Animals will fight for lives

Opinion: August 23, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

By Paula Moore

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

Animals raised for food don’t want to die anymore than we do, and given half a chance, they will fight for their lives until the very end.

Three recent incidents prove this point and will hopefully inspire at least some people to think about what — or who — they put on their plates.

Earlier this month, a terrified steer made a run for his life after escaping from a slaughterhouse in Queens, N.Y. His desperate bid for freedom ended when he was cornered on a local university campus, wrestled to the ground and taken back to the slaughterhouse and killed.

Mile-long chase

After watching his companions get shot in the head with a captive-bolt gun, another steer crashed through an unlocked door at a slaughterhouse in Michigan and darted across five lanes of traffic, leading police on a mile-long chase.

Police finally cornered the exhausted animal, shot him and hauled his body back to the slaughterhouse with a tow truck.

Kayli’s story had a different ending. Kayli, a cow, was being loaded into the holding pen of a Philadelphia-area slaughterhouse in June when she made a break for it. She ran through the streets for nearly an hour before being lassoed by a slaughterhouse worker and taken back to the facility.

A local animal-loving attorney went to the halal slaughterhouse and begged for the cow’s life. An official from the Council on American-Islamic Relations worked to negotiate her release.

Even Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett stepped in: His office gave Kayli an official pardon. She will now live out the rest of her days at a sanctuary for farmed animals in upstate New York.

According to the sanctuary’s website, Kayli will be “surrounded by loving people who see her as a life to be valued — here WITH us and not FOR us.”

Every year, billions of animals have their bodies chopped up, labeled as this cut or that and wrapped in cellophane for the supermarket meat case. But animals are more than walking entrees.

Social hierarchies

Cows are intelligent and curious animals who form social hierarchies, can recognize more than 100 members of their herd, have best friends and cliques and even hold grudges.

When they are separated from their families or friends, cows grieve deeply, especially mother cows for their calves. Author Oliver Sacks, M.D., wrote of a visit that he and cattle expert Dr. Temple Grandin made to a dairy farm. Earlier in the day, the calves had been taken away from their mothers.

“We saw one cow outside the stockade, roaming, looking for her calf, and bellowing,” Sacks wrote. “She wants her baby,” Grandin told him.

When it comes to basic emotions, such as the love that a mother feels for her baby or fear of the knife, animals are not so different from us. But it’s easier to eat them if we pretend that animals don’t experience the same grief, love, joy and pain that we do.

Vegetarianism

After the steer in Queens was killed, the Village Voice wrote, “This isn’t how we treat our liberated animals; we’re supposed to create Twitter presences for them and reward them for their courage like Kayli, the cow in Philadelphia. ... Vegetarianism is sounding pretty good right now.”

The recent slaughterhouse escapes serve as a reminder of the terror and suffering faced by billions of animals every year. Turning away and shutting our eyes to the suffering won’t make it go away. When we buy meat, we are paying someone — for the sake of a sandwich — to kill another living being who didn’t want to die. If you find that hard to stomach, then it’s time to stop eating animals.

Paula Moore is a senior writer for the PETA Foundation, Norfolk, Va. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.