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In an article I read in the UTNE Reader, Kimberly French, a womyn who raised (razed) sheep for consumption, describes what she witnessed at the slaughter house.
Jackson [the man at the slaughter house] killed two hogs before I could figure out how he did it. He herded another one from the maze of pens outside into a red steel chute. He wrapped a chain around the hog's right rear leg, then lifted the front wall of the chute just enough to shove the hog into the room. He pushed a switch that hung from the ceiling. A hydraulic lift hoisted the big animal. Its free leg thrashed. He lowered her, slowly, headfirst, into a barrel. Then I saw: Just before her head disappeared, he stuck a knife in her throat. In and out.The conversion of a hod into meat was routine and quick. Jackson and him employees killed and cleaned animal after animal, with the same competent ease they might use to move pallets around a warehouse. Jackson told me that watching the first one is the hardest. It was true.
Once the hog was close to dead, belly twitching only a little, Jackson swung it into a large vat heated by gas jets. He let it soak a few minutes, then rolled it onto the hog dehairer. The racket was terrific. A rotor spun the hog and flicked bits of hair around the room. Already the dead animal looked like meat.
Jackson took the next hog and an employee named Reg took over.... He slit the belly. The intestines popped out and slithered slowly towards the chest. He tossed them in a pile on the floor. Reg then sawed the length of the backbone. Steam rose from the animal and the chainsaw.
This is what happens to every animal before it becomes your favorite dish, though not all animals are killed the same way. It is taken, frightened by load noises, pulled by chains, and held upside-down. Then it has its throat slit. The animal does not die right away. It suffers a few minutes before it dies. Every time you eat a hamburger, you endorse this kind of cruelty to a living, breathing, feeling thing.
As the band Propagandhi has quoted, "Anyone who can make a case for eating a hamburger can make a case for rape, gay bashing, and white supremacy."
Could this be more true? No, it could not. The amount of suffering involved in one steak dinner is certaintly equal to the amount of suffering a rape victim goes through.
Why do we do this? How can one be so cruel, especially this day in age, where we can go to a super market and get any food we want? We don't need to kill a fellow being to eat, there are thousands of foods that don't have meat in them, and they are just as easy to obtain as a London broil. But people don't care. Our society is so filled with ignorance that they are willing to sacrifice an animal when they could have some pasta, or salad instead. For the most part, they do this out of ignorance, not cruelty. People don't know the suffering of the animal of their plate. And just think, for thousands of years, humyns have been doing this. Think of the millions of animals, slaughtered in the name of gluttony. They deaths used to feed an ignorant population, so that they could grow stronger, and kill some more.
In closing, remember where your meal came from, and try to stop the torture of animals.
