You are ascribing human characteristics to something that is not human.
(Solaris)
Animals
We share this world with many living creatures.
Each one is unique and wonderful in its own way.
People often think of themselves as 'animal lovers'.
Our
treatment of animals says a lot about humanity.
How we
behave towards other living creatures tells us what sort of beings we
are.
We can use words to praise the achievements of mankind but how we act says
far more than words. If we do not respect and
care
for other creatures, what does that say about us?
Cruelty
Animals are treated as if they had no free will or personality.
They are the source of entertainment in such sports as show jumping or dog racing.
Scientists use animals for product testing and vivisection.
Other animals are locked in cages in zoos or in people's houses.
Birds that yearn to fly are confined in spaces too small to stretch their
wings, let alone fly.
Fishes are forced to swim in circles.
Circuses use animals in a cruel spectacle of 'entertainment'.
Factory farming
means a life of slavery, pain, misery, abuse and death.
People use weaponry to hunt
animals for 'sport'.
Dog breeders amputate tails; mutilating the animal in order to satisfy the aesthetic requirement of
the pedigree.
Children treat animals like toys.
Animals are frequently abused, neglected or killed by humans.
Food
For many people, animals are a
food
source.
They are reared to be killed, processed and eaten.
Abattoirs slaughter vast numbers of living creatures every day.
By calling an animal 'meat' it offers a way of distancing people from
the life they are consuming without thought or conscience.
The very word 'animal' serves to differentiate between human and
food source.
Human nature?
Humans destroy other humans in the name
of ideas, opinions, beliefs and politics.
Why?
Are we really that savage?
History says yes.
In the name of 'progress', so many cultures have been eradicated.
Their diversity and uniqueness gone.
The lessons they may have taught, their stories and insights, their
history... gone.
Inhuman
People argue that animals do not feel pain, emotion or suffering, that they
exist to be eaten.
This seems like the worst kind of blindness.
Whilst no animal speaks in the way that people do, many respond to
emotion and all react to pain.
Humans are simply intolerant of life that is not like our own.
Other people argue that there exists a 'natural hierarchy' - that humans are
at the top and animals beneath us.
Similar arguments were once used to justify slavery and
concentration camps.
Extinction
What we have done to other humans is nothing compared to the animal world.
Mankind has wiped out thousands of species of animal.
These creatures are gone forever.
Humans never learn.
When every animal is dead, it will be far too late for
regret.
Teach children that animals have feelings and should be treated with love
and kindness.
(Animal
Sanctuary Fund)
Page created 6 March 2003