The whole Animal Rights thing

636:

What happens to billions of animals each day is enough to give the average sensitive person nightmares. To avoid this it’s best to train yourself NOT to think about it at all, thus causing no sleeplessness. By not-thinking we can enjoy our food and, if challenged, we can claim to know very little about the ‘animal thing’, or claim we don’t want to know. This is of course is a betrayal of our feelings. Some people are able to convince themselves animals are lesser beings and we humans are simply exercising our rights over them as the dominant species … and that we have certain privileges which animals are not entitled to, namely the right to an enjoyable life.

For those useful animals we keep imprisoned on farms, in cages, there’s no life, as such. Every one of them is doomed to an existence of the meanest kind and when they’re fat enough or they are no longer economically viable we execute them. It’s all very efficient. It appeals to the practical brain of the human.

If we can see a way of taking advantage of them, of any resource in fact, we will take it. We never voluntarily forgo our advantage, especially over the matter of animal-use. If we do have to hunt them, because they can’t be domesticated, the hunting is done with the same ruthless efficiency with which we farm them. If their main value is in producing useful by-products, like eggs or milk, their day of execution is determined by their rate of production; when that drops off they get the chop.

            With our knowledge of biology we understand how a body will produce (foodstuff for humans), mate, reproduce, secrete, fatten and generally respond in a productive way, despite even the most appalling living conditions. Humans know that animals will endure life-long imprisonment, manipulation of their breeding cycle, be enticed to eat and fatten, and then go passively to their execution, all at our convenience. They have nothing to fight back with so they are completely in our power. We can do with them as we please.

Humans are only interested in animals for what they can get out of them, mainly food and clothing and companionship. Nothing else matters. The care they’re given is more to do with humans looking after a piece of property than concern for an individual animal’s well being. Their right to a life or the conditions under which they live are of no interest, since other factors govern everything; where money is to be made from them and where competition is fiercest for ever-cheaper products, the farmer is forced to minimise welfare standards to maximise outcome.

The consumer, hand in glove with the producers, cheers from the sidelines in order to maintain a constant supply of the food or clothing product. We expect good supply just as we might expect a good supply of water from a tap. If vegans are the thin end of the wedge, by potentially endangering supply, veganism will always be seen as a threat.