When is cruelty to animals OK?
By Nancy Whelan - Parksville Qualicum Beach News - April 01, 2008 | | | |
Under normal circumstances, what should any creature, human or animal, have in store for its life when it’s born? Nobody can answer this question in terms of specific time or events, because of the ever-present variables in life and living. However, in general terms, a living creature, in the natural order of things, has a life of growth and some conscious or unconscious joy, satisfaction and contentment ahead.
These attributes include living in its natural environment and experiencing the orderly passing of days and nights, sunshine and rain, warmth and cold, shelter, food of its choice, the companionship of its fellows and perhaps procreation.
Now think of the millions of animals, during the last several decades, to whom most or all of life’s simplest pleasures have been utterly and cruelly denied. These are the animals bred, born and raised to do nothing but supply humans with cheap food regardless of the animals’ needs or comfort. And think, too, all this is done, not just to satisfy our excessive appetites, but to satisfy the insatiable appetites of corporate food producers for ever more mega-bucks.
The argument every living thing must die sooner or later does not excuse the raising of food animals completely cut off from the natural cycles of their lives. Albeit not to feed our fellow man, we humans know we’re all going to die too, but we fully expect our days in the sun and the right to experience life’s ups and downs until our time has expired, be it long or short. So why do we think (or do we think?) that it’s OK to treat other forms of life so brutally?
Chickens with beaks cut off, crammed into cages, there to live out their lives ‘til they stop laying our breakfast eggs or are considered ready for the roasting pan. Pigs, cheek by jowl in factory sheds, with no room to turn around; their only duty to fatten up to provide the eggs’ bacon or the Sunday joint. Cattle, knee-deep in their own excrement in feedlots to be finished with grain feeding to do away with that grass-fed flavor. Salmon bred in cages with no room for even a lap or two and no thought for the fresh diet such fish were meant to consume.
In human history, certain diseases came to be known as crowd diseases because they started up and flourished in crowded conditions. It’s not acceptable to say so in the factory food industry, but many feed-animal epidemics are caused or at least exacerbated by the crowded conditions.
From the consumers’ point of view the scenario only gets worse. The animals are fed hormones to get them growing faster and antibiotics to keep the crowd diseases at bay. The old saying, we are what we eat becomes more accurate if we say, we are what we eat eats. Are the animals having the last word here in return for this ruthless treatment?
I’m not a vegetarian, nor do I intend to stop eating meat. I do intend to eat only meat that has had a life. Yes, it costs more, and can be a powerful consideration for many of us. But as we can live healthful lives with much smaller portions of meat than we’ve become accustomed to, we can hope to stretch the dollars to provide meat from animals treated with care and respect for their needs and our greater enjoyment (and less guilt).
Unfortunately, eating only happy animals is not easy. First we must seek out a source for the meats of our choice. Then we must hope the farmers who raise the animals are not put out of business by ever increasing regulations about where and how their animals may be slaughtered.
Since 1824, carriage horses and pet animals have had the SPCA to watch over their rights and treatment. There’s also the WSPA — World Society for the Protection of Animals, and perhaps a more effective body, the CETFA — Canadians for Ethical Treatment of Food Animals. Then there’s the BC Prevention of Cruelty to Animal Act which apparently fails miserably in trying to better the lot of factory food animals, and whose voluntary guidelines are simply not effective against industry clout.
If we all insisted upon enforced labeling of humanely raised food as such, and if our hearts overcame our stomachs for a change, would the meat giants hear us? What we really need to do, though, is simply stop eating factory-food-meat for a year.
That would put a crimp in some big bottom lines. Might even have a positive effect on our own bottoms.