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The Slaughter of Animals for Food

(Papers in the Daily Mail, 1912.)^[2]

The thing is horrible, but it is necessary. Why then drag it out into the light? Why make our thoughts miserable with contemplation of horrors which must exist?

If it were true that the present methods of slaughtering animals for food in this country were necessary, if all the suffering they involve was inevitable, I should be the first to say: “Let us shut our eyes!” For, needless suffering—even to ourselves—is stupid. It is just because this particular suffering is avoidable, and easily avoidable, that one feels we must face the matter if we want to call ourselves a decent people.

I am a meat-eater—we are nearly all meat-eaters. Well! We cannot sit down at present to a single meal without complicity in methods that produce a large amount of preventable suffering to creatures for whom the least sensitive among us has at heart a certain friendly feeling. For, to those who say that they do not care for animals, or that animals, even domestic ones, have no rights except such as for our own advantage we accord them, let me at once reply: I do not agree, but for the sake of argument, granted; and then conceive, if you can, a world without cattle, sheep, and pigs, and tell me honestly whether you do not miss something friendly. No! the fact is, we, who are the descendants of countless generations to whom these animals have been literally the breath of life, cannot—even now that we have become such highly civilized townsmen—disclaim all sensibility in their regard.

Consider the magnitude of this matter. The calculations of an expert give the following approximate numbers of animals annually killed for food in England and Wales: 1,850,000 beasts, 8,500,000 sheep, and 3,200,000 pigs. These figures are hard to come at, and may be a million or so out, one way or the other, but even if they be, is there any feature of the national life which can touch this for possibilities of preventable physical suffering? And is there any department so neglected by public opinion and the law?

Save the eating of bread, have we any practice in our lives so consistent as that of eating meat, or any from which we, perhaps wrongly, consider that we derive more benefit, or any about whose conditions, sanitary or humane, we are so careless?

If a donkey is beaten to death, a dog stoned, or a cat killed with a riding-whip, the chances are that a prosecution will ensue or a question be asked in Parliament; for public opinion and the law lay it down that the infliction of unnecessary suffering on animals is an offence punishable by fine or imprisonment. But if in slaughter-houses some 8,000,000 sheep are killed yearly, without first being stunned, by a method which, even in the hands of an expert, produces some seconds of acute suffering (Report of the Admiralty Committee on Humane Slaughtering of Animals, 1904); if thousands of cattle require two or more blows of that primitive instrument, the pole-axe (if even only one in a hundred cattle requires a second blow it means 18,000 in a year); if pigs are driven in gangs into a small space and there killed, one by one, with the others squealing in terror round their dead bodies; if all this preventable suffering is inflicted daily in our slaughterhouses, what does public opinion know of it, and what does the law care?

There was a time in this country when men beat their donkeys, set cocks fighting, baited bears and badgers, tied tin pots to dogs’ tails, with the lightest of light hearts and no consciousness at all that they were outside the pale of decency in doing so. We, their descendants, now look on the unnecessary suffering involved in such doings with aversion; but we still allow our sheep and pigs to be killed without stunning, our pigs to be driven in gangs into the slaughtering chamber, and the uncertain pole-axe to be used for cattle—all without a qualm.

Why should this enormous field, wherein does occur such an amount of easily preventable suffering, be left so unpatrolled by the law, which has interested itself in warding off all needless suffering from cats and dogs and horses? Well! The law stands idle partly because the animals we kill for food are not so near and dear to us as those others. We should never stand the horses and dogs and cats we make such pets of being killed when their time comes in the manner in which we kill our sheep and pigs. And partly the law stands idle because in the case of horses and dogs and cats there is no large leagued interest, such as that of the meat trades, unconvinced of the need for improvement.

