: I'm sure you will find this all very hard to accept but, I have never seen an animal, other than a human, display a sense of betrayal. I can not ascribe to any philosophy which dares to compare the consumption of an omnivorous diet with the genocide that occurred during the second world war. I would be saddened to see you present that arguement to a survivor.Whether or not you have seen the sense of betrayal, we are betraying animals by keeping them and killing them in such a cruel way. As to comparisons with genocide in the 2nd world war, well I personally wouldn't make the comparison, but only because I think there's a difference in the state of mind of the people doing the killing. Most of us are brought up to think of the killing of animals as acceptable, but the killing of humans as unnacceptable. Therefore people who work in slaughterhouses probably don't think too much about what they are doing, whereas people who kill other people probably first have to suppress the feeling that what they are doing is wrong.
However having said that, animals are being killed in numbers far greater than the numbers of people killed during the 2nd world war and for the animals that are being killed it is no comfort that humans find it acceptable behaviour. So if some people feel they want to make the comparison I think that's ok. It's not a sign of disrespect to the people, but a sign of respect for both people and animals to live their lives in peace.
Also interestingly, a long time ago now, I went on a march against vivisection where I met a man who had been in a concentration camp, and he _did_ view experiments on animals as being comparable to what went on in concentration camps during the 2nd World War. So don't assume that everyone who has suffered such a fate would be insulted by comparisons between human and animal suffering.
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