Dark storm clouds appropriately loomed over Fair Oaks Farms when I visited the once-megapopular megadairy this week.

After reading several “udderly” silly billboards along Interstate 65, I finally arrived at the touristy destination site in rural Newton County. I wondered how many protesters would be demonstrating outside. I counted zero, with only a police vehicle parked at the edge of the lot.

I’ve been to this property twice before, the first as a chaperon for an elementary school field trip and later to dine at its adjacent Farmhouse Restaurant. I recall what’s billed as a “Dairy Adventure” to be overly cute and cleverly marketed with its “Cowfe,” “Mooville” and other pun-heavy amenities.

As we know, there was nothing cutesy about the video released earlier this month by the animal welfare group, Animal Recovery Mission, showing Fair Oaks workers physically abusing calves. It led to animal cruelty charges against three workers and repeated apologies from the farms’ owner. Some retailers have since pulled Fairlife milk from their stores, and a lawsuit has been filed accusing the company of fraud over its keenly marketed treatment of cows.

Since the video was released — not coincidentally at the beginning of National Dairy Month — more than two dozen readers asked why I haven’t weighed in on this issue, regardless which side I support. (I was on sick leave when the milk hit the fan.)

“The Fair Oaks Farms charade is a sham. This video proves it. I’m outraged!” one reader told me.

Another reader countered: “Please consider it is possible that this video is misleading and misrepresenting a really great organization that has done great things for the community.”

Yes, I watched the video. Yes, it made me cringe. And yes, I still devour animal products — milk, pork, beef, poultry, you name it — with absolutely no thought how it gets delivered into my mouth. In fact, I just downed a chicken sandwich without once wondering how that chicken was treated by humans before it became my dinner.

Call me callous. Call me cold-hearted. Or simply call me American. As the country adage goes, just don’t call me late for dinner if there’s meat and milk on the table.

While you’re criticizing me for my lack of concern over animal welfare, I’m calling out all those meat-lovin’, milk-drinkin’ consumers who are now posing as lifelong vegans or PETA activists. (PETA: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, for all you outraged animal lovers who had no idea.)

My outrage is for those of you whose outrage only reflects your USDA-graded hypocrisy. We are a nation of carnivorous hypocrites who enjoy salivating for animal welfare while swallowing animal parts and products until we die — historically by our own addiction to these animal products.

So I don’t buy your feigned anger or dramatic shock by this video or other peeks into how our proverbial sausage is made. We honestly don’t care, and deep down we know it.

We have no idea how many animals have been abused, mistreated, slaughtered, butchered and processed simply to feed our addiction.

For example, I drink at least a gallon of milk each week. I have since I was a teenager. These days, I drink organic milk, for its discernible taste not for its debatable ethics.

I have no idea how these organic-milk cows are treated by dairy farmers. I’d like to think they’re pampered with only the best feed money can buy, top-notch conditions designed for house pets, and lullabied to sleep every night by the farmers’ young children. Isn’t such a fairy tale rationalization how we lullaby ourselves to sleep after consuming a daily smorgasbord of animal products? Sure it is.

We are a culture of milk-thirsty, bacon-addicted hypocrites, expressing manufactured indignation over animal cruelty claims while wiping the blood of butchered animals from our hands and mouths. And, if we rationalize enough, or if we’re delusional enough, wiping it from our conscience too.

I’ve been doing this for decades. You probably have too. Right? Right?

I care more about how my steak is cooked (medium well, please, just a hint of blood) than I do about how my steak was delivered to my bottomless plate. I’ve never seriously contemplated the well-being of animals that I consume, or their humane treatment before they’re slaughtered.

My breakfast mantra: “I’d like my bacon extra crispy please.” Heck, I’ve showed more compassion to cartoon animals than I have to the animals that satisfy my daily addiction to meat products and milk products. And you probably have too. “Poor Bambi!” we cry while shoving another drumstick into our mouth and downing it with chocolate milk.

Who knows how many chickens I’ve eaten in my lifetime? Or how many turkeys I’ve gobbled down. Or how many cattle I’ve consumed, one fast-food hamburger at a time. Truth is, I don’t want to know. You don’t want to know. We don’t want to know. It’s easier to pretend that we don’t know. (This is what addicts do, by the way.) If we did, all of our neatly processed and packaged rationalizations would be slaughtered with blood-splattered honesty.

I’m not saying I condone animal cruelty of any kind. I’m saying I’ve been conditioned to look the other way as long as I get my fix of meat and milk, among other animal products.

As activists wage war on animal agriculture, the world’s population is expected to increase to 9.7 billion by 2050, the United Nations said this week. How will we feed this many inhabitants using animal products? I have no idea. And we don’t care.

I don’t want to hear your hamfisted outrage unless you’ve stopped digesting animal products since the video was released, like Becky Joseph, of Hebron, said she has done.

“It’s been a lot easier than I thought it would be,” she told me. “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do but never really had the motivation.”

Until now. So, how truly outraged are you?