The disconnect

Because the law allows the exploitation of animals, none of it registers as a crime, whether it be the caging of animals in zoos, the experimenting on them in laboratories, the suffocating of fish on the decks of boats or the ultimately disgusting factory farming of pigs and chickens.
For the mass of the population, there has to be a ‘disconnect’ between two great forces – the inner beauty of our own humanity versus the inner weakness of food cravings and all the blind-eye turning that goes with it. Animal food is so endemic in our community that it affects the educated and rich in much the same way as the uneducated and poor. Almost all of us fall for it. Whether or not we’re religious we’re all seduce-able. We all want food enjoyment. But we also want to justify what we do, so that we can maintain social acceptance by way of the food we eat. If we like to taste and eat certain foods, eating it with others is even more of a pleasure. The provenance of our food doesn’t interest us. We want no disturbances about animal farming a food that’s “not good for us”. The origins of our food we ride over – as an adult it mustn’t matter but these very origins when they’re discovered by children it can bother them. It’s a shock to them when they first find out where there food comes from and ‘what happens to animals’.
Kids aren’t in any position to complain. They do what they’re told. And unless they want to starve or be deprived of yummy things to eat, they conform. We all did. We weren’t reluctant to conform because the foods we were expected to eat were often a pleasure to eat - dinner table conformity wasn’t usually a problem because Mum dishes up ready-to-eat food and it’s easy to accept that. From the earliest age we are programmed to accept animal products and enjoy them too.
At adulthood there are some decisions to make, and the provenance of our foods is at the centre of an ethical dilemma.