Slavery

About a month ago, my girlfriend read "Skinny Bitch". It's a book that tries to make a case for a vegan lifestyle. They discuss slaughtering of meat in detail. She was trying to get me to give up meat, but I wouldn't listen. I told her that those "people" exaggerate the situation, and that I wouldn't give up meat.
I've always considered myself to be an animal lover. I came to a startling realization after watching Earthlings. At first, I thought I was a hypocrite, but then I realized that I was just ignorant. I was totally oblivious to animal suffering at the hands of humans world wide. As Speigel said, "the parallels of experience are numerous", between animal suffering and slavery of millions of native Africans by American plantation owners in the antebellum South.
Bentham says that animals are, "degraded into the class of things." (312) Basically, we just use up animals for our own selfish purposes, with no regards for their feelings. We exploit them by forcing them to race for our enjoyment, separating mothers from young at auction, branded them as property, torture/slaughter them for our food, torturing them for their skins, and perform terrible experiments on them. Likewise, native Africans were brought to this country and exploited by their white masters. Slaves were forced to dance for our enjoyment, separate from their spouses at auction, branded by their masters, and whipped or possibly killed for "misbehaving".