The humane response to a story about cold blooded killing

27.

Whether the killing is done at the abattoir or in the back yard in modern clinical surroundings, today or at any time in the past, these moments of horror don’t change much. The innocent animal, nurtured by relatively kind humans, is now forced to meet its doom. The human capacity to turn, in such a cold and calculated way, from kindness to violence is how human dominance has always worked - by playing a trick on our victims, lulling them into a false sense of security in order to manage them with minimum difficulty. The cold-heartedness of today’s animal food industry exemplifies this. And it’s this ugliness that many of us want to put behind us. Vegetarianism starts the process of disassociation.

            What are animals? How are they different to humans? Perhaps they can’t match our brain power, but does that justify humans treating them badly? Most animals that are useful for food have long been enslaved and denied any form of natural life. We justify stealing their lives to meet our own need to survive. It trumps every other consideration. We say that if we have to kill them, then we have to be practical about it by keeping them captive and controlling their feeding, so that their productivity is maximised and their killing presents as little problem to us as possible. If there is any ethical component here, we have to weigh usefulness against compassion even if economic viability involves cruelty. Economics rules the animal-production business. Every cost must be calculated to keep ahead of the competition. It’s a ‘dog-eat-dog’ mentality, and there’s no room for sentimentality.

            But many of us today are not able to accept this, because for us, empathy and ethics are based on the sentience of animals. They are like us in that they have the ability to suffer and have the need to escape attack. On a farm or at the abattoir, where there’s no escape, animals must experience the ultimate terror. And this has always presented a dilemma for those who are kind-hearted but who still believe they need meat to be healthy - they can’t come to terms with animal suffering! But as any Vegan knows, that myth has long ago been exploded. We can now live with a clear conscience, without any need to hurt animals, because we no longer need to ‘use’ them. Animal products need play no part in any human life whatsoever!