Humane Slaughter: The biggest lie the meat industry tricked us into believing
Time and time again we are told that we needn’t worry about what happens to animals, that they are raised with care and compassion and then when they are slaughtered it’s done humanely.
ED WINTERS: To most of us, the act of harming an animal is morally reprehensible and we think that those who cause undue suffering to animals must be terrible people. Yet we have a huge blindspot. Meat, dairy and eggs. However, as I discuss in my book This is Vegan Propaganda (And Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You), this blindspot is not necessarily through any fault of our own. Time and time again we are told that we needn’t worry about what happens to animals, that they are raised with care and compassion and then when they are slaughtered it’s done humanely. But what does this actually mean?
The concept of humane slaughter is used to make us believe that we needn’t be concerned about the slaughtering of the animals we consume. After all, it is because we care about animals that we have to be convinced that what happens to them is humane. However, synonyms for the word humane include compassionate, benevolent and kind. In other words, by referring to slaughter as being humane, we are also saying that it is compassionate.
But is it benevolent to force pigs into gas chambers and suffocate them with a highly aversive mixture of carbon dioxide that causes them to enter a state of panic as they hyperventilate? Is it kind to force baby lambs on to the kill floor of the slaughterhouse with the intention of cutting their throat? Fundamentally, is it compassionate to exploit and slaughter an animal when we don’t have to?
If slaughterhouses were truly humane, wouldn’t we also take our pets to them when they needed to be euthanised? After all, we’ve been told that animals don’t suffer or feel pain in slaughterhouses and that the process doesn’t cause them stress, anxiety or discomfort. So surely slaughterhouses are the ideal places for our non-human family members to be euthanised. Yet imagine the horror we would feel if we were told that our beloved companion animal was going to be put into gas chamber or hung up by their back leg and bled out…
So how do we reconcile our paradoxical attitude towards animals? Undeniably we have done it for a long time, but does the longevity of an action make it moral? Undeniably we enjoy how animal products taste, but is sensory pleasure a moral justifier for causing harm to others, especially considering we can cook delicious plant-based foods instead?
In truth, the reason we view someone kicking a dog to be immoral is because we have come to see dogs as the sentient individuals that they are, yet we fall into the trap of viewing the animals we farm as abstractions. Whilst it’s easy to empathise with the plight of a singular horse who we see being punched on TV, it’s harder to empathise with the mass numbers of animals who are being exploited out of sight and out of mind.
But cruelty is still cruelty, harm is still harm and an injustice is still injustice irrespective of whether it is happening in front of us or not, and that fact isn’t changed by us disingenuously using words like humane to describe it. SOURCE…
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