I have further bad news: all of the animals that go into your beef, turkey, bacon, eggs, milk, butter, and animal products of any kind also have terrible, excruciating lives, as the full documentary conveys.
If you don't want to watch this, all I have to say is: Why? Don't you owe it to yourself to know where your food comes from? What are you afraid of? That us vegans might have a point? If you're confident that you'll be a steadfast non-vegan no matter what information you become privy to, then you have nothing to lose by watching something like this. If animal agriculture didn't have anything to hide, then why do ag-gag laws exist? I thought we liked whistleblowers who expose shocking things to the public?
If you think that this clip is a shocking, out-of-context, worst-case example for what goes on in animal agriculture and that most farm animals are treated fairly and with dignity, do you actually believe that? Vegan or not, we're all already anti-capitalists on this site, and we know that any business reveres and pursues profit above all else by any means necessary, or else they would not exist for long and be chased out of the market by a more ruthlessly "efficient" competitor. And "by any means necessary" means that capitalists won't bat an eye at all at unsafe working conditions, grueling work hours, shit benefits for employees (if any), or hell, using cheaper labor if not outright slavery in Global South countries to take advantage of lax/non-existent labor laws in US client states.
Do you think that animal agriculture companies don't operate with the same mindset? Do you think they pamper their livestock and then "humanely" slaughter them when the time is right, instead of being a brutally efficient killing machine designed to extract as much profit as possible? Of course they don't, there's not as much money to be made by investing in treating livestock with dignity. These animals are treated like unfeeling machines designed to maximize profit.
Please stop eating animals and contributing to this sadistic industry when more ethical alternatives exist. Using "there's no ethical consumption under capitalism" to condone your current lifestyle does not mean that you cannot make more ethical choices within this shithole economic system. There has never been a better time to go vegan, there are many great vegan meat/dairy alternatives that already exist if you need transition products to wean you off of meat and dairy. And if that is out of your price point, there are millions of vegan recipes online and so many cookbooks that exist, I'm sure you could find some of your favorite dishes and veganize them.
If you've ever had even the slightest urge to go vegan but are too afraid to take the plunge, I think it's fair to say that many current vegans felt the same way at one point, myself included, so you aren't alone in that. But once I had the moral framework for why people choose veganism and once I did research for how to successfully transition to veganism and avoid pitfalls, it ended up being much easier than I thought it would be. You won't know until you try.
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Great post, friend! I'm sorry you had to go through that, that is horrific for anyone to endure, let alone a child. :meow-hug:
[CW: animal gore/death]
spoiler
I very recently just experienced a memory from when I was a kid, probably about five years old or so, that I hadn't thought of for over a decade, but I remember going to a fair in my city, and one of the "games" was one where there was a small bucket that was filled with a bunch of fish (which were likely going to be shipped to some supermarket or something afterward by my best guess), and kids would try to catch a fish from there. Well, it was my turn, and I remember catching a fish and being excited about that. Then I was instructed to give it to the people at the booth or whatever, so I did, and then one of the guys set the fish down, pulled out a knife, and immediately started slicing the life out of the fish, and my excitedness turned into horror, like I wouldn't be surprised if my jaw dropped as this was happening, I can't remember. But IIRC, no one else around me seemed to mind, including my parents, as if this shit was completely normal and rational to do, especially around little kids. This anecdote is nowhere near as awful as your own, but I'm posting it anyway to convey how this perceived superiority and normalization of using animals as food is a completely learned response and not innate at all, if an impressionable young kid like myself who hadn't fully absorbed speciesism yet was horrified by someone deliberately killing a fish.
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