I am told that the meat trades constitute the strongest body in the kingdom. And well they may, considering the vast proportions of their business. The meat trades are controlled by men like ourselves—as humane, and undesirous of inflicting unnecessary suffering. Surely they will reconsider their convictions and accept such simple, elementary safeguards against unnecessary suffering as were outlined by the Admiralty Committee on Humane Slaughtering, of 1904. There is nothing really prejudicial to their interest in these suggestions. Nothing extravagant, or experimental. The case has been proved up to the hilt. What is the good of appointing a governmental committee of first-rate men^[3] to examine into facts if their Report is to be paid about as much attention to as one would pay to the suggestions of seven lunatics? Why set going a laborious inquiry, for negligible or puny results? It can no longer be pretended that humane-killers are not effective, in the face of so much evidence from abroad; in the face of numerous testimonials from butchers in this country; in the face of the fact that Mr. Christopher Cash (for whose consistent advocacy of humane slaughtering the thanks of us all are due) in the year 1910 had 4,000 animals, the property of thirty butchers, killed by “humane” methods, and though he was in every case willing to pay full compensation for any injury he might do to a carcase, had not one single claim made on him. (From a pamphlet entitled “The Humane Slaughtering of Animals for Food,” by Christopher Cash. Issued by the R.S.P.C.A.).

Butchers and slaughtermen perform a necessary task from which most of us would shrink, and it is both unbecoming and nonsensical to suggest intentional cruelty on their part. I do not for a moment. But I do say that it is the business of the law so to control the methods of slaughter as to obviate to the utmost all needless suffering, however unintentionally it may be inflicted.

In the following brief summary of our want of system I am not dealing at all with the Jewish method of killing, for not being a Jew, I cannot pretend to be qualified to discuss a custom which appears to have been necessary hitherto to the peace of the Jewish mind. I only urge a people in some respects more humane than ourselves to search their consciences, and see if they can still endure this method. Neither am I speaking as to Scotland, which is ahead of us, having provided by the Burgh Police Act, of 1892, that where there are public there shall be no private slaughter-houses; and where—at all events in Edinburgh—they have abattoirs that compare, I am told, with the best on the Continent.

The following is a rough outline of what at present seems good to a nation which prides itself on being at once the most practical and the most humane in the whole world: —

A mixed system of private and public slaughter-houses—thousands of private slaughter-houses (some of them highly insanitary) alongside of a few municipally controlled abattoirs.

No regulation that where there are public abattoirs there shall be no private ones; hence great difficulty in making these public slaughterhouses pay their way.

Inspection of private slaughter-houses, in spite of all the good intentions of local authorities and medical officers, admitted to be very inefficient in so far as condition of meat and method of slaughter are concerned.

Supervision of public slaughter-houses much hampered by the present widespread custom of allowing butchers to send in their beasts with their own slaughtermen.

No general statutory regulations as to method of slaughter. Model by-laws have been drawn up by the Local Government Board and recommended to local authorities—but they are not compulsory and have been as yet but sparsely adopted.

Slaughtermen not licensed; nor—except in slaughterhouses directly controlled by a Government Department (such as the Admiralty)—required by law to be proficient before they commence slaughtering.

These are the methods of slaughter we adopt at present: —

Cattle are almost universally stunned before their throats are cut. So far—good! But they are still, for the most part, stunned with the pole-axe. This weapon produces complete unconsciousness at the first blow, if well wielded. If not well wielded——! I have been assured that the cases of misfire amount to a very small percentage. But I can only say, on the first two beasts slaughtered before my eyes the first blow of the pole-axe—wielded in each case by an experienced slaughterman—descended without effect. The animals moaned, and waited for the second and successful blow. Thanks to the efforts of the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Council of Justice to Animals, the Humanitarian League, of Mr. Christopher Cash, and others, there are now a considerable number of improved instruments for stunning cattle in use—the Greener and Behr pistols; the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals humane-killer and large captive-bolt pistol; the Swedish Cattle-killer (used throughout Scandinavia), and others. But the number of these improved instruments in use at present is only a fringe to the mass of time-hallowed and uncertain pole-axes.

Calves.—“The usual practice in this country appears to be to run the animal up first (by a tackle fastened to its hind legs) and then to stun it, previous to bleeding.” (Report of the Admiralty Committee.) On this method the Committee thus commented: “This order of procedure is not so humane, and appears to be unnecessary.” ... “Calves should first be stunned by a blow on the head with a club”—i.e., before being run up. When this Committee conducted its investigation in 1904, the best humane-killers had not been invented, or were not known here.

Sheep, with few exceptions, are not stunned before they are bled. The method of killing them and the amount of suffering they undergo are thus summed up in the Report of the Admiralty Committee:

“The usual method in this country is to lay the sheep on a wooden ‘crutch’ and then to thrust a knife through the neck below the ears, and with a second motion to insert the point from within between the joints of the vertebrae, thus severing the spinal cord. In the hands of an expert this method is fairly rapid but somewhat uncertain, the time which elapses between the first thrust of the knife and complete loss of sensibility varying, according to Professor Starling’s observations, from five to thirty seconds. In the hands of an inexpert operator it may be some time before death supervenes, and there can be little doubt that this method must be very painful to the sheep as long as consciousness remains.

“At the best it is a somewhat difficult operation and yet in practice is often entrusted to the younger and less experienced hands in the slaughter-house, the probable reason being that sheep are easy to handle, and do not struggle or give trouble when stuck....”

In other words, the more helpless the creature the less need for humanity!

“In Denmark and many parts of Germany and Switzerland the law requires that sheep shall always be stunned previous to being stuck, and the Committee have satisfied themselves, by practical experiments and observation, that this can be done expeditiously and without difficulty. A small club with a heavy head should be used, and the sheep should be struck on the top of the head between the ears. This point is important, as it is almost impossible to stun a sheep by striking it on the forehead.... It was also clearly demonstrated that the stunning caused no injury to the sheep’s head or to the ‘scrag of mutton’ which could in any way depreciate their market value.”

Notwithstanding this recommendation, the Local Government Board had (up to 1915) omitted from their model by-laws (which, as before said, are not obligatory) a regulation requiring the stunning of sheep. In 1915, however, they added the following alternative clause:

“9 (b). A person shall not in a slaughter-house proceed to slaughter any animal until the same shall have been effectually stunned with a mechanically operated instrument suitable and sufficient for the purpose.”

And in their memorandum they say:

“At the present time the Board understand that a ‘humane-killer’ can be got which is adapted for stunning any kind of animal, reasonable in cost, and effective and simple in operation. It appears, too, that the use of the improved instruments can readily be learnt, so that no prolonged training is needed for their proper manipulation.”

One can only hope that every Local Authority will now adopt this clause, and insist on the stunning of sheep as well as of all other animals.

Pigs.—“The Committee ascertained that it is the usual practice in large establishments in England to stun pigs by a blow on the forehead previous to sticking them, and there is no difficulty in carrying this out, as the pig’s head is soft as compared with that of the sheep. The Committee are of opinion that the preliminary stunning should be enforced in all cases, the evidence tending to show that this operation is often limited to pigs which are so large or strong as to give trouble, or to cases where, owing to the location of the slaughter-house, the squeals of the stuck pigs cause annoyance to the neighbourhood. The Committee feel that considerations of humanity are at least as important as those above mentioned.”

A sentiment with which most of us will presumably agree. Note, however, that the Admiralty Committee refer above only to large establishments. Pigs still appear to be killed in ways that the following quotation describes:

“I, with another witness, saw five pigs killed—three small ones and two large ones. The pigs were ‘knifed’ one at a time and allowed to wander round the slaughter-house bleeding and in a drunken, reeling, rolling state, and at the same time uttering most plaintive cries.” (From a letter to a daily journal.)

And Mr. R. O. P. Paddison (one of the foremost workers in the cause of humane slaughtering) thus describes the method adopted in most of our bacon factories:

“First the animals are hung up alive head downwards by a chain fastened to a hind foot, and then they are stuck and bleed to death. The work is done quickly in a collective sense—at the rate possibly of 100 to 200 pigs an hour, but each individual pig suffers from forty seconds to two or three minutes, and several pigs struggle and shriek at the same time.”

