Rudra Krishna

I don’t know where you get the impression that animal activists don’t oppose killing of animals for the meat industry. Combating the meat industry – by exposing abuse in slaughterhouses, advocating vegetarianism and veganism, and lobbying for tighter legal regulations – is one of the top priorities for the animal rights movement worldwide, and while not all self-professed animal activists are vegetarian a great many are, or are at least trying to give up meat. However, legally banning it isn’t practically feasible so long as the majority of people in most countries eat meat and animal agriculture companies remain politically powerful. If meat-eating can ever be outlawed, it won’t be for a very long time, until the majority of people have willingly chosen vegetarianism for themselves. Should activists not try to achieve any other good for animals in the decades or centuries between now and then? With regard to sports like jallikattu, or rodeo in my own country (United States), yes it’s true that the level of cruelty and number of animals harmed is far less than in the meat industry. However, it’s hard to imagine that most people will oppose killing animals for food behind closed doors if they’re okay with tormenting them for fun in public; public forms of animal cruelty are therefore important to combat because they set the floor for what’s considered socially acceptable to do to animals and why.

All that said, we are at least in agreement that people who claim to care about animals shouldn’t eat them. I know for a fact that Rudra Krishna, the author of this piece, is vegan. Many of the other authors featured on the Animal People Forum are also vegetarian or vegan, including myself, and our organization Animal People specifically endorses vegetarianism.