The inanimate

If I think the animal thing is sad and another person doesn’t, perhaps it’s time to look at what ‘animal’ is and what it symbolises. Animals and the way we treat them show us the ugliest side of ourselves. Finding out what is done to them is a wake up. Animals are not so very different to us, they’re sentient, they feel pain and they probably suffer as we do when their well-being and life are threatened. But the most abused of them and the way their abuse reflects something ugly in us is not much different to the way we treat the inanimate.
I would say that the most useful thing I possess is a table, my desk, a place where I sit and eat and write. I love my table - I made it. I’m proud of ‘my’ table. I chose the wood, paid for it and did the carpentry. I didn’t grow the tree but I feel I have the right to call this table ‘my’ table. It’s my property. I can look after it, abuse it, even chop it up. I don’t have to wonder how the table is feeling, or what it thinks about my ‘owning’ it because, of course, objects can’t ‘feel’ or ‘think’. Does that mean I can treat my car, my bike, my table in any old way I please? Legally I can. This must be how a farmer thinks about his “right” to treat what’s his, in any way he chooses, not only his tractor but his “stock” (like warehouse stock). Essentially it’s carte blanche; you can do what ever you like. Because animals are considered property (like my table or my bike) they can be loved and nurtured or they can be exploited and even killed. We deal with property as we please, with impunity and legal immunity. Farm animals are regarded, to all intents and purposes, as inanimate: not without life but without the right to an unexploited life.