It’s what everyone says. They say it while eating the flesh of their defenceless victims, drinking the breast milk they made for their infants, using the eggs they laid because humans have corrupted their genes and selectively bred them until they lay themselves to death. They say it wearing flayed skins, body fibres and feathers, freshly washed top to toe, with sweet perfumed toiletries of corpse parts and ingredients for which helpless, despairing creatures were tortured in labs.
‘Oh, I think animals should be humanely treated.’ Hardly a day goes by without seeing a similar comment on social media. Have you ever wondered why we say these words?
Because if we really thought of animals as the objects, the things, the commodities and resources that our use of them is built upon, we wouldn’t even consider being ‘humane‘. We don’t worry about telling people we’re ‘humane’ to furniture; we’re not ‘humane’ to machines.
The words ‘I think animals should be humanely treated’ are a clear acknowledgement and an absolute admission that those whom we use, can and do suffer harm and distress as a result of the practices we are demanding and funding with our consumer cash.
While we continue to pay for and support using the lives and bodies of members of nonhuman species, with our own words we’re admitting either that we don’t know the facts, or else we’re admitting we know and don’t care. But if the latter is true, isn’t it curious that we don’t want others to know this about us?
Our victims value their lives and they don’t want to die. Our every use of them reinforces the unjust and extremely violent position that our self interest – no matter how trivial – is of greater importance than our victims’ most basic right to live. Every use we make is unnecessary, causes them harm and sets them on a path where their only escape will be a premature and horrific death.
So the next time we hear the words, ‘I think animals should be humanely treated’, why not pause and reflect. Is the speaker saying that they don’t know the facts? Or are they saying that they do know the facts but that they don’t care?
Because the only way we can make the words sincere is by being vegan.
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Even though I had been vegan for decades, when I had my daughter I wanted her to grow up with animals around her, so we had all sorts of beautiful beings, kept in cages for their own protection. They had bigger cages, with grassy runs, and respectful loving care, but now I realise it was enslavement. I adored horses my whole life and thought it was not only ok but necessary to ride them or they’d get laminitis from living on too rich grass. I thought because I kept them shoeless and bitless, didn’t shut them in stables, and used only natural training methods it was ok. It was not ok. I just want to be honest about this because it took me so long to wake up to the less obvious exploitation I was part of, even though I had been vegan since 1970. This liberation movement is definitely a process of awakenment, and I am grateful to fellow activists for helping me become more harmless and loving, as well as more compassionately forceful to those still asleep ❤
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Thank you for this comment, Ruth. I know I relate strongly to the feelings we have when we look back into the past, remembering things that we did that we thought at the time were right. I think for me that’s an essential part of vegan activism – realising that we meant well and trying to figure what information would have helped us to see the flaws that we now know were there. It’s through that lived experience that we can try to help others to avoid our own mistakes. Even so, every one of us is learning every day; constantly evaluating our thoughts and behaviour. I’m just very grateful to have found so many like minds to help me with the process. Vegan best wishes!
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Exactly!! Such a ridiculous statement, when thought about logically and intelligently. How can there possibly be a ‘humane’ way to kill a being that does not want to die?? It is all just part of the massive cognitive dissonance that is most people’s permanent state of being.
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Vegans make non-vegans uncomfortable. We question their moral ethic, pick apart their hypocrisies with our very actions or abstentions. They are threatened by us because we force them to make connections to others that are too painful to make, that corporations propagandize to remove, but the thought of giving up their beloved cheese is more painful to them because it’s THEIR perceived pain. They feel we are attacking them.
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Well said! People use all kinds of mental gymnastics to justify and feel good about the harm and death they cause animals.
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