THE SLAUGHTER OF ANIMALS FOR FOOD.
It is impossible that any discussion of the principle of animals’
rights can be at all adequate or conclusive which ignores, as many
so-called humanitarians still ignore, the immense underlying importance
of the food question. The origin of the habit of flesh-eating need
not greatly concern us; let us assume, in accordance with the most
favoured theory, that animals were first slaughtered by the uncivilized
migratory tribes under the stress of want, and that the practice thus
engendered, being fostered by the religious idea of blood-offering
and propitiation, survived and increased after the early conditions
which produced it had passed away. What is more important to note, is
that the very prevalence of the habit has caused it to be regarded as
a necessary feature of modern civilization, and that this view has
inevitably had a marked effect, and a very detrimental effect, on the
study of man’s moral relation to the lower animals.
Now it must be admitted, I think, that it is a difficult thing
consistently to recognize or assert the rights of an animal on whom
you purpose to make a meal, a difficulty which has not been at all
satisfactorily surmounted by those moralists who, while accepting
the practice of flesh-eating as an institution which is itself
beyond cavil, have nevertheless been anxious to find some solid basis
for a theory of humaneness. “Strange contrariety of conduct,” says
Goldsmith’s “Chinese Philosopher,” in commenting on this dilemma; “they
pity, and they _eat_ the objects of their compassion!” There is also
the further consideration that the sanction implicitly given to the
terrible cruelties inflicted on harmless cattle by the drover and the
slaughterman render it, by parity of reasoning, wellnigh impossible to
abolish many other acts of injustice that we see everywhere around us;
and this obstacle the opponents of humanitarian reform have not been
slow to utilize. Hence a disposition on the part of many humane writers
to fight shy of the awkward subject of the slaughter-house, or to gloss
it over with a series of contradictory and quite irrelevant excuses.
Let me give a few examples.
“We deprive animals of life,” says Bentham, in a delightfully naïve
application of the utilitarian philosophy, “and this is justifiable;
their pains do not equal our enjoyments.”
“By the scheme of universal providence,” says Lawrence, “the services
between man and beast are intended to be reciprocal, and the greater
part of the latter can by no other means requite human labour and
care than by the forfeiture of life.”
Schopenhauer’s plea is somewhat similar to the foregoing:
“Man deprived of all flesh-food, especially in the north, would
suffer more than the animal suffers in a swift and unforeseen death;
still we ought to mitigate it by the help of chloroform.”
Then there is the argument so frequently founded on the supposed
sanction of Nature.
“My scruples,” wrote Lord Chesterfield, “remained unreconciled to the
committing of so horrid a meal, till upon serious reflection I became
convinced of its legality from the general order of Nature, which has
instituted the universal preying upon the weaker as one of her first
principles.”
Finally, we find the redoubtable Paley discarding as valueless the
whole appeal to Nature, and relying on the ordinances of Holy Writ.
“A right to the flesh of animals. Some excuse seems necessary for the
pain and loss which we occasion to animals by restraining them of
their liberty, mutilating their bodies, and at last putting an end
to their lives for our pleasure or convenience. The reasons alleged
in vindication of this practice are the following: that the several
species of animals being created to prey upon one another affords
a kind of analogy to prove that the human species were intended to
feed upon them.... Upon which reason I would observe that the analogy
contended for is extremely lame, since animals have no power to
support life by any other means, and since we have, for the whole
human species might subsist entirely upon fruit, pulse, herbs, and
roots, as many tribes of Hindus actually do.... It seems to me that
it would be difficult to defend this right by any arguments which the
light and order of Nature afford, and that we are beholden for it to
the permission recorded in Scripture.”
It is evident from the above quotations, which might be indefinitely
extended, that the fable of the Wolf and the Lamb is constantly
repeating itself in the attitude of our moralists and philosophers
towards the victims of the slaughter-house. Far wiser and humaner,
on this particular subject, is the tone adopted by such writers as
Michelet, who, while not seeing any way of escape from the practice
of flesh-eating, at least refrain from attempting to support it by
fallacious reasonings.
“The animals below us have also their rights before God. Animal life,
sombre mystery! Immense world of thoughts and of dumb sufferings!
All nature protests against the barbarity of man, who misapprehends,
who humiliates, who tortures his inferior brethren.... Life--death!
The daily murder which feeding upon animals implies--those hard and
bitter problems sternly placed themselves before my mind. Miserable
contradiction! Let us hope that there may be another globe in which
the base, the cruel fatalities of this may be spared to us.”[27]
Meantime, however, the simple fact remains true, and is every year
finding more and more scientific corroboration, that there is no such
“cruel fatality” as that which Michelet imagined. Comparative anatomy
has shown that man is not carnivorous, but frugivorous, in his natural
structure; experience has shown that flesh-food is wholly unnecessary
for the support of healthy life. The importance of this more general
recognition of a truth which has in all ages been familiar to a few
enlightened thinkers, can hardly be over-estimated in its bearing on
the question of animals’ rights. It clears away a difficulty which has
long damped the enthusiasm, or warped the judgment of the humaner
school of European moralists, and makes it possible to approach the
subject of man’s moral relation to the lower animals in a more candid
and fearless spirit of enquiry. It is no part of my present purpose
to advocate the cause of vegetarianism; but in view of the mass of
evidence, readily obtainable, that the transit and slaughter of animals
are necessarily attended by most atrocious cruelties, and that a large
number of persons have for years been living healthily without the use
of flesh-meat, it must at least be said that to omit this branch of the
subject from the most earnest and strenuous consideration is playing
with the question of animals’ rights. Fifty or a hundred years ago,
there was perhaps some excuse for supposing that vegetarianism was a
mere fad; there is absolutely no such excuse at the present time.
