Scientific Power of the Vegetarian Diet

Here is a popular description of the nature of cows, to contrast with their lives on a factory farm:

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In an ideal situation, cows lead peaceful and contented lives. Cattle are extremely social; herds can form with up to 300 animals, individual cows can recognize about 100 individuals. They show a distinct preference for some friends (mothers and daughters seem especially close), while avoiding others. They moo to each other frequently, and in this way, keep contact even when out of each other’s sight. Like horses and other herd animals, they also communicate through a series of different body positions and some facial expressions.

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Cows are especially attached to their calves. If a cow finds herself on the opposite side of a fence from her calf, she will become agitated and call fearfully, and, desperate to be reunited with her baby, she will stay by the fence through all kinds of weather, hunger, and even thirst. The strength of this bond continues even after the calf is fully grown. Mother cows have been known to travel up to seven miles in order to be reunited with their calves.

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Cattle have near-panoramic vision, which allows them to watch for humans and other predators. Like us, they can see in color, except for red. Their sense of smell is acute; they can detect scents more than six miles away. Cattle seem to love the moonlight, and they appear to remain busy for longer periods when the moon is full. The lifespan of cattle averages twenty to twenty-five years.

 

How cows live on factory farms is another matter.

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Nowadays, dairy cows are little more than living milk machines. They are raised indoors in individual stalls with just enough room to stand and lie down in. Lighting (bright light sixteen hours a day), temperature, and food are controlled without regard to comfort for the sole purpose of making the largest possible amount of milk.

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The dairy cows’ calves are taken away, and this causes unimaginable agony to the animals. The new mothers moan pitiably upon the forced separation. From the day of separation forward, the cow will be milked two or three times a day for about ten months until she is made pregnant again, when the cycle starts anew. A dairy cow typically lasts no more than four years before their milk production drops enough to make her more profitable as hamburger or dog food. Off to the slaughterhouse she goes.

 

“It should not be thought that animals go meekly and willingly into the death chambers—they are filled with terror and resist strongly.”

—Geoffrey Rudd

 

All animals suffer horribly in our factory farms, but none more than the male calves on their way to becoming veal. In order to provide people with pale and tender meat, the calf is subjected to the most stressful and unnatural of lives. The only mercy is that it is short.

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The calf’s suffering begins as he is ripped from the comfort of his mother. Scared and confused, missing his mom, he is placed in a small wooden box—measuring less than three square feet. This space is so cramped that he is unable to turn around or lie down—a source of constant frustration and discomfort. On the slatted floor, the calf is in a perpetual state of distress. Veal producers do not want the baby calf to develop muscles or burn calories (feed is expensive!), so they never allow the calf to leave this small, tight, and extremely uncomfortable space.

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He never sees the sun or breathes fresh air. He can never even feel a moment’s peace as he consumes the most unnatural diet forced upon him by the farmer—in an effort to keep his flesh pale, the calf is almost completely deprived of iron. Farmers refuse even to give the calves water, to force them to drink more of their special feed. The tight space prevents the desperate calves from even turning to lap up their urine to score a trickle of iron or appease their relentless thirst, in a pathetic instinctual response in this desperate state.

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The poor creature wants only its mother, to suckle, and to find a comfortable place to stand or lie down, but he is denied these simple things. Indeed, veal producers often keep the calves in complete darkness in order to reduce their movements even further. So extreme is the cruelty involved in producing veal that veal producers have a hard time finding vets who will treat their animals.

 

“As we talked of freedom and justice one day for all, we sat down to steaks. I am eating misery, I thought, as I took my first bite. I spit it out.”

—Alice Walker

 

Cattle raised for beef are the luckiest of all the farm animals; they typically enjoy six glorious months of freedom—of smelling the wind, feeling the sun and rain, and grazing to their hearts’ content. After roaming free for six months, they are shipped to the feedlot where their misery begins.

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They are not caged at the feedlot, but they do spend the next eight months or so on concrete or barren dirt. They become victims of the elements as few farmers provide shade during the hot summer months or warmth during cold winters. Cows want only to graze and chew their cud, but these simple pleasures are denied them in order to force them to eat the concentrated feed designed to fatten them quickly. Manure piles up, the smells are foul, and cows are far more sensitive to this olfactory assault than humans are.

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The feedlot provides a most unpleasant life for cattle, one interrupted only by weather and painful procedures, all performed without benefit of anesthetics: castration, branding, and dehorning. Contrary to popular belief, horns are not insensitive material like nails; they contain nerves and arteries, both of which are cut in the removal process.

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There is no end to their suffering until the slaughterhouse.

 

Transportation to the Slaughterhouse

 

As the trucks rolled by, I saw the cows and sheep in those trucks, being transported. One could only see their eyes through the slits in the trucks and it struck me that that was very much like the scene out of the Holocaust period of Jews being transported in cattle trucks to their fate. During the Holocaust, I am sure that the German people were aware that Jews and others were being treated in the most horrific way. They may not have known all the details, but they must have known something, but they didn’t want to think about it. And I think today, we also don’t want to think about the way in which animals are being treated. So, there is a parallel in terms of our desire not to reflect on what is really happening.

—Rabbi Professor Dan Cohn-Sherbok

 

The transportation of farm animals to the slaughterhouse is perhaps the cruelest aspect of their ordeal. The pigs, cattle, calves, sheep, and lambs board the trucks or train cars in a state of fear and confusion. Trips are between forty-eight and seventy-two hours, and for cattle heading to a feedlot, the trip is sometimes even longer—and the creatures are deprived of food, water, and rest for the duration of the trip. The animals cannot speak to tell us of their pain, but their worn-out bodies paint a sorrowful picture. Farmers call it “shrinkage”—the amount of weight an animal loses during transportation from stress and nutritional deprivation. It is not uncommon for cows to lose ten percent of their body weight from dehydration during transportation.

