It’s 6am and I’m looking at my Echo Show and up pops a news bite: ‘Cows have unique moos.’ Hmmm. This is a revelation? All animals have unique communication methods. Why don’t humans just ‘get it ‘? Why do they have to study and test and cut and torture to be convinced that animals are just like us? Even invertebrates. We all want to live a happy life. One free of pain and suffering and fear. One free of blood and gore. Why is it so hard for a human to understand that a human is an elephant is a cow is a whale is a bird. We all think, love, hurt, feel loneliness, sadness and fear.
Who can look into an animal’s eyes and not see that? Who can see a beautiful cow with soft brown eyes and tears in them, suffering as her newborn calf is being taken away from her in a wagon just minutes after birth so she can’t nurse and not be moved? This anguish will be repeated throughout the day all so humans can drink her milk instead of her baby as nature intended it. Worse than this. How can an industrial farmer cruelly rip a newborn male calf away from his mother as she watches in horror as they murder him? The waste product from an industry that values only females because they produce milk.
As a human animal who shares this planet with millions of other species, I look around me and ask myself which among us doesn’t deserve to live? Why does mankind think they have the right to decide the fate of other species lives? Are we really superior? What makes us better? Intelligence? By whose standards? And if we are really more intelligent why are we so cruel?
In Genesis 3:17–19, God tells Adam that he and Eve shall toil in the dust and in the soil and eat the plants until they return to the ground. He curses them above any beast but does not tell them to kill and eat them. That urge to kill and torture comes completely from the evil in men’s hearts. From the need to conquer another species and exploit it. Man can’t live without subjugating other species to feel superior. They do it with animals and they even do it with their own kind.
That bloodlust I believe is something I am sure is a deeply rooted and psychologically driven urge that meets some primal instinct I suppose. I do know that in modern-day times the hunter mentality is shifting and has led to a whole new way of thinking and looking at animals. People are becoming more and more consciously aware of what they are eating and the suffering that goes into producing it. It’s having profound psychological and emotional effects on people when they learn that the beef they are eating suffered immensely just so they could have a steak. When they find there are tasty, healthy alternatives, more and more people’s consciences is starting to nag them. They are questioning using animals as a food source. The biggest question being asked is if you truly do love animals how can you slaughter and eat them?
Over millions of years, the hunter-gather paradigm has shifted. Men rarely hunt anymore and gathering is done at the grocery store. Industrial farming is becoming a dirty name. More and more people are adhering to a plant-based diet.
If you’re environmentally conscious you probably already know that growing plants versus raising animals are environmentally more sound for our planet and the future environmentally and now it appears as this vegan movement grows eventually there will be more plant-based substitutes. If you haven’t tried the Impossible Burger yet, this I give it two thumbs up. Tastes just like the real thing without all pain, suffering, fat and cholesterol. And beyond food, there will also be plant-based substitutes for leather fashion. Vegan leather alternatives, such as pineapple leather and kraft paper are the future.
Ramona Agin is an animal rights activist, vegan and writer. She has been published in online magazines like the NM Vegan Times, among others.
