Animal slaughter

“ E. Bell has written, “Dreadful are the revelations made by humane men, who, setting aside personal comfort and peace of mind, have endeavoured to sound the depths of animal agony and bloodshed. The process of flaying alive, and even of dismembering animals before the breath has left their bodies, is far from uncommon in private slaughter-houses.” ”

“ When the blow descends on the knob of the punch, the sharp part is driven with great force into the skull, and the animal drops to the ground stunned. It is not dead, and it has to he "pithed" and its throat cut in the usual way before death takes place. The theory on which humane slaughterers go is that the animal is rendered by the first blow unconscious to everything afterwards. ”

“ Provided with firebrands, the crowd surrounds the spot; the conflagration soon extends on all sides, until the poor brutes, choked and scorched, fall a helpless prey to their destroyers, who despatch them with their lances. Since not only the males, with their large and valuable tusks, but the females also with the young, are included in this wholesale and indiscriminate slaughter, it may easily be imagined how year by year the noble animal is fast being exterminated. ”

“ And it cannot be denied, hide it how we may, either from our eyes or our conscience, that however skilfully the actual killing may usually be carried out, there is much unavoidable suffering caused to the beasts that have to be transported by sea and rail to the slaughter-house. The animals suffer violently from sea-sickness, and horrible cruelty (such as pouring boiling oil into their ears, and stuffing their ears with hay which is then set on fire, tail-twisting, etc.,) has to be practised to prevent them lying down lest they be trampled on by other beasts and killed ”

“ In these last cases the animal whose slaughter has to be atoned for is sacred, that is, it is one whose life is commonly spared from motives of superstition. Yet the treatment of the sacrilegious slayer seems to resemble so closely the treatment of hunters and fishermen who have killed animals for food in the ordinary course of business, that the ideas on which both sets of customs are based may be assumed to med to be substantially the same. ”

“ On the other hand, when the revered animal is habitually killed, the slaughter of any one of the species involves the killing of the god, and is atoned for on the spot by apologies and sacrifices, especially when the animal is a powerful and dangerous one; and, in addition to this ordinary and everyday atonement, there is a special annual atonement, at which a select individual of the species is slain with extraordinary marks of respect and devotion. ”

“ However, certain persons who know the proper rites of atonement for such a crime can kill wolves with impunity, and they are sometimes hired to do so by people who have suffered from the raids of the [pg 221] wolves on their cattle or fish-traps. The professional wolf-killer prays to the animal whom he has bereaved of life, and seeks to avert the vengeance of the other wolves by laying the blame of the slaughter on the people of another settlement. ”

“ Often have I seen a man kill a hog on the floor of his house, cut it up, toast it, as one may say, at the fire, and then offer the grilled and frequently under-done flesh to his guests. Invariably the guests are obliged to witness the slaughter of the animal which is to supply their dinner. This slaughter is performed as a kind of sacrifice; the legs of the beast are the portions of the gods, and are laid, with bits of fat, upon the altars. ”

“ The Bushmen say that it is useless covering up a carcase and leaving blood-stains on the ground round about, as vultures can see these signs of slaughter at an incredible distance, and will always come down to investigate such tell-tale marks, whether the meat of the slain animal has been removed or not. ”

“ A large number of animals live, it is true, in a state of permanent warfare, killing and devouring each other in turns, but how far does this fact imply another—viz., that this internecine slaughter presupposes in animals a clear idea of death—of the extinction of life as the necessary consequence of their actions? How far are these acts of hostility determined by the intention of depriving another animal of life? In other words, have animals a distinct idea of life and death and of the means by which life may be destroyed? ”

“ You ask of me then for what reason it was that Pythagoras abstained from eating of flesh. I for my part do much wonder in what humor, with what soul or reason, the first man with his mouth touched slaughter, and reached to his lips the flesh of a dead animal, and having set before people courses of ghastly corpses and ghosts, could give those parts the names of meat and victuals, that but a little before lowed, cried, moved, and saw; how his sight could endure the blood of slaughtered, flayed, and mangled bodies; how his smell could bear their scent; ”

“ It kills man, and comparatively small animals, such as deer and antelopes, with a blow of its terrible paw; and often needs to give no second blow to cause the death of its victim. The sharp talons are not needed to cause death, for the weight of the blow is sufficient for that purpose.
When the hunter pursues it with dogs, after the usual fashion, there is often a great slaughter among them, especially among those that are inexperienced in the chase of the Lion. ”

“ But the worst thing is the frightful, endless shedding of blood which human meat-eaters deem necessary for their preservation. Think of all the butchers in the world, think of those immense slaughter-houses in Chicago and other places where the machine-like, wholesale murder of innocent animals is constantly going on. ”

“ This pitiless massacre includes even the larvæ and pupæ of the males. The executioners drag them from their cells, run them through with their stings, greedily suck the liquids contained in their bodies, and then cast their remains to the winds. This slaughter goes on for many days, continuing till the males have been completely got rid of, they not being able to defend themselves, as they have no stings. ”

“ The slaughter thus commenced has passed into a custom of annually destroying these confiding companions of man, when the howl or piteous death-cry of the poor animals rings upon the ear, on fine summer mornings, as the watermen are employed in knocking them down with their iron-pointed sticks in all the streets, and even at the very doors or gates where the persecuted creatures seek protection in vain. ”

