What Should Caring Consumers Do?

People buy animal products with labels such as Swine Welfare Assurance Program, Animal Care Certified, free-range, and cage-free because they care about the welfare of animals, as nearly all Americans do. But if you are concerned about the treatment of farmed animals, by far the best thing that you can do is to stop paying others to abuse and kill them.

Chickens, pigs, fish, and other farmed animals are individuals with feelings, desires, and a will to live—just as we are. Most of us would never eat a dog or cat, and similarly, we should not eat any animal—there is no moral difference between eating a chicken or a cat, a pig or a dog. If you think that your local health food store sells products made from farmed animals who were treated well until they were killed painlessly, take this challenge: Visit the farm. Visit the slaughterhouse. Chances are, you will be denied access. Then ask yourself, “What are they trying to hide?”

If you are able to visit the farm and watch the animals be slaughtered, ask yourself if that’s what you want to support when you sit down to eat. Then ask yourself, “Would I want to cut an animal’s throat?” And if your answer is “no,” as it is for most Americans, then ask yourself what it is about eating flesh that is so appealing that you’ll pay others to do something you wouldn’t do yourself and that you don’t even want to watch.

All of us could spend an afternoon getting plant foods to the table—there is no suffering or cruelty involved in cultivating and harvesting beans, grains, fruits, or vegetables—but very few of us would want to watch any aspect of what is required to get chickens, fish, pigs, cattle, dairy products, or eggs to the table, including seeing terrified animals being mutilated without the use of painkillers and having their throats cut. Please consider this: Where is the integrity in paying others to do things that you can’t even watch?

Learn more about chickens, pigs, fish, turkeys, and cows. Once you know them a bit better, you probably won’t want to eat them.

Learn more about how you can help.