So, What is the Right Thing to Do? Part 3
(Yep! One more time!)
As mentioned in a previous post, Peter Wohllenben, author of “The Inner Lives of Animals” has caused me to question my “good” intentions with regards to wild animals and how much I interfere with them. I’ve also begun to question my motives regarding farm animals.
When Molly and her companions were loaded onto a stock trailer that was headed to the slaughterhouse/meat packing plant in January of 2006, I can’t help but wonder what they sensed. Probably never having been in a trailer before, they were at the very least apprehensive. When being transported like this, I’m told they can suffer motion sickness, just like us. Think about the times you’ve seen these huge trucks parked at a roadside diner and have heard the restless hooves and plaintive mooing. Can you imagine their perplexity?
And then when they finally arrived at this unfamiliar place and were unloaded into a heavily trodden corral bearing the scents of former animals, what sensations alerted their nervous systems? Was their sense of safety threatened? Were their amygdalae on high alert? Could they smell death?
All mammals have hormones that surge through their bodies when stressed. And while these cattle may not yet have felt fear per se, they surely felt some level of anxiety. The release of adrenaline and cortisol in reaction to the fight or flight response is going to look the same in a cow as it does in a human.
Photo Credit: Staff Photographer Robin Loznak, Great Falls Tribune/Associated Press Archives
So, the morning Molly made her escape – what motivated her run? Was it fear? Gumption? An understanding that her life was in danger? Photos snapped from that day show that she had cow shit all over her from her shoulders down to her flanks – this tells me that these heifers had no room to move, they were tightly packed into holding pens with no choice but to defecate on one another. Maybe cows don’t care about that, but I kind of think they probably do. Does anyone like to be confined?
The concept of anthropomorphism is frowned upon across the sciences. In fact, I’m convinced that for those individuals majoring in wildlife biology and its associated disciplines, that notion gets knocked right out of them their first semester of college. That may be the only way a person engaged in the biological sciences can find equanimity.
I get it. I am willing to concede that wishful thinking and our tendency to imbue animals with feelings similar to ours can probably be taken too far, but what about basic emotions?
Any animal is going to attempt to move away from an uncomfortable situation. Even intelligence-compromised slugs will not remain in soil that is unfriendly to them. (“The Biology of Belief” by Bruce Lipton, Hay House, 2013)
Following the initial newspaper reports of Molly’s escape, there was a lot of commenting by readers. Most were supportive of Del Morris, the meat packing plant’s manager, and the vote of its workers to grant Molly clemency. But typically there was one comment that stuck me as characteristic for Montana – a state whose economy is based upon cattle and wheat production. I envisioned the speaker to be a grizzled, old cowboy. He said something blunt like, “She’s a cow! Butcher her!” Of course, that’s what we do with cattle. That’s what we raise them for – food. What other consideration would her life warrant?
Well, I do think there is another consideration. While I think it’s highly unlikely that this country will ever give up eating beef, I want to believe that gone are the days when large mammals like cattle are regarded as nothing but dumb beasts, here only for the purpose of our exploitation.
I want to believe that as homo sapiens we are evolving - that the potential exists for the fostering of a higher consciousness regarding all food animals. And that integrity will more and more underpin the understanding of our responsibility to them as their stewards so that raising them with thoughtfulness and “harvesting” them with compassion becomes the standard, not the exception.
