Dodging ethics

Monday lst June
The man who came up with the idea of imprisoning hens in fetid, sunless sheds, set a trend. He and others invented and then developed the caging system. They were pioneers of pragmatism and many of them were also builders of similar prisons for other animals. It came to be known as the "factory farming" process. Perhaps it was all inspired by the Nazi holocaust, since it too came from a death-camp mentality. This may be a clue to the main weakness in humans - our ability to allow the monster to develop, to turn a blind eye for the sake of convenience, and to dodge ethics when it suits us.
By associating with such anti-altruistic acts we show an acceptance of cruelty, but then to go on from there to benefit from that cruelty … The significance of this trend, particularly in the treatment of domesticated animals, is opposite to the central tenet of altruism - empathy. It shows how easily humans can go along with what is supposedly being done 'for the best' whilst knowing it to be fundamentally ethically flawed. Take eggs for instance. Scarce during the hungry times of the second world war, but now plentiful. When we allowed the cage to be used as an emergency means of feeding hungry people, we neglected to write in a twilight clause - so it continued. Now eggs are mass produced. They’re cheap, people are hooked on them and like so many other animal products, we buy them because we like the taste of them. We didn’t see the danger in allowing factory farming to happen, perhaps because it could have proven too inconvenient for us personally, so it continued as a means of supplying cheap foods, many of which are our favourite foods. The animal industries have always known how to cater for the consumer and we consumers have always been dazzled by improvements to our lifestyle. We’re particularly wowed by the wide variety of attractive tasting food experiences now available. If animals have to suffer for that, too bad!!
Today nearly all humans ignore animal suffering because they think they will get away with it. They think they’ve got the whole thing sewn up - ruling Nature by perfecting animal enslavement techniques. The score: humans one, animals zero.