Has the RSPCA abandoned those animals that need them most?

According to George Monbiot of the Guardian,

“…the deepest and most wide-ranging report yet conducted into something called RSPCA Assured. When you see meat or fish or eggs in the supermarket, you might find the RSPCA’s stamp of approval on the packaging, telling you that the animals they came from benefited from “high welfare” farming. It might seem odd that an organization devoted to animals is promoting their exploitation and killing. It seems odder still when you discover that this “high welfare” farming includes massive factory farms, indistinguishable from the norm, in which animals live short, distressing lives before being trucked away to be stunned and slaughtered.”

You can read the full report here – https://www.animalrising.org/_files/ugd/80f7b1_312aaf59f84e462fa13ae8d355c2cf02.pdf.

It is my own opinion that factory farms are abhorrent!  A global scourge upon our planet arguably as bad as any pandemic. A human intervention of nature born out of pure, unadulterated greed for money and power. A legacy that one day in the distant future, after the last “Auschwitz for animals” is shut down, we will look back on this period of our history with torment and shame.

Monbiot goes on to say,

“Animal Rising reporters conducted 60 investigations across 45 Assured farms. Expert assessors concluded that in many cases the farms not only failed to meet the RSPCA criteria, but didn’t even achieve the legal standard for animal welfare. Altogether, they alleged 280 legal breaches”.

The RSPCA, an institution that has echoed in every household in Britain for 200 years, an institution that has become part of the concrete foundations that shore up society’s assuredness and reliance, that someone out there has a watchful eye on those storybook creatures that depend on genuine and inexhaustible patience and love.

But has time and bureaucracy eroded the principal values of this once respected institution? Have they become complacent? Or worse, bought by a global consortium hell bent on controlling the global distribution of food, with precious little regard for the misery inflicted upon millions of animals that often never even see daylight, and live their lives in incarceration, overcrowding and filth.

But money and wealth band together.  The supermarkets could exercise a fundamental change by merely adjusting their purchasing selection process.  But for them, and those factory farms, profit is everything, at any cost.

If you look at a map showing the extent of factory farms in Britain – https://www.ciwf.org.uk/our-campaigns/factory-farming-map/ – it’s not hard to see that it’s a long way back to the green-pastured animals of yesteryear.   But back we must go despite the price.  Have we gone too far? It would be a long road of resolve, determination and sacrifice, and right now, in a world in which people are increasingly distracted by news and entertainment, fake or otherwise, increasing pressure from the cost of living, and a lack of empathetic leadership, it’s hard to imagine a lasting bond of awareness and collective consciousness needed to drive this return to “civilization” forward.

Here is a short video by Amy Jones, a young photographer who is trying to raise consciousness towards this detestable industry –