The 2084 Precept (15 page)

“Buffalo wings?”

“That is what they are called. And a lot of
these animals are killed to meet the requirements of human ‘eating
competitions’. The ‘Buffalo Wing Eating Contest’ is one of many
held annually in the U.S.A. Thousands of participants scoff as many
wings as they can within a ten-minute time frame. The winner has
usually managed around 1.3 kilograms and there are prizes from
corporate sponsors. Truck tires for example.”

“And you kill vast quantities of birds just
for that?”

“Well, for eating purposes in general,
yes.”

"And these birds are still alive while
paralyzed?"

"Oh, very much so. They are paralyzed, but
they are fully conscious as they are moved onto the next step in
the process. This next step is a rotating machine blade which cuts
both carotid arteries. It is important to keep the birds alive
during the slaughtering process so that their hearts will continue
to work to pump out the blood. And the next stage is the so-called
bleed-out tunnel—they are still hanging upside down—where they are
supposed to die from blood loss after approximately 90 seconds.
Unfortunately, millions of birds do not comply with this timeframe,
particularly those with one or two arteries missed by the cutting
machine. But dead or alive, the birds are then swept into tanks of
scalding water and the live ones are scalded to death, thrashing
and kicking and with their eyeballs bursting out of their
heads."

"And these birds are sentient throughout the
whole process?" Jeremy asked.

"Indeed they are," I replied. "They have a
central nervous system and they have the same biological reactions
as we do. They experience pain and they experience fear and they
know what is happening to them. They try to get away from the
killing machine, but they can't. And while they are bleeding, some
of them even try to hide from you by sticking their head under the
wing of the chicken next to them. But of course their muscles have
been paralyzed and so that doesn't work properly. But their eyes
still work. You can see their eyes. They are looking at you."

"And there is no better way to do this?"

"Not really, Jeremy. Death by gassing or
decompression has been tried and may still be used here and there,
for all I know. As for the older hens, the so-called 'spent' hens
which slaughter factories don't want, they are more often than not
simply buried alive in landfills. And of course, it's even easier
with newborn male chicks. As I have mentioned, they don't produce
eggs, and so most of them are just thrown into a shredding machine
straight from the shell after birth. It's just like shredding paper
in an office. Alternatively, they are simply thrown back onto the
pile of discarded eggshells from which they have just emerged and
disposed of with the rest of the trash. But to be fair, Germany and
one or two other countries are researching methods to identify and
kill the males before they are born. We can really be quite
considerate when we want to be, you see."

Jeremy did not appear to be affected one way
or the other by any of this. "I see," he said. "You appear to have
it all pretty well organized. Quite efficient. Mass slaughter
experts. Perhaps we could move on, Peter?"

"Certainly, Jeremy. Each year we also kill
about 2.5 billion ducks, 1.5 billion pigs—we allow pigs a life of
about 6 months, not too bad—1 billion rabbits, 800 million turkeys,
600 million geese, 600 million sheep, 400 million goats, 350
million cows and their children, 80 million rodents, 80 million
birds, 20 million dogs, 9 million horses and donkeys, 5 million
cats, and so on. Every year. In fact there is nothing we don't kill
on this planet, Jeremy. We kill every living species. It is just
the way we are. Every single thing that moves. We do it either on a
vast scale or on a limited scale, it depends on the species. And,
because there are so many of us now, we no longer have enough
animals for our purposes and so we need to 'create' more, or breed
more as we prefer to say, it sounds nicer. We have animal 'farms'
as we call them and, for marine life, we have 'fish farms'.
Actually, we have a much nicer word to describe the latter. The
word is ‘Aquaculture’ and, as the U.N. ministry responsible for
this activity proudly states, this now accounts for close to 50% of
our total worldwide fish and seafood stocks."

"Created in order to be killed," said
Jeremy.

