Vegan reason #4: The animals.

This one is fairly obvious.  No one wants to be eaten or exploited, not even our animal friends ...

I love animals and would never be cruel to one.  Nor would I stand idly by if someone else was treating an animal cruelly.

But shamefully, concern about my fellow creatures was not enough to convert me to veganism.  (I didn't change till I found out my own health was in jeopardy.)  I had chosen throughout the years to turn a blind eye, and not to read about how we treat animals that become our food, or to look at the horrific images.  (As a rule, I still won't look at this stuff, but did today briefly for the purpose of being able to write about it.)  

I won't use any horrific images here.

Our fellow mammals are capable of feeling fear, pain, and sadness.  Yet somehow caring about animals is considered the "crazy" reason to become vegan.

In general, these animals are not freely roaming green pastures.  They are kept in confined spaces, shackled, maimed, dragged around, left to wallow in their own filth, and pumped full of antibiotics to combat the infections that come with living in such conditions.

Cow's milk is the perfect food for baby calves (only!), but instead of being allowed to nurse, calves are separated from their mothers a day or two after birth.  Mother and baby cry for each other and grieve miserably.  This is repeated yearly, since dairy cows must give birth every year to keep the milk flowing.  Female calves on dairy farms will become milk cows like their mothers.  Male calves will become beef or veal.

Veal calves have it worst of all.  Separated from their mothers, they are kept in complete darkness with their necks chained to prevent movement, so that their meat will be tender.  They are purposely fed a deficient diet so that their meat will be white.  Then, a few weeks later, they go to the slaughterhouse.  (The veal industry is a byproduct of the dairy industry, since they have to do something with the male calves.)

Milk cows are pumped full of hormones that make them produce ten times more milk than they normally would, so they are constantly suffering from mastitis.  They are milked with hard metal machines that add to the discomfort and infection.  Commercial milk is allowed to have a certain amount of pus in it.  The majority of dairy herds in our country (64%) are also infected with BIV, which is the bovine AIDS virus.

Chickens are probably the most mistreated creatures, because there are few restrictions for how they can be kept ... and restrictions are often broken anyway.  They are bred to produce so much meat that they often cannot stand or walk.  They're kept in cages so small they can't move or turn around.  At birth, they are "de-beaked" so they can't peck each other (with no anesthesia of course).  They live, standing in their own filth, unable to move, until killed for meat.

Chickens bred for laying live in the same cramped conditions.  Female offspring become layers.  Male chicks are often just thrown in the garbage as soon as they hatch and are crushed to death.

Pigs are apparently smarter than dogs, but they are still treated horrifically.  All these animals are processed quickly and on a large scale to feed America, and the assembly line continues on, even if an animal is not dead while it's being gutted.  Unfortunately, we are not able to hear their screams of fear and pain.

There is no question of whether factory farms are treating animals humanely.

They are not.  Everyone knows it.  

Mostly we don't want to think about it.  And if we're involved in something (i.e., eating animals) that bothers our conscience so much that we can't bear to think about it, then we probably shouldn't be doing it.