A tenet of veganism is that animals shouldn't suffer. The lives of animals untouched by humans are steeped in suffering. They starve, freeze, endure infections, are torn apart by predators, drown, die in natural forest fires and contract diseases. Infants may be abandoned or eaten by their parents; newly matured males are driven away from their family grouping, and the injured or infirm may be left behind. I'm not sure whether most vegans ignore this, disbelieve it, make an exception, or consider it a problem to be solved later.
Humans suffer too. I think that most humans die painfully or at least stressfully. We all want to live to an advanced an healthy age and then die peacefully in our sleep, but most of us suffer prolonged and/or painful deaths from disease. (Ironically, a lot of those diseases would be prevented if we ate a vegan diet).
Just because animals suffer in nature doesn't give humans the right to inflict suffering on them. I imagine that if there were blogs in the 19th century many of today's arguments supporting the treatment of farm animals would be found in the blogs of those arguing for slavery. Most animal cruelty laws exempt "standard industry practices" so that you could get in trouble with the SPCA for throwing your pet chicken alive into a meat grinder or a scalding dishwasher, but that's legal and acceptable in the egg hatchery industry.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment