New book condemns cruel farming and says we must redefine our relationship with animals

^{Do you really want to eat these lovely creatures? Photo: Richard Austin/Rex Features/AP Photo}

“How to Love Animals: In a Human-Shaped World” is a new book by the Financial Times star feature writer, Henry Mance. It is a plea for people to think more deeply about the creatures we share the planet with and to be more sensitive to their suffering. He is most vitriolic condemning farming.

Henry’s quest took him to an abattoir to watch sheep being stunned, their throats cut, then hung on hooks still quivering. He asks, “How did humans come to this?” He goes on a deer hunt that he doesn’t like: “How pathetic to pull the trigger.” He studies safari parks visited by 32 million people annually. “We are polluting our children’s minds” with these displays of imprisoned wildlife. Researching the book led Mance to convert from vegetarianism to veganism despite his wife, a vegetarian, saying “this is divorceable”.

^{“How to Love Animals” author condemns modern farming Photo: Pinterest}

He writes our relationship with animals is fraught with contradictions and governed “by traditional inertia”. We accept that this year 1.5 billion pigs will be slaughtered around the world. A quarter of mammals are facing extinction and rainforests disappear at the rate of a football pitch every six seconds.

Lifestock farming is ethically unacceptable. “If you really love animals, you cannot accept modern farming.” A billion chickens will be killed in the UK this year. “When we say meat is cheap, what we really mean is life is cheap”. By cutting out meat and diary, we can open our hearts to a more respectful relationship with our fellow creatures. We should look for ways to redefine our relationships with animals for ethical as well as environmental reasons.

^{Henry Mance, Media Correspondent, Financial Times Photo: FT}

Mance explores the conundrum: why do we love some animals but not others? He looks at our treatment of captive animals in laboratories and zoos and our encroachment on the natural world. He abhors the dark side of how we mutate species for certain looks or personality traits. Continually he zeros in on the meat and dairy industries: “If anyone wants to stop killing for pleasure we should focus on farming.” Mance complains that we do not see fish as individual animals that feel pain.

Embedded in “How to Love Animals” is a challenge to understand our own relationship with animals. Do we really love animals the way we say we do? Are we doing enough to protect the animals we profess to love? Mance writes, “”I hope for a future where humans recognise what we share with animals — where we put less effort into owning animals and more into accommodating them alongside us.”

How to Love Animals, In a Human-Shaped World, Henry Mance: Jonathan Cape. ISBN: 9781787332089