A recent story on News 24 spotlights a study showing what many animal lovers already know: those who bond with dogs or cats as children are more likely to feel compassion for all animals.
The study, led by Hank Rothgerber at the University of Bellarmine, reveals that people who have pets when they are children are more likely to abstain from eating meat, due to difficulty in not seeing “at least some aspect of their childhood pets in the meat they eat.” People who eat meat despite their attachments to their pets largely admit that they justify it by “looking the other way.”
This study demonstrates that humans who have bonded with some animals as companions, or even as family members, are more apt to see the hypocrisy of calling themselves animal lovers while supporting cruelty to farmed animals.
Vegetarians answer the question “Why love one but eat the other?” by eating a diet based on compassionate, plant-based choices. Each vegetarian spares about 31 land animals a year from a lifetime of suffering that we would never think of inflicting on a dog or a cat.
Ready to cut cruelty from your diet? For info and tips, check out ChooseVeg.com.
