The systematic and legalized use of sentient beings that have feelings to obtain commercial earnings has reached unimaginable proportions. Raised under aberrant conditions and killed to be sold as food and clothes, tortured and destroyed in laboratories, hunted for sport, forced to unnatural behaviors in circuses, imprisoned in zoos for 'education'. The list could go on. This exploitation, based on the arbitrary discrimination that animals are subjected to, is the cause for extreme suffering and misery. The oppression goes by so unnoticed for the common citizen that when animal activists refer to animal defense, the listeners only relate it to sentimental reasons pertaining to companion animals.

Slave trade, sale of women and children under patriarchal tyranny, the burning of witches, political, religious, racist and sexist persecutions. The fight for equality among the human beings is today still a draft. But although the Cartesian conclusions about animal insensibility, according to the current scientific investigations, can motivate laughter, animal slavery is kept under the most terrifying forms of cruelty. The law approves specicism establishing animals to be "things" at the disposal of the use and enjoyment of humanity. They, who are unable to organize themselves in rebellions or labor unions, and unable of being understood in their voiceless language, suffer and die. Milan Kundera says: "Man's true kindness can only be shown in an absolutely clean and free way in connection with whom does not represent any force. The true test of humanity's morality, the deepest (located to such a depth that escapes our perception), resides in its relationship with those that are at its will: the animals. And here was where man's fundamental downfall took place, so fundamental that all others derive from it". [Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Tusquets Editorial.]

Only when the economic interests allowed it, the dike that retained cleaner waters broke its doors: the idea of slavery as unjust and the need for its abolition, already developed in the philosophical context at the time, could prosper. In some things, it was then known, Aristotle had been wrong. The enormous benefits brought about by animals for those that exploit them – be it the avidity of their pockets or their glory or personal vanity -, cannot be compared. Of course, the other responsible part is the attitude of the consumers and their indifference to those that don't belong to our species. Because many are the hands that act through the hand that kills, that of the instigator and that of the accomplice, that of the coward and that of the indifferent one, what is common to all is their acting directed by the homo sapiens, the only being who is able to annihilate large numbers of those of his own species.

Unavoidable coincidence: The movement for Animal Rights accompanies the peak of environmentalist movements. Because either the biblical precept of dominating all living creatures was a bad advice, or was it tyrannically and unethically interpreted. Kundera once more: "Even from the Genesis it is written that God created Man entrusting him with power over birds, fish and animals. Of course, the Genesis was written by a man and not by a horse. There is no certainty whatsoever that God has indeed entrusted Man with the control over other beings. It seems rather, that Man invented God to turn the domination of the cow and the horse he had seized, sacred. Yes, the right to kill a deer or a cow is the only thing in which humanity agrees fraternally, even amidst the bloodiest wars". [Idem mentioned book] “Is this worthless application of violence on animals, along with the destruction of nature -like ecofeminists think -, a direct consequence of the patriarchal mentality? Will we continue telling children that the bad wolf ate Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother instead of telling them that wild wolves -only state in which they live according to their nature - are faithful and extremely affectionate beings towards their mates? Will they still believe that that confined and repressed being is a tiger instead of its ruins? Will they learn to respect other’s lives in the horror of vivisection?

Even if we don't see them, mutilations exist, the steel traps in forests, the lifelong heaping in tiny cages, the mortal agonies are there. Vivisection and torture. And even boredom and horror that encourages self-destruction. The industry and the so-called unselfish science, as thousands of individuals at a personal level, do not distinguish between the object table and the object cat. The relationship that they establish with the objects can be reduced to domain and possession. With the purpose of obtaining earnings, this relationship becomes war and property. It is true that many ignore the hidden hell. Scientific data from a battery of tests drawn up to determine the degree of pain, prove that all mammals fulfill amply the same level than that of the human being. The birds slightly less, the fish a little below that. The suffering could be worse than we suspect: Brigid Brophy stated that the non human animal, not capable of abstract reasoning, can suffer a bigger pain than that experienced by a human being. [' In Pursuit of a Fantasy', eds. Stanley and R. Godlovitch and John Harris,1971].

The groups that minimize and sustain animal slavery are involved in their own benefits. We believe that disclosing the different forms of exploitation will contribute to awaken the sensibility and reflection of those who, by misinformation or influence of the dominant culture, consent to this great iniquity.