
The above image is what most of us would like to think is how most cows live. Unfortunately, it’s not.
I spent most of my afternoon watching different videos for my Animal Protection class, and one of them was the 2005 film, Earthlings, which you can watch for free by clicking here. (I must warn you, the film has graphic images. The first link goes to the Wikipedia description.) If you watch it, I can guarantee you will be changed as a person. I cannot believe what some humans are capable of doing to another living creature. I really can’t.
Now, I know that telling people all the things that they are doing wrong will just result in their tuning you out. So I’m not going to do that. But I will say that it caused me to rethink the cavalier way that I sometimes react when I really want a cookie and it might have been made with eggs. “Oh, it’s vegan today!” I sometimes say. Crunch, crunch.
Well, no more. The images from that movie are seared into my brain.
Chickens crammed into cages so tightly they can’t even move or stretch out their wings. Dairy cows unable to move from their milking area all day long, pumped full with antibiotics and pesticides so that they will produce more milk, having had their babies ripped away from them on the very first day of their lives. The slaughter scenes are what really did me in, as I knew they would. (I’d already known what happens in those buildings but seeing it again is something else.)
Another thing. In the past, I thought I could be in a relationship with someone even if they ate meat. I don’t think that I could do that, going forward. If I were dating someone, and they sat down across from me at the table and started to eat a raw steak, I think it would be nearly impossible to not imagine a cow being slaughtered and the immense pain it suffers from how it’s treated. I would hear its cries as my partner munched away. And I really don’t think I can do that again.
I choose to no longer be a speciest.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, speciesm is defined as the following:
Definition of speciesism
1: prejudice or discrimination based on species; especially : discrimination against animals2: the assumption of human superiority on which speciesism is based
Humans are the one species on this earth that inflict pain just to inflict pain. No other species does that.
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