If We Ought To Love Dogs, Why Not Pigs, Cows, and Chickens too?
A need for empathy towards farmed animals: Why factory farming should stop
What would we feel if we see a Shih Tzu in a slaughterhouse being prepared for meat? For a certain, we’d be outrageous. We’ll call the police, arrest the abusers, shutdown the facility, and rescue the beautiful creatures undeserving from that fate.
On the other hand, would we feel the same compassion and concern for a pig, a cow, or a chicken? Probably, no. They’re just food to us anyway: just meant to be raised and processed in factory farms for our own consumption.
But do we know, that pigs, cows, and chickens are as sentient beings as dogs? They have emotions. They can feel joy and grief. They can experience anxiety and stress. Pigs like belly rubs too, and surprisingly, equivalently intelligent to dogs. Animal experts consider them as more trainable than dogs and cats. We don't know that of course. Primarily because we don't spend time with them to teach them tricks and all, so we perceive them as idiotic animals. But can we judge a man for his illiteracy if he hasn't receive education?
Cows are smart and have great memory. And just like any mother would do, cows cry when their calves are taken away. They call and search for their babies after separation. Cows form strong bond with their loved ones, and would grieve if separated from them.
Research shows that chickens have deep emotions. Hens feel empathy and feel anxious when their chicks are in distressful situations. They are capable of love as we see on how they do everything to protect their children.
These animals are not far different from dogs. They are self-aware beings and have the same capacity to suffer and would do their utmost to avoid it.
Nevertheless, that doesn't make us stop exploiting these animals. We'll impregnate cows, take and kill the calves for meat, then milk the mother till she can't, and finally, she can have a good rest in our stomachs after providing us diary products over her lifetime.
While chickens, we cram them to minimize the cost whilst neglecting the stress and other physical and psychological damage they undergo. We shred male chicks because they’re useless. They won’t produce eggs and would be small for meat. We want big ones, like pigs. And speaking of pigs, without anesthesia, we castrate them and rip out their testicles, and cut their tails to avoid them from biting it off from each other because of anxiety when they’re too crowded. This again is solely to minimize cost as much as possible because space is too expensive and anesthesia would be another burden of work.
Probably we don't know much about these horrifying practices, but those are just a fraction of the real horror happening in factory farms despite of the so called humane welfare guidelines. (See Factory Farm Animal Cruelty)
But why, that although these animals are not in any way less than our pet dogs, don’t receive enough love from us people? And instead, face cruelty and callousness in our factory farms.
The answer according to Dr. Melanie Joy is carnism. She explained in her book: Why we love dogs, eat pigs, and wear cows, that carnism is the invisible belief, or ideology, that conditions people to eat certain animals. "Carnism", she described, "uses defense mechanism that distort our thoughts and numb our feelings, so that we act against our values like compassion without fully realizing what we are doing. It uses the 3Ns of justifications; normal, natural, and necessity to rationalize our use of meat. It teaches us to see farmed animals as abstractions, as lacking of personality of their own. A pig is a pig, and all pigs are the same.”
This belief system is widespread and its principles are considered commom sense. “Carnism is essentially an oppressive system. It shares the same basic structure and relies on the same mentality as other oppressive systems, such as patriarchy and racism,” she adds.
A white man in 1850 might not bother to think if he’s wrong for enslaving a black man, for the very same reason why we don’t hesitate eating pigs and certain animals.
This ideology enable us to overlook the suffering of food animals for our own sake, and that is why we allow this cruel animal farming.
But, while we can justify our consumption of meat, that it is undoubtedly essential, a natural thing, and that we need nutrition, we cannot deny that these are lives we take, are animals that just like us have a sense of individuality, and have own desires to live.
WHY FACTORY FARMS SHOULD BE STOPPED
Apart from the fact that these animals are worthy for a good life, there are other two reasons why we must reintegrate empathy to these animals and stop factory farms.
One is the large contribution of intensive factory farming to the global warming. Vast quantity of greenhouse gases are released from these farms and responsible for 14.5% of the global emission according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. To add, wide deforestation are carried out for growing the feeds of these animals. ( See How Does Factory Farming Contribute to Climate Change)
The other is the health risk from zoonotic diseases arising from these farms. “When we overcrowd animals by the thousands, in cramped football-field-size sheds, to lie beak to beak or snout to snout, and there’s stress crippling their immune systems, and there’s ammonia from the decomposing waste burning their lungs, and there’s a lack of fresh air and sunlight — put all these factors together and you have a perfect-storm environment for the emergence and spread of disease,” said Michael Greger, the author of Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching.
And indeed, with this current pandemic, we can conclude that animal farms are a total threat to human health and can cause unimaginable damage to society.
So, knowing all these, wouldn’t we be so ignorant to still be blinded by this invisible belief to condone the evil practice and gloss over the hazards to our environment and health? Wouldn’t we be so insensitive to continue to disregard that these animals are someone, have lives that matter to them, and not mere foods? And wouldn’t we be more humane, if we love not only the dogs, but also the pigs, the cows, and the chickens?
