Myth #42: “But I only eat humane meat.”
First & foremost my Friends, there is absolutely no such thing as “cruelty-free meat” – and there most certainly is no such thing as “humane slaughter” … Leaving aside the fact that many of the most egregious cases of animal cruelty have been documented on “cage-free” &/or “small-family” &/or “animal friendly” farms, every single farmed animal on every single for-profit farm is inevitably forced to suffer a cold, cruel death at a very young age.
Is this blatant contradiction not clear enough? Then let’s take a neutral, unbiased look at the basic definitions of the words involved … HUMANE is generally known to mean “characterized by tenderness and compassion, especially for those who are suffering or in distress”. SLAUGHTER, on the other hand, is recognized as meaning “to kill another being in a violent or brutal manner”. Now, let’s define one more term — OXYMORON, which is “a term where two or more incongruous positions are combined to create an patent contradiction” – a prime example being …
… “humane slaughter”.
*You see, no matter how “humanely” farmed animals are raised, they still suffer immensely — both physically as well as emotionally — throughout their drastically shortened lives …
*You see, the terms “cage-free” & “free-range” & “grass fed” & “humane” are merely distractions provided by the meat & dairy industry to keep us from recognizing the ultimate Truth: namely, that sentient beings are being imprisoned, enslaved & ultimately murdered solely because they are not powerful enough to stop us from doing so …
*You see, it is no more possible to “respect” farmed animals than it was for a slave owner to “respect” his slaves — or for a concentration camp guard who had been kind to the Jews under his command to “respect” them while then leading them to the gas chamber …
*You see, there really is no such thing as “humane slaughter” — just like there is no such thing as “humane rape”, or “humane child abuse”, or “humane domestic violence” …
*You see, it’s not how we use animals that is the salient point, but rather that we are using them at all. The patent wrongfulness of slavery & slaughter lies not in the way they are carried out, but that they are carried out in the first place. The harm of slavery is the enslavement — just as the harm of slaughter is the forceful ending of the lives of beings that wanted to continue living …
*You see, if the animals’ treatment from beginning to end were truly “humane”, then you would have no problem if your dog or your cat or your horse were treated the same way. Indeed, if the animals’ treatment were truly “humane”, then you would have no qualms about trading places with them yourself.
So, my “cruelty free” meat-eating Friends, now do you SEE?
Current status of this Myth: Thrashed
Justification it provides for eating animals: NONE
“For all those championing the cause of ‘humane slaughter’, it all boils down to a single question — a question that it is critical to be asked, and a question that simply must be sincerely answered. And that question is this one: Seeing as how even the most gentle of murders is undeniably both unjust & immoral, why are you looking for ‘the right way’ to do a wrong thing?” ~ anonymous
“For when injustice is absolute, one must oppose it absolutely. It was not ‘reformed’ slavery that justice demanded; not ‘reformed’ child labor; not ‘reformed’ subjugation of women. In each of these cases, complete abolition was the only answer. Merely to reform absolute injustice is to prolong that injustice.” ~ Tom Regan
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