A ‘Transfarmation’: Meet The Woman Helping Animal Farms Turn Vegan
Heiligtag has helped 125 farms in Switzerland, Austria, and Germany move away from animals. She calls this process a “transfarmation.” Animals will either be moved to sanctuaries, or remain and allowed to live out their natural lives in peace.
The new farms will always be entirely vegan.
Farmers mostly get in contact after experiencing the guilt that sometimes comes with their line of work. “They suffer because of what they have to do to animals,” she says. “It can be that they have been suffering for years and years and years and didn’t see a way out, but it can also happen that they look into one animal’s eyes and suddenly realize there’s someone behind these eyes.”
Wow. The cruelty these workers display and the conditions they work in and the pigs live in are absolutely disgusting. I don't see how you can behave the way they do without being evil - it's easy to see how Germans could have no problem killing Jews in concentration camps if they were similar personalities. We see this cruelty play out as Russia rapes and murders civilians in Ukraine as well with increasingly creative tortures. The casual nature of human cruelty is remarkable. How do we prevent people from ending up like this? Once someone reaches this point, I can't see them being able to safely integrate into society.
> As a meat eater ... I don't lack empathy for humans.
As a meat eater ... you cannot yet know what you lack/you'd gain ;)
> pet owners, their empathy for pets seems to reduce their empathy for fellow humans
It's funny that when someone adopts a rabbit, pig, or chicken as a pet, they often (based on anecdotes) stop eating that specific type of meat, but they don't typically stop eating other animals.
Something changes when people decide to stop eating meat.
>As a meat eater ... you cannot yet know what you lack/you'd gain ;)
No, I'd even grant that my pov could even be a sign of lowered empathy, but as my second part was meant to indicate. On the other hand developing an empathy for other animals can lead to lowered empathy for the 'murderers' of those animals.
If you empathise with foos and bars, and foos are harming bars, surely that would impact your empathy for foos.
It’d be interesting to read more about the psychology of “when people decide to stop eating meat”. Conversely, I’ve talked with individuals who were raised culturally vegetarian who started eating meat as an adult.
> my observation of pet owners, their empathy for pets seems to reduce their empathy for fellow humans.
Hmm, I haven’t seen that correlation, but it’s worth noting that there are all sorts of people who keep pets for all sorts of different reasons, so I don’t doubt it’s true for some.
Regarding your first point, that’s not a pet owner thing but a family thing. Most people would save their own before helping a stranger.
> becoming a pet owner also makes you more likely to want to save an unspecified dog over a unspecified person
From the article:
> In the scenarios involving an unspecified dog, only around 20% of American pet owners say they would choose to save the dog over the person or people
My reading of that data is different from yours. Does a 20% chance of something sound more likely or less likely?
>Regarding your first point, that’s not a pet owner thing but a family thing.
'Family' takes many different forms though (nation, ethnicity, species, etc)
I'm not saying it's right or wrong but I would include a human stranger in my 'family' over a known pet.
I am strongly opposed to mass industrialized farming of this nature - even if you pretend treating animals like commodities is OK, you're creating an increasingly centralized and fragile food supply - but pigs do not need to be forced to cannibalize each other. Whether raised on a farm or feral, pigs will gladly and with great energy devour even family members (merely injured or dead) they grew up with, given the opportunity.
We shouldn't need to rely on illegal undercover activist video to see how our food is made.