Refocusing mankinds view of the animal world
Commentary by DICK DORWORTH
Express Staff Writer
On an average day in the United States, every day of the year, year after
year, 130,000 cattle, 7,000 calves, 360,000 pigs and 24 million chickens are slaughtered
in the slaughterhouses of the nation to feed the appetites and expanding waistlines of
America. Every day. While death is undoubtedly a welcome relief from the horrors of
factory farm life for most of these sentient creatures, such carnage is an integral part
and a daily fact of the life of our culture. It has an effect on the mentality, the psyche
and the physical health of the citizenry, as, of course, does polite societys
self-imposed ignorance about where the meat really comes from.
The reality of wholesale killing of animals for the retail markets of our
civilization bears little resemblance to the sterile/frozen/wrapped/
sliced/diced/cubed and cut up remains of those creatures that wind up in the spotless
display cases of supermarkets where most people purchase their protein.
Mankind has a long history of relationship with the wild animals he has
domesticated and bred as a ready source of food and other useful materials. In all that
history farm animals have never been as cruelly kept, confined or slaughtered as in the
present time when animals are bred, born and raised in crowded animal factories, and
viewed as food machines, not as living creatures.
In a 1997 issue of Harpers magazine, writer Joy Williams
said, "The factory farm today is a crowded, stinking bedlam, filled with suffering
animals that are quite literally insane, sprayed with pesticides and fattened on a diet of
growth stimulants, antibiotics and drugs.
"Two hundred and fifty thousand laying hens are confined within a
single building. (The high mortality rate caused by overcrowding is economically
acceptable; nothing is more worthless than an individual chicken.) Pigs are raised in bare
concrete cages in windowless, metal buildings or tightly restrained in foul pens and
gestation boxes. Cows are kept pregnant to produce an abnormal amount of milk, which is
further artificially increased with hormone injections.
"The by-product of the dairy industry, calves, are chained in crates
22 inches wide and no longer than their bodies, and raised on a diet of drug-laced liquid
feed for a few months until theyre slaughtered for the delicacy
veal."
A lack of respect and a skewed anthropocentric perspective of the value,
meaning and sanctity of all nonhuman life is prevalent in our society. The animal world is
viewed by the majority of our citizens in the context of what use we can make of them, not
as animals having rights and intrinsic value in their own lives.
Even so distinguished a naturalist as Aldo Leopold, author of the classic
"A Sand County Almanac," was of the opinion that wild and domestic animals had
different moral statuses. He argued that domestic animals are not free and are therefore
not worthy of our regard. While one might expect more regard for his fellow creatures from
one such as Leopold, he at least recognized wild animals as having intrinsic worth not
dependent on the value man assigns to them.
Farm animals, both in factories and on real farms, are legally and
ethically viewed as production units whose lives are turned for a profit. The Federal
Animal Welfare Act explicitly excludes farm animals from protection. "Normal
agriculture operation" precludes "humane" treatment of farm animals.
Anti-cruelty laws are not applicable to that which is raised for food.
Whether mankinds relationships with the myriad creatures with which
he shares the earth are sick, demented, degrading, perverse and, even, inhumane, is, I
suppose, a matter of debate. I would argue that a mans relationship with the animal
world is indicative of his relationship with the rest of life, human life included.
But, whatever ones opinion on the subject, it certainly provides
mankind endless opportunities to exhibit his vast array of contradictions, hypocrisies and
boundless abilities to plunder the earth and its creatures.
Even the wildlife of America is viewed and treated as another profit
producer. While killing for recreationwhich goes by the name of huntingis seen
as morally suspect and offensive to some, it is big business to many. It is a business in
which the profit product is not penned up in hog factory cages or veal growing pens, but
the deer/elk/antelope/ducks/
geese/pheasant are slaughtered nonetheless. And, for the most part, they are not
slaughtered for the value of the necessary protein they add to the human diet.
Hunting, like factory farming, as it is currently practiced in America is
a business. It is no more a natural activity than is the production of veal. Except for
those few who truly hunt for food, hunting in America is slaughter in the name of sport,
sometimes more, never less.
So it was fascinating when a spokesman for a group recently formed for the
purpose of getting wolves out of Idaho said of Idahos wolves, "They are
absolutely slaughtering our big game." The spokesman, an outfitter, is right to say
that wolves kill for the sustenance they need to live. He is wrong to use the possessive
when referring to wild animals. They are their own creatures who do not need man in order
to live, though the obverse cannot be said. For man or any man to condemn the wolf for
slaughter is, at best, hilarious. It is a red herring.
Geoffrey Gorer, an Engish psychologist and historian, perhaps put it best:
"The Latin proverb, homo homini lupusman is a wolf to man
is a
libel on the wolf, which is a gentle animal with other wolves."
And wolves kill for the sustenance of life, not for gratuitous pleasure.