I have not personally witnessed either of the methods so described.

I understand that some bacon-curers consider, or did consider, stunning cruel, on the ground that several blows were often required. The use of humane-killers disposes of this objection.

The late eminent physiologist, Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, in a paper read before the Medical Society of London some years ago, says:

“Pigs, I have said, suffer a mental terror of death, and to them commonly is also given a severe degree of physical pain.... When they are killed by the knife alone they die by a hæmorrhage that may extend with persistent consciousness over three or four minutes of time.”

In relation to the pig’s mental horror of death, I myself saw the following sight:—Fifteen or so pigs in a slaughtering chamber just large enough to hold them and the slaughterer. Of these pigs three or four had already been stunned and knifed and lay dead and bleeding among their living brethren, who with manifest terror were squealing and straining here and there against the walls, while the slaughterer moved about among them selecting the next victim. A blow, a cut, and there was another dead pig, and this would go on, no doubt, till the whole fifteen were despatched and their bodies shot down the slide. Terror of death! Yes! At all this, by the way, a boy of about thirteen was looking on—and this in a public slaughter-house with a good superintendent and under municipal control.

Segregation of Animals about to be slaughtered from slaughtering operations.—“It appears to be the common practice, even in modern and well-regulated slaughter-houses, to keep the animals, which are immediately awaiting slaughter, in pens which are mere annexes to the slaughter chamber itself, and in many cases in full view of all that goes on inside ... There is no point which the Committee have more carefully investigated than the question as to whether animals do or do not suffer from fear from this contact, and the evidence of those best qualified to judge is so conflicting that no absolute verdict can be given ... The animal should be given the full benefit of the doubt.” (Report of the Admiralty Committee.)

But the animal is not given the benefit of the doubt. Whatever the degree of consciousness of animals awaiting slaughter (sometimes for a whole hour) just divided by a door which, all regulations to the contrary, is far from always shut, whether they know or not that it is death which awaits them, any spectator accustomed to animals in their normal state has only to look at their eyes, as they stand waiting, to feel sure that they are in fear of something.

Such then, in brief and in rough, are the conditions and methods of slaughter which still seem good to us. When the Admiralty Committee issued their report in 1904 they made the following recommendations: —

(a) All animals (cattle, calves, sheep, lambs, and pigs) without exception must be stunned or otherwise rendered unconscious before blood is drawn.

(b) Animals awaiting slaughter must be so placed that they cannot see into the slaughter-house, and the doors of the latter must be kept closed while slaughtering is going on.

(c) The drainage of the slaughter-house must be so arranged that no blood or other refuse can flow out within the sight or smell^[4] of animals awaiting slaughter, and no such refuse shall be deposited in proximity to the waiting pens.

(d) If more animals than one are being slaughtered in one slaughter-house at one time they must not be in view of each other.

(e) None but licensed men shall be employed in or about slaughter-houses.

What has been done to carry out these recommendations, the fruit of most thorough and laborious investigations carried out at a considerable expenditure of public money and presumably with some object, by men well qualified for their task?

Just this much has been done. The recommendations have been adopted and are worked successfully by the Admiralty themselves, and they form the basis of certain clauses in the Local Government Board’s Voluntary Model Bye-laws, to which attention is only just beginning to be paid.

Seeing that the condition of affairs is such as I have detailed; seeing that the Admiralty Committee made the following wise remarks: “However humane and scientific in theory may be the methods of slaughter, it is inevitable that abuses and cruelty may result in practice, unless there is a proper system of official inspection”; and: “In the interests not only of humanity, but of sanitation, order, and ultimate economy, it is highly desirable that, where circumstances permit, private slaughter-houses should be replaced by public abattoirs, and that no killing should be permitted except in the latter under official supervision”; seeing the enormous dimensions of this matter, and that our methods are behind those of nearly every Continental country, and very much behind those of Denmark, Switzerland, and Germany, it would occur to the simple mind that here was eminently a case for broad and sweeping action on the part of the Legislature.

