We've witnessed so many revolutions in our society. Think of transportation, photography, or communications. Things once unimaginable have become seemingly impossible to live without.
Animal abuse is still widespread and we have so much work ahead.
Especially in this Internet age, routine practices are being exposed and rightly recognized as harsh and cruel.
The response by agribusiness interests has been to back laws that ban animal advocates from taking pictures or videos at these facilities, and ban the media from publishing any that are taken. The laws also make it a crime for animal advocates to seek employment at animal enterprises without disclosing their intentions. Media coverage of the legislative fights is overwhelmingly negative for agriculture interests. The impression left among consumers is that the proponents had something to hide.
China is a keen observer of trends elsewhere in the world, and it's going to give our own innovators a run for their money.
China cares about its reputation and doesn't want to be known as the nation whose preferences drove the extinction of elephants.
Media coverage of the legislative fights is overwhelmingly negative for agriculture interests. The impression left among consumers is that the proponents had something to hide.
The good news is we are seeing an incredible surge in non-animal technologies in laboratories. With researchers using stem cells, visually impaired people may one day have new corneas and lenses grown from their own cells. That is likely to be a more effective and cheaper approach than using animals.
When we transplant organs, we are enabling viruses to jump natural barriers between species.
There are new ways of producing food, film, clothing, and research that steer clear of using animals. Some of those products are functionally equivalent or even superior to what we're used to. Now corporations, legislatures, and other institutions are responding, and supporting these shifts, so we're seeing seismic changes throughout society.
There are many innovators hard at work seeking to perfect alternatives to meat, milk, and eggs. These food products will, like computer-generated graphics or photography or sound systems, just keep getting better and better until there is little difference between an animal-based protein and a plant-based one, or farm-produced versus cultured meat. That will make it easy for people to make the kinds of choices that will usher in a world with far less violence.
