Attitude

1732:   

It’s a deep set trait within the human attitude towards animals which allows billions of beautiful, innocent, non-humans to be ruthlessly seized or bred, imprisoned, have painful things done to their bodies and substances sucked out of their bodies, and then cruelly killed. It’s the unremarkableness of this attitude which is such a worry. We routinely exploit animals and think nothing of it.

Our attitude contains no sympathy for the animals that are enslaved and even more tragically, we fail to see this attitude as dangerous for us. We kill without care, and this type of killing is the very opposite of mercy killing; it’s cold and hard and cruel.

This is mainly why vegans call for such a radical change to our eating habits.

Collective attitudes, like customs, are so subconsciously embedded in our psyches that they seem to be rock solid. We are dealing here with food, with habits from childhood, with habits practised since time out of mind. And we’re dealing with determined human beings, intent on eating meat and animal secretions, enjoying the textures and flavours they've loved since childhood. And then there are others whose livelihoods are entirely dependent upon animals, who make their money from producing animal products.

A whole world culture has this one thing in common – the using of animals for human benefit. It is no wonder, therefore, that almost no one is giving any serious consideration to what vegans are saying. They're not listening to us yet, not the producers, not the consumers and not the educators of children. Vegan animal rights advocates are a lone voice. But we’re saying what we have to say, nonetheless.