22.
The death at any
abattoir, of any sentient creature, is a long way from predator-killing-prey in
the world of Nature. In the slaughter house, the animal is immobilised and made
completely helpless. How it feels we’ll never know but the ugliness of the
whole process should make us feel ashamed. This dear, sweet-natured animal has
been imprisoned all its life, kept in slum conditions, transported under
frightening conditions, arrives at a death-smelling building, encounters a lot
of rough handling and is finally put to death ... and none of this need be
so; neither the cruelty nor the killing
nor the captivity. However, it is so, in every country of the world. The
killing continues at the astonishing rate of 150,000 animal executions a
minute, every day, all across the planet. Nowhere is there any regard for the
feelings of the animals themselves.
Since most people benefit from animals being killed for
food, no empathy is felt towards these animals, and whilst people are
normally hungry for new knowledge, they prefer to know as little as possible
when it comes to learning about the way animals are put to death. Conveniently
for everyone concerned, the killing is done behind closed doors, most often by
men or women who can’t find any other employment and who have to work quickly
and harshly because they dare not fail to keep up their killing quota for fear
of losing their jobs. They have to adopt the same conveyor-belt mentality as
that of a car assembly worker, who welds a bolt to a car door. Each animal
passes along the line, to be killed, to make way for the next, and the next,
with no one to care how either the animal or the animal-killer feels.
And yet many people these days do care. They go
out of their way to show how much they care for these millions of animals,
enough to work hard to establish rights to protect them.
Whatever we say about animals that are used for food, it
comes down to one question - Does pragmatism outweigh tender hearted feelings?
Once upon a time the question was about how humanely animals were being killed.
Now the question is about whether we should kill animals at all?
There are many reasons why we shouldn’t kill or even use
animals. Certainly there are health presents perhaps the most powerful case.
and environmental implications to animal farming, but the ugliness of animal
treatment on farms and in abattoirs
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