A blog reader and e-mail correspondent e-mailed yesterday in response to my post on the ethics of chronic pain and referenced David Foster Wallace’s 2004 Gourmet magazine article “Consider the Lobster” in which his assignment to report on the Maine Lobster Fest turned into a discursus on the ethics of eating lobster. I actually did read it when it came out, but I had long since forgotten it. I just reread it this morning and enjoyed it very much, especially how one could, as my correspondent stated “almost feel Wallace’s own anxiety about the issue, and about ‘the age we live in’ coming through in almost every paragraph.” I identify with that anxiety very much. I have often felt that much of the writing on this blog is more or less a chronicle of my anxiety over raising animals to be killed and butchered for their meat.
One of the interesting things about Foster Wallace’s article is that it ends with the issue unresolved. Most of us that admit the ethical quandry into our lives end up living with it perpetually; very very few of us become vegetarians and/or vegans. Instead we become like funeral attendees who periodically have our laughs and giggles and general good time interrupted by the force of the lack in our social body effected by the loss of the loved one we are mourning. Every now and then in the midst of mastication, as teeth meet teeth through soft cooked flesh we are jarred by the realization that the taste and texture, the sensuous pleasure being ground between our teeth was very much a sentient critter with distinct identifiable interests, a personality, a face, and the capacity for a great deal of suffering. As at the funeral, however, the moment passes and the joviality continues.
A little more than five years ago, I encountered for the first time Peter Singer’s concept of speciesism, which I have discussed on the blog before. Basically the speciesism argument goes that we think it is okay to eat the meat of various animals because we believe they have lower moral standing because they are fundamentally, permanently, and definitely different than we are. Cows, while indeed sentient beings capable of suffering that have some moral standing (we shouldn’t abuse them, they should be well cared for, etc.), do not have a high enough moral standing to outweigh even our interest (it is not a need) in cooking (most often) and eating their flesh. The danger of speciesism, Singer argues, is that speciesism is no different than racism or sexism, which were based on the same belief in the lower moral standing of the subject based on what were believed to be at the time identifiable differences. It is speciesism above all else that interrupts me because it is so clearly the true ground for my meat eating justification. A pig is not a person. In fundamental and permissive ways, a pig is less than a person. In light of speciesism, with it, in fact, constantly tapping on my shoulder in an effort to get my attention, I make a reverse Pascalian wager and act as if the threat of speciesism will never come to pass. That threat being, recall, that we will discover one day, just as we did with racism and sexism, that there is no difference there and that animals of different species have equal moral standing.
Continually spinning the wheel round and round this inescapable (because I am unwilling to give up eating meat) ethical quandry, I make regular trips to the slaughterhouse. To continue eating meat, to continue raising animals for the express puropose of having them killed so people, myself included, can eat their meat, I must consider the slaughterhouse. The slaughterhouse is, so to speak, the meat eater’s ethical moment.
There is a lamb, I mentioned her in post not too long ago, that I call “My Pretty Girl.” She is the cutest, most adorable thing I have ever seen. First, she is tiny. At five months old, she still probably only weighs forty pounds. (She isn’t unhealthy, just small in the same way that some people are big and some are small). Second, she has the whitest, cleanest, most delicately featured face you can imagine. She has great big doe eyes. Third, while skittish, she is bold and curious. She approaches me cautiously with her little nose stretched out crinkling as she sniffs the air between us. Of the 100 lambs in her group, she will be, because of her size, in the last group to go to the slaughterhouse, and as “My Pretty Girl,” she is the perfect lamb with whom (not, note, with which) to consider the slaughterhouse.
Ninety-nine point what, nine probably, percent of us never see the inside of a slaughterhouse, and this fact, incidentally is exactly how the jungle is able to thrive inside those windowless buildings. Not all slaughterhouses are jungles however. The one I use is not. To consider the slaughterhouse, I would like to take us through My Pretty Girl’s journey through the slaughterhouse. (Please note that unlike Foster Wallace’s literary and thoughtful consideration of the lobster, my consideration of the slaughterhouse will be simply descriptive.)
The morning that I take My Pretty Girl to the slaughterhouse will be stressful for her. For the past three months she will have been comfortably living in a familiar location following a comfortably familiar routine. When I come to load her group on the trailer, that routine will be shockingly interrupted. Because she will be in the last group to go, she will not need to go through the additional stress of being sorted out of a larger group. I will just open the pen and herd My Pretty Girl and her pen mates first into the holding area, then up an aisle, and finally onto the trailer. The group of lambs will be extremely anxious and will travel in a tightly wound blob, sort of like a school of fish. As they go up the aisle toward the trailer it will narrow and they will get more nervous. They will feel me walking behind them, urging them on. They might balk and try to turn around, only to find me standing behind them. My Pretty Girl and the rest of them will be wide eyed and nervous, no matter how calmly I work them. Livestock are critters of routine, which is one of the reasons working with them is possible. When we break that routine, no matter how calmly, it makes them anxious. At the trailer door, they will definitely balk. Because of the time of year, I need to load the lambs in the dark, and critters do not like moving from a lighted area (the aisle) to a darker area (the trailer with a nonfunctional interior light). As I put pressure on them to urge just one of them to hop on the trailer their level of anxiety will rise because they feel trapped, penned in, not realizing that they can relieve the physical discomfort of the close space by hopping up onto the trailer. Within a minute or two one of them will hop on. I would be lying, however, if I didn’t tell you that I occasionally need to pick one up and toss it on to the trailer. As soon as the first one goes, they flow on like water.