"Yes. And we also love killing just as a
form of entertainment, to the extent that we have created sports
whose sole purpose is to allow humans to enjoy the act of
slaughtering and butchering animals to death, either as killers or
as spectators. Firstly, there is the 'normal' hunting sport,
usually lots of males wandering around the countryside or forests
looking for something to kill because it makes them feel good,
allows them to experience power, makes them into real machos. In
most parts of the planet, we have what we call 'hunting seasons'
That sounds better than 'killing seasons'. A lot of excuses are
invented to pretend that the killing is necessary for 'animal
nuisance control' or 'environmental protection purposes', most of
which is a load of crap, if you will pardon the expression Jeremy.
The fact is that the 'killing seasons' do not exist in order to
reduce the number of animals and birds. You could do that at any
time. On the contrary, they exist to ensure that
not too
many
are killed, or killed at the wrong time of the year, which
would negatively affect their procreation rates. Which would mean
there would not be enough of them around for us to enjoy killing
the following year, or the years after that. Of course, some of the
guys who enjoy performing the killing say that they don't. They say
that they are forced to do it or that they are merely trying to
help the human race. And it is not just the killers, oh no. The
whole killing exercise is authorized by bunches of pin-striped
birdbrains, sitting comfortably in their chairs in comfortable
governmental offices, and who decide exactly what and how much
killing should be permitted. All over the world. That is just the
way it is, it's all more or less thoroughly organized. The animals
don't have a chance, they don't have a say in the matter."

"Interesting," said Jeremy. "Not very
pleasant, but interesting from a psychological point of view."

"Interesting indeed it is," I agreed. "We
also have other sports involving animal deaths. We cage dogs, we
starve them, and then we stage dog fights with them. To the death.
You can place bets on the outcome. We do the same with cock fights
and so on. We also have a sport called bull fighting which involves
a bull fighting for its life—hopelessly and impossibly of
course—against several human beings. Thousands of spectators watch
these shows and therefore the show needs to be made to last for
longer than a couple of minutes. We have invented a long, slow,
agonizing death process which completely ignores the terrible
suffering it causes the animal. We breed special bulls solely for
this purpose. And we don't even make it a fair fight either, that
would be too dangerous for the human beings. We can't have that, it
would take the fun away. So before the bulls arrive at the arena,
we shave their horns to reduce the risk of injury to their
assassins. And once in the arena, the bulls are then tormented by
humans on horses who drive spears into their necks in order to
weaken the neck muscles, make their heads hang low and cause a loss
of blood. We then goad them into chasing the bullfighter for as
long as it takes to for them to exhaust themselves totally. The
spectators love that. And finally the slaughterer kills them by
driving a spear down through their hearts. Except that it doesn't
always work. Last year, one of the bullfighters who had missed the
heart stared down for a long while at his bull, which had sunk to
its knees, blood pouring out of its ears, refusing to die just yet,
and then proceeded in a rage to kick it and kick it. Which didn't
work either. In the end, an assistant slaughterer had to jump into
the ring and drive another spear into the animal. Which of course
only wanted to die anyway, get away from the humans."

I got up and fetched myself another bottle
of water. Jeremy was looking at me in a thoughtful, perhaps
disbelieving way.

"But you kill a lot of the animals," he
said, "in order to be able to eat them, isn't that so?"

"Yes, Jeremy, that is so," I replied. “We
even eat dogs. We even eat monkey brains…”

“What?” he interrupted.

“Live monkey brains too…in fact, a lot of
live creatures are eaten all over Asia. We…”

“WHAT?” he interrupted again. “DID YOU SAY
LIVE MONKEY BRAINS?”

“Mostly rhesus monkeys, Jeremy. In
restaurants in China, the Philippines and so on. It’s a delicacy.
They have special tables there with special fixtures to hold the
horrified and screaming animals in place, allowing only their heads
to poke up. The diners then watch while the kitchen chef opens up
the head and they then eat the live animal’s brain.”

“This is more than difficult to believe,”
said Jeremy. “Are you sure you aren’t exaggerating, Peter?”

