The inanimate

1782: 

If I think the animal thing is sad and another person doesn’t, it says a lot about the wide range of human perception. I might know a few more details which makes me more aware of the situation farm-animals are in, but today almost every adult knows essentially how bad things are for them. In these gulags they call farms, and in slaughterhouses, conditions have to be blocked out of people's minds. While it's impossible for some to do that, it's easily possible for others - I see things one way and someone else sees the same thing in another way. What is of greatest importance to one is entirely unimportant to another.

         

This is how a typical vegan might see things: Animals are not so very different to us, they’re sentient, they feel pain and suffer as we do whenever their well-being and life are under threat.

This is how a typical non-vegan might see things: Animals are not ‘sovereign beings’ but more like 'things', and therefore no one has the right to interfere with the owners of these 'things'. Animal farmers contend that what they do with their animals is no one else’s business. Animals are their property, and property is sacrosanct, and that’s the law.

However, according to moral law, the way we treat them shows us how uncaring we humans really are. Seeing what we are allowing to happen to animals is rather like looking into the mirror at ourselves. It's a huge wake up, or so you’d think. But over a long period of time we humans have got used to our reflection. We hardly notice the uglinesses we've grown to accept.

One of the most useful things I possess is a table, which I made. 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 farmers think about their ‘right’ to treat what’s theirs, in any way they choose, not only their tractors but their ‘stock’. Animals are considered property (like my table or my bike). They can be loved and nurtured or they can be exploited and even destroyed. 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 life.