The Silence of the Horses
So I read in the Oregonian that this couple wants to build a slaughter house in Hermiston, Oregon to kill and process 25,000 horses a year as a meat product. I have a problem with this, but this my problem and not yours. There are two arguments here for and against doing this.
First, I live on 20 acres and have three horses. I have an Arabian, a Quarter-horse and a Shetland pony. I have horses because I have a wife and two girls. I don’t ride anything but a working ATV. However, I believe that horses are a majestic American icon. I say in America, because the horse was literally the vehicle by which America expanded. The horse pulled our covered wagons West, the horse was the basis of the Pony Express, and the horse was the cowhand’s best friend. As an ancestor of Kit Carson, I get it. Killing a horse is ethically wrong in my mind. But I am not saying this is a rational concept.
Second, horses are meat. We kill cows and chicken daily for hamburgers and McNuggets. We kill thousands, if not millions, of dogs and cats annually at our local “humane society.” How funny is that name? Or how true? Being humane is to be human. Is killing an animal humane? Why is killing dogs and cats any worse than killing a horse? Well, one answer is we don’t eat them as some cultures do.
Not many people realize it, but the cute animals at the state and county fairs are all slaughtered when the fair ends. I know this because my staff used to get the complaints about the sounds of the slaughter next to them. So you pet the cow and it is slaughtered the next day. For the record, there is no silence of the lambs. If you were an animal with a human voice, then you would say this was no different than an animal Auschwitz. But animals are not sentient beings. In other words, they are clueless about what their human masters are going to do with them.
I often wonder what I would do with a 1200 pound dead horse I found lying in my field. When a dog dies, I dig a hole, put the dog in it and build a cairn. That would be a man-made pile of stones. I am from Scottish descent and we do cairns. We bury the dead and don’t eat them.
The ethical, moral or religious question here is about the slaughter of any animal. Now I have a family with both Vegans and Vegan-lights. I find them amusing and ignore them. I like my sausage, bacon and beef. But I really would rather eat meat than kill it. I don’t hunt and this presents me with a mental conundrum I am dealing with here.
So why not process old people, as in “Soylent Green?” In the movie, human were processed into food. If you think about it rationally, then it makes sense. Why bury or burn a perfectly useful by-product called meat. But would you want your family to be processed as meat?
The answer here is that we are thinking human beings. As such we have values that guide what we do. I am not saying that our values are right or wrong. We slaughter our own kind in the name of this Jesus or Allah. We slaughter our own kind to gain resources, territory and economic advantage. As a Vietnam era veteran, I can tell you that I think killing human beings is stupid and wrong. But what about animals?
When I am dead, I don’t care what happens to me. Bury me, burn me or eat me. I really don’t care. But don’t slaughter me. I think I just answered my own question. The Bible says “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” This leads me to a rather odd question that I need to think about more. Is Eggs Benedict as moral as it is delicious?
Richard Carson lives in Brush Prairie, Washington. He was director the Clark County Community Development Department. That included managing the Animal Protection and Control. He is currently a doctorate student at Washington State University in organizational development.