Animals Aren't Even Things: a digression

We've discussed the Doctrine of Inanimacy several times. It holds that animals, being mere objects, are beneath our moral consideration. Contrary to everything you have witnessed yourself, animals don't think or feel. Hell, they don't really do anything.

Of course, the bizarre part is how this concept—animals' status as nothing more than matter—so often nestles alongside suicidefoodism's foundational principle. Namely, that animals are so like us, with dreams and desires that resonate so strongly in us because they so closely mirror our own. They want to belong, to amount to something, to receive approval.

It's the central paradox of the Movement: that which should serve to create psychological distance actually inspires intimacy, and that intimacy inspires contempt. Look, it's a giant, steaming stew of contradictory impulses, and trying to understand it will only give you wrinkles.

Our point here isn't to understand. Instead, we'd like to look at something that denies even the Doctrine of Inanimacy, something that says individual animals aren't even things, something that would have actual animals vanish into sheer abstraction.

This photo is from the October 31, 2011 edition of The New York Times. It accompanied a story in The New York Times Magazine about a "farmer" hoping to do something or other with fancy meat.

Whatever.

Before you go any farther, take a look at the thing under the man's arm. If you're like us, you might have thought that object was a piglet.

You would have been wrong. The caption explains the true nature of the photo:

"Brock with one of his heritage breeds—the start of a grand culinary reclamation project."

And just like that—poof!—the pig has been rendered invisible. For the man isn't holding an individual animal, or even a physical thing! He is holding a breed, and not even one that occupies its own place in the natural order. No, it's one of the man's breeds! The pig can't even claim its own lineage, its own existence. It's as though chattel was too good for the pigs, and they had to be reduced to airy concepts.

Deny if you will that pigs are intelligent and you are uninformed. Deny if you will that pigs are sentient and you are blind. But deny that they are physical things and you are a madman.

Calf Club

We'd like to tell you all about this, but after reading up on it, we're still feeling a little dizzy. From the Calf Club's website:

Originally the day was known as Calf Club even though children exhibited animals like lambs and goats, but with fewer children now having access to 'farm animals' the day has become known, in some areas, as Pet, Livestock or Agriculture Day, with events for all classes of animals, pets and handcrafts.

LIC strongly supports New Zealand's dairy, beef, deer and sheep industries and recognises that there are young farmers who work hard each year to select, prepare and show young animals at these school events.

This website provides information and guidelines to help you and your child select, train and show a pet - and most importantly, ensure everyone enjoys the experience.

Okay! Did you spot it?

It's the seamless, oh-so-natural conflation of the categories pet and livestock.

Let's be fair: The organizers of this event explicitly encourage young people to take good care of their animals, to treat them kindly, to make sure they have proper food and clean bedding. It's clear they believe—and the kids feel it too—that the up-and-coming "farmers" form a strong bond with their (ahem) pets, a connection born of duty and affection. We would assume that many "farmers" find this a commonplace.

But to us, that adoring calf—with its serene smile and worshipful gaze—knows more than it lets on. For, whether destined for milking or "rearing" (that is, being raised for meat), it will not long be anyone's companion. Are we wrong to detect a trusting nature in the calf? Not a trust that it will always be—and have—a friend, but a bedrock faith in the entire administration that will see to its eventual disposition. From friend to food, the calf is in their hands. Where it belongs.

Quality Semen Tanks

"I finally have my own little bundle of joy product! Thank you, Quality Semen Tanks!"

So says Mrs. Cow, we can only assume, on cuddling her newborn for the first time.

She knows what lies in store for her offspring. She knows that for a she-calf, it's a life spent voluntarily offering up her milk and her own offspring. For a he-calf, it's most likely an adorable processing at the hands of hard-working vealsmiths.

Which is why she's so pleased with the product line at Quality Semen Tanks. Because that's what makes it all possible. The fulfillment of her too, too brief motherhood. The succession of babies dedicated to milking and vealing operations. The peace that comes from knowing her place. All of it concentrated in her love and gratitude for sturdy, well-made semen tanks.










Addendum: An outfit called Goode Cattle uses the same mom-and-baby graphic on their website. They go one better (or one stranger, at least) by using this one, too, which looks for all the world like a cow in love with a Millennium SC20 semen tank. Perfectly understandable.

NRV

We are proud to present the winner of Suicide Food's first-ever George Orwell Award for Excellence in Distorting Language and Generally Making Us Feel Like We Need to Sit Down in a Quiet Room (the "Georgie" for short).

