as i travel, one place i always try to get to see is a local zoo. zoo's are a nice indicator of how a society treats animals. Nowday, some small older zoo's are undergoing renovations, recognizing the cruelty in keeping a lion or tiger caged in a 20 foot square room. Others are modifying there collection.. even as child, i hated that the bronz zoo didn't have panda's or kangaroos, but the zoo felt they could not provide the right habitate. In the 1950's, they started to reform the zoo, getting rid of cages, and replacing them with habitates, that sometimes made it harder to see the animals, but was great for the animals themselves. I am rather proud of the zoo, and how it treat the animals..
(one fall, an early cold snap froze one of the zoo's small lakes/ponds. on several connected island in the middle of the pond there was a gibbon "cage" (gibbons do not enter standing water if they can help it.) the gibbons, smart as can be, scampered across the ice, and made a get away! about 10 escaped before the thin ice cracked.. open cages do have some disadvantages.)
factory farming (there was a very candid article by Michael Pollan last month in NY Times Magazine.) is a form of cruelty to animals.
societies that practice cruelty, to animals, are half way to doing it to humans.
