Author: Sandra Kyle

There is no ethical way to kill an animal who doesn’t want to die, writes End Animal Slaughter contributor LYNLEY TULLOCH

The slaughterhouse is something many of us would like to pretend doesn’t exist. It sits, ghastly and imposing, behind high walls. It represents the interface between life and death; a breathless and relentless killing machine.

Restaurant entrepreneur and chef Allegra McEvedy expressed this discomfort in an article she wrote for The Guardian in 2014. McEvedy wrote, “I’m fine with dead animals, but the point at which animals cross from living to lunch is one that makes me wobble a bit”.  McEvedy set up a ‘pork-focused’ or ‘pig based’ restaurant in 2013 which aimed to source pig meat sustainably, and “venerate the pig in all its manifold glory”. The restaurant closed in 2016, but not before many pigs lost their lives in a bizarre act of supposed veneration.

Veneration is a strong word. It means to worship and respect. I am not sure how McEvedy can claim that using a pig’s very flesh for food, and to profit from that, is synonymous with veneration.

We see this kind of hypocritical attitude regularly. It fits squarely in the welfarist camp where the animal unknowingly trades their life (by way of humane slaughter – an oxymoron) for being bred into existence and cared for. The animal has a good (albeit short) life while the person gets their pound of flesh.

The human gets to have the animal’s body and eat it too. It’s just – well, they would rather not see the life being taken. No one wants to do that, not really. Some people try to transcend this discomfort by deciding that if they can take an animal’s life or witness the slaughter of said animal then it justifies the act. We’ve all heard it being said before – “I won’t eat it if I cannot kill it myself.”

To return to McEvedy, she visited the pig farms where the pigs for her restaurant were sourced from. She cuddled day old piglets at Dingley Dell (I kid you not) specialized outdoor farm. She thought about her values of high animal welfare and integrity. And then she decided to tour the slaughterhouse where the pigs were to be killed. As she said, this was her first visit to a slaughterhouse despite being in the food business for 20 years.

The slaughterhouse was called Burrow’s Abattoir, a mid-sized independent outfit.  It’s the place that Dingley Dell sends pigs to be killed. It kind of sounds like a children’s book, a Disneyland version of happily ever after.

The slaughterhouse was called Burrow’s Abattoir, a mid-sized independent outfit.  It’s the place that Dingley Dell sends pigs to be killed. It kind of sounds like a children’s book, a Disneyland version of happily ever after.

Except it wasn’t. McEvedy describes how the slaughterhouse killed 4,000 – 4,500 pigs a day. They kill them by putting them in gas chambers after being ‘trotted along in single file up a ramp’. McEvedy says she can hear squeals, but she also concedes that pigs are notoriously chatty and she doesn’t really think they are distressed. The pigs enter a chamber of highly concentrated CO2 and after 90 seconds are dead.

The 90 minutes is debatable. There is evidence that pigs may suffer for several minutes in agonizing pain.

That’s it. McEvedy is now happy to move along the chute to the blood-letting area satisfied that she is still in Disneyland. The pigs however, are being hooked up, bled out and split in two and their innards (grey with a hint of mauve according to McEvedy) are released.

And of all this, McEvedy says she feels more a sense of awe than of disgust. She writes, “I can feel my eyes widening and over the next hour I am aware they’ve taken on a look somewhere between intently engaged and slightly demonic”.

Her words, not mine.

And of all this, McEvedy says she feels more a sense of awe than of disgust. She writes, “I can feel my eyes widening and over the next hour I am aware they’ve taken on a look somewhere between intently engaged and slightly demonic”.

Her words, not mine.

There is something disquieting about the sense of awe and enjoyment some people get from watching animals being killed. Not everyone cares that animals suffer, or that their lives mean nothing more than a bacon sandwich. The human mind is capable of twisting reality into shadows that obscure the truth.

Before you buy into the line of ethically sourced, sustainable meat it is important to disperse the shadows. What McEvedy did not say in her article is that pigs suffer horribly in gas chambers. There is a myth that gas chambers are humane. The pigs struggle for air and convulse before death. Undercover footage reveals the harrowing reality. When the pigs inhale their lungs, eyes and mouth become acidic and they burn from the inside out. Their squeals are harrowing, and not the kind of ‘chatter’ one would associate with pigs socializing.

Carbon dioxide gas chambers are not a happy way to end a pig’s life.

Instead of a Disneyland fairytale of happy ever after, these pigs go from Dingley Dell to Hell.

