horror in the eyes of a gentle being. as the butchers blade approaches to end a life of torment. skin is torn, a final cry in anguish. all that could have been fades as a tortured heart beats for the last time. a living creature that could have been loved and felt love in return. confined to a waking nightmare of loneliness, abuse and brutality. deprived of freedom, surrounded by filth and knowing nothing but pain. a tragic, hopeless existence doomed to end in a violent death. sacrified by compassionless hands on the bloody alters of convenience, apathy and greed. mutilated, carved limb from limb into a lifeless pile of flesh, to satisfy the urge to dine on the dead. a systematic atrocity of domination and destruction. creating famine, pestilence and suffering. an endless slaughter perpetuated by merciless killers devoid of any reverence with no justification beyond might makes right. and there is not one second of this inhumanity that is righteous, necessary or excuseable. every single instance, every animal murdered in terror is an act of cruelty without beauty and a death for no reason. every meal that comes at the price of a life is complicity in a holocaust that is beyond comparison and the cold, callous, thoughtless continuation of a vicious ritual of bloodlust.