The Indigestible

2 Comments

• by Guy Mac

  08 Aug 2008 at 11:48

  

  I’m no veg, but can under­stand their point of view (and tac­tics). What I don’t get are things like the (recent AZ propo­si­tion) which would require that ani­mals be humanely penned… on the way to the slaugh­ter­house. It’s sort of like what Sam Harris says about Fundamentalist Christians com­pared to “luke­warm faiths” : he may dis­agree with them entirely, but at least they are consistent!

• by Warren

  08 Aug 2008 at 23:50

  

  There might be a good rea­son for that, actu­ally; the stress of restraint could change the fla­vor of the meat due to adren­a­line. Also, I sup­pose stress-​​related mor­tal­ity could go down.

  TTBOMK most ani­mals killed in slaugh­ter­houses today are done in with stun bolts, which makes it pretty fast. Until a few min­utes before they’re led into the chute they’re prob­a­bly clue­less about what’s hap­pen­ing, so over­all it could be argued that the reg­u­la­tion is more or less sen­si­bly humane.

  What I haven’t seen, and would like to, is leg­is­la­tion increas­ing pro­tec­tion of slaugh­ter­house employ­ees. Eric Schlosser, in Fast Food Nation, doc­u­ments ris­ing cases of repetitive-​​motion injuries, lac­er­a­tions, miss­ing dig­its, etc. as slaugh­ter­houses have increased pro­duc­tion with decreased work­force over the last decade or so. It’s a hard, tir­ing job on the floor, prob­a­bly exacts a rather painful psy­cho­log­i­cal toll, and the work is a big social blind spot. (“I work in a slaugh­ter­house” is almost guar­an­teed to be a con­ver­sa­tion stopper.)

  Having seen a whole cow shot, bled and butchered on a ranch, I’ve got some idea of the con­nec­tion between the moo­ing, poop­ing ani­mal and the slabs of meat that come from it — but that was out in the open, under a blue sky, with sev­eral expe­ri­enced peo­ple work­ing on the car­cass. Modern slaugh­ter­houses are nowhere near as demi-​​romantic. Generally, the ani­mal is taken apart so fast that its mus­cle fibers might still twitch even as they’re being cut into steaks.

  The point is that things hap­pen so fast, and under such high-​​stress con­di­tions, that the humans work­ing on the ani­mals are sub­ject to pres­sures most of us can’t prob­a­bly imag­ine, and that leads to all sorts of prob­lems for them.

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