If you do something
for animals in industrial farming, you will not always
have direct contact with the animals. If you stop eating
meat or do not keep pets, you are working towards a world
in which there will be fewer (farm) animals. But this
will also be a world in which fewer animals are kept in
cages.
There are a number of motivations to change your behavior,
which may not all be very grand, but that are better for
everyone, man and animals.
Your benefits to help animals can be:
A healthier life and a healthy society (vegetarians keeping a varied
diet and people consuming less industrially farmed
meat, lead healthier lives and specifically have a
smaller chance of developing cancer).
A more sober lifestyle (less meat and no tax-money
to the meat industry saves money, and is better for
our climate and for animal well-being).
Freer living (keeping no pets means more freedom in spending your time, space and
money).
A clearer conscience (you no longer have to feel guilty and you can be
proud of yourself: you are helping others to help
animals).
Depending on how
realistically you set your goals in helping animals, and
how much time, money and effort you put into it, the benefits
can be greater than the drawbacks.
You may have to invest or change something before it can
become fun. Compare it with quitting smoking: it's hard
at first, but then you don't want to go back. Very often,
it is more a matter of letting go than of actively doing
something.
Some things you may need to invest are:
having to walk further to a butcher who doesn't
sell industrially farmed meat
learning to cook different ingredients than sole
potatoes-meat-vegetables. More variety offers more
possibilities, and is not more of an effort
receiving cynical, indifferent and ignorant remarks
from your environment
In answer to the question of "what makes campaigning
for animals satisfying?", Geert Laugs from Compassion
In World Farming (CIWF)
said:
"Campaigning for animals is basically not more
or less satisfying than campaigning for other causes.
For some it is even a lot more awful, for instance if
you can't bear to see animal suffering. It all depends
on how the campaign is organized: it is possible to
expose serious subjects in a playful way.
In my experience, people like campaigns that:
do not needlessly annoy people;
present a positive signal (offer alternatives);
are motivating, get attention in a nice way
are covered in the newspapers;
are successful (with a clear goal and results connected
to that goal).
We think it's obvious that CIWF actions fulfill this
image to a great degree."
Doing something for animals, or changing the way you
eat is a form of behavior
change. We want to help you to make this as easy
as possible.
We do not want parents to feel pressed to buy their
kids a pet. What we don't like
either is the way in which animals are exploited in
commercials.
What we did like is this anti-hunt
video from Woodpecker on AdEater (MPEG 2Mb).