There are two points of especial significance in this connection.
First, that as civilization advances, the cruelties inseparable from
the slaughtering system have been aggravated rather than diminished,
owing both to the increased necessity of transporting animals long
distances by sea and land, under conditions of hurry and hardship
which generally preclude any sort of humane regard for their comfort,
and to the clumsy and barbarous methods of slaughtering too often
practised in those ill-constructed dens of torment known as “private
slaughter-houses.”[28]
Secondly, that the feeling of repugnance caused among all people of
sensibility and refinement by the sight, or mention, or even thought,
of the business of the butcher is also largely on the increase; so that
the details of the revolting process are, as far as possible, kept
carefully out of sight and out of mind, being delegated to a pariah
class who do the work which most educated persons would shrink from
doing for themselves. In these two facts we have clear evidence, first
that there is good reason why the public conscience, or at any rate the
humanitarian conscience, should be uneasy concerning the slaughter of
“live-stock,” and secondly that this uneasiness is already to a large
extent developed and manifested.
The common argument, adopted by many apologists of flesh-eating, as
of fox-hunting, that the pain inflicted by the death of the animals
is more than compensated by the pleasure enjoyed by them in their
life-time, since otherwise they would not have been brought into
existence at all, is ingenious rather than convincing, being indeed
none other than the old familiar fallacy already commented on--the
arbitrary trick of constituting ourselves the spokesmen and the
interpreters of our victims. Mr. E. B. Nicholson, for example, is of
opinion that “we may pretty safely take it that if he [the fox] were
able to understand and answer the question, he would choose life,
with all its pains and risks, to non-existence without them.”[29]
Unfortunately for the soundness of this suspiciously partial
assumption, there is no recorded instance of this strange alternative
having ever been submitted either to fox or philosopher; so that a
precedent has yet to be established on which to found a judgment.
Meantime, instead of committing the gross absurdity of talking
of non-existence as a state which is good, or bad, or in any way
comparable to existence, we might do well to remember that animals’
rights, if we admit them at all, must begin with the birth, and can
only end with the death, of the animals in question, and that we cannot
evade our just responsibilities by any such quibbling references to an
imaginary ante-natal choice in an imaginary ante-natal condition.
The most mischievous effect of the practice of flesh-eating, in its
influence on the study of animals’ rights at the present time, is that
it so stultifies and debases the very _raison d’être_ of countless
myriads of beings--it brings them into life for no better purpose than
to deny their right to live. It is idle to appeal to the internecine
warfare that we see in some aspects of wild nature, where the weaker
animal is often the prey of the stronger, for there (apart from the
fact that co-operation largely modifies competition) the weaker races
at least live their own lives and take their chance in the game,
whereas the victims of the human carnivora are bred, and fed, and from
the first pre-destined to untimely slaughter, so that their whole mode
of living is warped from its natural standard, and they are scarcely
more than animated beef or mutton or pork. It has been well said that
“to keep a man (slave or servant) for your own advantage merely, to
keep an animal that you may _eat_ it, is a lie. You cannot look that
man or animal in the face.”[30]
Vegetarianism, then, is the ideal towards which food-reformers must
strive; and in the meantime something may be done by the improvement of
methods of slaughtering. The advantages of the public over the private
slaughter-house have repeatedly been demonstrated, as, for example, in
the Report of the Tuberculosis Commission of 1898, and in the Report
of the Commission appointed by the Admiralty “to consider the humane
slaughtering of animals,” issued in 1904. Anyone who will compare the
blundering, haphazard methods of many English slaughter-houses with the
model abattoirs of Germany, Switzerland, and other Continental States,
will at once see the pressing need of such reforms on the score of
humanity.
The butchers’ objections to the abattoir system arise from the usual
trade prejudices, and from the fear that their interests would suffer;
but private interests, real or imagined, should not be allowed to stand
in the way of a reform which would in the long run benefit all classes
of the community--not least the unhappy victims of the shambles.
One thing is certain, that if all flesh-eaters could themselves see
what goes on behind the scenes in many private slaughter-houses, an
end would soon be put to a system which is as barbarous as it is
insanitary--a fruitful cause of cruelty to the animals and of danger to
the public.
Reform of diet will doubtless be slow, and attended in many individual
cases with its difficulties and drawbacks. But at least we may lay down
this much as incumbent on all humanitarian thinkers--that everyone
must satisfy himself of the necessity, the real necessity, of the use
of flesh-food, before he comes to any conclusion on the subject of
animals’ rights. It is easy to see that, as the question is more and
more discussed, the result will be more and more decisive. “Whatever my
own practice may be,” wrote Thoreau, “I have no doubt that it is a part
of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave
off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating
each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.”