Excerpt from The Slaughter of Animals for Food Save the eating of bread, have we any practice in our lives so consistent as that of eating meat, or any from which we consider that we derive more benefit, or any about whose conditions, sanitary or humane, we are so careless? If a donkey is badly beaten, a dog stoned, or a cat killed with a riding-whip, the chances are that a prosecution will ensue or a question be asked in Parliament; for public Opinion and the law lay it down that the infliction of unnecessary suffering on animals is cruelty, an offence punishable by fine or imprisonment. But if in the dark and sacred precincts of our slaughterhouses some sheep are killed yearly, without first being stunned, by a method which, even in the hands of an expert, produces some seconds of acute suffering (report of the Admiralty Committee on Humane Slaughtering of Animals, if thousands of cattle, stunned by inexperienced young slaughtermen, require two or more blows of that primitive instrument, the pole-axe; if pigs are driven in gangs into a small space and there killed, one by one, while the others squeal in terror round their dead bodies; if all this preventible suffering is inflicted daily in our slaughter houses, what does public Opinion know of it, and what does the law care? One of the quaintest things in life is the inability of the human mind to see that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. There was a time in this country when men beat their donkeysset cocks fighting, baited bears and badgers, tied tin pots to dogs' tails, with the lightest of light hearts and no consciousness at all that they were outside the pale of decency in doing so. Their descendants, butchers, slaughterers, what-not (as good and decent fellows as members of other trades) now look on the unnecessary suffering involved in such doings with the same aversion as the rest of us; but they still kill their sheep without stunning, still drive their pigs in gangs into the slaughtering chamber, still prefer to use the uncertain pole-axe - all without a qualm. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.