Hypocrisy

       Right now there is a certain hypocrisy under the spotlight. Well, my spotlight, anyway.

       It appears, to me, to be a mite strange that people are so concerned with what they see as ‘cruelty to animals’. They are, as one, appalled at ‘ritual slaughter’, for example.

       To give you a clue as to what they are referring to, the killing of an animal in order to obtain its meat for human consumption can be done in several ways.

       Officially, in an abattoir, an animal may be stunned or not. It is then despatched by either shooting a bolt through its head or cutting open its throat.

       Of course, those who are sensitive to the needs of animals will tell you that pre-slaughter stunning is the only acceptable means of compliance under humanitarian grounds.

       Unfortunately, stunning is not always carried out efficiently or, indeed, properly. The process of stunning, if carried out imperfectly, leaves an animal writhing around in agony before it is then despatched with the bolt through the brain.

       Except that brains are useful so if the brain is to be eaten then, perhaps, the bolt might not be employed for fear of damaging edible foodstuffs.

       The alternative is to cut the throat.

       You will have seen, no doubt, unpleasant images of animals with the throat (being) cut dying in torment. These tend to be the exceptions rather than the normal way. If the animal is stunned, properly, first then the animal just slips into death.

       If a sharp knife is used on an unstunned animal (as prescribed for halal or kosher slaughter) in a single stroke the animal usually dies quite peacefully.

       In all these cases there are exceptions. There will be times when the prescribed way of killing doesn’t quite work as it should. Nothing is certain.

       The only sure way of preventing animal suffering on this scale—however small, is for everyone to become a vegan.

       Chickens are routinely slaughtered by dipping their heads into electrified water. This is, sadly, an imprecise method of killing, it does not always work and leaves the fowls still conscious while they are being plucked and disembowelled. Hopefully the plucking will cause themn to die of shock because the disembowelling will certainly despatch them to the granary in the sky.

       Ritual slaughter means their throats are cut. This means they are dead well before they are plucked. Yes, there are stories of how the chickens struggle and peck the people holding them prior to being killed but, then, most birds will struggle and peck when being held irrespective of whether they are to be slaughtered or not.

        Seagulls caught in fishing lines would struggle and peck heartily, although ineffectually, whilst being freed from the line.

       Let’s look farther afield.

       We are concerned with the welfare of animals that are to be killed for human consumption but what about other animals?

       Cats and dogs are to be humanely ‘put down’ at the end of their useful lives or when they are of no further interest to us. Yet, really, ‘humane’ is a somewhat imprecise word. A lot of money has been spent on how to ‘humanely’ kill human beings on death row. Most have failed.

       Since most murderers are not known for their humane methods or sensitivity to their victims and the victims’ families one wonders at the need for subjecting them to a dose of humanity when it comes to executing them.

       I digress.

       Do we, I wonder, feel the same compassion for rats? Mice? We lay down poison for those in tubes so that the poison will not be taken by cats or dogs. Cats and dogs are regarded as ‘nice’ but rats and mice are, it seems, not ‘nice’. They are vermin.

       It is all right to kill rats and mice in any way we choose because they are not cute and furry. An agonising death at the mercy of poison is fine for the likes of them.

       Pigeons? Rabbits? Crows? We can blast them all with shotguns. Rabbits can be dropped with a single .22 shot assuming that the person squeezing the trigger is a marksman—or woman.

       Deer? Deer are often wounded in the hunt and have to be tracked, sometimes for many miles, before delivering the coup de grace.

       Even rabbits, pheasants, pigeons and other game can be wounded and lay cowering, shaking with fear and pain, in the undergrowth or corn until they succumb to their injuries.

       How small would you like to go? We exterminate vermin like snakes and insects at will. We employ pesticides that kill the ‘good fellows’ as well as the ‘bad chaps’. Insects have lives.

       They have, pretty much, everything we have but on a smaller scale.

       I mentioned snakes. What about other reptiles that we do not like? Can we kill them? Maybe we can because they intrude on our habitat or, perhaps, because they are just downright ugly.

       Where do we draw the line? Is size the criteria or is sentience the determining factor?
       Are we sure that a cow is unaware of death? We see films of Wildebeest* being brought down by Lions; the prey seems unaware that it is being killed, it tries to stand even with a Lion dangling from it throat. Is a Wildebeest sentient?

       What about snakes? Praying Mantis? Spiders? These all munch their prey while it yet lives as they, too, are often eaten while still alive.
       Sometimes this living meal is a design feature of the diner. Some bugs lay eggs inside living hosts so that their larvae can eat the host live—fresh, as it were. Is that humane? Does that give us the right to crush ants under our feet or burn them with focussed sun’s rays as a sport?

       Where do we draw the line? When is it all right to kill inhumanely and when must we observe kindness and consideration for the animal involved?

       Trawl nets drag up fish packed, squeezed, into a tight bunch and then dumped gasping, asphyxiated, into a hold before treatment that involves gutting and slicing. Are they dead? Who knows? Who cares? Fish have no feelings. Do they?

       And humans?

       What about humans?

       We send people off to war on our behalf. They get a 7.62 bullet smash their spines to shreds, renders them para- or quadraplegics. Maybe a grenade or a mortar bomb blasts bits off them—an odd arm or a leg, or two.

       Those are the survivors. Not those who have lain in the mud or on the sand screaming for their loved ones, writhing in agony until, at last, loss of blood or shock releases them from their torment.

       Then they come home. The lucky ones are buried in the ground. The unlucky ones are buried in society. Forgotten, ignored and stepped over in the street.

      

       They, the veterans, are treated as less than animals. Animals we care for. Animals we cry over. Veterans are people for whom we have no further use.    

       Animals can be eaten.

*But not Gardner.

(See: the ‘Hawksworth stories on

www.davidleyman.com)