As the saying goes, when it comes to a breakfast of bacon and eggs, the chicken is involved but the pig is committed. A pig in a sow stall: The industrial scale processing of pigs, chickens and cattle would appal most people if they were exposed to the process. Credit:Aussie Farms Because I have a good idea about what happens between those characterful pigs and pork meat, I gave up eating meat. It was an incremental moral process which started 10 years ago and is now complete. I eat fish, lots of fish, but no red meat or pork, and no chicken unless it is the only option. Pigs are full of character and most breeds will readily become a part of a human family if allowed to, yet what the Australian people have tolerated for decades – pigs being raised for consumption in sow stalls in which they can barely move – is a stain on our nation. Australia is bipolar when it comes to the treatment of animals. We have one of the world's most entrenched systems of factory farming, where industrial scale processing of pigs, chickens and cattle would appal most people if they were exposed to the process, co-existing with one of the world's highest rates of animal companionship.

Almost two out of every three Australian households, 63 per cent, include at least one animal, 33 million of them, according to the RSPCA. This is almost 10 million more than the human population. Almost 40 per cent of households include a dog, there are about 4.2 million of them, and 29 per cent of households have a cat. They all certainly make their presence felt, as every animal owner can attest. Our household has changed this year since a little cat decided he wanted to live with us. His needs begin early and end late. I now suffer from cat lag. I have also started visiting the horse owned by the woman who sells me my cat food. When she bought the horse its owner was crying, and this is how she described her first encounters with her new horse: "He stood at the corner of his vast pasture screaming for her and holding vigil at the gate, waiting for days for her to come and fuss over him."

I go and feed him apples. Fortunately, he is not a racehorse. If you knew what happens to most horses bred for racing who can't run fast enough, it would change the way you think about racing. This is another way we casually avert our gaze from reality, for sake of convenience, cheap food, or entertainment. We can no longer avert our gaze from the realities of the greyhound racing industry. It is so weighed down by revelations of systemic animal cruelty, in addition to the corruption that has long been associated with the sport, that it will have trouble surviving. The demise of greyhound racing would be a marker of the social awakening that is gradually dismantling our selective amnesia about factory farming and commercial racing. We know things are bad, but most people don't want to know too much. I was recently on a farm where two orphaned lambs had been rescued and raised at the homestead. They are named Polly and Lilly. They live on the paddock next to the house. When I went to visit, Polly and Lilly, now grown, ambled over to say hello. They are part of the family.

I don't eat lamb. And I grew up eating lamb for the Sunday roast, and regard it as the best of meats. Chickens, we conveniently assume, are creatures with a very small brain, so it is fine to eat them without a thought. Our consumption of chicken has more than doubled to 40 kilograms a year over the past 35 years. But if you saw the conditions in which most chickens are kept, to keep costs down, you would be appalled. Cheap meat always comes at a price, and the price is high for the animal involved. Twitter: @Paul_Sheehan_