It’s not a
stretch to say that people love their dogs and cats. In fact, we love our
companion animals so much that we treat them like members of our family.
It should come as no surprise that a survey by American Pet
Products Association, featured in last month’s MarketWatch, found that more than 50
percent of people with dogs and 38 percent of people with cats in the U.S. buy
their animals gifts for Christmas or Hanukkah.
What’s wrong with this?
Nothing, really, except that moments before millions of
people give their companion animals a holiday gift, they eat a holiday ham that
came from an innocent animal who was tortured, and quite frankly wasn’t that
different from the dogs or cats they adore.
You see, the animals we raise and kill for food are just as
sensitive and intelligent as the dogs and cats we consider family. Chickens,
for example, can recognize more than 100 individuals, cows form close
friendships, and pigs are thought to have the intelligence of a three-year-old
child.
In all the ways that matter, farmed animals are no different.
Heck, chickens
purr and turkeys
like to perch in high places just like cats. Similarly, pigs
enjoy belly rubs and cows
respond to their names when called just like dogs. Yet we subject farmed
animals to intense and unimaginable cruelties: extreme confinement; brutal mutilations;
and bloody, violent deaths.
The fact is that if we treated just one dog or cat the way
the meat, dairy, and egg industries treat billions of animals, we’d be behind
bars for animal abuse, and rightly so.
The blatant hypocrisy of treating dogs and cats like family while
subjecting farmed animals to unspeakable cruelties is something we must face.
First and foremost, no one needs to eat animal products to
survive; it’s quite the opposite. In fact, there are tremendous health and environmental benefits to ditching animal
products. Right now, millions of people are thriving on a delicious and humane
plant-based diet.
If you love your dogs or cats and see them as unique,
sensitive, and intelligent beings, it’s time you opened your eyes and started
seeing farmed animals the same way.
Now go get your cat a laser pointer, your dog a ball, and
yourself a vegan
roast!
Click here for more
information on transitioning to a compassionate vegan diet.