Do the fine folks of NRV take care of calves naturally by providing a safe and enriching environment for calves and their mothers to bond and grow? Yes, of course! Which is to say, no, of course not.

In "naturally" taking care of calves, NRV has made it their business to manufacture "replacement" milk for them. That is, a substitute for the mother's milk the calves would naturally drink.

And why? Because the milk produced by their mothers is already spoken for. The calves have only a natural—not a spiritual/economic—claim on it. The milk already belongs to those who manufactured the calves' mothers.

This stuff is evaluated on the basis of everything you might expect—fat and protein content, and even taste, but also on the basis of so much more. For instance, at NRV's own lab, they can analyze the "meat color status" of the calves! (Take that, your mind!) This must be the detail that has their mascot smiling.

Naturally.

Suicide Art: a digression

As you know—even children know it!—animals want to die to enrich our lunches. And our wardrobes, our leisure time, our medicine chests, and our decrepit cultural institutions. And other things besides.

We've seen them all, all the ways animals are dying to serve us by serving up themselves. The July 3, 2011, edition of The New York Times Magazine suggests one that escaped our reeling imagination: art. Yes, we can now assume animals enjoy dying for our art.

In a piece titled "Among the Piglets," by Randy Kennedy, we learn about what Peter Nadin, onetime leading light of the intellectual New York City art circuit, has been up to lately. And what he's been up to is farming. We learn about how his experiences on the land have led him back to art. But we're not the only ones inspired. The animals are pretty darn happy about it, too! One of his projects is the artistic drying and curing of "a half-dozen mold-covered hams." Says Mr. Nadin, whether about his artistic or agrarian pursuits, we're not quite sure:

The pigs, for their part, might not agree that it's such a good thing to have happen, I suppose. But it seems to me like a pretty noble end, all in all. I wouldn't mind being eaten, you know? Meet your end in the forest somewhere and the coyotes and other animals eat your body? In fact, I think it would be quite a dignified way to go.

Almost as nobly dignified, we would venture, as having your entire life taken over by some artist who wants to make you his property, kill you, and make supper or art out of you.

Red Curry with Pork Fillet

The pig is alone on his island, his only company the playful sailboat that appears occasionally just past the lagoon. Apart from that fey blue sail, the pig has no one to talk to, no one to dream with. He has a coconut palm. He has food enough, thankfully. And he has the insane nightmare world that blooms brilliantly in his brain.

How else to explain what on earth he's doing?

Some have argued—believe us, we know—that the pig is merely capering. Or maybe gathering coconuts for his meager subsistence.

Please. We've been around the block a few times. We know what's what. The pig has gone out of his way to enact an elaborate ritual suicide. He will shinny up the slender tree until it bends just so, whereupon he will loosen his awkward grip and splash into the seasoned broth simmering in the wok. He intends to cook himself—with curry, coconut juice, and fish sauce—so that the sweetly calling birds will pick him apart and scatter him from one end of the island to the other in their droppings.







Addendum: Every year or so, we bring you one of these illustrations, from livestock pharmaceutical giant Baytril. Take a look at the most recent.

Happy Mountain Farms

Have you been looking for a place to satisfy your dream of meeting miniature cattle while you satisfy your meat tooth? Look no further. Happy the 32-inch miniature bull—and the rest of his diminutive fellows—invite you to take it all in! See? He's talking to you!

Well, to be fair, Happy is mostly promoting the come-look-at-small-cows angle, but his parent company also deals in the edible side of the business, too.

Catering to the small-is-beautiful crowd, Happy and the rest of the shrimpy bovines make themselves available for anything you might have in mind. Petting, chewing, digesting, whatever.

(Thanks to Dr. Kirsten for the referral.)

Suicide Barnyard: a digression, part 2

A year and a half ago, we presented a letter printed in the New Yorker that reminded us all how much animals on loving farms enjoy their lot. Well, in the magazine's June 13/20 issue, a Ms. G. of Ashland, Oregon, has a similar message for us:

Placing a value on the existence of cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens as both edible and sentient beings gives them species-appropriate lives, albeit with a scheduled death. (Emphasis added, because that's plain weird.)

In other words… Oh, shoot. We lost it.

It's a squirrely thing, this idea.

No, wait. It's like this: The animals are better off when people think of them as walking foodstuffs—this is opposed to supporting the bioengineered ("vat") meat industry waiting in the wings, an industry that would eliminate the need for actual animals.

