Despite the evidence that animals can emotionally and physically experience the world in much the same way that we do, we continue to treat them as mere commodities that can be exploited for our benefit.
It is the desire to maximise profit and fill supermarket shelves, which has led to such inhumane treatment of farm animals. Because it is less expensive than more humane alternatives, we accept the practice of keeping animals in abysmal concentration-camp style factory farms, in zoos, in testing facilities, in pet stores and in cages of all sorts. In many of these facilities, they lead bleak lives, with no stimulation, unable to perform their natural behaviours.
To understand a little how these animals feel, put yourself in a closet or a tiny room and stay there for the whole day in the dark. Ask someone to bring you a tasteless meal and do not move out even to go to the toilet. Keep a bucket for a toilet in the same closet and do not remove this for the whole 24 hours. Now you will understand what animals in cages endure for days, sometimes their whole lives.
For farm animals the journey to the slaughterhouse entails further suffering – they are packed onto lorries, squashed together and often shipped abroad for slaughter in foreign abattoirs where their short lives are ended in barbaric ways. Broken bones, and wings, injuries and sickness over and above the lack of food, water and rest. Fear, pain, frustration, despair, hopelessness are just some of the negative emotions we are guilty of causing them. Like us, animals too are capable of feeling love, pain, joy, and depression.
We are happy to attribute feelings to our pets, but for the animals we eat or use in other ways for our material gains, we create an entirely new set of rules. This disconnect, for many, is an attempt to continue practices that are inconsistent with our values. After all, what sort of creatures would we be if we ate animals that had feelings?
Every religion tells us that we should behave towards others, as we would like them to behave towards us. Yet, we too often treat animals in ways that we ourselves would not like to be treated, though they are our fellow beings on this planet. They also have senses, nervous systems like us, and show emotions and feel pain.