I have not even thought it worth while to dwell on the insanitary aspect of the present system, because the Royal Commission on Food from Tuberculous Animals (again at a considerable expenditure of public money) reported thus—“The actual amount of tuberculous disease among certain classes of food animals is so large as to afford to man frequent occasions for contracting tuberculous disease through his food. We think it probable that an appreciable part of the tuberculosis that affects man is obtained through his food”—practically without effect! If the public likes to spend its money on ascertaining a risk to itself and likes to disregard that risk to itself when ascertained, far be it from me to gainsay the public. But if any one be interested in the sanitary side of our want of system, let him go to the superintendent of some large public slaughter-house and ask what percentage of meat is condemned daily; then let him ask some medical officer of health how far it is possible to inspect the condition of carcases in private slaughter-houses; and then let him go home and think! There I leave the matter. For, frankly, it is not this, but the disregard by the public of needless suffering inflicted on helpless creatures, bred and killed for its own advantage, that moves me. Surely no one can call the following suggestions unreasonable:

No animal to be bled before being stunned (or otherwise rendered instantaneously insensible).

No animal to be slaughtered in sight of another animal.

No slaughter-refuse and blood to be allowed within sight or smell of an animal awaiting slaughter.

No stunning or slaughtering implement to be used that has not been approved by the Local Government Board.

The licence of no slaughter-house to be renewed unless it possesses these approved stunning and slaughtering implements, a copy of official instructions how to use them, and can prove that it does use them and them alone.

All offenders against these regulations to be liable to penalties on summary conviction.

Why has not this simple harmless minimum of decent humanity been—as in other countries—long ago adopted? For the usual reasons: Dislike of change; dislike of a little extra trouble and a little extra expense; liberty of the subject. To take the last point first. Dictate to a man how he shall slaughter his own animals—what next! Well! I am all for liberty of the subject. I am for letting him hurt himself as much as ever he likes. I even go so far as to say that prosecutions for attempted suicide are wrong and ridiculous; but where the subject claims to hurt the helpless with impunity, then it seems to me time to hurt the subject.

I fancy that in most men’s minds there lurks the feeling: “Oh! a little extra suffering to animals who are going to die anyway in a minute or two—what does it matter? Now, if you were to put it on the ground that it hurts the slaughterer, there’d be something in it!” Yes! It certainly may hurt the morale of the slaughterer—but not much, for he inflicts the needless suffering without consciousness of cruelty; and ill actions of which one is not conscious only negatively deteriorate morale, in so far as they are a waste of time in which good actions might have been performed. But to say that it does not matter whether we needlessly hurt the sheep or pig because they are going to die anyway is really to say that no suffering matters, however unnecessary, since we must all die and it will be all the same a hundred years hence. It is at all events not a saying that I can imagine coming out of the mouth of a human being in perfect health and the possession of all his faculties, with a knife going in just behind his right ear and wiggling about in his neck and head till it finds his spinal cord between the joints of his vertebræ. And though you may think that the infliction of some seconds of excruciating torture on an animal does not really hurt the animal because she cannot tell you that it does—it conceivably might hurt you a little to feel it was needlessly inflicted.

The meat-trades and butchers generally deny the need for change, and claim that the humanity of existing methods cannot be improved on. I really cannot understand this. Take for example two conversations I had with quite humane butchers.

I: “So you never stun your sheep before bleeding them?”

First Butcher: “Oh! no.”

“Why not?”

“It isn’t necessary.”

“Not to avoid pain?”

“Oh! no; there’s no pain.”

Ten minutes later:—

I: “You always stun your cattle before bleeding them?”

Same Butcher: “Oh! yes, always.”

“Why!”

