Those Crazy Vegans. They seem to care about the lives of animals and how other beings are treated. But do animals even experience pain or have a consciousness? Are they really treated that badly? Why would any of this matter?

Well, many of these crazy vegans actually believe that animals do feel pain and have a high level of consciousness. It's pretty simple to see how animals try to avoid pain or react to being hurt by the way they resist, whimper, scream, or twitch when they are endangered or injured. The jury is still out as to whether plants or trees feel pain, but pineapples and mangoes don't try to run away from danger or let us know they don't like being beaten or harmed the way animals do.

In the wonderful world of factory farming, innocent animals are treated as badly or even worse than most prisoners or slaves. They are often kicked, punched, beaten, electroshocked, forced to take hot water baths, kept in uncomfortable confinement, and forced to watch their brothers and sisters die as over 70 billion land animals await their destiny in line for slaughter each year. And that's just the beginning.

While the industry uses cute (and misleading) catchphrases like "cage free," "free range," "free roaming," "organically raised," "happy cows," or "humane slaughter," the story is much different. Behind the closed doors of these industrial and even smaller-scale backyard animal farming operations, the sad truth is that most of the victims of these establishments are always faced with a wide variety of mistreatment, malnourishment, and undesirable procedures that no conscious being would ever consent to. Many animals are castrated, branded, debeaked, and much more with no anesthesia. They usually live in very overcrowded conditions where they are trampled, attacked, and urinated or defecated on by other animals. They are often pumped full of hormones, antibiotics, and vaccines, sprayed with toxic chemicals, forced to eat GMO (genetically modified organisms) feed or even go underfed for extended periods of time. Many males are often ground up alive just after birth as they are typically not as valuable to the farmers as the females. The animals are usually killed while fully conscious on conveyor belts or in production-line style massacres. Not to make this sound like a horror movie, but this is the inconvenient reality of what happens to the animals that humans so blindly choose to consume.

In the dairy industry, where people's beloved milk, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream come from, the story is even sadder. Most of the above applies, but in addition, the females are constantly re-impregnated through gruesome methods of bestiality, their babies are stolen from them, usually within a few days of birth, the young males are marketed for veal or killed soon after birth, and mother cows are sent to slaughter when their milk production declines to make cheap meat for humans, or they're ground up to be fed back to other cows (where mad cow disease comes from).

The transportation of farm animals is also a far cry from a beautiful day at the park. You may have seen trucks full of cows, chickens, pigs, or other animals crammed into metal trailers with no room to move. Their joy ride can last for hours or even days, and they are usually not given food or water or protected from the extreme weather conditions like heat, cold, wind, rain, or snow.

Fish are also being wiped out at alarming rates, with estimates that well over a trillion of our waterborne friends are killed every year. Fish most definitely feel pain, as we can clearly see them flopping and twitching as they are removed from the water, gaffed, hooked, sliced, and diced while still alive. Some people tend to show less empathy for fish because they don't scream or cry as other animals do, but after witnessing how fish react to pain and suffering most crazy vegans wonder how people can support such violence or choose to live as pescatarians.  To learn more, read the book, What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins.

There are much more examples of how farm animals are mistreated, but the bottom line is that these beings are seen as property by humans and exploited unnecessarily for food, clothing, and other products. Many people are disgusted by the fact that some Asian cultures consume dogs and cats, without questioning what the difference is between their furry friends and pigs, chickens, turkeys, cows, sheep, fish, or other animals they see as food. All of these beings are sentient, meaning they are capable of experiencing emotions and feelings of pain and suffering. When we consume or use these animals, we are supporting the industries that are responsible for inflicting such horrible conditions on our animal friends.

One major issue related to ethics is the vast sense of disconnection between the animals products people see on the shelves and the reality of what actually happens to those beings before they are stuffed into pretty packages with enticing names for humans to consume. Clever marketing, preparation, display cases, food dyes, and other tricks remove the thoughts of abuse, torture, and death from people's minds as they stroll down grocery aisles or sift through restaurant menus. But farm employees lend some insight into how humans feel when they actually experience the pain and mistreatment caused to the animals, as many of these workers have PTSD, drug abuse, alcoholism, spousal and child abuse, and many other social problems. If everyone got to be an animal farm worker for a day, there might be a lot more crazy vegans out there as most people couldn't stomach the way these animals are treated.

Another point that many people overlook is the exorbitant volume of crops that are required to be grown to feed farm animals. While millions of people around the world are starving, many countries are experiencing food shortages, and the price of food is continually increasing, over fifty percent of the produce on earth is earmarked for feeding the subjects of unnecessary animal agriculture instead of being used to help solve the problems many humans face. This not only leads to deforestation, mono cropping, chemical applications, and other destructive practices to the environment, but it also uses the earth's precious land to support evil practices rather than growing healthy produce to provide food for less fortunate people.

We are born into this world as loving and compassionate souls who don't wish to harm or create a negative impact on others. We are, however, programmed from a young age by society, the governmental-media-educational-medical-industrial complex, and the meat, dairy, and egg industries to eat, wear, and use animals in many different ways despite our pacifist instincts and better judgment. But the silver lining in the clouds is that there is always room for humankind to improve as a species. As we educate ourselves about the treatment and use of farm animals and make the connection between the pain and suffering that is required to create products from their bodies and secretions, and become more empathetic and compassionate towards them, we can connect to our inner wisdom and spirituality and remove ourselves from the herding culture. This way we can work towards healing and raising our consciousness to end the violence, unconditionally love all beings, realize that we are all interconnected, and extend respect and benevolent to the animals by opting out of consuming and seeing them as commodities.