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Pets & Animals
Animal Rights & Issues
Animal cruelty and why eating them is wrong

You have heard it a thousand times before haven't you? The argument... read more

Animal cruelty and why eating them is wrong

It has come to my realization in the recent past that the use of the most amazing, kind and loving word "compassion" - is being misused. A friend of mine just mentioned to me that most Americans have compassion. He said he has friends that are meat eaters that are compassionate people.

Let me just give you the dictionary description of the word Compassion:

Compassion is an emotion that is a sense of shared suffering, most often combined with a desire to alleviate or reduce the suffering of another; to show special kindness to those who suffer. Compassion essentially arises through empathy, and is often characterized through actions, wherein a person acting with compassion will seek to aid those they feel compassionate for.

Compassionate acts are generally considered those which take into account the suffering of others and attempt to alleviate that suffering as if it were one's own. In this sense, the various forms of the Golden Rule are clearly based on the concept of compassion.

Compassion differs from other forms of helpful or humane behavior in that its focus is primarily on the alleviation of suffering. Acts of kindness which seek primarily to confer benefit rather than relieve existing suffering are better classified as acts of altruism, although, in this sense, compassion itself can be seen as a subset of altruism, it being defined as the type of behavior which seeks to benefit others by reducing their suffering.

Now that we have a better understanding of the word - let me just say, as I mentioned to my friend, that when you contribute to animal suffering by eating it or buying it - you simply are not compassionate.

Compassion does not extend only to human beings and domestic animals. It extends all the way around the globe. To every single living, breathing creature with a brain. An animal or living being that has a brain can feel pain, sadness, joy, distress, depression and they suffer. Probably more so than humans.

When animals suffer, they do not have the luxury of being able to tell us. The cow who has her calf taken from her after only a few days so that humans can drink her milk, cannot tell us how her heart is breaking. Neither can the baby cow who cries non-stop for it's mommy. The pig in the gestation crate (2' x 7' metal crate) who cannot even stand up or turn around cannot say, I can't stand this any longer just end my misery please - so that people can eat her flesh. Or the chicken who is de-beaked as a baby chick without any pain killers or any kind of understanding that she is a living breathing creature. This is done so that she doesn't go insane at the abnormality of her conditions (crammed into a postage stamp size cage and unable to move) and peck at her cell mates and heaven forbid, ruin the flesh of the other chickens and cause a loss in profit.

Compassion is actually caring about these and ALL animals, including humans. Farm animals are the most abused, mistreated creatures on this planet. Where is their empathy? Why are they suffering every second of every single day of their entire lives? Why are we brutally slaughtering over FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND animals per hour? Because people (compassionate people?) choose to eat their flesh. When every single study and test ever done by medical researchers, physicians and nutritionists, has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that human health is superior when eating a plant based diet. My question is when. When will the world evolve enough to realize this is barbaric and unneeded suffering.

Here is a section of a speech given by John Henry Newman, Vicar of St. Mary's University Church in 1942. This, in my mind, tells all:

"What should move our very hearts and sicken us, is the realization that animals are morally innocent, that they have done no harm. Next, that they have no power whatsoever of resisting; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are the victims which makes their suffering so especially touching.... there is something so very dreadful, so satanic in tormenting those who have never harmed us and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power, who have weapons neither of offense nor defense that none but the very hardened persons can endure the thought of"....

Love one another, love our animals, love our planet and this world will eventually be a better place to live.

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