According to Elizabeth Costello, people use gods as excuses for eating meat: "It's convenient. God told us it was OK" (Coetzee 86). I personally believe that it is OK for people to consume animals because we are predators and they are preys. It is natural that stronger species dominate and eat weaker species. Because I consider humans to be at the top of the food chain, I do not see problems with eating meat.
The problem lies within the meat production stages. The horrors of meat factories are comparable to those of the concentration camps during the WWII. Most people know the cruelty that took place in those concentration camps. However, while the concentration camps were fully active, people insisted on ignorance. Similarly, "we are surrounded by an enterprise of degradation, cruelty and killing which rivals anything that the Third Reich was capable of, indeed dwarfgs it, in that ours is an enterprise without end, self-regenerating, bringing rabbits, rats, poultry, livestock ceaselessly into the world for the purpose of killing them" (Coetzee 65). Nevertheless, many people decide not to notice the horrific scenes of these meat factories, for it ruins the fantasy that there is no animal CRUELTY.
Look at all the blood that is spewing out of the birds as they dangle upside down!
Some people become vegetarian to salvage themselves, but vegetarianism has little to do with compassion for the animals. Unless they are hunting or fishing, people generally do not kill the animals that they eat. Hence, "vegetarianism and compassion for animals are not the same thing at all" (Anthology 350). When the President asks Costello if she is vegetarian out of moral conviction, she answers, "No... It comes out of a desire to save my soul" (Coetzee 89). Her answer reflects South Asian arguments for vegetarianism: "Buddhists and Jains cared, like Elizabeth Costello, for individual human salvation, more, really, than they cared for animals" (Anthology 351).
I wish there could be a better way to run meat factories, but, sadly, it is all business in the end. As a business, its top priority is to make profit, not to be concerned about the animals that are about to die and make money. The business requires the animals dead, and it really doesn't matter how they die. Hence, cruelty to animals is common in many meat factories, but because that is the most efficient and cost beneficial way to kill animals, primitive way of killing animals by slitting their throat will continue. When Costello finishes her pro-animal rights speech, a man asks her "Are you saying we should close down the factory farms? Are you saying we should stop eating meat? Are you saying we should treat animals more humanely, kill them more humanely? Are you saying we should stop experiments on animal? Are you saying we should stop experiments with animals, even benign psychological experiments like Kohler's?" (Coetzee 81). If you think about it, he is right. What are you suppose to do without any of the things listed? Although they all contain some sort of animal cruelty, they are all necessary to the world. Plus, there really is not a "humane" way to kill all the animals we eat in a day.
Factories have to produce tons of meat in a day, so they have to be proficient at killing.
It is sad, but animal cruelty exists in our peaceful society. Many people do not know about it simply because we CHOOSE to be ignorant of the truth.
