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What Do We Mean By Animal Exploitation

We’ve all seen some kind of animal exploitation in the world, whether it’s a dog and cat meat trade or dolphin slaughter. Wherever you may go in the world we can find some kind of unethical behavior towards animals in every country.

While it’s easy to criticize any unethical practices that happen in other countries, we often forget what is happening on our own. Now you may be reading from anywhere in the world but, Some of these kinds of exploitations would be happening in your own country as well.

It takes a great amount of strength and compassion to recognize these practices that are often passed of like tradition, culture, and unwarranted criticism.

Let’s see some of the ways we exploit animals daily.

Food

77 billion land animals and at least 1 trillion fish are slaughtered every year for human consumption. The number of animals and fish that are killed every year poses a huge threat to the environmental balance.

Although we all know that eating meat is not necessary to live a healthy lifestyle, the way these animals are bred and kept in small cages is horrifying. While most of the animals come from factory farms where this practice is common.

Clothing

With modern-day skills and technology, there is no need to use animals for clothing. We, humans, are capable of making a variety of amazing fabrics that are better than animal substitutes the only reason why we keep using animals for clothing is that we are used to it and we want to look a certain way.

Each year around 100 million animals are bred and killed on intensive fur farms that are used to supply to the fashion industry. Many other animals are killed for clothing as well.

Silk Worms

Silkworms are boiled alive to get the skein or thread that can be made into silk cloth. It takes around 3000 silkworms to make a pound of silk.

Rabbits

Rabbits are reared to get angora wool. These animals are killed in many brutal ways to get the wool. In most farms, male rabbits are slaughtered at birth since they have lower wool yields compared to females.

Seals

Most often baby seals are clubbed to death for their fur to be used for human clothing. Hundreds of thousands of seals are killed for their fur every year.

Sheep

We all know that sheep are used to get their wool but, have you heard about the term shearling? Shearling is when a year-old sheep is sheared and then slaughtered. These shearlings are often priced high in the market as they come from a sheep that’s only been shorn once in their life.

Foxes

One of the most frequently killed animals for their fur on the list. Fox pelt is considered a kind of luxury that is often priced a lot. Many fashion accessories like Stores, scarves, coats, etc use fox fur.

Many other animals are often used for clothing such as Chiru, Lambs, Minks and, Beavers. Some places also supply fur products sourced from Cats and Dogs. This fact is cleverly hidden from customers. They are often labeled as Mongolian wolves.

Entertainment

We use many animals for entertainment purposes such as Chimpanzees, Bears, Tigers, Elephants, Dolphins, etc. These animals are made to perform silly tricks under the threat of physical punishment.

These animals are kept in filthy confines and pools in boring cramped enclosures. Most of them are separated from their families and friends.

Animals are extensively used in entertainment industries like circuses, zoos, marine parks, advertisements, television shows, movies, cruel sports such as bullfighting, rodeo, and horse racing. The businesses exploit animals to make money so that some people can gawk and enjoy their time.

These sentient social animals sned their lives in cages many even losing their lives for our entertainment.  When animals don’t perform well they are often discarded by sending them to slaughter or are destroyed.

Companion & Leisure

Many animals are bred and bought because people like to spend their free time with them. This is very different from adopting abandoned animals. Where the reason for the rescue is the well-being of the animals themselves.

Nearly 170,000 breeding dogs are currently in the United States with similar numbers for cats. That number can be much higher as puppy mills don’t report on their breeding stocks. Approximately 6.5 million companion animals enter U.S animal shelters each year With around 2.7 million Cats and Dogs killed each year as shelters are too full and there aren’t any adoptive homes.

Many of these so-called pets are euthanized each year just because we wanted some pets.

Workers & Tools

A variety of animals are used for transportation and as tools. Animals like, Oxen, Horses, Donkeys, Elephants are often used for transportation. These animals are often overworked and not taken care of. They are often put into a situation where they have to lift heavy things. Saying that they are worked to death won’t be an understatement.

Many other animals are also used for different things like snakes to make antivenom or even give massages. Seals are used in the military to detect enemy divers. Cormorants used for fish hunting, etc.

Experimentation

Every year about 115 million animals are used for experimentation these include mice, fish, rats, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, farm animals, birds, cats, dogs, minipigs, and non-human primates (monkeys, and in some countries chimpanzees). Many labs do not publish the exact number of animals used, in most cases many animals are excluded from the official statistics. Which makes the figure 115 million a huge underestimate from the actual figures.

So what is wrong with animal testing? Aside from the ethical issues they pose, inflicting physical and psychological suffering on sentient beings provide little to no understanding of how chemicals work on our body.

Many times the treatment seen in other species is often dissimilar to those of human patients. As a result 9 out of 10 candidate medicines that appear safe and effective in animal studies fail when given to humans. This is a huge margin of error that can be easily reduced with modern technologies.

How can Veganism Help

With a vegan lifestyle, you can be a healthier you and help all these animals indirectly. We as humans change societies with our individual choices. Your one choice might seem small and irrelevant to you, but we can create a change when many of us act together.

Say no to non-vegan products and find vegan alternatives. You can learn more about vegan alternatives here. Your small choice can have a huge impact on the world do not think that you as an individual can’t do much.