Black & White

"They chased it all over the barn and it bled everywhere, ...Somehow it ended up in the goat stall. They cut its leg off."
(pet-abuse.com; cruelty case #12459 Mutilation/Torture)

So was the situation of a two year old calf named Neapolitan.

Born into a farming industry, purchased by the Neadow's for two thousand dollars and valued for both the milk she provided and her responsiveness to human prompts. Neapolitan was considered a part of the family, a "pet" by Neadow's standards. Until the calf was found dead, throat slit, in the barn of the Hartland, N. Y. farm, the existence of this voiceless victim had been rather typical, by farming standards.

This 2007 Niagara County cruelty case remains unsolved. It is tragic, horrendous and the extreme violence reflects an anomaly in human behavior. Or does it?

When I was very young, not more than seven or eight, I was told the story of a calf and it's mother who, with approximately twenty other cows, had been transported to a slaughterhouse.

The storyteller was a relative. An old farmer type who had changed careers late in life and now drove the trucks that carried farm animals to their final destination. He was not an animal activist, nor vegan; he was not even vegetarian. Just a typical mid-western sixty-year old man with a mortgage an no pensions to rely on. So he purchased an eighteen-wheeler an began driving for his living.

The story of the calf and mother cow was something that, had the characters' species been different , would have matched the likes of movies such as Friday the Thirteenth and Chainsaw Massacre.

After arriving at the slaughterhouse lot, he backed the trailer to the stall area. The cows were unloaded and herded onto what is known in the industry as the "kill floor". A place where blood pools and men yielding knives and wearing red-soaked aprons awaited them.

As the mother cow began to notice the threats within her new environment she began to cry out a sorrowful moan, attempting to alert her baby and fellow passengers to the dangers. Only there was no way out.

The men immediately separated the mother from her calf, but only by a few feet, and began hacking away at the tiny calf, who remained fully conscious and in great fear and confusion. Each hacking brought laughter to the room of slaughter workers until the violence turned into a sick game of eliciting maternal responses with each assault to the helpless calf. Her guttural pleas for the safety of her infant only prompted more violent responses by the workers until, after twenty minutes of stabbing, hacking and slitting, the tiny and frightened victim ceased to live.

Once the calf's struggle ended, the slaughter workers turned their efforts onto the mother cow and the process of killing then returned to the more automated methods of chaining, hanging, dismembering and skinning.

After hearing this story I asked 'why, in witnessing this horror, had my relative not done anything to stop the cruelty?' He answered with his shameful silence.

Even he, the meat-eating, leather wearing and weekend fisherman that he was, could not rationalize the actions of those slaughterhouse men. After a few minutes of heartfelt contemplation his only response was, "That happens every day. I have seen that same sort of thing many times in my driving career. It sickens me."

So what is the difference between Neapolitan's ending and those of the anonymous calf an his mother?

Neapolitan was a family pet. The cow and calf were not.

Neapolitan was given a name and with that name, was assigned a role within the human system of relationships. The mother cow and her calf were not.

Neapolitan's death was assigned to a cruelty investigation. The other's are not.

Well over 35 million cows and calves meet their death in US slaughterhouses annually. Many suffer the extreme horrors described in this post. Those who aren't entered into these sick and violent games suffer no less, as many are hoisted in the air having their throats slit and "bled-out" to their death. Others live their existence inside crates only large enough to stand, until transported to kill factories. Still others, put inside machines designed to confuse and render less conscious (but not dead or even unconscious in the least) before being skinned an dismembered alive. Yet none of these nameless creatures is ever assigned a cruelty case number. Their death, not considered a tragedy. Not one is even given a second thought as they make their way from the factory farm to a dinner plate or shoe store shelf.

Most issues in life fall into areas of gray. Rigid boundaries of right and wrong give way to the undefined haze of perspective; they are arguments multifaceted and have many angles for consideration. But the killing of the defenseless is not gray; it never can be. If we allow compassion to become debatable we loose our civility. Compassion is black and white.

Food and clothing can not justify the cruelty endured by these sentient beings. Their prolonged confinement in unfeeling environment that denies even the most basic of comforts; the harrowing hours, even days of the cramped, cold and painful ride to the slaughterhouses; the traumatic ending brought by the plunges of blood-stained knives by uncaring men and women. This cruel unsympathetic treatment has no justification.

The killing of innocent beings, whether be the incident named or in anonymity, is black and white. It is wrong. It is uncivilized. It is opposite the nature of humanity.

As the human component of humanity we must stop the disregard that our manufacturing processes have for the beings of other species.

We must, if we are to move closer to our spiritual potential, develop a reverance for all creatures, great and small, and no longer allow convenience and greed to support the pain and suffering that exists today.

What would Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad or any other spiritual leader do or say about the conditions that our societies have created for the non-human animal?

Cruelty is black and white.

Compassion is black and white.

There is no gray in recognizing that other beings feel the same fear and pain that we, as humans, do and that humanity must be a central component of how we relate to one another, regardless of the differences of our species.

"Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind."
Albert Schweitzer