For They Are Not Robots

Starvation and cruelty

1

I don't know what you've been told
But I don't get out much these days
Waking young and feeling old
The days are no longer my own
To piss away the waking hours

But don't, don't, don't
Don't let them go
Don't, don't, don't, don't
Don't let them go to waste
The fire in my eye
Is fleeting now
Your robot heart is bleeding

Recently, in a Chinese dog farm, 1.3 million dogs were left to starve to death. One of the puppy-meat sellers, facing financial troubles, was unable to afford to feed the animals. Consequently, they left them to starve, for no deal that they offered was deemed adequate by another dog meat seller. Eventually, a Chinese agency took over the farm, and simply murdered the dogs en masse. Why isn’t the U.S. sanctioning a country that systematically tortures and starves dogs?

Just kidding. It wasn’t dogs that were starved in China. It was chickens starved in Iowa. The facts are much as I described above—when Pure Prairie Poultry went bankrupt, the 1.3 million chickens in its possession were left to starve to death. Then, the Iowa department of agriculture took over the farm and simply killed all the chickens. Of course, the news articles refer to this policy with the euphemistic label “depopulation,” or “culling,” rather than what it is: mass murder.

The article that talks about culling doesn’t even mention how the animals were killed. It doesn’t mention that they were left without food for five whole days, so that many began cannibalizing each other, that they were being systematically starved in the month before the company went bankrupt.

The big concern that the media has, of course, is that the murder of these animals was pointless because they weren’t subsequently eaten. Brenna Platz, for instance, complains that the starved and murdered chickens were “wasted.” A spokesperson for the bankrupt farm apologized, saying, “We know that our difficulties are causing real hardship for our growers and for others.” No doubt the others that were referenced in this statement didn’t include the 1.3 million birds left to starve, before being murdered.

A USDA spokesperson similarly said “the number of producers who relied on this market underscores the need to explore how the facility might continue with a return to profitability.” Ah yes, after a ghoulish torture facility leaves millions to die, the most important concern is making sure they can continue to operate. Such is the twisted, upside-down morality of our society.

Mass murder and starvation isn’t genuinely a cause for concern. It’s only worrisome if the tormented animals’ carcasses aren’t subsequently eaten. Mass starvation isn’t regarded as a concern. If we did regard starvation as a concern, then we’d be worried about the fact that every moment, about 6 million hens are being starved through a process called forced molting, wherein animals aren’t fed, so as to trick their bodies into thinking the season is different, thus increasing egg production. Such creatures are starved for a whole week, and by the end of it, they’ve suffered immensely, many have died, and they lose around 27% of their body weight.

If we were concerned about starvation, we’d worry that the turkeys and chickens that are used to breed the next generation of turkeys and chickens are constantly starved, because they’re been genetically modified to be so obese, that if they could eat as much as they want, they’d get routine heart-attacks and other horrifying injuries. As Peter Singer writes:

Here is the problem: if the breeders are fed as much as they want, they will, over their longer lives, grow even more obese than their shorter-lived offspring, develop even more severe skeletal abnormalities, and cheat their producers by dying from heart disease or organ failure before they have produced enough semen or eggs to pay for the cost of rearing them. Producers overcome this problem by giving the parent birds only half as much food as they would eat if they could. This practice is also used with parent birds in the chicken industry, and behavioral studies there have shown that birds restricted to half-rations are chronically hungry and search in vain for food. It is unlikely to be any different for the parent turkeys.

If we were concerned about starvation, we’d be concerned about the fact that animals generally aren’t fed in the two days before they’re killed. It’s easier to kill them without too much mess if they have empty stomachs. Thus, as they undergo a cruel transport process, one of the worst things they undergo, and are killed, they’re extremely hungry.

But we don’t care about that. When 1.3 million birds starve, we decry the wastefulness of the industry, not the starvation of the birds. From dark, filthy, decrepit sheds, millions of birds cry out, having spent five days not eating; instead of rescuing them from this horror-show, our response is to kill them all.

2

Tried to be the robot king
And settled for a robot boy
Ring the bells that still can ring
And sing your stupid head off to
The ones who are not listening

But don't, don't, don't
Don't let them go
Don't, don't, don't, don't
Don't let them go to waste
The fire in my eye
Is fleeting now
Your robot heart is bleeding out

They are not robots.

If they were non-feeling robots, all of this would be fine. Non-feeling robots cannot scream, cannot suffer, cannot hurt, cannot cry for their mother as they are ripped from her arms, sent off to months of torment, before a horrific slaughter.

