Human Beings Are Social Animals. We Were

Even People Who Are Aware That The Traditional Family Farm Has Been Taken Over By Big Business Interests, And That Some Questionable Experiments Go On In Laboratories, Cling To A Vague Belief That Conditions Cannot Be Too Bad, Or Else The Government Or The Animal Welfare Societies Would Have Done Something About It.

Of All The Arguments Against Voluntary Euthanasia, The Most Influential Is The Slippery Slope: Once We Allow Doctors To Kill Patients, We Will Not Be Able To Limit The Killing To Those Who Want To Die.

It Is An Indication Of The Extent To Which People Are Now Isolated From The Animals They Eat That Children Brought Up On Storybooks That Lead Them To Think Of A Farm As A Place Where Animals Wander Around Freely In Idyllic Conditions Might Be Able To Live Out Their Entire Lives Without Ever Being Forced To Revise This Rosy Image.

When Children See Animals In A Circus, They Learn That Animals Exist For Our Amusement. Quite Apart From The Cruelty Involved In Training And Confining These Animals, The Whole Idea That We Should Enjoy The Humiliating Spectacle Of An Elephant Or Lion Made To Perform Circus Tricks Shows A Lack Of Respect For The Animals As Individuals.

In The Past 20 Years Alone, It Adds Up To More Death Than Were Caused By All The Civil And International Wars Adn Government Repression Of The Entire Twentieth Century, The Century Of Hitler And Stalin. How Much Would We Give To Prevent Those Horrors? Yet How Little Are We Doing To Prevent Today's Even Larger Toll And All The Misery That It Involves? I Believe That If You Read This Book To The End, And Look Honestly And Carefully At Our Situation, Assessing Both The Facts And The Ethical Arguments, You Will Agree That We Must Act.