 A shocking confession from a prisoner reads, I've been confined for 27 years to a concrete box and prison staff treat me like an animal branded with a number. It's interesting that around the world we claim to be animal lovers and caretakers preaching that we look after animals with the best of welfare yet one of the worst ways a human can be treated is like an animal. This speaks volumes. Many times throughout the day I forget that I am human. When I try to remember, prison staff won't let me forget that I'm just another number. Here we can draw another parallel in the way that animals are objectified, ear tagged, branded and commodified. They are no longer a sentient being, but a unit of production. I never thought I'd be on the receiving end of a cattle prod. Here, incarcerated or viewed by prison officials as simply dollar signs with a certain price attached to them. Again, like animals in cell yards whose dismembered body parts will be sold in stores for a few bucks. It is easy to compare incarcerated people and animals, like zoo animals. Those of us behind bars are tagged with a permanent wristband identified by a number, caged and marched in single file through the feeding gates. All the things that I observed on the small Tennessee farm where I was raised as a child. Another profound connection, but it's important to note that the vast majority of farmed animals around the world are treated far, far worse than most human prisoners. Forced to live in conditions we wouldn't subject even the worst of criminals to. Another realization emerges about how innocent animals are treated. They are sent off to be killed, while he will live. Even prisoners on death row who are convicted of shocking crimes will be fed a last meal of their choice, which often contains the bodies of animals who have done nothing wrong at all. A blatant display of injustice right before our very eyes. I looked up the writer to see what he was convicted for. He is serving two life sentences for murder. This prisoner took someone's life, but the animals to whom he compares his harsh treatment and who are treated far, far worse committed no crime at all. They were just born into a species that humans have doomed to perpetual hell. Please don't be the reason animals are persecuted and treated well like animals. It's time we collectively change what it means to be treated like an animal. It's time to free the innocent from the chains our selfish desires have enslaved them into and respect their fundamental rights. It's time we collectively embrace the philosophy of veganism.