Next, I am one of the lucky ones with a slaughterhouse nearby, so the trip only takes twenty minutes. I have always wanted to put a camera inside the trailer to see what the ride is like, but I have yet to do that. I drive as carefully as I can, but still, I imagine being jostled around by turns and bumps is unsettling. Maybe My Pretty Girl will lie down, which would make the trip much more comfortable for her.
Once at the slaughterhouse I will back the trailer up to the unloading chute and then walk around to the front of the building to let them know I have arrived. During that time the lambs will be standing in an anxious huddle in the trailer, completely adrift, cut off from the familiar routine. They will be anxious, not terrified, not frightened, just anxious. My Pretty Girl, though small, will likely be on the outer edge of the group because she is bold. She will face the slaughterhouse worker when he opens the door of the trailer ready to run for her life. But, instead, when the slaughterhouse worker steps onto the trailer (I will be outside the trailer on the other side of the chute) My Pretty Girl will get scared and turn with the rest of her group and scurry up to the far end of the trailer away from the slaughter man, who will walk slowly, calmly, and thoughtfully (he is good at his job) up the length of the trailer so that he can get behind the lambs. As soon as he passes halfway past her body, My Pretty Girl will rush to the other end of the trailer, but she and the rest of the group will balk at the edge of the trailer. They won’t simply hop down. In just that short twenty minute drive, the trailer will have become the familiar place compared to the concrete floored chute outside of it. The slaughterman will slowly walk up behind them, saying “Come on sheep. Come on sheep.” and making “woosshh, wissshhhh, wissssh” sounds. When he gets to the group, My Pretty Girl will dig in her heels and lean back so that she doesn’t get pushed out of the trailer, but as the slaughter man gently puts pressure on the lambs by pressing against them with his knees, eventually the pressure will be enough that one lamb, maybe My Pretty Girl, decides to step off the trailer, and once one goes, they all go. After that, they will walk about ten feet to the door leading into the holding pens where, once again, they will balk and the process will be repeated. Once one goes, they all will go and once they have all gone inside, the slaughter worker will slide the door closed, and then we’ll button up my trailer, and unless I have some business to do inside, I will be on my way.
Inside the holding pen, My Pretty Girl and her pen mates will continue to be nervous, a bit agitated, unsettled, but they will soon calm down a bit. In an hour or two depending on how busy the slaughterhouse is, the slaughter man will reappear, increasing once again the anxiety level of My Pretty Girl and her pen mates. He will herd them out of the holding pen into the kill chute. Just as before, he will do this calmly, thoughtfully, and deliberately.
Within a few minutes of being herded into the kill chute, My Pretty Girl will be led forward onto the kill floor. The slaughter worker will quickly and confidently place a captive bolt gun against her forehead and pull the trigger. The gun will make a loud popping sound and My Pretty Girl, the cutest, sweetest, most adorable little lamb you can imagine will drop like a stone. It will have been a stressful morning, anyone who denies that is a liar or a fool, but, at the end, she will drop like a stone. In the time it takes her to flutter those pretty long lashes, she will go from conscious to unconscious.
Within five seconds of being rendered unconscious by the blow to the brain of the captive bolt, a shackle will be placed around one of My Pretty Girl’s hind feet, and using a motorized pulley, the slaughterman will raise her up off the ground with her unconscious head hanging down. He will then deftly insert an very sharp knife into My Pretty Girl’s throat and sever the major veins and arteries. With the force of her still beating heart, My Pretty Girl’s blood will gush out of her neck and splash onto the kill room floor. Within seconds My Pretty Girl will pass from unconscious to dead.
My Pretty Girl’s body will dangle for a while to ensure that all of the blood has drained out. Then she will be moved over to a sort of metal cradle and lowered onto it. The slaughter worker will skin her and cut off her feet. Then her head will be cut off. From the cradle she will be moved about ten feet away and then raised up into the air again with her belly facing the slaughter worker. He will the disembowel her, being careful not to spill any of the contents of her guts inside of her, which would foul the meat.
About fifteen minutes after being walked forward onto the kill floor, My Pretty Girl will be a familiar looking whole lamb carcass ready to be rolled along the rails and placed into the cooler where she will hang for a week before being cut up to my specifications by the butchers in the cutting room, while other lambs or cows or pigs, though almost certainly none as cute, are being killed on the kill floor.
I am a speciesist. I believe because only I and none of her sheep family will miss her and because only I and not she can imagine the future and because only I and not she can wish for something different and only because I have considered the slaughterhouse that it is okay to kill My Pretty Girl and eat her.