“ The dogs have been worrying and killing sheep, and yesterday drove three into the sea, where they were drowned. As a result several of the dogs have been shot. Complaints were made to Repetto about his dogs, and half in temper he picked up his white fox-terrier and hammered it to death, as he thought, and threw it into the tussock. In a few days it crawled back to the house and had to be shot. Animal life is little thought of here. It is no wonder the dogs prey as they do, for many are half famished. ”

“ Dogs, again, that had been quite law-abiding as regards domestic poultry, tame rabbits, sucking pigs, or sheep and lambs, suddenly took to breaking beyond the control of their masters, and killing anything that they were told not to touch. It was held that any animal killed by a dog had died a natural death, for it was the dog’s nature to kill things, and he had only refrained from molesting farmyard creatures hitherto because his nature had been tampered with. ”

“ While the killing of large animals presents greater difficulties than the killing of small ones, such as sheep, pigs, and calves, it is with respect to the latter that the discovery of a painless system is most imperatively required. Unfortunately, from the ease with which the smaller animals can he handled, butchers have concluded that it does not much matter how they are despatched, so long as the affair is finished with reasonable quickness. ”

“ Fast trust upon the hands which murder them.”
If the cruelty and injustice to animals are nothing to us, we have still another argument to offer—the brutalization of the men who slaughter that we may eat flesh. ”

“ For well they know that the devoted parents will suffer death rather than leave their young in such danger.
"Shot upon shot rings out in repeated volleys, each followed in turn by the piteous cries of wounded birds, till the ground is strewn with hundreds of the dead and dying. Then the cruel hunters tear off the plume-tuft from the back of each victim, as the savage does a human scalp, and move on in search of another heronry, to repeat this inhuman slaughter of the innocents. ”

“ Aware of this circumstance, the hunter approaches him with caution, and either secures his prey by a second shot, where the first has been but partially successful, or, as is more frequently the case, causes his dog to seize the wounded animal, while he watches his own opportunity to stab him with his hunting-knife. ”

“ How strong must be the destructive propensity, when it leads men to wanton acts of barbarity like this; since, had a hundred fish been killed, there would have been no possibility of getting one on board, and the slaughter must merely have been perpetrated for slaughter's sake! ”

“ Man, though the direct or indirect cause of the death of many creatures, plays but a small part in this great tragedy of nature. His interference, except in a few instances, does not lessen or increase the actual death-rate of wild creatures; slaughter for food continues whether he steps in to take a hand or not. When, however, he attempts to regulate the massacre, strives to protect one species from its foes or to wipe another off the face of the land, he causes widespread calamity, for very precise and definite, albeit ruthless, laws regulate birth and death rate in nature. ”

“ THE BEST AND MOST HUMANE MODE OF KILLING ALL LARGE HOGS is to strike them down like a bullock, with the pointed end of a poleaxe, on the forehead, which has the effect of killing the animal at once; all the butcher has then to do, is to open the aorta and great arteries, and laying the animal's neck over a trough, let out the blood as quickly as possible. ”

“ The killing is a work of art; it must not be done in any vulgar way. The matador flaunts his red cloak, invites the bull near it, holds it out to him draped on a stick, spreads it and draws it along on the ground with both hands, like a clerk exhibiting to a patron some new thing in ornamental fabrics. The grim animal, raging with the memory of all his wrongs, his disappointment, his wounds, accepts the invitation. Then the keen rapier flashes like lightning and seeks a vital part. Fatal simplicity, fatal ignorance! Surely there are morals in plenty to be drawn from a bull-fight. ”

“ It is quite true that we cannot avoid accidentally taking life; but that can scarcely justify us in purposely breeding animals for the slaughter-house. To assert that because we accidentally tread on a beetle, we are justified in deliberately slaughtering an ox ; or that because we chance to swallow a fly, we are right in bleeding a calf to death and enjoying our veal, is an argument which must equally justify homicide and murder of every description. ”

“ If a donkey is beaten to death, a dog stoned, or a cat killed with a riding-whip, the chances are that a prosecution will ensue or a question be asked in Parliament; for public opinion and the law lay it down that the infliction of unnecessary suffering on animals is an offence punishable by fine or imprisonment. But if in slaughter-houses some 8,000,000 sheep are killed yearly, without first being stunned, by a method which, even in the hands of an expert, produces some seconds of acute suffering (Report of the Admiralty Committee on Humane Slaughtering of Animals, 1904) ”

“ Their position also is often so badly chosen that the children in the vicinity resort there to see the animals killed, and the poor beasts have in some cases to be driven through a narrow passage into the slaughter-house itself, where, trembling at the sight and smell of the blood and carcasses of its dead companions, it remains tethered until its turn comes to fall a victim to the blow of the slaughter-man: a blow which sometimes has often to be repeated before its object is attained, owing to the bad light and cramped surroundings of the place. ”

“ Before our eyes there continually arise photographs of hanging masses of waterfowl, grouse, pheasants, deer and fish, usually supported in true heraldic fashion by the men who slew them and the implements of slaughter. The world has become somewhat hardened to these things, because the victims are classed as game; and in the destruction of game, one game-bag more or less "Will not count in the news of the battle."
The slaughter of song, insectivorous and all other birds by Italians and other aliens from southern Europe has become a scourge to the bird life of this country. ”

“ Even when the animal has received a mortal wound, and been lying on the ground with only a few minutes of life in its body, it has been known to sweep its armed head so fiercely from side to side that it killed several of the dogs as they rushed in to seize the fallen enemy, wounded others severely, and kept a clear space within range of its horns. ”