About killing

25.

For a long time, the poor in our society have eaten animal protein because it was the only high-protein food available. The belief was universally held that meat was an essential food. In rural areas, many people kept a cow, a pig, sheep and chickens to provide their families with food, clothing fabrics and many other useful commodities. But the question of feeding and caring for domesticated animals presented people with a dilemma. Humans have a great capacity for love and caring. Farmers are no different and believe they truly do care for their animals. The relationship of trust and cooperation between man and animal has always been important to anyone who farms them, but that mutual trust is broken by putting the animal to death. To get around this, most people who had animals, who lived amongst them almost as friends, preferred not to do their own killing or even witness it. The meat and by-products were considered vital food and important sources of cash, but the inevitable betrayal of the living animal meant that only limited affection could be felt or shown to any individual animal during its life.

            The act of attacking a captive animal in the clinical confines of the modern abattoir is not that much different to the roped-down animal being slaughtered in the farmyard or backyard. The animal’s terror is unavoidable, whatever type of death it faces. Whether we call it murder, slaughter or betrayal, it happens to every domesticated animal used for food, whether it is killed for its carcass or killed when it becomes no longer economically viable or productive. There is no such thing as showing gratitude to an animal for all the milk or eggs or wool it has produced by sending it into retirement.