It’s About Making Babies!

Anna at AnnaLand lauds her husband turning vegetarian, after learning of criminal abuses at a CA slaughter operation.

Gaack. We treat animals, livestock, pets, or wildlife, humanely for a very important reason. Mistreating animals harms us. We learn bad habits of disrespect and violence to animals and people around us. We learn to view animals and others as objects, we learn to withhold compassion and respect. Most serial killers began with abusing animals – police departments treat animal cruelty today with a great deal of attention – it is one of the signs of a developing killer.

As long as there have been animals, animals have been killed in defense or for food. Whether all life evolved from common sources, or were divinely created, there is little objective reason to hold one life more important than another. Socially and culturally we all tend to follow the practices that enabled our ancestors to survive – protect our family, avoid unneeded killing, develop resources.

Anna deplores killing cattle. She prefers fish. She figures the fish don’t die as cruelly.

Dead is dead, none of us can report whether one form of death is worse than another, whether by legal means in a slaughter house for cattle and hogs (or horses) or gasping for oxygen as a fish is removed from water. We *think* passing away in our sleep is preferable, but we don’t *know* what, if anything, our spirit experiences.

Which brings me back to Anna and her husband. Stories of abuse at that slaughter house have a lesson to teach – that abusing animals, like abusing children or family or friends, is illegal and should be punished. Those that view any slaughter as being wrong draw artificial distinctions – they assign a spirit to cows but continue to slaughter, by amateur means, fish. Or include fowl such as duck, chicken, geese, in on one side of the equation or the other. Some draw a line at mobile life, and dismiss evidence of spirit in grains and other growing things.

Out of respect for ourselves, we must show respect for the people and animals that come into our responsibility. We raise our children and teach them to participate and function in our society. We gather and preserve food. And for those that eat meat, we treat our livestock and pets with respect.

Slaughter in the wild has been going on for a long time. Away from confined feed lots, some cattle are killed each year by predators, weather, disease, and injury. I don’t hold that there is a special ‘wrongness’ with slaughtering cattle for food. Dead is dead, and the cattle are not respected less because we eat beef.