I watched the documentary Dominion on how the factory farm system treats animals. It’s brutal but important. It shows many graphic scenes so I know the link below won’t play inline, but the producers made it freely available. Click through to watch it online. I recommend watching Dominion when you’re ready for a sobering gut-punch you’ll wish you had watched earlier.

Why I recommend it

I last ate meat in 1990, went vegan several years ago, and when vegetarian at less animal products than anyone I’d met who called themselves vegan (different people seem to define zero differently), but I don’t consider eating meat immoral or wrong in any absolute sense. When I read James Suzman writing about people in hunter-gatherer societies hunting as their ancestors did for hundreds of thousands of years, I can see some cultures where eating meat doesn’t seem a moral issue.

In practice, though, in the modern world avoiding funding animal cruelty is difficult. Dominion shows the perils in buying meat today. You almost can’t avoid funding inhumane behavior.

Also, learning about systems makes me see individuals within a system as less guilty as some do. As W. Edwards Deming said, “A bad system will beat a good person every time.” I do think of the people at the top of a system as able to make an outsized difference—the people who decided to make the slaughterhouses and other buildings. Also, people who pay for most meat pay to keep this system running.

We can make a difference and change this system through our choices and actions.

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