Glenn's blog

Recently I had an occasion to feel sad when I heard that a friend of mine had lost a loved one. I felt incredibly sad for him, for his loss.

This got me thinking about how I feel when people or animals die. I've always thought that I felt sad for the one who died, that they were no longer with us. But now I'm realizing that I really feel sad for the loss of the living.

The times when I've felt the saddest at times of death have been when I empathized with the survivor.

I think this is also what bothered me most deeply about watching animals get killed for food. They almost always had children or mothers who were going to miss them - who would feel that loss. Perhaps that's one of the cruelest parts of animal farming - repeating this loss over and over again.