Perhaps the most compelling reason for giving up meat is to show kindness to our fellow animals. We care about animals. We know that they are smart, playful, and loving. We know that they are capable of feeling joy and pain. That’s why, in children’s books and nursery rhymes, we think of farm animals happily being raised on open pastures. On milk cartons and egg boxes, we see cartoon pictures of smiling cows and chickens. We tell ourselves that “happy” animals make “delicious” meat.

Unfortunately, a vast majority of the hundreds of million animals we consume each year comes from factory farms - large, filthy warehouses where animals are deprived of everything natural to them, including sunlight, family, and even the ability to turn around. This allows a single farmer to manage up to thousands of animals at once, which is the only affordable way to meet the global demand for meat.

The consequence, however, is that these animals are treated as objects that are incapable of feeling anything. They suffer neglect and mutilation. They die slow, agonising deaths from overcrowding during transportation. And the only thing that awaits the survivors is a gruesome death in the slaughterhouse.

Every single animal experiences the kind of unimaginable pain that matches or even eclipses that of the worst forms of human torture. Every single animal leads an unfulfilling life without regard for their emotions and feelings. And this happens to more than 150 billion animals globally, every single year.

Contrary to what we believed as children, there is no love for these factory-farmed animals whatsoever. Make the compassionate choice and choose to go veg.