Charlotte Frank

No matter how good the climbing, beautiful scenery does not make exploitation beautiful.

Climbing gives us freedom, yet these landscapes are filled with animals whose own freedom, bodies and lives have been taken from them. It is not hidden. We have simply normalised it enough to look at cows, barns or calf hutches without thinking about what it means for them.

For a cow to produce milk, she first has to give birth. Cows are repeatedly made pregnant, their calves are usually separated shortly after birth, and their milk is sold to humans. Many males are slaughtered young or raised for beef, while females often enter the same cycle as their mothers. When the mothers are no longer profitable, they are killed too.

Some cows are confined, while others get pasture and the label “better welfare”. Less suffering is better for the individual, but grass and sunshine do not make exploitation ethical. They make for great PR and, at best, turn her into a “premium slave”.

She is still property. Her body and reproduction are controlled for someone else’s benefit, and someone else decides when her life ends. A prettier version of ownership is still ownership.

If the victims were human, we would never excuse slavery because it was legal, traditional or socially accepted. Slavery has been all three, so “everyone does it” is not the brilliant moral argument people think it is.

Humans and other animals do not need to be identical. There is no morally relevant difference between us that could justify owning, exploiting or killing them. They are sentient individuals with lives that matter to them, just as ours matter to us.

This system runs because people pay for it. Every animal product creates demand for more animals to be bred, exploited and killed. You cannot claim to respect animals while financing the opposite. Calling it respect does not magically make it respectful. It makes it hypocrisy.

Veganism is not a diet or personal preference. It means rejecting animal exploitation and is the moral baseline other animals should be able to expect from us.

Stop being the reason animal slavery exists aka be vegan!