Hogs Get Slaughtered (As Do The Pigs)

I knew it would take me several whacks on this blog to do justice to my recent thoughts on the vegetarian question.

However I didn't anticipate how many "coincidences" would nudge me along, inciting me to hurry up and jot my thoughts down.

Yesterday I posted my first reflection on the topic, using the horrors of the slave trade as an opening analogy.

It must be acknowledged that this is an extreme starting point for any discussion, but I think it's a good one in that it invites an objection.

"Cows aren't people. They're stupid animals. If we raise them nicely and kill them humanely before we eat them, is it really that bad?"

This question had been rattling about in my head already yesterday, but this evening a headline link on the local community website motivated me to start the next installment.

The article was titled, The Cruelest Thing I Saw On A Hog Farm, and the timing was a bit eerie. We're not a farming community and I've never seen anything to do with farms and animal rights on that website before. Be that as it may...

Links like these go stale fast, so here's a quick summary. In short the author described seeing "[r]ow upon row of large hogs... lined up in stalls just bigger than their bodies. Literally hundreds of 250 lb animals were shoulder-to-shoulder in crates too narrow for them to even turn around in."

You'd think that was the cruelest thing she saw, but she went on to point out that, in so many words, life is complicated. Left to their own devices, hog lives are nasty, brutish, and shorter. So to speak. Hogs fight viciously with each other in the wild, etc. etc. So keeping them in tight stalls prevents injuries and keeps them healthier.

The cruelest thing for the author? The reminder that one in ten piglets don't make it, despite the best efforts of the farmers. Runts are, well, runts. They don't survive. Her closing comment was, "The cruelest thing I saw on that hog farm was at the hands of Mother Nature, not a farmer, as some alarmist propaganda may have you believe."

This is a differently worded version of the same basic objection I offered at the start of this blog. But it doesn't work.

Why doesn't it work? Let's revisit the slave trade scenario again.

Life in Africa was pretty rough for the humans who lived there 200 years ago. It could be argued that life as a slave in America was at least in some cases preferable to the alternative tribal life on offer. Perhaps kinder slave owners can be seen in hindsight as benefactors?

Well, without a doubt some people who owned slaves treated them well. But the people we applaud today are the ones who worked toward setting all slaves free. We wince today, trying to imagine how slavery could ever have seemed an acceptable part of civilized life.

So... No. It's not acceptable today to look back on the slave trade as a humane alternative to rugged life in Northern Africa. Poor children can be found throughout the world today. But in this day and age, gentle souls bring them home, adopt them and make them their own children. Only criminals bring them back as slaves.

Giving people a higher standard of living does not by itself justify using them for our own ends.

Giving animals a higher standard of living does not by itself justify using them for our own ends.

Both arguments run by the same logic. They stand or fall together.

Let me say that again.

Both arguments run by the same logic. They stand or fall together.

My point?

Any attempt to justify the meat industry on the basis of keeping the animals healthy until we eat them is a pretty poor line of reasoning.

Human enslavement as a practice has been weighed in the balance of history and found wanting.

What about the meat industry? Well, I have two thoughts on that.

To be continued...

Closing Disclaimer

I am NOT equating cattle farming with slave trade. The evils of human slavery far, far outweigh anything that we do or do not do for animals. If I thought these evils were even remotely commensurate in measure, it wouldn't have taken me forty years to come to this point.