The Spoilt Brat

1171: 

Everyone and everything wants a life, but humans deny domesticated animals just that.  And by the way, they also deny them affection, and we do nothing to ease the pain of their terrible deaths.

         

If we humans can’t see the wrongness in any of this, there’s probably a reason - it’s likely that we’ve learnt to bypass our guilt because of our strong urge, as members of our society, to conform.  If we didn’t conform, there’d be anarchy and insecurity.

But on the matter of what we put in our mouths, we should all be more circumspect.  We trust the food manufacturers and rarely ask what they are putting into their foods.  We accept what we’re told, that their food is safe. And then there’s the ethical question - whether we should be eating products from enslaved animals.

Don’t go looking to Society for answers. Farm animals have been stitched up by humans - we’ve made special laws that outlaw cruelty to dogs and cats but which makes it okay to abuse ‘food-animals’.  Farmers can’t be punished for what they do to them and consumers aren’t doing anything illegal by sponsoring the farms.  If the law is on our side, so too is there a psychological safety in numbers - we all take part in the abuse, we all spend our money on Animal Industry products. When we’ve been doing the same thing all our lives, and see everyone else doing the same, we don’t question what we are doing, how we are living.

Our failsafe in all this is supposed to be our own personal ethics, conscience and intelligence.  Supposedly these functions stop us in our tracks, and urge us to start questioning.  But our cravings and senses push us on. They tug at us like any temptation, “I really, really want ... those shoes, that steak, that chocolate”. Which is why the Animal Industries do so well out of us.  They play on our ‘temptatious-ness’, and thus keep themselves in business.

What it boils down to is this: they can continue attacking animals without fear of the law or fear of causing public concern. It seems that we humans may attack animals as we wish - animals can never pose any direct threat to us. And if they can’t retaliate, there’s no reason why we can’t exploit them up to the hilt.  After all, animals were ‘put here’ for us to use!

Animals make profits for farmers, drug company, wholesalers and retailers.  As a society, we allow the Industry to shaft the animals because it pleases us to do so.  Our protective gene is switched off, and a new belief creed begins to ring true -indifference. Saying,  “Animals don’t have the sort of feelings that we humans do”,  suggesting animals are no different to machines. And as machines, we don’t have to feel anything for them.  They aren’t like our pets at home.  They MUST have no feelings like that.

There would be big trouble if we treated our dogs as we do pigs.  If we did to our cat what we do our hens.  The RSPCA would get involved.  They’d make sure enough TV cameras were rolling, to expose us.  

It’s not-okay to hurt cats. Stories of ‘cruelty to cats’ usually make big news, but what about ‘cruelty to farm animals’? What is the difference between a mistreated dog and a mistreated cow?  Why aren’t we interested in the cow’s emotional wellbeing?  Why don’t we care about a hen’s health, unless it affects her ‘egg production’?  And more to the point, why aren’t we concerned for ourselves, for what we are getting ourselves involved with?  Why can’t we make the connection between the numbing of our collective conscience and our present fall from grace?  Why do we do these terrible things to animals, and all for such slim pickings?  Are we looking at a spoilt-brat attitude, that insists that, “I must have milk on my corn flakes, or it just be right”.