Shortly after she wrote this article the author, currently in Fiji, heard the bloodcurdling screams of a pig being slaughtered in a back yard.   It left her shaking, and unable to forget what she had heard.  (Internet photo).

Richard Ryder has a special place in the history of the Animal Rights movement.  His influence was seminal in the early development of the notion of rights for animals,  and he is also the inventor of the term ‘Speciesism’, a central idea in the movement.

Richard Ryder was born Richard Hood Jack Dudley Ryder in Dorset, England in 1940.  After studying psychology and working in animal research laboratories, he began to speak out about animal experimentation, organising protests against animal experiments and also blood sports.  In the late 1960s when he was working as a clinical psychologist, he joined a group of young philosophers and writers loosely centered around Oxford University called the ‘Oxford Vegetarians’ or the ‘Oxford Group’.  In 1971 a book of selected essays emerged from the group, called ‘Animals, Men and Morals’  which argued clearly in favour of animal liberation/animal rights, rather than simply for compassion in the way animals are used.  The editors wrote in the introduction: “Once the full force of moral assessment has been made explicit there can be no rational excuse left for killing animals, be they killed for food, science, or sheer personal indulgence.”  These were truly groundbreaking ideas at the time.

In 1970 Ryder had a Eureka moment when he thought of the word ‘Speciesism’ to describe the assumption of superiority that humans have over non-human animals.  This prevalent notion has led to the widespread cruelty and abuses of countless billions of sentient beings, as well as the endangerment and extinction of many species, and environmental damage.  Shortly after this a young moral philosopher who had been influenced by the Oxford Vegetarians approached Ryder about a book he was planning, and asked him to co-author it with him.   The young man was Peter Singer, and the book the seminal Animal Liberation, published in 1975.  Ryder turned down the offer, but his influence was demonstrated in Singer popularizing the term ‘speciesism’ in the book.

Ryder’s accomplishments in the field of animal rights are extensive.   In 1972 he joined the Council of the RSPCA, becoming its chairman in 1977, during which time he tried to get rid of reactionary and pro-hunting elements within the organisation.  Also in 1977 he helped to organize the first academic animal rights conference, which was held at Trinity College, Cambridge.    The conference produced a “Declaration against Speciesism”, signed by 150 people.  In the 1980s he toured Europe, America and Australia, appearing on television and lending his assistance to campaigns to protect whales, seals, elephants and farm animals.     In 2004 he became Director of the Political Animal Lobby and later became Mellon Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Tulane University, New Orleans.

In the early 2000s, after a long and hard campaign, Ryder established the Eurogroup for animals – the major coordinating and lobbying organisation in the European community,  who “speak for animals and for the millions of European citizens who are concerned about the way animals are treated”  The group was instrumental in animals now being recognised in EU law as sentient beings.

Ryder has written ten non-fiction books on animal rights, psychology and moral philosophy, including Animal Revolution (2000), Painism (2003), and also a novel, The Black Pimpernel.   Now approaching eighty years of age, Ryder is still active writing and giving interviews, continuing his life-long work on behalf of the other animals that mankind has so unjustly exploited and caused to suffer.

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Israeli historian and Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem YUVAL NOAH HARARI has written a number of best selling books including Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2014), Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016) and 21 Lessons for the 21^st Century (2018).    

In this GUARDIAN article he claims the fate of farm animals is not an ethical side issue, but concerns the majority of Earth’s large creatures: ‘tens of billions of sentient beings, each with a complex world of sensations and emotions, but which live and die on an industrial production line’.  

Professor Harari states that since we are on the cusp of being able to reshape the future through biotechnology, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, in designing this brave new world ‘we should take into account the welfare of all sentient beings, not just of Homo sapiens.’

Industrial farming, he claims, is ‘possibly the greatest crime in the history of the world.’ 

Read the Article:

Should cows have the right not to be placed in a hamburger?  End Animal Slaughter Contributor LYNLEY TULLOCH thinks they should.

New Zealand-owned Pizza chain Hell was recently in the news when they covertly added a Beyond Meat patty to their burger pizza.   It is suggested that they were in breach of the NZ Fair Trading Act, which protects consumers from being misled.

Lawyer Ray Neild is quoted as saying: “What does a reasonable consumer expect if it says “burger”?  A reasonable consumer is going to think that means meat.”

But what is reasonable for the consumer is not necessarily so hunky dory for the bovine. In fact, if bovines were extended human rights they would well and truly be on solid ground to seek legal remedy. They would no doubt ask to make it illegal to murder bovines in order to put them in a burger patty, or on a pizza, or for any other reason.  If a bovine had the same rights that are bequeathed to humans under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights it would be complete pande-moo-nium.

