The inanimate

1616: 

If I think the ‘animal thing’ is sad whilst the next person doesn’t, it says a lot about perception. I might know a few more details which makes me closer to the predicament farmed animals face, but today almost every adult knows, essentially, how bad things are in these gulags they call farms and slaughterhouses. And yet it seems that I see things one way and someone else sees it in quite another way.

This is how I see it: animals are not so very different to us, they’re sentient, they feel pain and suffer as we do when their well-being and life are threatened. This is how others see it: animals are NOT sovereign beings and their treatment, by their owners, is no one else’s business – animals are property, and property is sacrosanct according to the law.

         

However, according to moral law, the way we treat them shows us how careless we, as a species, have become. Finding out what’s actually happening to them is a huge wake-up call, or so you’d think. But most people are still swayed by the rights of the owners, rather than any rights the animals might have.  

One of the most useful things I possess is a table, a place where I sit and eat and write. I love my table - I made it. I’m proud of ‘my’ table. I chose the wood, paid for it and did the carpentry. I didn’t grow the tree but I feel I have the right to call this table ‘my’ table. It’s my property. I can look after it, abuse it, even chop it up and throw it in the garbage. I don’t have to wonder how the table is feeling, or what it thinks about my ‘owning’ it because, of course, objects can’t ‘feel’ or ‘think’. Does that mean I can treat my car, my bike, my table in any old way I please? Legally I can.

         

This must be how farmers think about their ‘right’ to treat what’s theirs, in any way they choose, not only their tractors but their ‘stock’ . Essentially, they think they can do what ever they like to animals, because animals are considered property (like my table or my bike). Animals can be loved and nurtured or they can be exploited and even destroyed.

We deal with property just as we please, with impunity and legal immunity. Farm animals are regarded, to all intents and purposes, as inanimate: not without life but without the right to life.