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An animal’s death in transit is not an easy one. Nor is it uncommon. The creatures freeze to death during winter, perish of thirst and heatstroke in the summer, and are often simply destroyed by the unbearable stress of the whole ugly process.

 

“You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1883)

 

Meatpacking plants, at twenty-nine injuries per 100 employees, had the highest nonfatal injury and illness incidence rates among industries, primarily due to the pressure to move far too many animals too quickly through the slaughterhouse. Furthermore, because slaughterhouse supervisors are under a lot of pressure to report low injury rates, injury log falsification is rampant, and many experts think the actual rates are much higher than those reported. One can scarcely imagine a worse job: slaughterhouse workers have astronomical rates of alcoholism and domestic violence.[1]

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There is a heavy physical cost to the large-scale slaughter of animals, and—understandably—slaughterhouse workers exhibit the highest rates of turnover of all jobs in the USA.[2]

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No one wants to know about the slaughterhouses. They are kept carefully hidden from public view. Few people ever visit these dark places. Many, if not most, countries have no regulation governing the slaughterhouses, while those countries that do have humane slaughter regulations, rarely enforce the regulations. In the USA, for example, Congress passed the Humane Slaughter Act in 1958, and this was one of the most popular pieces of legislation in the nation’s history; again, no one wants animals to suffer needlessly. The humane slaughter law stipulates that the animal must be knocked unconscious before it is killed.

 

“If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.”

—Paul McCartney

 

Slaughterhouse workers use a stun gun for this purpose, but unfortunately, the guns frequently fail and break down. The slaughterhouse rarely stops the kill line at this point—there is no one there to force them to do so. An untold number of animals are not rendered unconscious for the killing. Workers regularly report (and complain!) that the cows and pigs are often fully conscious as the metal shackles are fastened around their legs and the machine lifts the terrified animals into the air. Flesh and bones rip and crack. The living, breathing animals move along a conveyor belt upside down, twisting and crying in horrible pain and unimaginable terror, until they reach the place where someone slits their throats. It is an inexcusable tragedy.[3]

 

“In their behavior towards creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right.”

—Isaac Bashevis Singer

 

Even when the stun gun is operating properly, the pain and terror before the mercy of death is extreme. It is still a horrifying journey down what slaughterhouse workers call the “kill line.” Cows and pigs catch the scent of blood and death the moment they arrive at the slaughterhouse. Cows moan and pigs scream out; they often collapse in helpless terror. Workers use electric prods to force the animals to the place where they are supposed to be knocked unconscious.

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A veteran USDA meat inspector from Texas describes what he has seen:

 

Cattle dragged and choked ... Knocking ‘em four, five, ten times. Every now and then when they’re stunned they come back to life, and they’re up there agonizing. They’re supposed to be re-stunned, but sometimes they aren’t, and they’ll go through the skinning process alive. I’ve worked in four large [slaughterhouses] and a bunch of small ones. They’re all the same.

 

Before they reach their end, the pigs get a shower, a real one. Water sprays from every angle to wash the manure off them. Then they begin to feel crowded. The pen narrows like a funnel; the drivers behind urge the pigs forward, until one at a time they climb onto the moving ramp ... Now they scream … smelling the smells they smell ahead … It was a frightening experience, seeing their fear, seeing so many of them go by, it had to remind me of things no one wants to be reminded of anymore, all mobs, all death marches, all mass murders and execution....[4]

—G. A. Eisnitz, author, Slaughterhouse

 

There is growing scientific evidence that the electric shock renders the animal merely paralyzed—but still cognizant of what is happening and fully susceptible to the pain. So, even if the stun gun is used, the mercy of a painless death might not be achieved.[5]

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Nor is a humane slaughter granted to the animals killed for kosher meat and in accordance with the Muslim dietary laws. This is most unfortunate, for these religious laws sprung from ethical considerations of animal welfare. They were instituted to protect human health and to shield the animals from unnecessary pain, thereby granting them a measure of mercy on the way to the dinner table. Modern factory farms and the sheer numbers of animals killed according to their religious traditions make a mockery of the intention of these laws, and nowadays, the most egregious abuses of humane slaughter occur in kosher slaughterhouses.[6]

 

“If man is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practice kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.”

—Immanuel Kant 

 

So, there you have it—the overwhelming repercussions of meat consumption in our material world. Arguably as senseless and destructive as war, meat consumption is the most devastating practice known to man. Adopting a plant-based diet is the solution; it is the single most powerful action we can take to answer the call to create a better world for ourselves, all other living beings and the beautiful green planet that sustains us.

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Keeping in mind that the spiritual realm and the material world mirror each other, that what affects one affects the other, there is a loud spiritual call to the vegetarian diet. Answering it promises a great spiritual payoff. The vegetarian diet becomes a gift that, I promise you dear readers, keeps on giving.

 

[1] Eisnitz, G. A. (1999). Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry (Second Edition). Prometheus Books.

[2] Eisnitz, G. A. (1999). Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry (Second Edition). Prometheus Books.

[3] Eisnitz, G. A. (2001). Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry (Third Edition). Prometheus Books.

[4] Eisnitz, G. A. (1997). Slaughterhouse (First Edition). Prometheus Books.

[5] Singer, P. (2002). Animal Liberation (Third Edition). HarperCollins Publishers: New York.

[6] Simon, S. (2004). Cattle Video Stirs Kosher Meat Debate. Los Angeles Times.