. . there is one other thought closely allied to this. What of our duties to our fellow-men? And here I appeal particularly to my own sex, because women are supposed to be rather the standard in the community of refinement, of gentleness, of compassion, of tenderness, of purity. But no one can eat the flesh of a slaughtered animal without having used the hand of a man as slaughterer. Suppose that we had to kill for ourselves the creatures whose bodies we would fain have upon our table, is there one woman in a hundred who would go to the slaughterhouse to slay the bullock, the calf, the sheep or the pig? . . . But if we could not do it, nor see it done; if we are so refined that we cannot allow close contact between ourselves and the butchers who furnish this food; if we feel that they are so coarsened by their trade that their very bodies are made repulsive by the constant contact of the blood with which they must be continually besmirched; if we recognize the physical coarseness which results inevitably from such contact, dare we call ourselves refined if we purchase our refinement by the brutalization of others, and demand that some should be brutal in order that we may eat the results of their brutality? We are not free from the brutalizing results of that trade simply because we take no direct part in it.
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On a wagon bound for market lay a cow with 2 mournful eyes... lay a cow with 2 mournful eyes. (If one passes slaughterhouse trucks on Rt 80 bound for Manhattan or the slaughterhouses of S Phily, in winter, with the freezing wind from mountain passes ripping through the slats, one sees their noses pressed to the bars, and their sad and frightened eyes.)
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In a lunch session at the slaughterhouse, a lamb jumped out of its pen and came unnoticed up to some slaughtermen who were sitting in a circle eating some sandwiches; the lamb approached and nibbled a small piece of lettuce that a man was holding in his hand. The men gave the lamb some more lettuce and when the lunch period was over they were so affected by the action of the lamb that not one of them was prepared to kill this creature, and it had to be sent away elsewhere - showing that within each human soul there is an element of pity, compassion and love in varying degrees. It is our duty to encourage the higher qualities to bloom and blossom wherever possible in each individual.
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The very people who shudder over the cruelty of the hunter are apt to forget that slaughter, in the grimmest sense of the word, is a process they entrust daily to the butcher; and that unlike the game of the forests, even the dumbest creatures of the slaughterhouse know what is in store for them.
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Animals arrive at the slaughterhouse, many, in a 4D state (dead, diseased, dying, debilitated.) (These animals sometimes go into the pet food tankers).
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Those who, by their purchases, require animals to be killed have no right to be shielded from the slaughterhouse or any other aspect of the production of the meat they buy. If it is distasteful for humans to think about, what can it be like for the animals to experience it?
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I spoke often in Congress against the war in Vietnam.. and commented on congresspersons hiding from the reality of war by saying 'many eat the meat but few go to the slaughterhouse'. I said it so often I became a vegetarian.
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'In a real way, we must share at least some of the blame and guilt for the killing (of animals) if we do not do ALL we can to stop it! Rather than sacrificing that high ground, thoughtfully-selected direct action affirms it. A few hours in jail, or even days, is NOTHING compared to a day at the slaughterhouse, the research lab or the fur farm.'
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You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity. In Fate
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In all the round world of Utopia there is no meat. There used to be, But now we cannot stand the thought of slaughterhouses. And it is impossible to find anyone who will hew a dead ox or pig. I can still remember as a boy the rejoicings over the closing of the last slaughterhouse.
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Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they're only animals.
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I'd rather get my brains blown out in the wild than wait in terror at the slaughterhouse.
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