what the eye doesn’t see …

In our society, we are encouraged not to know about animal issues. Factory farms, abattoirs and animal laboratories are closed to the public. But it’s unlikely the public are keen to visit them anyway because they are such ugly places. More importantly, it’s frightening to see how easily we kid ourselves. We reckon we can’t object to what we haven’t seen with our own eyes. We also reckon that if our educators thought we should know about all this, they’d have taught it at school. If we aren’t taught something then we reckon it’s probably not worth knowing about anyway. And if any of this warped logic doesn’t sway us, we can be sure that our own backup defence shield will swing into action, to act in our best interests. We know all too well that if we take on board issues concerning animals, we’ll be inconvenienced. One realisation would lead to another. For example, as soon as dairy products were implicated in the cruelty argument, everything made with milk would be ethically infected and our conscience would pressure us into avoiding dairy products altogether. That spells inconvenience big time. If vegans are left to say why they boycott dairy products, they will threaten our whole existence. If we let them show up our ethics we’ll feel compromised.
Imagine then what happens when the same arguments are applied to our wardrobes. Health arguments obviously don’t apply here. Leather shoes, for instance, are not "bad" for you, but they are hardly ethical items since they come from slaughterhouses just as meat does. (Leather is not so much a by product as a co product, since its production is very often on an economic par with meat). Our most fashionable attire is often associated with the ugliness of abattoirs. Even vegetarians who still wear leather can’t justify it and that puts them in a difficult position. If one is compromised, one can’t hold (let alone promote) an animal rights position. And so that is a problem for many people seeking liberation for animals who are still propping up the animal industries.