Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Cattle and other Animals Slaughtered for Human Consumption Deserve the Benefit of Modern Technology .... just like we Humans do.

This lovely cow is J.West's Nell Opal, sired by J.West's Bounder, an English Woodbastwick Turpin sired bull, and Nell Opal has never missed a calf. Her calf at foot is sired by J.West's El Presidente. I really enjoy this video from a year and half or so ago, gives me a quiet happy feeling. Yes, the calf looks muddy with the August summer sand turning to mud with the fluids of birth . . . but look how very alive and curious he is, how grand and milky and beautiful his dam, my Nell Opal. I've just about finished, only in the last hours, a silly struggle to keep her image from being used for a purpose that I found abhorrent and totally at odds with this breed's history, it's docility -- the joy the breed conveys to it's owners on a regular basis -- yes, they are beef cattle -- but they do feel pain, keenly, they feel the loss of their calves, they sense the injury and distress of their herd mates -- and they do deserve the benefit of modern humane treatment at slaughter, rather than their throats being slit and a painful and unconscionable wait for them to cry and struggle and bleed out and die. We accept the furtherance of technology that benefits humans -- yet some wish to hold the slaughter animal back to Biblical days. Astounding.