On the day she is born, she is taken from her mother. It is not a voluntary arrangement: the mother kicks, struggles, and screams. She is beaten until her infant can be wrestled away and she is forced back in her cell. Mother and daughter never see each other again.

The infant is confined until she reaches a certain age. She is not permitted to turn around, and has only her excrement to keep her company. She is periodically injected with drugs. A substance is poured on her head that burns for days. She survives.

As soon as she bleeds—not from another infection—she looses her vaginal and anal virginity. Her head is secured between two bars and she is entered from behind. A cold rod is thrust deep into her vagina and a harsh human hand fumbles and gropes inside her rectum.

Nine months later she gives birth. She never gets to see her infant. Afterwards she thrashes herself against the bars and cries until no more sound can come. Her voice is lost in the anguished clamor of countless other units experiencing the same loss.

Now a mother, she is paid closer attention. Drugs are injected into her nipples, and twice a day they are clamped. In two months she is raped again. Again she is impregnated and her infant taken from her, a process that takes place again and again.
Her fourth and final maternity she is permitted to nurse for a few hours. Her infant cries fearfully as she is taken. The mother struggles to save her until a well-placed blow shatters her already weakened leg.

After a lifetime of feeling no ground other than fecal-encrusted cement, seeing no horizon other than cold bars, and hearing no sounds other than confusion, anger, and pain, she is granted her reprieve. Her adolescence waning, her usefulness is negligible. Her fractured leg is chained to a forklift and she is dragged to a truck.

After several cramped days with no food or water she reaches her destination. She is forced into a featureless structure which reeks. Something explodes behind her ear and she can remember no more.

She regains feeling to find her throat being ripped open. As she speeds forward, shackled upside-down by one leg, she sees many others similarly hanging in front of her on the line, some jerking and some limp. As her life splatters onto the churning floor, she sees her intestines being torn out, feels her skin being separated from her flesh. She is dead now. She is “what’s for dinner.”

She is a modern dairy cow, one of ten billion land animals killed in this country every year for human consumption. While not every animal suffers the same, they are all at the mercy of a system where the animal’s most essential needs are inconsequential when in conflict with even the most trivial of human desires. Razor-thin profit margins and exemptions from anti-cruelty laws for “standard agricultural practices” ensure that the animals’ welfare will only be considered if it coincides with the financial interests of the corporation.

Although they can’t articulate it in English, all animals have an interest in living. They avoid pain, and most care for their young, form social and familial bonds, and experience emotion. Their differences from us are of style, not of substance. Our law and morality extends protection to human children and disabled people because even in their limited state, they have an interest in living and in existing for their own sake. Other animals have the same interests, yet they are denied protection, and have the status of property like toilet paper or chairs. It is ethically inconsistent to protect one group and exploit another when their interests—and what they have at stake—are similar.

Exploitation is the issue, and the example above is not an exaggeration. Fellow mammals susceptible to pain and capable of forming social and familial bonds, cattle in the dairy industry are forcefully taken from their mothers within a day or two of birth, causing major emotional distress. These sentient beings have their horns gouged out with caustic chemicals or a hot iron, and males are castrated, all without anesthetic. Tightly confined, fed and injected with hormones and antibiotics, the females are artificially inseminated by rectal palpitation while the males are killed for veal within a few months of their birth. Because of their treatment and conditions lameness is common, and despite regulations to prevent use of “downer” flesh for human consumption, the livestock industry is largely self-regulated and the animals subjugated to additional cruelties necessary to get them to slaughter. Modern slaughterhouses “process” at least 250 cattle an hour, many dismembered while still conscious.

A multitude of other species are similarly deprived of basic natural behaviors and subjected to extreme cruelty for profit in the food, clothing, entertainment, and testing industries. Do your own research—for every sugar-coated “happy cows” corporate advertisement there exist countless photographs, videos, expert and eyewitness reports, and even self-indicting testimony from the industry documenting the unimaginable violence enacted upon fellow sentient beings purely for unnecessary human indulgence. Fortunately it is easy to make a difference with animal exploitation: simply stop perpetuating the cruelty with every purchase and every meal.

Going vegan involves many lifestyle changes—however, these changes do not have to be as complicated as you might think. There are multiple resources on the Web as well as tons of literature available through Columbia Students for Animal Protection (CSAP) and other animal rights groups. Some things you might want to think about in addition to food-related questions are “Where can I get cruelty-free clothing?” or “Where can I get cosmetics or accessories that are 100 percent cruelty-free?” Here are some useful Web sites that can help answer these questions for you: vegforlife.com, goveg.com, govegan.com, supervegan.com, and vegsource.com.

If you have any other questions, feel free to contact us at csap.columbia@gmail.com. CSAP members are also available every Thursday afternoon in Lerner with literature, pins, restaurant guides, and other fun stuff. Please consider this issue seriously, follow your conscience, and stop by any time.

Eric is an alumnus of Montclair State University. Saryta is a Columbia College senior majoring in sociology.