Farms

We’ve been trained to see animal farms as benign places. And, heaven-forbid, animal research labs too. We value the work farmers and scientists do, even the ones who ‘work with animals’. Consumers along with factory farmers and vivisectors are becoming increasingly desensitised. For instance, consumers let themselves be persuaded that an animal lab is a benign place, and consequently pharmaceuticals, developed using the animal model, are also benign. Consumers say they know nothing about what goes on in labs. They’d rather not know because it’s difficult enough to object to food from farmed animals let alone drugs tested on lab animals, and so this whole subject is ignored as somehow irrelevant. We make the whole thing seem benign. But benign it is not! Well, not to animals it isn’t. For surely every captive creature experiences not only confinement but the denial of any affection. One can only hope they don’t foresee the terrible deaths awaiting them.
If we humans can’t see the wrongness in this, there’s probably a reason - it’s likely that we bypass the guilt about it and make laws to okay it because we need to feel safe from being punished for what we do to them. We all do it by spending money of animal industry products, but there’s safety in numbers. Animals can never pose any direct threat to us, and if they can’t show any retaliation there’s no reason why we can’t go for broke. And we do “go for broke” since we cling to the absurd belief that animals were ‘put here’ for us to use as we please. The represent profit to the farmer or the vivisector and they benefit humans in general (or so we believe), indeed we do it because there’s something in it for us. We turn off the protective gene and turn on the gene of indifference, justifying it by believing animals don’t have feelings (in the sense that we humans do).
And hey presto, we’ve turned them into a machine. As machines we needn’t feel anything for them … as distinct from the very opposite feelings we have for companion animals. If it were a cat or dog being treated badly we’d have the TV cameras down there, recording everything….but not with these creatures.
What is the difference between a mistreated dog and a mistreated cow? Why is it that we aren’t interested in the cow’s emotional wellbeing and why do we not give a stuff about a hen’s health unless it’s going to affect her ‘egg production’? And more to the point, why aren’t we concerned for ourselves and our fall from grace, over this? Over such a pathetic, spoilt-brat attitude as - “I must have milk on my corn flakes or my day just won’t start out right”?