“No, I am not exaggerating at all, Jeremy.
You are paying me a lot of money and I am replying to your
information requests with facts. Like many things nowadays, you can
probably just google it. Or maybe there is even a YouTube video of
one of these screaming animals being restrained at the restaurant
table, opened up, and the live brains being scooped out of its
skull. You can also probably watch us eating other live creatures.
Have fun.”

Jeremy was sitting there without moving. He
was possibly sitting there thinking about the human species. And
possibly about the fact that I am a member of that particular
species. Who knows?

But, true to form, he spoke quietly and
politely. “I apologize, Peter. I didn’t mean it in that way.” There
was a pause, quite a long one, and then he said “Please do
continue.”

“But we also kill them for a lot of other
reasons as well," I said.

"We do? Such as?"

"Such as because we like their skins. Such
as because we like their fur. Such as because we like to use them
to test for possible deadly effects of new medications. Such as
because we like to give them cancer and perform cancer tests. Such
as because we like to test newly researched cosmetics. And the law
requires that we test new household products. And so on. We have a
lot of reasons, you name it. And we justify all of this by saying
that God put the animals here for us to do what the hell we feel
like with them. And so that is exactly what we do."

What a depressing subject. Particularly if,
like me, you are not convinced of the existence of a God. Or of any
of our gods, take your pick.

"Let me tell you about the baby seals,
Jeremy," I continued. "Baby ones. We love to kill baby seals also.
We do it year in, year out, non-stop. As usual, on the one hand you
have the suit and tie brigade, the politicians, the birdbrains, who
authorize it, flap, flap, and on the other hand you have the
killers themselves who lovingly perform the job. The latter are not
a problem to find, there are plenty of human killers available no
matter where you go. They are not forced to do it, on the contrary
they are very happy to do it, often just for the money. Now, these
birdbrains authorize the slaughter of around a quarter of a million
of these baby animals each and every year, on average. But
birdbrains in general rarely know how to enforce any of the
decisions they manage to take, it's too difficult for them to
figure out, they have created too many holes and gaps and there is
no exception to that maxim on this occasion either. The death
‘quotas’ are consequently exceeded by an average of 40% each year.
The favored killing weapon is also authorized by the
sit-on-your-pinstriped-ass brigade, to use another of my friend
Steve's nomenclatures. This is called a
hakapik
, and it is a
heavy wooden club with a hammer head and a curved metal hook on the
end. This is the last thing the babies see, or feel, before being
dispatched back into non-existence. Those that are lucky that is,
investigations show that 42% of the babies are skinned
alive
and this is also condoned by the aforementioned brigade, whether
willingly, because of incompetence, or simply due to inertia, I am
not in a position to know. And of course, thanks to certain other
activities of the human race, the poor seal mothers nowadays have
difficulty in finding enough ice floes to give birth on in the
first place. And the reward for those which achieve it is to
witness the appearance of the human being and his clubs, and the
subsequent slaughter of their babies."

"Extraordinary," said Jeremy. "Your species
is certainly an unusual one. Quite brutal. And it doesn't sound to
me as if you yourself are much in favor of some of these
activities. Terribly ruthless ones, I must say."

"Jeremy, I am just stating facts, those few
facts of which I am aware. Whether I consider the way we deal with
animals to be a laugh, a great piece of fun, a necessity, or
whether it disgusts me to the core, is unimportant. It is
unimportant because I cannot change the human race. If the human
race is a cruel race, and if it commits abominable crimes against
the other defenseless cohabitants of its planet, I just accept that
that is the way it is, that that is the way we are. I am neutral on
the subject. I am just providing you with the facts, the ones I
know, anyway."

"But do you kill
all
of the other
species or just selected ones?"

"More or less all of them as far as I am
aware. As I said before, if it moves, we kill it. Legally or
illegally, it doesn't matter. There may be some exceptions but I
can't think of any at the moment. We even kill species we don't
know about yet."