Aggressively animal friendly

A letter from a fictional veteran vegan and aggressive animal rights activist, looking at the other side

Dear reader,

Would you like to be devoured?

Or would you prefer to be gawked at? Enslaved in cages and have bratty infants drool over you? Have peanuts and popcorn thrown at you whilst you try and catch a wink?

The questions may appear to be bizarre, but for many animals that are unlucky enough to have an encounter with Homo sapiens, these are their only choices. Once a hunter or trapper stumbles upon their private havens, young animals are separated from their pack and then play a fun game of Russian roulette where it’s decided if they would be butchered for soup, trapped to be smothered as pets or put behind bars as prisoners at zoos. What is their crime, you may ask? Being unlucky enough to share their lifespan with us humans. The greedy hands of capitalists have wrapped around the necks of many innocent animals, shaking them for profits driven by our own demand for animals, the reasons to stop are vast.

Animals feel joy. Animals feels pain. Animals are sentient beings! This is a truth that must be accepted by all those that claim to have a sense of morality as it is ridiculous to assume that one’s conscience can be retired the second they smell some fried chicken. No good person can look a lamb in the eyes as its neck is being chopped off and then enjoy eating it later. Billions of innocent animals are killed each year to pleasure our taste buds and that must be first thing to stop if humanity wishes to atone for its sins. No arguments of Abrahamic righteousness can stand against the laws of humanity that we have carved out for ourselves in the 21st century, swearing to protect one species and torching another is outrageous hypocrisy. The argument for kindness and compassion doesn’t end at skewering through pigs, but extends to all animal products. Cows harvested for their milk are forcefully impregnated and their children stolen from them and killed, just so that we can enjoy our milk, butter and cheese! Millions of male chicks born each year are killed as they don’t lay eggs, imagine their ghosts hovering over you as you eat your sunny side up and wash it down with the blood of the mothers whose eggs you just ingested (all chickens used in the egg industry are eventually killed!).

The steps to hell are paved with the bodies of those that say, “zoos protect animals and promote conservation.” That is the furthest thing from the truth as most zoos are simply another way to squeeze profits out of innocent animals. Animals are meant to roam free in the wild and not kept in captivity, PETA reports that the enclosures in UK zoos are on average 100 times smaller than what animals utilise in the wild. This not only causes animals stress, as many of you readers will know based on your time in virus driven lockdown, but also causes them vast long-standing mental problems, another fact proven by our times enslaved in our homes. Additionally, the animals have next to no stimulation in their cages, no matter how many zoo owners will want for you to believe. These animals are then pimped out to play tricks for the amusement of young children that haven’t the slightest clue of the damage it does to their health. Through the use of draconian techniques animals are made to dance, sing and even paint as in a zoo in Australia that used electric shocks and whips on Elephants to get them to follow commands. Those that argue for zoos as a way to teach children about animals and their habitats are found in flaw of logic as no one would promote a tour of the Bedford institution for the criminally deranged as a source of learning about human activities and habitats!

You don’t eat your cat, you don’t wear her skin, you don’t keep her in a cage. You feed your cat only the most expensive salmon, her bed might be costlier than yours. Regardless of all this, keeping a pet is just as immoral as visiting a zoo or eating a hamburger. However, the tendency to become defensive at the mere suggestion of letting pets go must be put aside to address the logical reasons behind why it isn’t moral to keep animals as pets. Animals are bred to meet the demands of us humans, becoming smaller, fluffier, big-eyed and more palatable each time, we discard the ones that don’t meet our expectations as easily as an old washcloth. The market for pedigrees makes animals more prone to catching diseases and vulnerable to environmental changes, on the other hands forced breeding between certain species to get a desirable pet is equally immoral. The trade market for ‘exotic’ pets is even more ruthless, killing millions of animals in the journey from their homes each year. When owners find themselves unable to care for another living being, they are free to leave them to die. Moreover, if your pet is ‘part of the family’ then why do you control what it does, eats and when it sleeps? Your pet is happy, you say, but how do you know? We are now more likely to stuff words in the mouths of pets purely because we want to convince ourselves what we’re doing is not morally wrong. The sooner we accept it is, the better it is for the animals we claim to love.

All said and done we live in a society that will meet the demands no matter what the law says or will say in the future. Ultimately, it isn’t in the hands of lawmakers and politicians to enact change that will benefit animals but rather you, my dear reader. As long as you want to take your kid to the zoo, as long as you want to buy yourself a cat and together feast on salmon, the market will find ways to let you. The change the non-human animals of the world need today can only come into effect if you put aside your own short-term pleasure to help improve the lives of many. If you can’t imagine it being done to you, don’t do it to another animal.

Sincerely,

X