More than 1.7 million living beings, daily. In this column for De Correspondent, writer Simon van Teutem argues that this is not normal, and that the time for excuses is long past. The animals behind these numbers are not unfeeling machines: pigs are social, curious and highly intelligent; cows distinguish between individual humans; even chickens show genuine empathy. Yet the factory farming industry continues to treat them as if none of that is true.
What makes this piece particularly striking is its challenge to the idea that we simply don't know any better. The information is there but we just choose not to look. With nearly 1,000 mega-farms in the Netherlands, the country holds more livestock per square kilometre than anywhere else in the EU, with only 3.4% of animals raised organically. Van Teutem's argument is not that everyone must go vegan overnight, but that knowingly participating in unnecessary suffering (when alternatives exist) is something worth sitting with. Read the full column (in Dutch) here.
