I: “Then you never stun your sheep before bleeding them.”
Second Butcher: “No, never.”
“Why not? Is there any objection?”
“No, I don’t see any objection; only it’s never done. I’ve never seen a
sheep stunned.”
“Just custom?”
“Yes, just that.”
The old, ignorant prejudice that animals do not bleed freely if stunned
first is now, I think, never advanced.
So much for custom and dislike of change.
But now we come to what is perhaps the real gravamen of the
resistance—a little extra trouble, a suspicion of extra expense. This
touches all the points in the irreducible minimum of reform. For
instance, the various R.S.P.C.A. humane-killers cost about thirty-five
shillings; the Swedish cattle-killer ten shillings and sixpence, with
cartridges four shillings per hundred. You must spend perhaps an hour in
learning how to use them, and five minutes or so per day in cleaning
them. They are still new things—“fads”—although they have passed all
tests, been proved by dozens of testimonials from butchers in this
country to be perfectly efficient; _and the Swedish cattle-killer is
used throughout several countries_.
Again, it is convenient not to have to be careful to shut doors between
slaughtering chambers and animals awaiting slaughter, or to have to pave
your floors so that blood runs well away from the waiting pens. It is
handy (especially in ill-constructed slaughter-houses) to kill animals
in sight of each other. It is always, in fact, a nuisance to make any
change that involves readjustment. And unfortunately animals have no
force behind them, are not represented on the public bodies of the
country; cannot lobby in the House of Commons, withdraw votes or commit
outrages; cannot instruct counsel; have no rights save those which mere
chivalry shall give them. “Besides,” says Defence, “everything is
already done as well as it can be done. Switzerland, Denmark—who knows
whether they are really better? The ways of our own country are good
enough for us—the good old-fashioned methods—if there were any real
need for reform we should be the first to undertake it!” Waste-paper,
then, the Admiralty Report! Waste-paper!
I have reckoned that in the case of sheep alone the amount of needless
suffering inflicted must amount to some 33,000 hours of solid,
uninterrupted death agony each year (number of sheep slaughtered without
stunning, 8,000,000; period of suffering, five to thirty
seconds—Admiralty Committee’s report)—all preventable by a few strokes
of the legislative pen.
But the truth is we don’t reflect; or if by any chance we do, we pass on
with the thought: “Nothing can be done till the butchers themselves are
convinced!” Is that true?
Just this far true: As in every other case of new law, there would be
required at first a little special activity. It is only a question of
starting a new standard. In two years’ time, if these simple, harmless
regulations concerning the slaughter of animals for food were
enforced—not merely recommended, as now—there would hardly be an
animal in this country bled without first being stunned by humane
methods, or any beasts watching their fellows being killed.
I attack no one in this matter; I blame no one, for I am not in a
position to—the charge of callousness falls heavily on my own
shoulders, who have eaten meat all these years without ever troubling as
to what went before it. Nor can I hope that these words will do more
than ruffle the nerves of the public; but I do trust that such of our
legislators as may chance to read them may be moved to feel that it is
their part to save patient creatures, who cannot plead in their own
behalf, from all suffering that the proper satisfaction of our wants
_does not compel_ us to inflict on them.
If what I have written has seemed extravagant, he who reads has only to
go and see for himself. And let those who would attack this plea train
their guns on the Report of the Admiralty Committee, 1904. For I have
but conveniently summarized the unanimous verdict of able and
disinterested men, who, officially appointed to examine the whole
matter, held many sittings, heard many witnesses, saw with their own
eyes, and made their own experimental investigations. I have, in fact,
done nothing but give an added publicity to the deliberate conclusions
of an impartial tribunal, which had an unique opportunity of forming and
delivering a comprehensive, dispassionate judgment, and delivered it—to
what end?
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[2] Things have moved a little, I believe, but not nearly enough.—J. G.
[3] The Admiralty Committee on Humane Slaughtering, 1904 Chairman, Mr.
Arthur Lee, M.P.
[4] I believe it is the smell of blood, rather than the sight, which
affects animals.—J. G.