The humane response to a story about cold blooded killing

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I often wonder what is worse, the act of hurting animals and killing them or the unwillingness of people to acknowledge that it happens at all. If any of us saw an animal being killed, or indeed being mistreated, our first instinct would be to want to do something to help that animal. But since there’s nothing we can do, instead we turn away and pretend not to know. We pretend we don’t care and that ‘turn-off’ switch is used so often we no longer notice ourselves becoming desensitised. To re-sensitise, we surely have to first stop our involvement in the routine killing of animals, by not buying the produce from abattoirs.

            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 ugly doom. The human heart’s capacity to turn, in such a cold and calculated way, from kindness to violence illustrates how human have hardened, by playing a trick on the animal victim, lulling it into a false sense of security in order to manage it 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 by disassociating from this.

            What are animals? How are they different to humans? Perhaps they can’t match our brain power, but does that justify human cruelty towards them? Most animals that are useful for food have long since been enslaved and denied any form of natural life. We justify the ending of 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. We say that if there is any ethical component here, we have to weigh usefulness against compassion even if it involves cruelty. Economics rules the animal-production business. We say that every cost is 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 more kind-hearted but who still believe they need meat to be healthy - not being able come to terms with the ‘necessary’ 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!