To everyone who says all is doom and gloom, I say you aren't reading enough. Yes, there are atrocities to animals that have been revealed in China that are so sickening that it seems that there is no hope for animals (or for the human spirit), but when leading media voices all over the world are beginning to understand that cruelty to animals is a major issue, and some are even beginning to understand that abolition of owning animals is the only logical way to end all the cruelty to animals (just as the abolition of slaves was the only way to end the cruelty of slavery), then change is clearly coming.

Even now, in China, there are animal welfare groups springing up everywhere, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that there is even an abolition movement.

When a magazine like Cosmo, which seemed to have no moral bottom at all, becomes anti-fur, I for one can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Now if only all the fat-cat multi-million dollar animal welfare organizations would start to preach abolition, instead of prolonging cruelty by only preaching animal welfare/cruelty prevention. Animal welfare/cruelty prevention, a billion dollar industry with "shelters" and animal-police and jobs, jobs, jobs (mostly paid for by compassionate animal lovers), only exists because of the owning and use of animals. As long as animal are owned, there will be jobs forever in the animal welfare industry.

The question that AAS asked over ten years ago needs to be asked over and over: What are animal welfare agencies doing to put themselves out of business?

Cruelty cannot be wiped out - it can barely be controlled - as long as humans are allowed to own animals. And no matter how high the standards that a compassionate society imposes on owners, even well-treated animals are still "owned", just as well-treated Africans were owned. No laws could prevent some cruelty to owned Africans and so abolition of owning Africans was finally understood to be the only moral answer to the cruelty so many Africans suffered.

Animal welfare is vitally necessary, but only as long as animals are owned. If you're not an abolitionist, you're part of the problem. Dealing with the cruel fallout of animal ownership by rescuing animals from suffering has financially broken many kind people. But others have made a stunning financial success out of animal welfare (or the pretence of animal welfare).

Humans seem to be getting closer to allowing animals the freedom that was given to other slaves; to allowing animals to revert to their true natures and bodies; to allowing them the natural spaces in which to thrive; and to just leaving them alone to be what nature intended them to be, not gross aberations designed by humans for humans.

But the goal of no more cruelty is actually slowed by animal welfarists, the people who are listended to, who are the leaders, who have the moral authority, and who do not clearly state that welfare is only necessary until abolition is achieved.