According to the Institute of Humane Education humans have granted protections to certain animals under certain conditions. What is illegal if done to a dog or parakeet may be perfectly legal when done to a cow or chicken. And while there are many laws protecting dogs and cats in peoples’ homes, these laws do not apply to dogs, cats, or any other animals in laboratories. In other words, our relationships with animals are inconsistent, based upon our feelings, our traditions, and our habits, and not upon their inherent capacity to suffer or their intrinsic value.

Animals are used, and abused, in many industries – food, entertainment, research, fashion, the military, education, the pet trade, and more. By far the greatest abuse is found in the food industry, where tens of billions of animals are killed every year. Factory farming, the name given to industrial animal agriculture, is inherently cruel. Animals are routinely mutilated without anesthesia (e.g., tail docking, dehorning, debeaking, castrating, branding), and are confined so intensively that normal behaviors are impossible. Modern, sped up slaughter lines often result in animals being dismembered while still conscious.

Ironically, the harm we cause to animals often harms us and the environment, again reminding us of the connections among issues. For example, when a “lagoon” holding pig excrement in a North Carolina hog factory burst, it flooded into nearby rivers and streams, contaminating water supplies and killing tens of thousands of fish. Routine use of antibiotics in animal feed has led to resistant strains of bacteria and diminished efficacy of antibiotics in general.