This morning, the thing that really broke my heart was the thought that, being trucked to their execution in the silence of night meant that even in this, we had conspired to deny these innocent creatures the only glimpse of sunshine that most will ever see.
Image by Jo-Anne
McArthur / We Animals
tToday I did a taxi run in the early hours of the morning, passing the
slaughterhouse at about 03.45 as the pre-dawn glinted on wet black roads,
and again at 07.00 in the rain-drenched grey light of day.
Approaching the squat collection of unremarkable buildings, the first thing
that always hits me is the stench; a stinking, gut-churning miasma that over
the years I have learned to associate with slaughter; a unique foulness that
seeps sickeningly from depravities that no decent human should even have to
contemplate; a smell made all the more painful by knowing it’s demanded and
paid for by consumers too fastidious to consider who is meeting the cost of
their frivolous convenience; paying in blood and in agony with all they will
ever have.
I have written before about the curtain-sided trucks (open at this time of
year) parked side by side in the yards at the front, and the refrigerated
transports in orderly ranks at the back. Driving by, they are visible only
as the open road widens the perspective; yields a view of what can only be
thought of as hell.
Both times that I passed in this morning’s small hours, there were laden
trucks out front; blue and yellow plastic crates stacked stem to stern on
articulated trailers. Each crate was crammed with a cargo of defenceless and
motherless infants, their pale 42-day-old bodies grotesquely swollen,
crouched on quaking legs, huddled together and frozen into the immobility of
fear.
Never ending, all day and all night, the blood flowing daily from over 182
million innocent throats, mechanised killing driven inexorably by the
smiling and casual shoppers of a species whose gaze never deigns to sweep
over this wasteland of despair, so intent are they upon on mutual
reassurance about how much they ‘love animals’.
Incongruously, this morning, the thing that really broke my heart was the
thought that, being trucked to their execution in the silence of night meant
that even in this, we had conspired to deny these innocent creatures the
only glimpse of sunshine that most will ever see.
Be vegan.
Number of animals killed in the world by the fishing, meat, dairy and egg industries, since you opened this webpage.
0 marine animals
0 chickens
0 ducks
0 pigs
0 rabbits
0 turkeys
0 geese
0 sheep
0 goats
0 cows / calves
0 rodents
0 pigeons/other birds
0 buffaloes
0 dogs
0 cats
0 horses
0 donkeys and mules
0 camels / camelids