Cows are truly amazing and extremely interesting beings. Numerous people see them only as food items, rather than as highly sentient and intelligent individuals with markedly different personalities.
MARC BEKOFF: ‘Cows are typically recognized for their ubiquity as various sorts of products, whose value is cashed out in terms of their instrumental value, namely, what they can do for us… Cows are truly amazing and extremely interesting beings. Also known as steak, burgers, beef, veal, and leather, and global producers of all sorts of dairy products, numerous people see them only as food items, merely products of one sort or another, rather than as highly sentient and intelligent individuals with markedly different personalities…
Their inherent value as living sentient beings with distinct personalities often is glossed or totally ignored. However, even people who work in the food-industrial complex or who are responsible for developing humane welfare guidelines that all too frequently are ignored, know that cows are sentient beings and that they suffer and feel pain, or else they wouldn’t even bother to develop some regulations that supposedly protect the animals. Rampant abuse of cows and other food animals is the rule, rather than the exception…
I often wonder how people would view their meals and if they’d change their meal plans if they were referred to as cow, pig, or bird. A cow by any other name is still a cow — a sentient feeling being. I fully know that some people will quibble that cows are indeed respected for who they are, but that we have to use them as we do and they’re doing the best they can to give them a “better life.” It worth bearing in mind as I’ve written above that a “better life” is not necessarily a “good life,” so feel-good excuses and rationalizations don’t really help these bright and sentient bovines or other so-called “food animals”.’ SOURCE…
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