Exploiting

Once we feel safe to exploit, the process of separation has already taken place, just as it has when we do it to ‘certain’ people, to put them in their place.
Once we’ve made it clear in our own minds where our inferiors stand, then all we have to do is simply withhold friendly feelings from them - a dependent employee, for instance, in fear of losing their job, doesn’t need to be befriended by the employer. From a superior power base, the unscrupulous employer can push employees to their limits, in order to get the most out of them. As long as they’re careful (and within the law), they can come very close to enslaving their workers. Much the same thing happens on the farm, with animals, only much worse – a farmer, by having biological control over the animal can feed them and breed them at will. Animals may be used to pull a cart or produce an egg or fatten or reproduce, and all of them, once used up, end their days in the execution chamber at the abattoir. Even our pets, once past their use-by date will be sent off for execution. We euphemistically call it ‘euthanasia’ or ‘putting them to sleep’. Whether kind or cruel, this determination of the fate of animals reflects our deepest belief that, as inferiors, they require less consideration and less ‘trouble’ on our part, and usually that means less expense in keeping them alive beyond our comfort zone.
But it’s the ‘food’ animals that suffer most, and in their billions. They are regarded merely as property. They are strictly utilitarian objects for making money for humans. They are subjected to their own biological body functions and their breeding is manipulated. They’re made to produce whatever is useful, and that’s the extent of their being, as dictated by their human masters. A milking cow, for example, is artificially inseminated to produce calves, and often these calves serve their only real purpose in embryo, their presence in the womb being enough to stimulate high lactation in the animal which maximises her milk production. The cow is as powerless to stop her calf being born (and then disposed of) as she is to alter the biological functioning of her body. She lactates and gives birth all her life. And whereas at the age of 20 she would normally die, in the dairy she is ‘put down’ at about half that age, too exhausted by constant pregnancies and milking to live much longer. More importantly at this age she is no longer economically viable. She doesn’t warrant any more life. The decisions that are made about her are as cold as that.
The bonanza which a farm animal represents can be quite considerable. Not only does the owner of the animal benefit from the sale of the animal’s carcass and the co-products like leather which are often more valuable than the carcass, but also from their various by-products, taken from her while alive. Animals make ideal slaves. They don’t complain and they don’t fight back. There’s no need to make friends with them any more than bosses do with their employees at the factory. Humans have separated so completely from these animals that normal standards of care (like the ones we are obliged by law to show to our companion animals at home) do not apply to these animals.