Conditioning
From an early age, we are trained and learn to treat animals differently based on their external characteristics. Which animals belong to which (human-made) category is entirely arbitrary, as there are no logical grounds whatsoever for this moral discrimination. Indeed, it is completely irrational. In our actions, it is species affiliation, rather than the capacity to suffer, that determines the fate of a living being. Rationally speaking, it should be the other way around.
Unquestioned Belief Systems
In our society, various beliefs are set in stone. One of them is the so-called carnism. This is an unquestioned belief system according to which some animals are for eating and others are for petting / loving. We have grown up with the narrative that animal products are normal, natural, and necessary.
Cognitive Distortion/Bias (?) Makes Wrongful Action Possible
We have internalized a way of normalizing behavior that, upon sober reflection, we would describe as cruel. This is achieved through various mechanisms of repression, strategies of justification, tactics of concealment, and cognitive distortions. Only in this way are we able to look past the realities of our wrongful actions, talk them down, allow ourselves to be misled, and continue to live with our cognitive dissonance.
Sentient Individuals as Products
Advertising and targeted marketing contribute to maintaining speciesism (discrimination based on species affiliation) and the decades-long devaluation of so-called “livestock” into products has succeeded in pushing sentient beings so far into anonymity that they are hardly perceived as sentient anymore and are seen only as purchasable units. What seems philosophically unimaginable is, in social terms, reality: the unequal treatment of equal interests.
Living Beings
From a philosophical point of view, a living being is born in order to live, hence its name. The distinction between livestock (an animal that is not intended to live for its own sake and not for long) and pet/companion animal (which, at least in theory, is meant to have a long and good life) cannot be justified either logically or ethically.
Equality
Animals suffer just as we do. In suffering, we are all equal. Whether human, dog, or pig. Whether brother, cat, or chicken. Animals have a wide range of emotions, including love, joy, grief, fear, and pain. The fact that animals can feel pain and other negative emotions means that they prefer, or strive, to avoid them.
From this, our duty to protect them from unnecessary suffering can be concluded. Nevertheless, it has become normal for them to be exploited by the billions for profit and at the expense of their well-being.
The Change Has Begun
Fortunately, in recent years a shift in awareness has begun, within which people of all kinds and backgrounds are facing the facts with alarm and no longer wish to simply accept them. Consumers and producers at every link in the production chain are refusing not only to continue sending animals toward their doom but are also actively working to change the world into a place of peaceful coexistence.
Farmers are creating animal sanctuaries, slaughterers are changing professions, and cheesemakers are producing plant-based cheese. And with this, we find ourselves in the TransFARMation, which has recognized that today it is no longer necessary to eat animals in order to survive.
