The Emotional Lives of Farmed Animals and Why They Matter |
Science, common sense, and heart provide the best windows into the inner lives of cows and other animals.
There's a lot more going on in their minds than we often give them credit for.
Chickens are as cognitively, emotionally, and socially complex as many mammals.
The lives of rescued animals show they're individuals with unique personalities and a sense of the future.
"If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian."—Paul McCartney
More than enough detailed evidence clearly shows that millions of animals used for food—farmed animals ranging from mammals to birds to fish and invertebrates—are sentient beings with rich and deep cognitive and emotional lives. And, because the inner lives of these animals and their diverse individual personalities and how they are treated "out of sight" are increasingly being exposed not only in scientific media but also in a wide range of popular outlets, more and more people know that these animals suffer greatly and are experiencing moral challenges about who they choose to eat.1
For these and other reasons, I was pleased to read Vicki Hutton's recent book Emotion in Farmed Animals: Ethical Challenges for Animal Welfare, in which she offers stories about the uniqueness of every pig, cow, bird, rabbit, and other animals when they are allowed to display these traits. To show who these animals really are when they are free to be themselves, Vicki "seeks to bring change through stories of individual animals now living on farmed animal sanctuaries" whose stories reveal them as individuals with wide-ranging emotional capacities and a sense of the future.
Marc Bekoff: Why did you write Emotion in Farmed Animals?
Vicki Hutton: Every animal is unique, but the industrial farm system has commodified them into products for mass consumption. I wanted to showcase the uniqueness of farmed animals by giving voice to some survivors of the system. The best place to start was at the farmed animal sanctuaries that offer a home and a future.
MB: How........