“Oh! it avoids a lot of pain.”

To the second butcher:—

I: “Then you never stun your sheep before bleeding them.”

Second Butcher: “No, never.”

“Why not? Is there any objection?”

“No, I don’t see any objection; only it’s never done. I’ve never seen a sheep stunned.”

“Just custom?”

“Yes, just that.”

The old, ignorant prejudice that animals do not bleed freely if stunned first is now, I think, never advanced.

So much for custom and dislike of change.

But now we come to what is perhaps the real gravamen of the resistance—a little extra trouble, a suspicion of extra expense. This touches all the points in the irreducible minimum of reform. For instance, the various R.S.P.C.A. humane-killers cost about thirty-five shillings; the Swedish cattle-killer ten shillings and sixpence, with cartridges four shillings per hundred. You must spend perhaps an hour in learning how to use them, and five minutes or so per day in cleaning them. They are still new things—“fads”—although they have passed all tests, been proved by dozens of testimonials from butchers in this country to be perfectly efficient; and the Swedish cattle-killer is used throughout several countries.

Again, it is convenient not to have to be careful to shut doors between slaughtering chambers and animals awaiting slaughter, or to have to pave your floors so that blood runs well away from the waiting pens. It is handy (especially in ill-constructed slaughter-houses) to kill animals in sight of each other. It is always, in fact, a nuisance to make any change that involves readjustment. And unfortunately animals have no force behind them, are not represented on the public bodies of the country; cannot lobby in the House of Commons, withdraw votes or commit outrages; cannot instruct counsel; have no rights save those which mere chivalry shall give them. “Besides,” says Defence, “everything is already done as well as it can be done. Switzerland, Denmark—who knows whether they are really better? The ways of our own country are good enough for us—the good old-fashioned methods—if there were any real need for reform we should be the first to undertake it!” Waste-paper, then, the Admiralty Report! Waste-paper!

I have reckoned that in the case of sheep alone the amount of needless suffering inflicted must amount to some 33,000 hours of solid, uninterrupted death agony each year (number of sheep slaughtered without stunning, 8,000,000; period of suffering, five to thirty seconds—Admiralty Committee’s report)—all preventable by a few strokes of the legislative pen.

But the truth is we don’t reflect; or if by any chance we do, we pass on with the thought: “Nothing can be done till the butchers themselves are convinced!” Is that true?

Just this far true: As in every other case of new law, there would be required at first a little special activity. It is only a question of starting a new standard. In two years’ time, if these simple, harmless regulations concerning the slaughter of animals for food were enforced—not merely recommended, as now—there would hardly be an animal in this country bled without first being stunned by humane methods, or any beasts watching their fellows being killed.

I attack no one in this matter; I blame no one, for I am not in a position to—the charge of callousness falls heavily on my own shoulders, who have eaten meat all these years without ever troubling as to what went before it. Nor can I hope that these words will do more than ruffle the nerves of the public; but I do trust that such of our legislators as may chance to read them may be moved to feel that it is their part to save patient creatures, who cannot plead in their own behalf, from all suffering that the proper satisfaction of our wants does not compel us to inflict on them.

If what I have written has seemed extravagant, he who reads has only to go and see for himself. And let those who would attack this plea train their guns on the Report of the Admiralty Committee, 1904. For I have but conveniently summarized the unanimous verdict of able and disinterested men, who, officially appointed to examine the whole matter, held many sittings, heard many witnesses, saw with their own eyes, and made their own experimental investigations. I have, in fact, done nothing but give an added publicity to the deliberate conclusions of an impartial tribunal, which had an unique opportunity of forming and delivering a comprehensive, dispassionate judgment, and delivered it—to what end?

[2]	Things have moved a little, I believe, but not nearly enough.—J. G.

[3]	The Admiralty Committee on Humane Slaughtering, 1904 Chairman, Mr. Arthur Lee, M.P.

[4]	I believe it is the smell of blood, rather than the sight, which affects animals.—J. G.