The End Is Profit

2000:

Ending animal farming won’t come about over night but it will happen. Before it does, the farmer is going to feel fairly safe, with steady market demand along with promises of protection from prosecution for cruelty to animals. There’s nothing more satisfying than knowing ‘what you do’ is safe. When there’s safety from prosecution and safety of profit it helps people do things they shouldn’t. It helps them exploit animals for a living. Animal farming has now, more than ever before, become a cruel practice. It’s always been cruel and yet pragmatically it’s been accepted, but now it’s so obviously wrong that it’s much harder to wriggle out of feeling guilty about it. And animal business has gotten bigger and grubbier, but it’s still here, feeding the population. Its husbandry practices are overlooked by people, out of ignorance, or they’ve been excused as being ‘part of traditional practice’. The blind spot people still have is that the cruelty itself is not wanton or sadistic, but simply calculated to fend off competition. That’s the justification for cruel practices anyway. In the end, it all comes down to the fact that money can be made out of animals. And there are a lot of interests riding this particular wagon.