On Compassion in World Farming

Compassion in World Farming is an international farm animal welfare charity. Welfare, as in, they believe it’s fine to breed and slaughter animals for food when we don’t even need to eat them.

Check out their supermarket survey, complete with The Compassionate Shopping Guide, which tells you where to get great vegan food products from animals who were allegedly treated better, prior to their slaughter, than the average factory-farmed sentient being. When you watch the video, you’ll notice that the narrator says, "We believe people will reduce their consumption of meat, dairy and egg,  preferring to pay a little extra for the sake of the animals, their own health and the environment." And my favorite: "You can actively promote the welfare of farm animals every time you go shopping, by buying only organic or free-range products."

The most interesting aspect of the supermarket survey material, for me, is that for all the talk of improved conditions, there is not one photo of an actual animal at one of the farms that is allegedly treating its animals so well.
Furthermore, listen to the narrator and pay close attention to the triumphant music (as opposed to the bleak, ominous music at the beginning) when she talks of the cages and crates that will be phased out over a decade. People are donating to an organization and considering that a victory? I couldn’t figure out what my hard-earned cash was funding, exactly. The supermarket survey? For heaven’s sake, if I want to help animals there’s a much easier way than paying someone to do a survey, and then to sit at the table with exploiters, to find a way they can both win, so I can pay more for products that may or may not have involved less suffering, while still harming my health and the environment. Um, I can just stop eating them, right now, and all that other nonsense becomes unnecessary. Not to mention it was a dodgey plan to begin with.

Perhaps because I’d never been to this site (and thanks to Jenny at Tribe of Heart for directing me to it), I was able to see it objectively. It came across as absurd, to me. Meanwhile, here in the US we have many sites that are just like it, asking for money for the same campaigns. I started to think about the entire industry that has cropped up along with factory farming, and how, in my opinion, it has thoroughly betrayed the animals by negotiating with their lives. You don’t sit across from someone who breeds, brands, mutilates, confines and slaughters and expect that person to do the right thing. There is only one right thing: stop all the aforementioned. Don’t do them less, don’t take one out of the equation. Stop. Find a new job. Create a new job. Invent something that will help the world.

When I was a little girl, one of the values my mother instilled in me that I have since rejected (along with "Some animals are for petting and some are for eating") was: all work is honorable. That’s bunkum. Now, what she meant was that the guy who picked up the garbage was just like my father–working to support his family (I know, I know, don’t write me about my traditional upbringing or I’ll be forced to tell you how traditional it wasn’t). Breeding sentient beings to be used by people, basically because they feel like using them, is not honorable. And certainly all of the "necessary" actions involved in that process aren’t honorable either.

Compassion in world farming, in my world, means not creating and destroying sentient beings for my palate or other enjoyment.