What is animal cruelty? What does it look like? And how can we stop contributing to it?
Animal cruelty is the abuse toward or neglect of an animal. It’s that simple. Some aspects of animal cruelty involve purposefully putting animals in situations that harm, scare, and terrorize them, while others simply result from people looking the other way.
We live in a world that not only turns a blind eye to animal cruelty but condones it — whether through indifference or legislation. It’s legal to raise chickens in deplorable conditions for the sole purpose of slaughtering them later. If that isn’t animal cruelty, then what is?
Animal cruelty can take many different forms and the impact is always the same, a sentient animal capable of love and creating social relationships experience pain, fear, and desperation. This needs to stop.
Animals are bred to provide meat, eggs, and milk and experience lifelong suffering at the hands of humans. If someone can sell animal meat or by-products and make a profit, he or she can justify the slaughtering of innocent animals.
Consider going vegan if you haven’t already. Don’t eat meat, eggs, dairy, honey, or any other animal by-products. Police your non-food products so you don’t buy anything that has been tested on animals or contains products that come from our animal friends.
A specific from of animal abuse I wanted to shed light on is animal factory farming. I have created posters below to share awareness on this matter.
The words “factory” and “animal” should never be found in the same sentence. When we think of factories, we imagine manufactured parts for televisions, refrigerators, and furniture. Unfortunately, animal cruelty extends to the farming world. While we’d like to imagine that farm animals are grazing on lush grass in huge pastures with hay-bedded stalls awaiting them at night, those pastoral images are far from reality.
Factory farmed animals don’t receive any more consideration than the aforementioned machined parts. They’re viewed as objects. Farmers pack as many animals into a given space as possible, provide as little veterinary care as they can get away with, and use the animals until they die of exhaustion or disease or until they’re slaughtered for meat.
Even slaughter doesn’t rescue these creatures from animal cruelty. Some get their throats slit while hanging upside down, but they don’t always die from the wound. They are then suffocated in mounds of their own feces, boiled to death, or killed by electric shock.
The problem is that there aren’t enough people fighting for animal rights. If everyone started to look at all animals — and not just dogs and cats — as fellow animals who share our planet, we would see far fewer cases of cruelty toward animals.
As more people become aware of animal cruelty, we will have more power to stop it. Don’t just read this campaign, share it, donate, and contribute your own voice to the cause.
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing cruelty to animals. Help the ASPCA put a stop to animal cruelty by donating today, 'We are their voice.'
www.aspca.org
