The images in the following program are very sensitive and may be as disturbing to viewers as they were to us. However, we have to show the truth about cruelty to animals.

This is the Stop Animal Cruelty series on Supreme Master Television. On today's program we feature an interview with an acclaimed author from the United States, Dr. Jeffrey Masson. After many years of teaching and working in the field of psychoanalysis, Dr. Masson began studying the emotional lives of animals in the 1990s.

Over the years he has written nine books, including the international best sellers, When Elephants Weep and Dogs Never Lie About Love. In his recently published book, The Face on Your Plate, he explains how our food choices profoundly affect animals, our health and our planet.

Jeffrey Masson now shares how his research led him to change his diet and adopt a vegan lifestyle, free of animal products.

I think there are very good reasons to stop eating any animal product. I would go a bit further than vegetarianism because I remember many years ago, I met Cesar Chavez, a wonderful man, and said to him that we had something in common. We are both vegetarian. And he said, “But do you eat eggs and milk?” And I said, “Sure.” He said, “Well, you’re causing more suffering by doing that than if you were to just eat meat.”

It stayed in the back of my mind and now I realize it’s because he was visiting many of these farms where chickens are kept and ducks are kept and of course dairy and cattle are kept. And he saw the conditions, not only of the workers but of the animals themselves. And he was a man of great empathy and compassion. And he realized, "This is wrong."

I had to actually see it with my own eyes. I had to visit. It wasn’t enough for somebody to tell me or to read about it. I had to actually see what kind of life dairy cows live. And the minute I saw that, I realized this cannot be right. There is something terribly wrong with inflicting this kind of a life on another sentient living being.

Bovines are intelligent and sensitive, with complex inner lives. Confining a cow 24-hours a day, 7-days a week in an extremely small, dark stall, forcibly keeping her pregnant for much of her life until she is slaughtered, and dragging away her baby calf when he or she is born, imposes unconscionable cruelty to this noble animal.

Most of us simply don’t want to know about the horrific conditions under which these animals live. People don’t realize that when a calf is born in a dairy farm, she is immediately separated from her mother. She doesn’t get to drink the milk that’s meant for her. And you can hear them calling each other sometimes for weeks, or even months.

The male calves, what happens to them on a dairy farm? They’re of no use. One or two are kept to impregnate the cows. The others are slaughtered. They’re used for veal. So they live under these horrendous conditions for a few weeks or a few months at most, and then they’re slaughtered.

So if we know this, if we bother to inform ourselves, most of us would not consent to eat meat. If we had all the information we needed, most of us would never want to touch an animal who's been killed for us ever again.

In hatcheries, thousands upon thousands of hens are kept in massive windowless sheds, row on row, crammed into utterly filthy cages. The helpless birds on the bottom are covered with feces from the defecating hens stacked above them and the air is so foul with ammonia that breathing is difficult. Male chicks that hatch have no value to the egg or meat industry as they cannot produce eggs and do not grow fast enough to be murdered for meat. So what happens to them?

On chicken farms where they’re laying eggs, when they have chickens that are born – half are female, half are male. What do they do with the male? They macerate them! They put them in these giant machines that simply crush them alive! How could anybody do that?

What about eating eggs labeled “free range” or “organic” from hens kept under so-called “humane” conditions?

“Free range” is not regulated by the (US) federal government, so it can mean anything you want. And I have visited a few farms where they say, “Our chickens are free range. Chickens laying the eggs get to go outdoors.” And sometimes it means a space this big, or they are out for five minutes. They are by no means living the life they evolved to live.

Jeffrey Masson has noted a deep similarity between humans and animals in terms of their fear of death.

I have recently come to believe that animals actually undergo a kind of trauma as their death approaches, the same trauma that humans would. The film called “(Saving) Private Ryan,” there is a terrible scene where the American soldier is slowly killed with a knife and in the moment, in extremis, when he’s about to die, he calls for his mother.

I asked a few people I know who’ve been in the army and they say “Well that’s very common, when somebody is about to die they call for their mother.” What they’re doing is calling for help. Now I learned that when pigs are slaughtered, the screaming, it sounds like a child being murdered. They scream.

