Life Sentences

An agonised debate wracked society a couple of hundred years ago. Church, government and the middle classes searched their consciences, argued publicly and offered evidence to back their views. However, it was a one-sided argument and they soon reached agreement, with a collective sigh of relief. It was official – black people didn’t have souls. More than that, they would benefit from the discipline of hard labour provided by their Christian masters.

The outcome was – business as usual. Ship’s architects played with little models of prostrate humans, jiggling and juggling them until every available space on every possible deck was filled. They produced new vessels that could carry even greater numbers of slaves. It translated into millions of human beings being chained, motionless, side by side in the festering dark of a ship’s hold for weeks on end. Over two million died and were simply tossed into the Atlantic’s waves.

In West Africa, slave traders continued to plunder villages, yoking the inhabitants by the neck in long lines of misery. In the colonies, plantation owners continued to divide families, beat abuse and exhaust the people over whom they had complete and total control. In Bristol and other sea towns, the monied counted their dividends from this trade in human degradation.

So long as we persuaded ourselves that black people were beasts then we could do to them as we wished. Few people posed the question of whether we should be handing out such barbarity to beasts. The overriding concern was to defend the right to make money. In order to do that, almost anything could be excused.

The argument these days is not about souls but about consciousness, awareness, the ability of animals to feel or fear. But it is motivated by entirely the same morality. Pigs are imprisoned in barren crates, so deprived of stimulation that they often go mad. They are forced to have as many litters of piglets as their bodies will stand but they are not allowed to mother them. But it’s fine because they spend their lives in buildings sheltered from the elements with all the food they need and no animal wants more than that! Well, that’s what we’re told.

If a person did the same thing to dogs they would be prosecuted for cruelty – and yet a pig is equally as intelligent as a dog. So why the difference? Why do we have two sets of rules, one for a dog and one for a pig? There is no logical explanation except that we eat pigs after we’ve been cruel to them and industry makes money from their suffering.

Doesn’t it seem extraordinary that we can cram sheep into lorries in three tiers, knowing that the top tier will urinate and defecate on the sheep below and that tier will do the same to the sheep below them. We then drive them around Europe without food, water or rest and talk about a humane society. Could anyone with no financial interest conceive of such a way to treat any feeling creature? But, of course, they feel differently to us! Or so we’re told.

Trawlers criss-cross the world’s oceans, their trawl boards crushing everything on the sea bed that has the misfortune to be in their path. Much of what is caught is either thrown back dead or turned into fish meal to feed other animals. Those to be eaten have a knife thrust into them and are disembowelled while still alive. But that’s all right because fish don’t feel pain! Who could ever have conceived of such an excuse and who would have believed that so many people would be taken in by it?

Watch a chicken as she forages around a field. It struts and scratches and runs and bathes in sand. Its feet thrust the earth to one side in search of bugs and beetles and seeds and other things to eat. Her feathers shine and glint in the sunshine. What intelligence could ever have conceived of taking these restless creatures and cramming them five to a cage little bigger than a microwave oven? The beak is clipped, the feathers fall out and the pathetic creatures are bred to produce 10 times more eggs than they would naturally. Instead of bugs and beetles and seeds we produce boring pellets of indeterminate origin and feed that to them. Every attempt to end the battery system is resisted. Well, chickens aren’t really animals, are they?

The only excuse for visiting such suffering on other creatures can be ignorance. But that exit is closed to us because we do know the truth. We might pretend we don’t, we might say that to give up battery eggs is pointless as one person’s abstinence doesn’t make any difference and we might even say what the battery owners say – that it’s of no consequence. But really we know it’s wrong and that knowledge makes us push the reality into the darker reaches of our minds. If we don’t think about it, it doesn’t exist.

The world has existed for nearly five billion years during which time various life forms have developed and evolved. From the earliest sea life to the most complex mammals such as apes, they have all had one thing in common – they have lived within their environment, part of it and dependent on it. On the African plains, a cheetah chases after a Tomson’s gazelle. It has evolved to live largely on gazelles and it chases because it has no choice – it’s that or die. Both creatures match each other closely for speed and turning ability which ensures that it is largely the weak, the old or the injured who are caught. Similarly a cheetah which is slow will not survive. This selection process ensures that only the fit and healthy survive to pass their genes on to their offspring.

Into this fine web of existence came human beings. In evolutionary terms we have been here for little more than a twinkling of light. But already we have begun to tear and break the individual strands which go to make up the web of life. Our entire teaching, both political and religious, is to place us above and beyond the rules by which all other animals live, as though they simply don’t apply to us, as though we are not animals. But the smartest Porsche car, the best stereo system or the biggest swimming pool can’t alter the fact that we are animals and we are governed by the same rules which govern all animals. To ignore these rules is to court disaster. And that is what we are doing – ignoring the rules.

