Off the assembly line they role, bicycles and washing machines, lawn mowers and airplanes; manufactured in an endless variety of inanimate things. But when did a chicken or steer, a lamb or a hog, become merely an object, an unfeeling and unaware thing? Factory farming, growth hastened to maturity--hormone creativity; unnatural lives confined--defined, from birth to ignoble death. Amidst the mayhem of the cutter's knife, animal cries--bewildered eyes; maximum profit mentality--reality; indifferent to the difference between a lamb and a shovel-- a bleat or a scrape. Newborn calves isolated--violated, destined to die when three months old, throats slit hanging upside down. Unintended mercy--culpability; veal all that remains to justify the pain. Does the tender pink flesh lessen the suffering, do we compliment the chef? Inhumanity served medium rare. Animals possess rights beyond human selection or rejection; though we as a species create misery in denial of shared presence--essence; with impunity and separate from the system we all share. Our common bond trivialized--unrealized as by virtue of no virtue; altruism viewed with open disdain--in vain. While the cruelty continues unabated--unsatiated tho all life related; animals alive and sentient yet demeaned and mistreated, abused and confused, crying out thing--machine.