Today, we bring you an excerpt from The Ultimate Betrayal: Is There Happy Meat? by Hope Bohanec (with Cogen Bohanec). To enter to a win a copy, please see the instructions beneath the excerpt.
***
EXCERPT FROM: The Ultimate Betrayal: Is There Happy Meat?
by Hope Bohanec with Cogen Bohanec

The Ultimate Betrayal: Is There Happy Meat? by Hope Bohanec with Cogen Bohanec
It is curious that people will show great concern for how farmed animals are treated when alive and yet do not seem to be troubled by their slaughter. This fact seems to demonstrate a general inability to appraise the various gradations of moral transgressions, with killing being at the furthest end of the spectrum of immorality. Especially with respect to animal slaughter, there is a general tendency to ignore gradations of violent and harmful actions. Our criminal justice system is based on the idea that punishment must be proportional to the crime, and we, as a society, have institutionalized varying gradations of punishment proportional to how serious we consider a crime to be. There is a general consensus that taking another’s life is amongst the most serious type of crime. In the United States, the death penalty is practiced in thirty-three of the fifty states and almost exclusively when the most horrible crime has been committed: murder. Even then, extraneous circumstances must have also occurred—pre-meditation, kidnapping, rape, etc.—to warrant the death penalty. The extent to which our society values the human animals’ life is highly admirable. Why is a nonhuman animal not afforded the same consideration? While I am certainly not advocating a position where people who kill animals receive the death penalty or are treated as murderers, there are compelling parallels between killing animals and killing humans. An animal has the same will to live as a human does. And, as stated in the introduction, they have the same consciousness, awareness, and emotional capacity. Are they really so different? In our tendency to deny farmed animals a place in our circle of compassion, we fail to properly assess the gravity of the act of killing and tend to exclusively consider the conditions in which an animal lives. There is a sense that it is okay to slaughter an animal as long as she has been treated well, the “one-bad-day” scenario. In this sentiment, we fall short of extending the same recognition to animals that is the cornerstone of our criminal justice system: that taking life is the highest transgression, much worse than any crime that allows for the survival of the victim. For example, would you rather have six months in a five-star hotel and then be executed or have a lifetime in jail? Most everyone would take the lifetime in prison, even if the conditions were harsh. Because animals share similar behaviors to humans regarding their will to live, it is safe to assume that they would share the preference for living as well. Life is an animal’s most cherished possession and animals, like humans, will fight to survive. It is absurd to speak of humane treatment of animals when it comes to their handling, management, food, and shelter if you deny them the most basic right—to live out their lives—and condone or are complicit in their slaughter. Clearly, the killing of the animal is the most severe transgression, greater than any mistreatment that allows the victim to live. And because of that, our greatest concern should not necessarily be the treatment of the animal, though this is obviously very important; rather, the greatest consideration should be that the animal be allowed to live.

The idea that you can humanely kill an animal is completely absurd. The very act of killing is the greatest source of inhumanity and the worst act of violence. Based on the formulation of betrayal articulated above, the more humanely an animal is treated, the greater is the bond of trust, and the greater the bond of trust, the more severe the crime of betrayal. By this standard, killing “humanely” treated animals could be a much greater act of betrayal.
This does not imply that it is more ethical to abuse and then kill an animal, because in this scenario there is no element of betrayal. Rather, this is only to posit that regardless of how the animal is treated there is a moral transgression. If the animal is treated well before slaughter, then betrayal is the infraction preceding the act of killing. If the animal is treated badly, then abuse is the preceding crime. Either way, if animals are raised for the purpose of ending their life to serve the interests of the human captor, regardless of how the animal is treated, whether abused or betrayed, it is wrong.
While violence is undoubtedly a severe criminal act, some might argue that betrayal is even worse. In Dante Alighieri’s fourteenth-century epic poem Divine Comedy, the first part, entitled Inferno, famously reserves the deepest of the nine circles of hell for the betrayer, while violence is only considered the seventh, followed by fraud, which is the eighth. Because these concentric circles represent a gradual increase in wickedness, Dante is issuing a clear statement: to covertly deceive with malicious intention is even worse than an overt act of violence. Perhaps this distinction is subjective, but it is important to note that violence, betrayal, and fraud are all committed in the act of killing an animal, especially one with whom we’ve developed a bond of trust (betrayal) and one that will be labeled humane (fraud). Yet we find on “alternative” farms that most animals are not at all humanely treated, despite misleading labeling to the contrary. We will delve deeper into this deception in chapters 2 and 3.

Unless you were with an animal through her entire life and accompanied her to the slaughterhouse you do not know what kind of life or death she had. It is impossible to really know. Manufacturers will tell stories that pacify, labels show pictures that appease, and websites offer fabrications that soothe the conscience. If you cannot be sure, don’t take the risk, because the animal behind the delightful label was not happy and may have suffered considerably. The industry will lie to sell products.
The idea of being an ethical meat eater or a compassionate carnist has inherent contradictions. This is not to say that people who consume animal products are fundamentally without compassion or ethics. People can be extremely compassionate and ethical in some areas of life, such as when it comes to children, the poor, the environment, companion animals, etc., and then go home and eat a cheeseburger. The implications of this later action contradict the values expressed in the previous actions. I have seen friends weep over the loss of a dog or cat, but then shed no tears for the animal they will eat that day who certainly suffered much more than their dog or cat. If they knew the pig, and the misery she endured, they would likely also be distressed by her life cut short merely for a meal. Most people have compassion for helpless beings and don’t want to see them die, but their window of compassion is only open for certain species. Open the window wide an let farm animals into your sight of concern. Farmed animals have the same ability to suffer as any other animal and they are worthy of our sympathy, just like an injured bird that fell from a nest, just like a starving, stray dog. We would offer assistance to these animals if it was within our ability to help them—why are pigs, cows, and chickens exempt from this compassion? How can we, in good conscience, kill when it is unnecessary? Causing another’s death when there is no benefit to our health or to the planet, and indeed, when it is harmful to the environment and our bodies, simply is not consistent with the dictates of ethical living. We must widen our circle of compassion to embrace all nonhuman animals.
***
Want to win a copy of The Ultimate Betrayal: Is There Happy Meat? Simply email contest [at] ourhenhouse [dot] org by Monday, February 21 at Midnight EST, with the subject line “Ultimate Betrayal,” and be sure to include your full mailing address. We will randomly choose a winner on February 22, 2014.
***
Hope Bohanec has been active in animal protection and environmental activism for over 20 years and recently published the book The Ultimate Betrayal: Is There Happy Meat? She is a nationally recognized leader and speaker in the animal protection movement, and is currently serving as Projects Manager for United Poultry Concerns. Before this, she offered her organizational talents as the Grassroots Campaigns Director at In Defense of Animals. Hope has led campaigns like getting the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to sign a VegDay Resolution encouraging meat-free eating in the city and was the Sonoma County Coordinator for a statewide proposition to help protect farm animals. She co-founded a North Bay vegan organization, Compassionate Living, and is the primary organizer for the annual Conscious Eating Conference at UC Berkeley. She is currently working on a vegan themed sci-fi novel.