Animals ALL

What about Carnism?

[Carnism is the invisible belief system, or ideology, that conditions people to eat certain animals. Carnism runs counter to core human values, values such as compassion and justice. Most people would not willingly support unnecessary violence toward other sentient beings. Therefore, carnism, like other violent systems, uses a set of defense mechanisms that distort our thoughts and block our natural empathy so that we act against our values without fully realizing what we are doing. In other words, carnism teaches us how not to feel. Carnistic defenses hide the contradictions between our values and behaviors, so that we unknowingly make exceptions to what we would normally consider unethical.]

So...
Americans are proud being a nation of animal lovers. Each year we spend BILLIONS of dollars on our cats, dogs, horses and other animal pets. The love we feel for our pets or companion animals is so strong that they become full members of our families and are treated as such.
So just imagine this scenario: Your cat or dog is taken from you, loaded on to a truck with lots of other people's pets and taken to a slaughterhouse. You are told that your pet is needed for human consumption, that it's always been this way, that it's JUST an animal.
You are assured that your pet's death will be humane. It’s explained to you that your pet will line up with all of the others and they will enter the kill room one by one. There it will be stunned, hung upside down and his or her throat will be cut and its blood will be drained. It will be quick and painless, they won't be aware of what's happening, it's JUST an animal.
In desperation you follow the truck to the slaughterhouse. When you get there you see people trying to stop the truck, holding up signs in protest and standing in front of it. You see people looking in the side of the truck, talking to and trying to comfort the animals.
But the truck driver refuses to stop. The police and security guards are pushing the protestors out of the way; many are in tears, begging them not to do this. These are not even their own pets.
The truck pulls into the slaughterhouse and you never see your little friend again.
So you decide this has to stop, you talk to your friends, your family, your neighbors, in fact anyone who will listen but you find almost none want to talk about it. They tell you that everyone has the right to eat meat if they choose to and you have no right to suggest otherwise. They suggest that you have been brainwashed, that you sound like an extremist, a tree hugger, a hippie.
You post on Facebook, on Twitter but get the same response.
Every single day in America millions of cows, pigs, sheep and chickens are slaughtered. You don't know them, but they are every little bit as conscious and as capable of giving and receiving love and affection as your pet cat or dog or the horse you stable in your barn. They have every bit as much right to life as your poodle, your tiger cat or your colt.
Most human beings do not need to eat animals to live, to survive and thrive. Therefore it is a choice.
We call ourselves a civilized society, in the way we treat the animals that should be under our care we are anything but.

They are not JUST animals, we are all JUST animals, animals ALL.