Compassion and Empathy part 2

I wrote recently of the need to infuse our lives with compassion and empathy, for a better world. But compassion must not stop with humans. Don't forget the animals!

I am reminded forcefully of this from seeing the latest horrors from Compassion in World Farming  who have a dreadful report on the cruelty pigs are subjected to in Italy  -  don't look if you will be upset by images of pigs that are left in appalling conditions waiting to die, maybe many days or weeks later.

1 in every 30 Americans, that is 10 million people, back the Humane Society of the United States,  an organization that seeks a humane and sustainable world for all animals and is America’s ‘mainstream force against cruelty, exploitation and neglect.’ This means that 29 out of every 30 or 290 million Americans may not care very much about animal cruelty. That is a huge number of people. Many farm animals are subjected to the most appallingly cruel conditions in factory farms. Would those who love their own family pets be happy for them to be treated to the same kind of cruelty? 

By our inactions we appear to condone miserable birthing cages or farrowing crates for female pigs, where they are held for months and can hardly move let alone turn around or socialize with other pigs; we eat and apparently enjoy the French delicacy pate de foie gras which requires that ducks and geese are force-fed unnaturally large quantities of food through a metal tube that is shoved down their throats and into their stomachs two or three times each day. This barbaric treatment produces a liver that is fatty, diseased and ten times the normal size. It sounds disgusting and it is; goodness knows how those birds must suffer. We prefer not to know about the calves separated from their mothers within the first few days of birth and crammed into individual crates or stalls, tethered by their necks, so they can hardly move, for the duration of their dreadful short lives; and we ignore the plight of the 280 million laying hens in the United States which spend their lives cooped up in tiny cages with no more than the space of an A4 piece of paper that they can (hardly) call their own. 

I'm sorry if you find this shocking. If you don't find it shocking then I am sorry for you - and for the fate of animals that touch your lives in any way.

Let's all make a difference. Let's all help to put an end to suffering - of humans and animals - let's cultivate empathy and compassion in all that we do!!