As a species, we have looked at the world and said that nothing matters but us. All the glories and wonders are there to be exploited and if they can’t be exploited then they count for very little. We destroy without knowing the long-term effects of such actions. And even when we do know, we continue to destroy because today is much more important than tomorrow. It is by today’s achievements, today’s profit margins, today’s boasts that we are judged.

The very philosophy which has brought the planet teetering to the edge of destruction is, we are told, the same philosophy which will save us. Like the practice of bleeding in the 18th century, the cure for our haemorrhage, they say, is to prize open even wider the severed arteries of life. Allow those with the power even greater licence to make money and the cure will be found. Profit is now the global penicillin and its voracious appetite can never be satisfied.

Profit knows no morality other than to be successful. In pursuit of that success, humans and other animals are exploited – ever more demanded of them. Knowledge, truth and understanding have ceased to be signposts to the future and have become obstacles to be circumvented. For instance, we know that smoking is the biggest avoidable killer yet every high street is littered with discarded cigarette packets. We know that a vegetarian diet is much healthier than a meat-based diet but it is the livestock farmer who receives the subsidies. We know that poverty destroys people but the gap between rich and poor grows ever wider.

Leaders have always refused to accept responsibility for their actions but lack of integrity has become an epidemic disease. They pass the blame for their failures down the line – to single parents, to students, to travellers, to squatters, to immigrants, to other nationalities. Part of the process is to stereotype each of these groups so they cease to be a collection of ordinary humans.

So what has this to do with animals? Everything! It is all part of the same process of denial. By pretending that animals have no real desire for freedom, to procreate naturally, to mother their young or even to experience pleasure by lying in the sun, then it is so much easier to use them purely as commodities – like so much iron or coal or steel – and ignore their pain and fear. It is a philosophy which similarly applies to humans.

In the poorer parts of the world we ignore suffering on a massive scale and in the process conveniently forget our own history of colonisation. It was they who provided the wealth which we now squander and in return we destroyed their agriculture and social fabric. We now hand out a few paltry pounds and pretend that we are helping to cure the problem which we were instrumental in creating. We still control their economies and demand fodder for livestock while their children die from hunger.

Despite the disproportionate volume of the world’s wealth which we control, we are seemingly incapable or unwilling to solve the problems of poverty and inequality – even on our own doorstep. When care and concern for our own species is so stintingly withheld, what hope is there for animals?

If you refuse to accept this morality of self interest and violence, which binds this all together, and choose to exercise your right to protest – you will almost certainly be portrayed as the violent one. New laws can be used to prevent even the most peaceful demonstration and so collective action against the violence of factory farming or fox hunting can now be prevented, allowing the perpetrators of the real violence to continue unhindered.

We, as humans, obviously believe we have the right to determine everything, who and what shall live and die. We slaughter owls, hawks, crows and magpies so that grouse or pheasants can be reared in large numbers. We then slaughter them by sending lead shot ripping through their flesh – and call it sport. We destroy rabbits as vermin and then demonise the foxes who live on them. We then hunt the foxes. We gas badgers because they might have TB; we trap and kill rooks because we don’t like their habits; chase hares with dogs for entertainment; do anything we like to rats and mice; shoot pigeons in their tens of thousands. We determine which animals we will eat and deny them everything, we determine which will be labelled vermin and try to annihilate them; we allow others into our homes.

Across the globe we destroy whales for cultural reasons, dolphins and seals because they dare to eat the same food as us; and there is hardly a species which will not be exterminated if their interests and ours collide.

It seems we are incapable of understanding that every living creature has its part to play in maintaining the glorious fabric of our wonderful world. We pretend that only we can maintain the balance by determining what shall live and what shall die. It seems we never stop and look around us to witness the appalling mess we have made – deluding ourselves that we know what we are doing. None of the animals which we slaughter, even those we demonise as vermin, pose any threat to the survival of the planet. It is not they which threaten its existence but us. In this maniacal juggling act we have begun to drop the balls.

The only hope we have is to fundamentally reassess our role in things and our attitude to the planet and living creatures who share it with us. When a calf is dragged into the killing pen, wide-eyed and terrified with the stench of blood and death in his nostrils, there is no compassion. Nor when the captive bolt shatters his forehead. When the slaughter’s hand grabs the muzzle of a lamb to stifle her bleating and applies the knife to her throat, there is no compassion. And without compassion there is little hope for any of us.

Make no mistake, becoming a vegetarian is an important act. Instantly, you are no longer a part of this insanity. You are no longer responsible for most of the daily cruelties handed out to farm animals. You are taking the first step in allowing the planet to heal itself but it is much more than that. It is a political act and a clear expression of a belief is a different way of doing things, a different kind of world – a better world.