From: rigg@osnome.che.wisc.edu (Tim Rigg)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals
Subject: Re: "A Very Good Opponent."
Date: 27 Jul 92 20:21:33 GMT
Organization: University of Wisconsin-Madison, Chemical Engineering
In-reply-to: dreamer@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu's message of 22 Jul 92 18:15:42 GMT

In article <1992Jul22.131542.41815@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> dreamer@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (David Caruso II ~~~) writes:

   [Lots deleted]
   Is someone who likes
   to hunt, even though the can acquire meat at the grocery store,
   more evolved?

Why is buying fat, tasteless, drug-filled meat from grocery store
preferred to hunting?

Here is something that was posted a while ago that I think is quite
appropriate.  Please note the original author.


From: cpdlm@marlin.jcu.edu.au (Dominique Morel)
Subject: barbarians
Organization: James Cook University

		A Tale of Two Deaths. 

	Two animals lose their lives to feed two different groups of
humans.  One group sit outside a fast food store eating hamburgers
being washed down with a bottle of Coke, while the other sits around a
well set table eating a marinated joint of venison being eased down
with a good drop of red wine. Two groups of people are worlds apart in
their outlooks on life not thinking or caring about the life the other
lead. Yet these two groups of homo sapiens have much more in common
than their species, for both of these groups to be eating, an animal
has had to die.


	One animal was a wild free majestic stag of pure bloodlines,
whose ancestry dated to a mutations aeons ago. The other a semi
domesticated sickly looking animal bred and crossbred to be a drought
resistant bovine, which resulted in an animal with little grace. Yet
both of these have one thing in common, both died at the hand of man
for food, but their deaths have little in common. One died in the wild
rugged terrain which was his home, the other in an abattoir far from
the familiar ground he grazed. One died without the parts of his
anatomy that was his reason for existence, they were removed by man
when he was a calf so that he would taste nicer when the time came.
The other died a complete beast never before being touched by man.


	The bullock had lived a hard life in the arid Australian
countryside.  He had been castrated, ear marked and had a brand burnt
into his hide with a hot piece of steel to show to whom he belonged.
His life had been one of getting fat in the good times and almost
starving in the drought times, of being rounded up twice a year to be
dipped and to have his horns cut. His normal life had not been all
that pleasant or peaceful, but this was nothing compare to the horror
of his existence in his last days of life.


	The stag born free of human intervention had lead a life in
the less harsh environment. Not restrained by fences he could travel a
much larger area for nourishment when food was scarce. He too had the
hardships of drought to contend with, but being able to eat a larger
variety of food he fared better in the hard times starvation was not
such a common occurrence in his species of life. He had fathered many
fawn in his life full of purpose, to produce descendants for his genes
to survive.


	The day he died started like most of the days of his life
perhaps a little more noise and a strange odour occasionally. This
made him fidgety and more careful but the smells and sounds were now
gone and he browsed contentedly. All of a sudden he felt a sharp pain
in the shoulder and the start of the loud crack that was the shot that
killed him, but the shock wave through his body has made him
unconscious before all of the sound wave has reached him. He starts to
fall to the ground, but by then the now disintegrated heart has not
been able to supply the brain with blood. Before his head comes to
rest on the ground he is dead. The pain lasted a fraction of a second,
and he knew not that he was going to die or did he have time to his
contemplate death.


	The bullock's last few days, on the other hand were not at all
peaceful. He was once again mustered with the pain that a stock whip
on the rump produces, but this time not just a dip then freedom to
roam in the fenced off area that was his familiar range. This time he
was bundled into a crate with many other beasts in a cramped
double-decker trailer to breathe exhaust smoke from a noisy diesel
truck for two days without water or food. A reprieve from this torture
came in the form of the concrete floor and close confines of the
saleyards here he was fed and watered. Two days of relative peace were
once again shattered by another truck ride to the abattoir, where once
again he was given a bit of room to move, fed and watered. Then the
nightmare really starts twenty-four hours on concrete without food or
water in the holding yards next to the knocking box, and for a whole
day he smells the death of the others in his predicament. The final
few minutes of his life are the same terror of a man on death row. He
knows that he is going to die. He walks up the chute being jabbed in
the rump by electric shocks to keep him moving. He opens his eyes as
wide as they have ever been open before. On his face, the person who
is going to kill him sees terror, a look hard to forget once seen. He
is finally in the knocking pen. A door behind him slides across and
isolates him in a small area not much wider or longer than he is. The
pneumatic bolt-gun comes towards his head. He sees it and ducks. The
person moving the gun tries to compensate for the moving head, but not
enough and the twelve millimetre bolt protrudes twenty millimetres
into side of his face. Twice more the bolt gun comes down before
puncturing the front of the skull. Unconscious he falls to the ground
to have his throat cut so as to bleed him. Finally his brain dies as
the life giving blood flow to the floor rather than the brain.


	The flesh is systematically and unceremoniously removed from
his carcass by many different people. His flesh and hide are packed
and shipped to be processed. Within a few months nothing will remain
of the bullock bar perhaps a pair or two of boots, but the bullock
will not be remembered.


	The hunter comes out of his cover towards the fallen stag
still majestic in death. Remorse is felt by the hunter as he take a
few photographs of his quarry in death. The hunter carefully removes
the hide especially the cape as it will be sent to the taxidermist for
mounting with the antlers. With the flesh carefully packed, the long
walk back to the car takes place, carrying the dressed stag, the hide,
the antlers, and the hunters greatest and most revered possession his
hunting rifle.


	Long after the last remaining piece of venison is eaten, the
hunter, and the close friend with whom the hunter ate the stag, will
remember the superb meals that were had. The hunter will never forget
the long hours spent stalking the that magnificent animal that now
graces the wall of his favourite room. In three strange ways the stag
was immortalised, one in the genes carried by his offsprings, the
other in the work done by the taxidermist, and in the photographs
taken by the hunter.


	The people, who never having left the city, eating the
hamburgers, if told of the hunters deeds would denounce the hunter as
a barbaric person, who should not be allowed to hunt. Who are the real
barbarians? Are there people who are not barbarians? Perhaps the real
vegetarians are not barbarians. I am a hunter and have worked in an
abattoir. If I were an animal, and were to be killed I would much
prefer to die like the stag.



				Dominique L. Morel. 



--
    ...  Then they came for me,
	   and by that time there was no one
	     left to speak up for me. (Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals