The Compassionate Vegetarian
But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.
Plutarch (AD 46-120)
Vegetarians include animals in the circle of their compassion. Animals are sentient creatures; they suffer fear and pain, experience love, contentment and joy. The vegetarian philosophy regarding animals is both profound and simple: It is wrong to make animals suffer, and to kill them inhumanely.
This is the great blessing of being a vegetarian, and the very best reason to become one: Vegetarians do not participate in the abuse and inhumane killing of the cows, pigs, sheep, goats, or chickens that are raised and slaughtered every year.
As I cannot kill, I cannot authorize others to kill. Do you see? If you are buying from a butcher you are authorizing him to kill—to kill helpless, dumb creatures which neither you nor I could kill ourselves.
Paul Troubetzkoy (1866-1938)
Farm animals face the harshest of lives. Corporations have taken over the world’s farms, and assembly line production on factory farms is the cruel means by which we turn the living animal into food. The sheer quantity of meat demanded by consumers prohibits any and all humane treatment, even the smallest act of kindness. Each and every one of these billions of animals is born into suffering that does not end until the day that it is slaughtered. Because of the staggering number of animals involved, it is literally impossible to grasp the magnitude of the cruelty involved in meat eating.
Factory farm broiler chickens (table chickens) never know a moment’s peace or contentment. From the day the baby chicks hatch, they are confined in windowless sheds, kept there in the most crowded conditions imaginable. The noise—desperate squawks and squeals—is deafening. Food and water are dispensed from hoppers hanging from the roof. In most parts of the world none of the birds sees natural light until the day they are taken out to be killed. During the first few weeks of their short lives, they are subjected to intense light for 23 hours a day in hopes that their systems will be fooled into signaling them to eat more. Their very biology is not safe from intrusion and abuse. The birds’ lives are spent in a continuous state of distress, confusion, and discomfort.
In egg production, the male chicks are destroyed. Some companies gas the baby birds, but often they are stuffed into plastic bags, where they suffocate beneath the weight of the other sacks tossed over them. Others are ground up while still alive, to become food for their sisters.