Because see, um…

Because if animals are nothing but commodities, then, even though, sure, someone else will control every aspect of their existence and their "scheduled" deaths, at least the animals will be granted "species-appropriate" lives. And who's deciding what's appropriate? Why, the people making all the decisions and doing all the killing, of course!

Hey, Ms. G. is just telling you how the animals see it. They are thankful for the opportunity to live and die at your pleasure. Like the most sycophantic subjects of the cruelest tsar, the animals live and die to serve.

Suicide Snacks: quickies 8

It's been close to a year since we allowed ourselves a moment to rest and offer up another installment of our beloved series of "Suicide Snacks." Sometimes, like today, we're just not up to the rigors of our self-imposed campaign.


Can you read the inspiring legend on her sash? She has been crowned Miss Prolificacy, the livestock-makingest pig there is! She's a one-sow pork-producing machine!






This exotic beauty, this made-up, be-kohled octopus in Portland, Oregon, wiggles her sensual arms, beckoning all comers to dine on… well, herself.

Bonus: Impossibly, this seductress is only the third octopus we have ever featured!







Really? It's just us? We're the only ones creeped out by a pig with a beard? Okay. Fair enough.








We're not sure what we're seeing here. The weary satisfaction of another factory shift competently worked, perhaps. Or maybe the muted joy of a lobster facing his imminent boiling out there on the factory floor.

Foxlights

This equipment is used for chasing predators away, thus safeguarding livestock.

Now, we would be ghouls if we refused to acknowledge that non-lethal means of dealing with predators and protecting prey are better than the alternative. Surely scaring off foxes and wild dogs with a bunch of lights beats poisoning, shooting, and trapping them.

And yet.

The freedom the livestock enjoy—the liberty—is the freedom to remain someone else's property, to be kept from harm until the time is right.

Of course, we're not surprised that, like poultry we looked at long ago, they would rather not be carried off in one set or other of slavering jaws.

But their gratitude feels a little… off. It's like being grateful for shag carpeting in your cell. It keeps the chill away and comforts your shackled feet, but wouldn't parole feel even sweeter? Cold comfort might be better than no comfort at all. Granted. But wouldn't you imagine that animals would aim a little higher? That they would reserve the Lady Liberty get-up for something that came closer to the real thing?

In Suicidefoodland, the animals think a little differently. A little strangely. They have long contented themselves with small blessings.

Roast Beef with Onions

Fear not! Still your racing heart! Spare your sympathies for someone who needs them.

This Alpine maid is not weeping with dread at her impending slaughter and consumption. True, the man is hefting the hammer even as we watch this scene, and the butcher is whetting his blades. Though the purplish mountains and serene meadow suggest nothing so much as unending peace, a killing looms.

The roast beef's cow's tears are not born of fear, of pain, of the horror of impending nothingness. It's just the onions she slices for the dish she will soon join.






Addendum: It's another illustration from the animal lovers at Baytril!

Perturbed Cow political cartoon

We are again reminded that suicidefoodism is such a commonplace that anyone—everyone—can press it into service, knowing that it will serve as a benchmark, a universal password, a shibboleth to open any door. Which is why we see it so often in food advertisements, of course, but also in advertisements for other consumer goods and services. Even toys.

So when a political issue requires simplification, so that its basics might be understood readily by people from all walks of life, suicidefoodism is hauled up from the cellar of cliché once again. Here, in a cartoon that ran in the Rome (Georgia) News-Tribune, some point or other is illustrated with a great, hulking cow, angry that his prospects of being eaten by the Japanese citizenry are greatly diminished because of a trade dispute.

No, it doesn't make sense. And the way it doesn't make sense is of iconic familiarity. From clothing to sports franchises, from children's books to the plight of the family farm, suicidal animals are good for safe, reliable references.

(Thanks to Dr. Desdemona for the referral.)

The Parks Companies

The Parks Companies are dedicated to "innovative and forward thinking solutions for today's swine industry."

To innovative and forward-thinking we would like to add adorable.

Just look at the line of piglets kicking up their heels as they trail mama toward the processing plant!

We're seeing a new standard of maternal devotion and family togetherness, a new vision of peace and respite. It's as though Norman Rockwell relocated to Hog Finishing Town, USA! Banished to sour memory are the scenes of adoring mothers and fascinated babes, the shared language of care and regard. And good riddance! In Suicidefoodland, such ideas are manacles shackling us to a world we can never again know.

