Pledging Compassion

An Ethical Basis for Vegetarianism

Anna C. Briggs, Founder

Reprinted, with updates, from the NHES Journal, Winter 1997

We Have a Choice

A History of Killing

The “Modern” Age

What You Don’t Know Can Hurt

We Have a Choice                                                                    Back to Top

Imagine growing up in a box not much bigger than yourself. While well-fed, you’re never allowed to leave the box. This when, as a young thing, your greatest desire is to run and play. You remain for sixteen weeks, until freed of this torture—you are slaughtered.

Think of this the next time veal is on your menu.

It may seem like vegetarians never existed before the 1960’s, but I’ve been one since my teens, in the 1920s. As a girl, I gave the meat on my dinner plate to my dog. Then I fell in love with a man who gave my feelings a name—vegetarian. He told me why he ate no meat: the mistreatment in shipping the animals from place to place, and the horrendous killing. So I accepted the title with pride.

Ever since, I’ve looked at people who ate meat and wondered if they realized—particularly in this sanitized, cellophane-wrapped era—where the food comes from. Unlike our hunter-gatherer ancestors, we have a choice when it comes to our diet. There are fresh fruits and vegetables in the winter, food from all corners of the world, and alternative ways to cook. The surplus of food in the United States allows us to examine the humanity behind what we eat.

A History of Killing                                                                        Back to Top

For centuries, by necessity, eating meant killing. Some the oldest archeological artifacts in existence are arrow heads and cutting blades. Some of the first works of art depict great hunts.

But as humans developed inner lives, they began to question the world around them. Eventually, generations, philosophers and poets challenged the status of humans as unconditional stewards of the planet. Jonathan Swift, best-known for his Gulliver’s Travels, also wrote a treatise entitled, “A Modest Proposal.” An excerpt:

I have been assured...that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.

Yes, he is speaking of human children. Swift meant to shock, and one can draw a number of conclusions about unchecked human nature and commerce from his words.

In 1906, Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, a book which led to the passage of the United States’ first pure food laws. His exposé of Chicago stockyards brought to light numerous human rights violations, and comparable animal rights atrocities: “They had chains which they fastened about the leg of the nearest hog, and the other end of the chain they hooked into one of the rings upon the wheel. So, as the wheel turned, a hog was suddenly jerked off his feet and borne aloft [by one leg].”

About thirty years after that book appeared, my husband ran an animal shelter in Maryland. His animals had good care, but lacked the human touch, so I spent many hours there. One day, my husband asked me to go to the abattoir (the local slaughterhouse) to fetch some food for the dogs. I would do anything for those dogs, but I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.

To buy the meat, I had to observe a lot of awful things. I could hardly stay; it was nerve-wracking to hear the cows bleating in their fear. They knew where they were going. They sensed it as surely as anything. I could hear them in their death throes as well, screaming and squealing.

The “Modern” Age                                                                        Back to Top

Now however, as we look back on such previous food industry practices, we may feel a sense of false security. We may feel that, if animals are currently slaughtered in efficient and sanitary conditions, with the best modern equipment, we can endorse the eating of meat.

Yet consider just a few of these industry practices:*

Egg Industry

Billions of egg-laying hens are housed in tiny “battery” cages for egg production. These sensitive and caring mothers cannot nest, dust-bathe, nor care for the eggs as instinct drives them to do. The billions of hens suffer broken wings, disfigured feet, extreme overcrowding and psychological distress. These sentient birds, individuals in their own right, yet nameless and unheard, suffer in the dark barns that subjugate them to a life of cruelty and a severe deprivation.

Veal Industry

Millions of male calves, most only a day old or less, are torn from their birthing mothers—milking cows for the dairy industry—and shipped with little regard for their well-being to veal farms. Here, the young offspring, terrified and panicked, are chained within small wooden crates or stalls for the entirety of their brief lives, a matter of months. The calves are kept from moving as little as possible and denied adequate diets (particularly of the iron mineral they would gain from grazing and grain) to ensure tender, white meat results from the slaughter of these baby animals.

Pig Production

As a norm practice, millions of pregnant sows are confined to tiny stalls or “gestation crates” across farms in the United States for the purpose of pig meat production. The caring, gentle mother pigs are forced to lie down and cannot stand up nor turn around. When the mother gives birth, she cannot attend to her many tiny babies—many whose small hooves and legs become stuck in the grated floor which is lacking of any soft bedding. After the babies are taken from the mother sows to be grown into slaughter size, she will once again be forced into pregnancy via artificial insemination or forced breeding with male pigs.

Cattle Slaughter

Prefacing slaughter, the cattle are kicked, prodded, stunned, and dragged into the chutes to which they will never return. These animals—very sensitive to the sight, smells, and sounds of their kin’s suffering—buck with terror and panic at meeting their own demise. After the cattle are rendered unconscious, using a number of methods which include stunning and bolt guns, the animals are chained upside-down by one leg and moved along a conveyor belt to the slaughter line. The animals’ throats are slit, their front legs cut-off, and their body skinned. Despite USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) regulations to render the cattle completely unconscious prior to the slaughter, an average of 25 percent of cattle are still conscious and aware when the process begins.

Sadly, these are only a few of the many cruel and terrible factory farming and animal slaughter practices that occur across the United States and throughout the world.

What You Don’t Know Can Hurt                                                       Back to Top

Such grim realities inevitably raise deeper questions. What does it mean to have a discussion about animal rights, as members of an animal rights advocacy group, around a dinner table featuring spareribs or chicken noodle soup? Why are some animals “sacred cows” and others lunch? Should we exploit animals as food simply because we have the power to do so?

NHES advocates a vegetarian diet, though, as stated by a staff member, “ We’re not critical of those who meat, either. We just encourage people to think about exactly what does happen to that cow at the slaughterhouse.”

I myself will soon be 87 years old**. I’ve never regretted my choice in diet, and have enjoyed much better health because of it. In re-thinking our position on the food chain, I remember my mother.

She fed me and my brothers meat because everyone said to do so. “They need meat for good health,” the doctor told her. Then when I announced my vegetarianism, my brothers couldn’t understand it. Our mother defended my position with a phrase that has stuck with me ever since: “I never did think that meat was fit for human consumption.”

It’s easy to see the benefits of a vegetarian diet. But many of us don’t want to see the other side of the coin, the ethical question. Living a meat-free life equals erasing cruelty on a daily basis. Every time I choose an apple instead of an animal’s carcass, I feel good about eating it. An apple tree drops its fruit naturally; steak is stolen from a cow by harsh human violence.

You have only to look into an animal’s eyes to know that it has a soul or listen to its cries to realize that it has feelings, too. I made my pledge of compassion seventy years ago, and have never been tempted to change it.

*Updated May 2008.

**At time of publishing. Anna C. Briggs passed away in 2011, learn more about her life helping animals.