The problem of animal abuse from Abhidhamma perspective is a multidimensional one.
It’s like that old story of an elephant and the five blind men. Grabbing the tail of an elephant and concluding that the elephant is like a rope is called Suksham Satya (सुक्ष्म सत्य, ~microscopic truth). This may lead to Mithya Ditti (मिथ्या दिट्ठी, wrong views) depending upon the subject. Comprehending the elephant as a whole and understanding the infinite interactions between all its anatomical parts is called Bhasman Satya (भासमान सत्य, ~macroscopic truth).
Bhasman Satya and Suksham Satya are both truths, but then again, there is a difference between the truth and the true. A wise man sees both and sees the relationship between both. This will lead to Samma Ditthi (सम्मा दिट्ठी, Right View) depending upon the subject.
Animal abuse is composed of many anatomical parts, of which cancer, global warming, global hunger, cruelty, etc may be some.
We all get victimized by our own philosophies. A man who believes that animals can be slaughtered and builds a slaughterhouse does not realize that he is not building the slaughterhouse for the animals, he's building it for himself. Because killing of sentient beings leads to Vipaka Karma (विपाका कर्म)(There are 4 karmas out of which Vipaka is most dangerous and leads to rebirth), he will be reborn in this world as some animal, only to be slaughtered in some slaughterhouse. Because that’s how he left Samsara (world). This process repeats for Asankha Janmas (असंख जन्मा, countless lives) till all his/her Vipaka Karma is mitigated. It's like when you leave your house for a party. You ensure that everything's well secured because you know you will be returning back to this house. We will all return back to the animal world at one point of time or another till we're enlightened.
The Samsaric atmosphere also gets permeated with the vibrations of the sentient beings in misery and agony. In Mangal Maitry Meditation (which must be practiced after Vipassana if you're feeling good), we try to generate a positive vibration and permeate the atmosphere with it. Billions of sentient beings agonized, terrorized, tortured and slayed sets the mood wrong.
Killing at this scale also destroys the human form due to climate change, heart diseases, cancers, diabetes etc. - which is very grave. Nirvana can only be achieved in the human form. If the form is lost, we'll be struck for another 4.8 billion years in some planet as some life-form going through Samsara again and again and again.....and again.
Helping kill billions of animals and humans by our ignorant behavior leads to exponentially rising accumulation of Vipaka Karma ad. infinity. (According to the doctrine of keeping Sheela (शील) pure, ie, don't break Sheela, help others break, etc.). Realize the hopeless situation.
If on the other hand a person creates an environment that is cruelty free, he will have to come back and reap the fruits of this cruelty free environment.
According to Abhidhamma, a seeker of Nirvana avoids both these options. Let us say hypothetically we live the Abhidhamma to the letter. We minimize all killing, including plants, and mitigate the karma generated by killing plants/unintentional killing (of bacterias/insects) by meditation, and become perfect but not yet liberated, then also four miseries we have to go through - birth, disease, old age and death. No one can avoid this in the Samsara, not even a Buddha.
So, just because there is no evidence that raping a two year old child is bad for my sexual health, there are plenty of common sense/Abhidhamma reasons for not doing so. But none of them would convince or convert a pedophile. Everyone has a perfectly logical reason to do what they do.
This is the nature of Samsara - Dukkha.
There is no word in any language to convey the fortune of those who have realized that universal compassion (not just compassion) will lead to the cessation of this mindless cycle we're trapped in. Lucky indeed are those who have understood the Dharma. Librated indeed are those who practice it.
