#53 The Next Moral Revolution
The other genocide we don't talk enough about
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Re-evolution
We’ve conquered many revolutions.
We abolished slavery, at least on paper. We gave women rights, though not yet equality. We learned to see beyond color, nationality, and belief, though we still fail, often.
And yet, one of the greatest moral revolution is still ahead. And unspoken. One that is not about humans. One tha is about how we treat the rest of the living world, the billions of animals whose lives we take and whose suffering we choose not to see.
Every year, we kill over 80 billion animals to feed ourselves. Eighty billion. That’s ten times more lives than humans alive today.
And most die unseen; in cages so small they can’t turn around, under lights that never dim, pumped with antibiotics just to survive another week.
Science leaves no room for doubt. Animals feel pain. They feel fear. They anticipate suffering. A pig’s brain reacts to pain almost identically to ours. Cows cry for their calves. Chickens recognize faces. Fish show stress when isolated.
Pain is not a human invention. It’s biology.
As Jane Goodall said: “Once we accept that a living creature has feelings and suffers pain, then by knowingly and deliberately inflicting suffering… we are guilty.”
And we are guilty, every day, simply by choosing not to look.
Blindness
The question is, why are we blind to this insurmountable amount of suffering?
Partly because we’re designed to be. Evolution made us empathize with familiar faces. We cry for dogs but eat pigs. We care about pandas because they look like babies, not because they’re ecologically vital.
And partly because the system hides it from us. We don’t see the cages, the mutilations, the screams. We see clean trays wrapped in plastic, words like organic, free-range, humane. Words built to make us forget.
Our food system has perfected what Orwell warned about: violence hidden behind language. We say we “raise” animals when we mean we confine them. We say we “process” meat when we mean we kill.
The True Cost
Cheap meat isn’t cheap. It’s just subsidized by someone else’s suffering: animal, human, or planetary.
Crammed animals spread disease. That’s how pandemics begin.
Overused antibiotics breed resistance. That’s how medicine fails.
Deforestation for feed destroys ecosystems. That’s how the planet burns.
For now, we pay with their pain. Soon, we’ll pay with ours.
Because systems built on cruelty eventually collapse, from the inside.
Saint-less
No one’s asking for sainthood.
Just consciousness.
Eat fewer animals. Every meal without meat saves lives, and science shows plant-rich diets lower heart disease, cancer, and inflammation.
Choose better sources. Buy from farms that treat animals as beings, not units. Support certifications that actually mean something (in Spain, look for Bienestar Animal Certificado – Welfair™, AENOR Conform, Interporc Animal Welfare Spain (IAWS), or GlobalG.A.P.).
Most of all, know. Ask where your food comes from. Awareness is contagious.
The truth isn’t comfortable. But meaning rarely is.
Animals
We talk about “animals” as if we weren’t one of them.
Yet we are.
We breathe the same air, share the same instincts, and fear the same pain. We are just the only species that can choose compassion over convenience.
When we cage them, we cage part of ourselves.
When we numb their pain, we dull our empathy.
And when we justify their suffering, we justify any suffering.
Humanity’s story is one of expanding empathy: from tribe, to gender, to race. Each generation has had to face its blind spot.
Ours is how we treat animals.
Because intelligence doesn’t give us the right to dominate, it gives us the duty to protect.
And the question isn’t whether animals are like us. It’s whether we are still like them: alive, aware, and capable of feeling.
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