And I asked some scientists who were not particularly concerned with animal suffering and I said, “Why do they scream like that?” And they said, “Oh, don’t you know? They are calling for help!” I said, “What do you mean?” They said, “Well, in the wild when a pig, a small pig, a baby pig, is being attacked it gives this high pitch squeal and that immediately calls the herd, and the whole herd comes thundering over and they protect the baby.”

And I know that even elephants will not approach an enraged boar or sow when they’re protecting their young. So it’s a very effective way of calling for help. So it’s really sad to recognize that when these animals are being killed today by us, they’re basically calling for their mother. They’re saying, “Please help me, don’t kill me!” And when you realize that, I don’t see how anybody of compassion could go ahead and just take their life.

What about consuming the flesh of animals who have been raised on what are termed “organic farms?” Do these animals actually lead “happy lives” as the meat industry would like us all to believe?

I’ve seen ducks, for example, on the so-called “humane” farms, “organic” farms. And these ducks are near a pond, but are never allowed to go into the pond. Well, a duck is meant to swim! It’s meant to live in a pond. It’s meant to fly. It’s meant to go wherever it wants. It bonds with another duck. That’s the life a duck was meant to live. So a duck cannot be happy living in a cage, and killed at a few weeks old.

To talk about "They’ve led a happy life" is sheer hypocrisy! It’s a misuse of language. We should not use these words about animals that are there to be killed. They are death camps. They’re not summer camps, they’re not going home to their mother and father at the end. They’re going to be killed. What kind of a camp would we send our children to that promised to slaughter them at the end of the term?

The word “humane” should be reserved for when we feel compassion. And when we feel compassion, we don’t kill. And all of these animals that have been quote “humanely raised,” are raised to be slaughtered. That, in my opinion, is not humane.

Some people believe that it is acceptable to consume fish, saying that fish do not feel pain when they are caught or killed. However this view is rooted in ignorance and does not reflect the intense anguish experienced by these innocent beings when they are taken from the water.

Anybody who’s ever fished, I only did it once in my life, I’d never do it again, but that fish is feeling pain. They’re gasping for air, somebody comes and hits them with a board, it takes them a long time to die. They’re in agony, just like any other animal. They are being traumatized, they do not want to die. They know they are dying. They fight with every ounce in their body not to die. I can see no reason whatever to eat fish.

The meat industry not only causes unbearable suffering to farm animals, it also destroys the lives of our fellow human beings who kill these animals and thus constantly witness pain, death and agony.

Award-winning American author and chief investigator for the Humane Farming Association Gail Eisnitz, who interviewed many abattoir workers in the United States for her book, Slaughterhouse, reports that many of them turn to alcohol or drugs in an attempt to forget the murdering they do all day.

Do you know what the turnover rate on these places is in a year? 100%. Nobody wants to do this! They do it because they have to, to make a living for a short time. And they pay them minimum wages, and horrendous conditions.

These men, doing it to provide food for their family, within a year they quit. They can’t stand it. We as species, were not made to kill life to this extent. We’re simply not evolved to do that. We are not meant to be beings who kill other beings.

As more and more people come to fully understand the cruelty and oppression inherent in the way we treat most animals, Dr. Masson believes that society will change in the future and animals will be rightfully viewed as our equals.

I’m absolutely convinced people will look back and wonder “How could we have done this?” In exactly the same way that we talk about slavery or homophobia or sexism. How could we have been so blind?

Many thanks Dr. Jeffrey Masson and all others who share their wisdom and help people to realize the barbarism and savagery of the animal agriculture industry. Through your courageous and diligent efforts, you are helping to create a world soon to come where all embrace the loving organic vegan diet and live in peace and harmony with animals.

Be Veg, Go Green 2 Save the Planet.

For more details on Dr. Masson, please visit JeffreyMasson.com
Books by Dr. Masson are available at the same website

Thank you for your presence on today's episode of Stop Animal Cruelty. Coming up next is Enlightening Entertainment, after Noteworthy News. May you live each day with joy, wisdom and nobility.