For the sake of love of purity, the Bodhisattva should refrain from eating flesh, which is born of semen, blood, etc. For fear of causing terror to living beings let the Bodhisattva, who is disciplining himself to attain compassion, refrain from eating flesh...It is not true that meat is proper food and permissible when the animal was not killed by himself, when he did not order others to kill it, when it was not specially meant for him. Again, there may be some people in the future who...being under the influence of the taste for meat will string together in various ways sophistic arguments to defend meat eating. But...meat eating in any form, in any manner, and in any place is unconditionally and once for all prohibited...Meat eating I have not permitted to anyone, I do not permit, I will not permit. - Lord Buddha, Lankavatara Sutra
If one is trying to practice meditation and is still eating meat, he would be like a man closing his ears and shouting loudly, and then asserting that he heard nothing. - Lord Buddha, Surangama Sutra
One must not deliberately kill any living creature either by committing the act oneself, instructing others to kill, or approving of or participating in acts of killing. To completely abstain from the act of killing directly and indirectly, eat only pure vegetarian food. - Lord Buddha
The eating of flesh extinguishes the seed of great compassion. - Lord Buddha, Mahaparinirvana Sutra
A man is not Holy because he injures living creatures; because he has pity on all living creatures, therefore is a man called Holy. - Lord Buddha, Dhammapada
He who has given up harming creatures, whether feeble or strong, who neither kills nor causes to kill - him do I call a "brahman". - Lord Buddha, Dhammapada
By harming living beings not thus is one a noble man. By harmlessness towards all beings one is then called a noble man. - Lord Buddha, Dhammapada
The reason for practicing dhyana and seeking to attain samadhi is to escape from the suffering of life, but in seeking to escape from suffering ourselves why should we inflict it upon others? Unless you can so control your minds that even the thought of brutal unkindness and killing is abhorred, you will never be able to escape from the bondage of the world's life...After my paranirvana in the last kalpa different ghosts will be encountered everywhere deceiving people and teaching them that they can eat meat and still attain enlightenment. How can a bhikshu, who hopes to become a deliverer of others, himself be living on the flesh of other sentient beings? - Lord Buddha, Surangama Sutra
All tremble at violence; all fear death. Putting oneself in the place of another, one should not kill nor cause another to kill. - Lord Buddha, Dhammapada
One who, while seeking happiness, oppresses with violence other living beings who also desire happiness, will not find happiness hereafter. - Lord Buddha, Dhammapada
Let him not destroy, or cause to be destroyed, any life at all, nor sanction the acts of those who do so. Let him refrain from even hurting any creature, both those that are strong and those that tremble in the world. - Lord Buddha, Sutta-Nipata
All beings tremble before violence. All fear death, all love life. See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do? - Lord Buddha
To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana. - Lord Buddha
Anyone familiar with the numerous accounts of the Buddha's extraordinary compassion and reverence for living beings - for example his insistence that his monks strain the water they drink lest they inadvertently cause the death of any micro-organisms could never believe that he would be indifferent to the sufferings of domestic animals caused by their slaughter of food - Roshi Philip Kapleau, in To Cherish All Life
In China and Japan the eating of meat was looked upon as an evil and was ostracised. The eating of meat gradually ceased (around 517) and then tended to become general. It became a matter of course not to use any kind of meat in the meals of temples and monasteries. - Encyclopaedia of Buddhism
I have enforced the law against killing certain animals and many others, but the greatest progress of righteousness among men comes from the exhortation in favour of non-injury to life and abstention from killing all living beings. - Ashoka, Emperor of India, from Ashoka's Edicts
The inhabitants (of India) are numerous and happy...Throughout the country the people do not kill any living creature, nor drink intoxicating liquor...they do not keep pigs and fowl, and do not sell live cattle; in the markets there are no butcher shops and no dealers in intoxicating drink...Only the chandalas (lowest cast) are fisherman and hunters and sell flesh meat. - famous 4th century Chinese Buddhist traveller Fa-hsien
Most of us are able to obtain an abundance of nonflesh foods that can keep us robustly healthy our whole lives. With such a variety of nonanimal foods available, who would choose to support the slaughter mills and foster the misery involved in factory farming by continuing to eat flesh?...It is sad to see how many American Buddhists are managing to find a self-satisfying accommodation to eating meat...[In the first Bodhisattva vow of Mahayana Buddhism] we commit our compassion to all beings, not just humans. Eschewing meat is one way to express that commitment to the welfare of other creatures. - Bodhin Kjolhede, Abbot of the Rochester Zen Center and Zen master, from The Buddhist Review
We must look deeply. When we buy something or consume something, we may be participating in an act of killing. This precept [non-killing] reflects our determination not to kill, either directly or indirectly, and also to prevent others from killing. - The Venerable Thich Nhat Hahn
In every country in the world, killing human beings is condemned. The Buddhist precept of non-killing extends even further, to include all living beings. - The Venerable Thich Nhat Hahn, Vietnamese Zen master, from Interbeing: Fourteen Guidelines for Engaged Buddhism
Feeling unbearable compassion for all animals in the world who are killed for food, I went back before the Jowo Rinpoche [a great statue of the Buddha in Lhasa], prostrated myself, and made this vow: 'From today on, I give up the negative act that is eating the flesh of beings. - Shabkar Tsogdruk Rangdrol, Tibetan Buddhist Master
From 676 to 737 A.D., under the Japanese emperor Tenmu, the eating of all meat, including fish, was outlawed in Japan. From 737 A.D. until the late 19th century the eating of all meat other than seafood was not permitted. But even then, fish was generally only eaten by most people on special occasions. Dogen, the founder of the Soto Zen school of Buddhism, the main sect of Zen Buddhism, in the 12th century, instituted the requirements of a vegan diet for all his students, and that practice is still followed by observant Zen practitioners.
