It’s not a stretch to say that people love their dogs and cats. In fact, we love our companion animals so much that we treat them like members of our family.





It should come as no surprise that a survey by American Pet Products Association, featured in last month’s MarketWatch , found that more than 50 percent of people with dogs and 38 percent of people with cats in the U.S. buy their animals gifts for Christmas or Hanukkah.





What’s wrong with this?





Nothing, really, except that moments before millions of people give their companion animals a holiday gift, they eat a holiday ham that came from an innocent animal who was tortured, and quite frankly wasn’t that different from the dogs or cats they adore.





You see, the animals we raise and kill for food are just as sensitive and intelligent as the dogs and cats we consider family. Chickens, for example, can recognize more than 100 individuals, cows form close friendships, and pigs are thought to have the intelligence of a three-year-old child.









The fact is that if we treated just one dog or cat the way the meat, dairy, and egg industries treat billions of animals, we’d be behind bars for animal abuse, and rightly so.





The blatant hypocrisy of treating dogs and cats like family while subjecting farmed animals to unspeakable cruelties is something we must face.





First and foremost, no one needs to eat animal products to survive; it’s quite the opposite. In fact, there are tremendous health and environmental benefits to ditching animal products. Right now, millions of people are thriving on a delicious and humane plant-based diet.





If you love your dogs or cats and see them as unique, sensitive, and intelligent beings, it’s time you opened your eyes and started seeing farmed animals the same way.





Now go get your cat a laser pointer, your dog a ball, and yourself a vegan roast



