No, it’s not ‘natural’

No, it’s not natural to “domesticate” somebody – bring them into existence on your terms – so that you can kill them.

It’s not natural to control their reproduction, mess with their genes, mutilate their bodies, deprive them of comfort, take away their children, and make them suffer so that you can use them as means to your ends.

It’s not natural at all.

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No, it’s not natural to keep bovine women pregnant constantly so that you can steal their milk.

It’s not natural to force them to give birth every year, only to impose on vulnerable mothers the tragedy of having their children taken away, so that you can drink their milk.

Nature intended that milk for her babies.

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No, it’s not natural to put violence into your body, and then expect your body not to respond violently.

Should sentient creatures be tortured in laboratories to find “cures” for the diseases we give ourselves by eating the products of abused animals? Or should we solve the problem at its root by eating non-violent food? That’s a choice we make.

“Nature” has nothing to do with it.

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No, it’s not natural to wear or use the skin, fur, feathers, or hairs of other sentient beings.

Those things belong to them. That which we call “theft” by any other name is still theft.

It’s not natural at all.

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No, it’s not natural to confine and torment somebody so that they can entertain you.

It’s not natural to remove them from their home, deprive them of freedom and comfort, beat or whip them, withhold food or other necessities, and generally enslave them for a few cheap laughs at the circus.

Nature knows nothing of laughing at someone else’s expense.

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No, it’s not natural to kill.

The inevitability of death doesn’t excuse the injustice of prematurely robbing somebody of their life. When the captive bolt gun didn’t knock her out the first time, she stood there and endured every subsequent shot, refusing to die – clinging desperately to this life that, for all its misery and pain, is the most precious thing she’ll ever know.

Nature had no part in your decisions to impose suffering and death on somebody who would’ve given anything to avoid it.

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No, it’s not natural to exploit the vulnerable.

Human beings have evolved to be compassionate, and to be able to love and care for the vulnerable ‘other’.

Ignoring the greatest accomplishment of our evolution isn’t natural.

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Human beings have an extraordinary talent for telling ourselves all sorts of lies, and then actually believing them. Some lies have been told (and believed) so often, by so many people, that it becomes difficult to see them for the folly they truly are.

Fortunately, that pesky thing called ‘truth’ has a funny way of refusing to be silenced. It can be temporarily ignored, buried in the sand for a while, but sooner or later, it always resurfaces.

All animal exploitation – for food or for some other purpose, intensive or small-scale – involves unspeakable violence. All of it involves tragedy that is beyond the power of words to fully describe. All of it is unnecessary. Sticking nonsensical labels onto it (“natural”, “humane”, etc) may make us feel good, but that’s all it does. It has nothing to do with the justice that we owe to sentient non-humans who, like us, value their lives and want to live.