To Their Higher Selves Poem by Francis Duggan

Cattle eat grain, grass and silage and hay
And humans like me eat the meat of their kind every day
For us for to live animals, birds and fish have to die
To say most of us are not carnivore would be telling a lie
To feed the rising human population millions of other life forms are killed every day
They are raised in crowded enclosures and treated in a cruel way
As a fish and meat eater i too cannot deny
That in an indirect way human crimes against other life forms to me does apply
Why us humans at the top of the Worldwide food chain
Can be so cruel to innocent creatures beyond one to explain
Of cruelty to caged fowl and pigs raised in crates we so often hear of and read
It is not by good example us humans does lead
To human vegetarians respect is due
To their higher selves they try to remain as true.