This Is Vegan Propaganda (& Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You)

by Ed Winters

As consumers, our cognitive dissonance means we often believe these are just bad apples, that they don’t represent the industry as a whole and don’t reveal a systemic problem. And yet by this point there have surely been enough bad apples to suggest that the whole tree is rotten. Another good example of the cognitive dissonance of consumers is demonstrated by the story of a man in Florida who pleaded guilty to nine animal-cruelty charges for killing nine ducklings by running them over with a lawnmower and macerating them. He was sentenced to a year in jail, with three years of probation, and was ordered to have a mental-health evaluation.7 However, is it not jarring that macerating nine ducklings constitutes nine separate charges of animal cruelty but killing 7 billion male chicks every single year as soon as they are born, often by macerating them in grinders, is not only viewed as acceptable but is often defended by people who claim that it is those who do not believe in killing male chicks who are extreme? How can it be wrong to kill nine ducklings but not billions of male chicks, especially considering both acts are ultimately needless? This example demonstrates an obvious contradiction, which speaks to the wider issue of our cognitive dissonance in relation to animal product consumption. The reality is that if we took the legally sanctioned practices from the animal farming industries and then applied them to other situations, we would think those practices horrendous.