Horse racing involves the slaughter of tens of thousands of horses every year, across the globe perhaps hundreds. The fact that people are completely unaware of this, and the other ethical issues surrounding horse racing, prompted me to write this piece for Animal Liberation Queenslands newsletter.
Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come
I love how Safran Foer starts this book, talking about his grandmother's table. It gets very much to the heart of how, what seems an obvious improvement in the ethics of humanity, is actually so difficult. Caught up as we are in habit, story, family, friends, to make a change...