Every time we take out our wallet and pay for animal products, we pay for someone to be commodified, exploited and killed. Most people do not think about this. The role of Go Vegan World is to remind them.
Even though they are sentient, the animals we use are the legal property of their human owners, most of whom profit from them. This situation is legal but it is not just. Their lives and bodies are not ours and it is as unfair and unjust of us to own and use one of them because they are not human, as it is to own and use another human for any reason. It is this situation in which we justify our ownership and use of them on the grounds that they are not human that is the backbone of the struggle of the animal rights movement.
Those who profit from them defend their use of them by referring to the ‘animal welfare standards’ which guide their work. Let’s be absolutely clear about what animal welfare means. It is an industry term that refers to the legal breeding of sentient animals into a life where they are deliberately killed. It refers to the minimum standards by which other animals can be owned, commodified, and exploited for profit even though all use of them is unnecessary.
It refers to standard legal practices such as hyperconfinement, mutilation, electrocution, gassing, live mincing, scalding, separating mothers from their babies, and breaking the bonds between animals who know each other. It includes taking their milk and eggs, and it includes killing them. In contrast to animal rights, animal welfare is not only irrelevant but a facade that hides the root injustice and is thus entirely complicit in their exploitation. What matters is that they are unjustly owned and that their only value is to their owner when, in reality, the value of a life matters most to the one living that life.