But for the Sake of Some
Little Mouthful Of Flesh...

Most people like animals. Cats and dogs are favorites. But the good feelings many people have for whales and dolphins, baby seals and elephants show that even wild animals can come within the mantle of our affections. Animals don’t have to live with us to be liked by us.

Children reveal how generous we are in our natural love of animals. Any grade school teacher knows that nothing gets the attention of youngsters like a class visit by an animal, whatever the species. Children’s bedrooms are veritable menageries of stuffed creatures, and the stories young people eagerly read, listen to, or watch are as much about the travails of bears and rabbits as they are about the adventures of human beings. Even adults find it natural to drive cars named Mustang, Lynx, and Cougar, or to root for athletic teams called the Colts, Rams, or Cardinals. Some of the habits of childhood remain for a lifetime.

One of these habits concerns food. Most people who live in the Western world are taught to eat meat from infancy onward. And most people who acquire this habit never give it up. Perhaps some never stop to think about it. But whether thought about or not, we face a strange paradox: On the one hand, people naturally love animals; on the other, they eat them. How is it possible to eat what one loves?

One possible answer is that people do not love the animals they eat or eat the animals they love. And it is true that comparatively few Westerners feel much affection for domesticated “food animals,” as they are called — cows, pigs, chickens and turkeys, for example. Why these animals tend not to be loved by us, while others are, poses many interesting questions. We in the West are shocked to learn that Koreans and other Asians eat dogs. And yet Hindus are no less aghast that Westerners eat cow, and many other people from various parts of the world wonder how humans can eat any animal. Love is fickle, it seems, even in the case of our love for animals. It is difficult to understand how some people can adamantly refuse to eat cats and dogs because they love them, and then turn around and gladly eat other animals who are not essentially different. Cows and pigs, for example, just like dogs and cats, see and hear, are hungry and thirsty, feel pain and pleasure, like companionship and warmth. If we do not eat the latter, how can it be fair or rational to eat the former?

Perhaps part of the answer lies in the fact that people do not have to kill the animals they eat. Other people do this for them. So perhaps the ancient adage, “Out of sight, out of mind,” applies. Because we do not see animals die, perhaps we can pretend they are not killed. By not being a party to their slaughter people can have a psychological shield that protects them from seeing steaks and chops as parts of dead animals — as pieces of corpses. Certainly many people would give up eating meat if they had to slaughter animals themselves. The emotional trauma would be too great.

These psychological defenses may not be strong enough. How would we fare psychologically if the walls of slaughterhouses were made of glass? What would we feel and do if we SAW the death of so-called “food animals”? Might not the psychological shield break if people peered through these glass walls and saw the meat on their plate for what it really is, not for what they pretend it to be?

But slaughterhouses do not have glass walls. And few people ever venture inside. And why should they? Whatever the details, everybody understands without looking that they can’t be pretty. So why go in? Who wants or needs to see all the blood and gore?

Most people are satisfied with this response, at least until they begin to think about many things that aren’t “pretty” — the mass graves of innocent women and children massacred in Vietnam, for example, and the merciless exploitation of Jews at the hands of Nazis. We do not want to look, of course, and we do not enjoy what we see. Yet we understand the need to confront the truth, however ugly it may be, lest we forget. We owe the victims of large-scale human evil at least this much.

Do we owe less to the animals slaughtered for food? Certainly the statistics are staggering: over 5 billion slaughtered annually, just in the United States, approximately 4,000 killed every second of every day. In terms of sheer numbers even the worst human atrocities are dwarfed by comparison. Of these atrocities we understand the need to remind ourselves. In the face of animal slaughter we look away. How can it be right to force ourselves to confront the one and allow ourselves to avoid the other?

For many people the explanation is simple: Despite the natural affection we humans have for some animals, it is not wrong to kill them for food. Of course these people don’t like the idea of animals being slaughtered and would not (or could not) perform the slaughter themselves. But while it is wrong to kill human beings for food, for example, it is not wrong in their view to do this to animals.

How can this be? How is it possible for the one to be wrong and the other not? Some reason must be given. Many have been. One relies on religious beliefs about the soul. Many people think killing is wrong only when the victim has an immortal soul. And this belief, coupled with the additional belief that only human beings possess immortal souls, does offer a reason which, if true, could justify killing animals for food.

How adequate is this response? Different people dispute it for different reasons. Some dispute it because they believe that nothing has an immortal soul. Others dispute it because they believe that everything does. Who (or what) has an immortal soul, in short, is a controversial question. But whatever the answer offered, it proves to be irrelevant. For how long individuals live makes no difference to how they should be treated while alive. If a dog has been hit by a car and we can alleviate her pain, then it is wrong not to do so. It would be morally grotesque to say that we need not help “because she will not live forever.” It would be no less grotesque to suppose that we might justify killing “soul-less” animals “because they have no life beyond the grave.” If anything, just the opposite would be true. For if animals have no prospect of a life after this one, then we should do everything we can to insure that the life they do have — this one — is as long and full as possible. This we hardly do by slaughtering them at the rate of almost 14 million a day — just in the United States. Rather than this defense of slaughtering “food animals” serving to justify what goes on in slaughterhouses, it actually demands that we close them.

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