.

Perhaps the number one impulse for most people is to find food that’s nutritious and enjoyable, but hot on the heels of this impulse comes the associated guilt about animal cruelty, and this makes us hurry to justify what we eat. But the guilt is lessened by the fact that our eating habits are so socially acceptable. Our only constraint is whether we can afford to buy this sort of food – if we can pay the price, we can eat what we like, and it can be enjoyed because rarely, if at all, does anyone have to justify ANY of it to anybody. It seems that for almost all people, the ethical provenance of our food is not a problem - the practice of animal-eating need never bother us.

But there's a problem here that isn't easily fixed. We might want to foster sensitivity in our children, but that very sensitivity can stir things up in a most inconvenient way. As soon as the truth is understood by children, that we are eaters of animals, it does begin to bother those with heightened sensitivity. When these kids first find out about bacon being 'pig' or tender mutton being part of a young lamb, that in itself can be disturbing to a sensitive child. They gradually realise an alarming contrast between the loving kindness of the adults they know and what they see as adult-cruelty in regard to animals. There seems to be an inconsistency here, between the callousness of killing one type of animal and the kindness shown to their own animals at home. Feelings are conflicted. For children, perhaps they smell breakfast bacon cooking, experience their own salivating taste buds, and yet they can’t reconcile that with what they've come to know about 'what happens to animals on farms'.

As usual, reality forces the kids not to complain too much, since their opinions usually hold very little weight. Soon enough, children learn that if they don’t do what they’re told they’ll be denied lots of yummy things – it comes down to them either eating or starving. Children are bribed with food. They’re indoctrinated, from birth, to conform to a 'meat-and-veg' diet. And they know that they must conform, otherwise their significant-adults will be put to all sorts of inconvenience.

So habits roll on, from childhood into adulthood. We don’t bother about investigating everything we put in our mouths. We don’t ask what's behind our food or even if it's worth looking into. We convince ourselves that it's better just to ignore the whole matter altogether.