A slight slip in our brain function

1018: 

The road to ‘monsterdom’ started when we chased animals on horseback with guns, and then made things a whole lot easier for ourselves when we stopped trying to play so fair.  Since the animals themselves haven’t the means to accuse the humans of anything, there was nothing stopping us becoming super-monsters, so we herded them, captured and corralled them, bred them in captivity, and killed them to order, in order to eat them or wear them, and all at minimum inconvenience to our selves.  This came to be known as animal husbandry, such a benign-sounding term.  It was a long way from the fair fight or chase principle!  Factory farming is the logical extension of that.

           

Vested interests persuade consumers to spend much of their money on animal products.  As consumers, we’re not very educated about where our food comes from – the bliss of it comes from our willing ignorance.  Very few have ever entered an abattoir or seen an animal being killed or seen the equipment used for mutilating animals.  Few understand how mechanised the dairy has become or how the cow’s biology is exploited to increase her milk yield.  How many have seen inside a battery egg farm or seen sows encased between the metal bars of the quaintly named ‘sow stall’?  No, we the general public know very little of this and wish to know even less.  We’re lulled into a false sense of ethical security by people whose living depends on selling animal products.  When we are children, we’re given a sanitised picture of animal farming, by teachers and priests and grown ups in general.  Scientists tell us that meat and milk are essential for survival. The politicians and captains of industry assure us it’s all quite clean and humane (thank goodness the animals themselves can’t speak for themselves!), so we are made to feel quite safe all round.  And best of all, we know that we love animals, as proved by our caring devotion to cats and dogs.  We believe what we’re told. We don’t generally think things through for ourselves. We prefer to look through rose-tinted spectacles; we don’t see the double standards of the people who we regard as authority figures in our society. They enjoy the power we give them and they enjoy making dupes of us. The consumer, the poor dumb fool consumer whose brain function has been let slip!!