The killing process

4

Humans enjoy eating animals and animal by-products. We downplay empathy and emphasise a more macho attitude. Perhaps we regard animals as the spoils of a war waged against them. They are trophies and celebrations of our status as the ‘dominant’ species. We eat them with almost every meal, and that ‘couldn’t-care-less’ attitude won’t change until people realise what sort of ugly system they’re buying into.

We need to remind ourselves what actually happens to the animals we are about to eat. Lobsters and crabs are boiled alive, fish are slowly suffocated or crushed under the weight of other caught fish, chickens are hung up by their legs to have their throats run though revolving blades, cattle have a bolt fired into their foreheads, pigs have electrified tongs clamped to their heads, male chicks are thrown live into mincing machines!! The way in which we kill animals is cruel by any standard and yet we humans accept it and are glad to use the ‘end-corpse’ for food. The supermarket trolley, filled with styrofoam packets of muscle tissue, animal organs and even, in the case of fish, their whole bodies, is a long way from the human-fulfilling-the-hunting-instinct. We eat animals that have been imprisoned by others and we allow others to do the killing for us. We’re not too fussy how it all happens just as long as we don’t have to know about it. If we use animals for food or clothing we comply with an industry that cares nothing about the feelings of animals. They simply coral, breed, fatten and execute animals as part of their business.