We are—once more—reminded of those regimes that bepimple human history, the regimes that seek to erase the past and sever every last connection to it. This is the new Year 0.

With the past a political prisoner relegated to a lightless cell, and the future a savior who will never be born, all that remains is a present with no power to elevate us. A Now that sees us drawn ever closer to the grave.

Or, you know, a present wherein the piglets scamper ever closer to their sweet fate.

Suicidefood Book Report: Animals Make Us Human

Editor's note: This should more properly be called a book reportlet, but as our spellcheck would have murdered us had we gone with that title, we had to use the less-than-accurate report. We pretend nothing more than a cursory familiarity with the book in question. And now, on with the… thing.

We can summarize Temple Grandin's Animals Make Us Human (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, ISBN: 978-0151014897) in five words.

Treat 'em better, then POW!

We concede that while this is a finer sentiment than "Give 'em hell, then POW!" it's not the most transcendent philosophy we've ever heard.

Noted livestock advocate Grandin has devoted her career to understanding the mysteries of animals' inner lives and speaking for them in their muteness.

She tells us that pigs have "lively, active minds," that cows form "close relationships, especially between sisters and between mothers and daughters," and that chickens are "intensely attached to their mamas."

And where has her insight led her? Not to urgent pleas to spare the animals, possessed as they are of their own drives, desires, joys, and terrors. Nor to seeking legal protections for the most vulnerable among us.

No, no. Not there, but instead toward more thoughtfully designed slaughterhouses. In other words, toward making a grotesque industry merely sickening.

All that empathy, employed in the service of killing them with kindness—literally—on behalf of some of corporatedom's heaviest hitters!

(Read our first book report while you're at it.)

Elanco

Just look at the cute little investment!

Have you ever seen an investment with such a happy, little smile?

With Elanco, you can protect him and make sure nothing happens to him.

Remember: "Elanco products enhance animal health, wellness, and performance"! And before you ask, no, performance doesn't mean, like, juggling. It means putting on weight admirably and economically.

Lest you suspect that the Elanco folks might not actually care about the well-being of the pigs they protect, read what they have to say about respiratory disease and how keenly they feel its effects:

Healthy, heavier nursery pigs improve returns all the way to market. But respiratory disease that slows growth and increases variation can cost you plenty.

Disease, as we all know, can increase variation (gasp!) and play hob with your bottom line.

Keep smiling, little pig. Elanco's looking out for their profit-and-loss statements. That is to say, you. They're looking out for you. That's what we meant.

Suicide Barnyard: a digression

According to a letter published in the November 30 New Yorker and written by a Mr. G. of Salt Lake City, Utah, it could hardly be more plain that animals want to be killed on small, family farms:

Is it better for aging animals to suffer, blind, arthritic, starving, or cancerous until merciful death? I grew up on a farm and can say with certainty that our animals gave their bodies in gratitude for a well-cared-for life. (Emphasis added.)

Not only do the animals participate consciously in some sort of exchange of services, à la Derrick Jensen's "bargain", but it is as if the entire process—their breeding, raising, and slaughter—were something the animals themselves established!

Can the humans be blamed simply for following the orders of their livestock masters?

Ketchum Manufacturing Inc.

It is by now a truism that happy livestock enjoy being sacrificed for your pleasure. So widely recognized and acknowledged, so extensively documented that it hardly bears repeating. What is news to us, however, is that livestock are so enamored of the entire birth-to-plate process. Everything about it gives them delight. In other words, it's not just the dying that they love; it's the very fact of their subjugation!

Now we can understand what's going on in these images from Ketchum Manufacturing Inc. For in them we see the joy of the enslaved, for whom slavery is not merely the water they swim in, so to speak, but the very staff of life.

It's all here. Before this sow's identification as consumable property, she is apprehensive. After receiving a firm smack with the sow body identification system—the "slap tattooer," a happy device sporting rows of spikes—she is relieved. Her identity as a specific, specified object has been confirmed and ratified and made permanent.








Now, this pig benefits from an extra little something. There's being born into a pen. There's the pleasure of being an edible cog in a machine dedicated to your destruction. But livestock aspires to more! For instance, what about creating profit for your owners? Somehow, the Ketchum ear tattooers let a pig do just that!

(Can you read the copy? Did you really think we would need to make up a phrase like "birth-to-plate"? The suicidefoodists have been at this business a long time.)












Precocious piglets and goats love this stuff too!