Understanding Animal-people Emotions: Books by Dr. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (vegan), Part 2 of 2

Dr. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson is an ardent vegan and animal-people rights advocate. Since the early 1990s, he has written a number of books on the emotional life of animal-people and explored our relationship to the people from the animal kingdom.

“I was visiting an animal sanctuary called ‘Animal Place’ in Northern California. It was a couple who started it, Kim Sturla and Ned Buyukmihci. When animals are on a sanctuary, they’re very different. They recognize that they’re safe. They are much happier, it’s obvious. And then I had the same experience with a cow once. And I wandered in, and they said, ‘Well, we have a model dairy, and we’d like you to visit.’ And I suddenly stopped, and I said, ‘What’s that terrible sound I hear?’ It sounded like screaming. ‘That’s a mother cow that’s calling her calf.’ She said, ‘Well she’s just given birth, and we need her milk, and she wants to give the milk to her calf.’ I mean, it was just obvious to anybody that it was cruel. When you realize the amount of suffering involved in any animal agriculture of any kind, it’s immense.”

“I thought ‘The Face on Your Plate’ maybe wasn’t the best title because people don’t like to think that there’s a face on their plate, but there is, clearly. I mean, there’s a being there who’s been slaughtered for your pleasure. ‘Fish are cold-blooded; they don’t feel anything.’ That’s completely false and we know that now. Culum Brown, a very well-known scientist, professor of biology, has talked about fish emotions, and fish cognition, and fish memory, and he said fish have enormous memories. They have to, to be able to navigate and stay with the flock.”

“Well, my wish for humanity was to stop denial. But if you can’t do that, at least change, make a change; it’s not so difficult. And every country I’ve been in the last few years, there are more and more vegan restaurants, there are more and more people interested in it – it’s a movement that will not die. Sooner or later, the world will go vegan. I’m sure of it.”