Let’s face it, by being made into a burger the bovine has a substantial amount of her rights breached. These include her right to life, health, liberty, self-determination. equal protection of the law, nondiscrimination and protection against torture.

The bovine’s right to life seems to be a pretty clear cut case,  seeing that she has ended up as a medium rare patty in your burger. To get there she had to be dead. You may be ok with this. but the bovine, bless her, is probably not. I think I am in pretty safe territory when I say that no bovine goes to his or her death willingly, especially for no other purpose than to fill space between two bread buns alongside the lettuce and tomato.

If a bovine were accorded the right to good health she would also not end up in a burger. Not only is eating burgers bad for the bovine’s health, but also for yours. Meat eating is linked to many cancers, specifically colon cancer. It is also bad for the heart, causing fatty deposits which contribute to heart disease. It goes without saying that eating burgers is bad for the bovine’s heart which, not to put too fine a point on it, must desist in order for her to become a burger.  Meat, as the saying goes, ‘stops a beating heart.’

And what about the bovine’s right to self-determination? The bovine currently has none. She is caught up in a system where her very existence is predicated on her demise. Her life is determined by others, who seek to profit from her death. Years of domestication have rendered her docile enough to keep captive until she is deemed ready for the slaughterhouse. She may be used to breed other calves for meat, or her body may be used for milking before it is spent and sold off as cheap hamburger fodder or pet food. There is no self-determination for bovines at any stage of their short existence.

As for equal protection of the law, the bovine has none of this either. She is not protected, as humans are, from murder, forced impregnation, denial of liberty, or incarceration. She is at the mercy of the laws of the country she was born into that determine acceptable ‘welfare standards’ for her upkeep. However, these are routinely transgressed, and in some countries completely absent.

The right of bovines to nondiscrimination is clearly flouted. Bovines, like other animals who are farmed, are discriminated against on the basis of their species. She may be born into a bovine body, but she is still able to think, feel, hope, fear, and form attachments. Just because she is a bovine, does not mean she is not an individual whose life matters to her. Despite this, she is discriminated against, simply because she is a bovine.

What about her right to protection against torture? Surely we don’t torture bovines? Sadly, we do. They have their horns burned off, with 97% of New Zealand farmers using the hot iron cautery method.. If the calf is less than nine months old it is recommended pain relief is used, but this is not a legal requirement. Young male calves often have tight rings put around their scrotum so the blood supply is cut off,  causing the testicles to drop off. Some bovines used to have their tails cut off,  but since October 2018 this is illegal.  The law grants small mercies. Bovines also often experience distress by being given inadequate shelter, braving the wind, rain and biting cold in winter and the hot sun with no shade in summer. When they are transported to the slaughterhouse bovines are put in trucks and electric prods may be used to move them along. They often travel long distances in hot conditions only to arrive at the gates to Hades Underworld, with a one-way entry ticket purchased on their behalf. They come out in dismembered pieces; even in death they are not given any dignity.

It would be disingenuous to suggest that all human rights be extended to animals. For example, the right to education and freedom of religion and participation in government would be a trifle bizarre. No one really wants a bull lining up at the polling booth, horns and balls intact, ready to express his right to vote. However, animals can be given some rights within human law that would protect them from being so badly abused. We should bequeath to animals the freedom from human use and exploitation, and that, of course, means not murdering and eating them.

So in response to Lawyer Ray Neild’s comment about the expectation of ‘reasonable consumers’ I would like to shift the goal posts. A ‘reasonable consumer’ should find murder of an animal to be entirely unreasonable.

Hell General Manager Ben Cumming is to be commended. He is quoted  as saying: “We care about the planet and want to start a conversation and raise awareness about sustainable food choices.”  I don’t think I am being unreasonable in suggesting that, perhaps, a burger that tastes like meat, but for which no animal had to suffer and die,  is the more inclusive path to take.

This generation is waking up to the reality that many individual ‘choices’ about matters such as meat consumption are having an impact on the future viability of the Earth and our future as a species. Many people are also beginning to care a whole lot more about animal sentience, and want to extend the principal of non-exploitation to them.

It is not that difficult to do. We just need to break though the species barrier and see the individuality and person-hood in all beings. The ultimate feel-good factor in food consumption is knowing that your choice is based on non-harm, compassion and life.

Step away from Hades Underworld and enter the gates of Hell.     I hear the future calling.