No Animal Food | Page 9

Everything that is en rapport with all
other things: the pebble cast from the hand alters the centre of gravity
in the Universe. As in the world of things and acts, so in the world of
thought, from which all action springs. Nothing can happen to the part
but the whole gains or suffers as a consequence. Every breeze that
blows, every cry that is uttered, every thought that is born, affects
through perpetual metamorphoses every part of the entire Cosmic
Existence.[2]

We deduce from these postulates the following ethical precepts: a wise
man will, firstly, so regulate his conduct that thereby he may
experience the greatest happiness; secondly, he will endeavour to
bestow happiness on others that by so doing he may receive, indirectly,
being himself a part of the Cosmic Whole, the happiness he gives. Thus
supreme selfishness is synonymous with supreme egoism, a truth that
can only be stated paradoxically.
Applying this latter precept to the matter in hand, it is obvious that
since we should so live as to give the greatest possible happiness to all
beings capable of appreciating it, and as it is an indisputable fact that
animals can suffer pain, and that men who slaughter animals needlessly
suffer from atrophy of all finer feelings, we should therefore cause no
unnecessary suffering in the animal world. Let us then consider
whether, knowing flesh to be unnecessary as an article of diet, we are,
in continuing to demand and eat flesh-food, acting morally or not. To
answer this query is not difficult.
It is hardly necessary to say that we are causing a great deal of
suffering among animals in breeding, raising, transporting, and killing
them for food. It is sometimes said that animals do not suffer if they are
handled humanely, and if they are slaughtered in abattoirs under proper
superintendence. But we must not forget the branding and castrating
operations; the journey to the slaughter-house, which when
trans-continental and trans-oceanic must be a long drawn-out nightmare
of horror and terror to the doomed beasts; we must not forget the
insatiable cruelty of the average cowboy; we must not forget that the
animal inevitably spends at least some minutes of instinctive dread and
fear when he smells and sees the spilt blood of his forerunners, and that
this terror is intensified when, as is frequently the case, he witnesses the
dying struggles, and hears the heart-rending groans; we must not forget
that the best contrivances sometimes fail to do good work, and that a
certain percentage of victims have to suffer a prolonged death-agony
owing to the miscalculation of a bad workman. Most people go through
life without thinking of these things: they do not stop and consider from
whence and by what means has come to their table the flesh-food that is
served there. They drift along through a mundane existence without

feeling a pang of remorse for, or even thought of, the pain they are
accomplices in producing in the sub-human world. And it cannot be
denied, hide it how we may, either from our eyes or our conscience,
that however skilfully the actual killing may usually be carried out,
there is much unavoidable suffering caused to the beasts that have to be
transported by sea and rail to the slaughter-house. The animals suffer
violently from sea-sickness, and horrible cruelty (such as pouring
boiling oil into their ears, and stuffing their ears with hay which is then
set on fire, tail-twisting, etc.,) has to be practised to prevent them lying
down lest they be trampled on by other beasts and killed; for this means
that they have to be thrown overboard, thus reducing the profits of their
owners, or of the insurance companies, which, of course, would be a
sad calamity. Judging by the way the men act it does not seem to matter
what cruelties and tortures are perpetuated; what heinous offenses
against every humane sentiment of the human heart are committed; it
does not matter to what depths of Satanic callousness man stoops
provided always that--this is the supreme question--there is money to
be made by it.
A writer has thus graphically described the scene in a cattle-boat in
rough weather: 'Helpless cattle dashed from one side of the ship to the
other, amid a ruin of smashed pens, with limbs broken from contact
with hatchway combings or winches--dishorned, gored, and some of
them smashed to mere bleeding masses of hide-covered flesh. Add to
this the shrieking of the tempest, and the frenzied moanings of the
wounded beasts, and the reader will have some faint idea of the fearful
scenes of danger and carnage ... the dead beasts, advanced, perhaps, in
decomposition before death ended their sufferings, are often removed
literally in pieces.'
And on the railway journey, though perhaps the animals