The Use-By Date for Animals

1384: 

Edited by CJ Tointon

Once we humans feel safe exploiting animals, the essential separation has already taken place.  It's all that’s needed if we want to farm animals.  The same type of separation can be used on people.  If we want to 'use' people, we must first practice separation on them.  That's how we get them where we want them!

Once we’ve made up our minds that 'we're superior' and 'they're inferior', all we have to do is withhold friendly feelings and everything becomes easier.  An employer, for instance, coming from a superior power base, doesn't have to befriend a dependent employee (in fear of losing her job) because he has the power to push her to her limits. 

Much the same thing happens on farms with animals - only it's much worse!  A farmer, by having biological control over the animals, can feed and breed them at will.  Animals produce by-products (eggs, milk, wool).  They're fattened.  They’re made to reproduce and they’re made to endure mutilations.  And eventually they suffer the agonies of transportation to the abattoir and the terror of a brutal execution.  And it's all in order to make money!  It’s often the same story (but maybe less horrific) with companion animals.  They’re imprisoned, kept apart from their own kind, constantly under the orders of their human jailers and can be 'put to sleep' eventually when the vet bills get too high to maintain them in good health or longer life.

Determining the fate of animals is what humans are good at.  What we do to them underlines our superiority and emphasises their inferiority.  There is no requirement to reward the animal at the end of his productive life for all that he has provided the human.   He's just disposed of.  It’s as simple as that.  In days gone by, unproductive human slaves were never allowed to slip into retirement.   They were left to die or were directly extinguished like redundant property.  It’s exactly the same with animal slaves today; except that money is made out of their dead bodies.

'Food animals' are owned - they’re the property of someone.  They’re objects.  They’re not seen as irreplaceable, sovereign, individual living beings.  They're just slaves.  They are ‘put here’ for us to do with as we please.  They’re the victims of a species war, the victor’s spoils duly accruing to the dominant species. 

Take a dairy cow, for example.  She is the victim of her own biology.  She's artificially inseminated to produce a foetus in the womb.  This triggers high levels of lactation, so that she will produce large quantities of highly profitable MILK.  The cow is as powerless over her pregnancy as she is in stopping her calf being born or in affecting any other of her biological functions.  At the hands of her human masters, she is made into a milk-producing machine and her motherhood is denied since her calf is taken from her so that she can concentrate on her main function - producing milk.   She lactates and gives birth all her life, a life which should last 20 years but is foreshortened to half that age, since she has been used up by a constant series of pregnancies and milkings.   When she’s no longer economically viable, when she can no longer earn her keep, she warrants no more life.

That’s the human for you!  That’s the human consumer of milk too, who lends support for this whole system to flourish.  And this example of exploitation is just one of many.  Other farm-animals suffer simply because they produce good income for farmers and the many other branches of the Animal Industries.  And their treatment is tolerated by the whole of the human population because of the benefits their products bring.  Whether certain animals are valued for their carcasses, for their ‘co-products’ (like leather) or their by-products (like milk and eggs) these animals make ideal slaves.  They have no defences against human attack.  They don’t complain.  They can’t fight back.  And they need be given no respect or gratitude.

Humans have learnt how to ‘do’ separation.  We do it so routinely with animals.  The care we show for one another or for our companion animals is thought to be unnecessary for farm animals.