Some people have proposed breeding chickens to make them non-conscious. This would, if successful, be a great thing. If we made chickens that did not feel, they would not suffer. They would be, in effect, what the industry treats them as if they are: robot chicken-flesh dispensaries.

But they are not robots.

Any industry built on the systematic murder of billions of animals will inevitably come to see them as a product rather than as a person. Any industry devoted towards mass murder, so that they may convert the flesh of their victims into meat, will come to see their victims the way the screw industry sees screws, the way paper mills see paper. Paper mills think little of the welfare of paper. Factory farms think little of the welfare of cows.

If they were not treated as if they were robots, we would not tolerate the things we do to them. We would not be okay locking them in a cage, where they’re covered in filth and feces, where they lie all day in waste, unable to move because genetic engineering has bred them to be so large. Where they’re constantly pecked at and injured by the other chickens, because they go crazy from the horrifying conditions.

The workers treat them like robots too.

Undercover reports routinely uncover instances of grotesque physical abuse. Animals are given savage beatings; when a turkey’s leg was tangled in a crate, a worker simply ripped her leg off. It was easier for him that way. An industry dedicated to animal death and devastation and carnage and torment unsurprisingly has workers that torment animals. When day after day, they treat animals like robots, eventually they start thinking of them like robots.

But they are not robots.

The industry is fond of euphemism, that makes the practices in the industry sound like something efficient and surgical. But it’s anything but. It’s a torture industry. Like the people in Omelas, our society is built on locking people in filthy-feces ridden basements where they can barely move or breathe, where comfort is a faraway and distant goal. But for Omelas, there is just one who suffers; our society is built off the backs of trillions of tortured animals.

It calls the things it does “artificial insemination”—a practice when animals are held down and injected with semen as they try escape, something that would be called rape if done to a human. It calls its practices “depopulation”—a euphemism for mass murder—processing, and livestock units. It calls its eventually byproduct—the body parts of cows and pigs—pork and beef. As you dine on the remains of a cow, you scarcely give thought to the fact that what you are now eating once belonged to someone else, once was someone else.

The industry works as hard as it can to treat them as robots. To get animals treated as robots. To get you to think of them as robots.

But they are not robots.

3

And I've spent half of my life
In the customer service line
Flaws in the design
A sign of the times

And that little voice
In the back of your mind
Just wants you to know
Just hopes you know

I think probably, deep down, you know that eating meat, at least in normal circumstances, is wrong.

Having read my blog, you know about the hellish conditions on factory farms, like something out of a horror movie. You know about cows being ripped from their parents, chickens being thrown into blenders, cows being dangled from their red and being stabbed in the neck, pigs being gassed to death, and so on through a hundred more horrors.

But people are rarely motivated by abstract immorality. You can see that some action is wrong and do it anyways. Maybe leaving on your heater for a bit too long is a bit wrong, but it’s not the end of the world.

Now, meat eating is different. Leaving on a heater isn’t a big deal. It might be slightly bad, but it’s not horrible. In contrast, by eating meat throughout your life, you’ll condemn thousands of extra animals to a lifetime of torture. Animals will endure hundreds of hours of torture because of you. That’s much worse than most anything else you do.

But it’s also less personal. You don’t have to see their cute little cow faces, eyes crowded with pain, coughing and sputtering on phlegm and feces and ammonia. You don’t have to see the baby male chicks as they fall into the blender or the terrified baby female hens under harsh artificial lighting being tossed into transport.

But this is a vice. If you engage in cruelty because you don’t have to see it, this is in no way exculpatory. Just as a man abusing dogs by firing them out of cannons wouldn’t be absolved by the excuse that he doesn’t have to see the dogs get injured, as they’re very far away by the time they land, that you don’t see their suffering is no excuse.

By treating the things the industry does as something divorced from your actions, you are falling for an industry lie. The amount of meat produced is a function of the amount consumed. If more people buy meat, more meat gets produced. We’re not divorced from the process by which animals are killed—we are part of that process.

Their widespread and systematic torture is unacceptable.

For they are not robots.

Robots need love too
They want to be loved by you
They want to be loved by you
They want to be loved by

Robots need love too
They want to be loved by you
They want to be loved by you
They want to be loved by

Robots need love too
They want to be loved by you
They want to be loved by you
They want to be loved by

Robots need love too
They want to be loved by you
They want to be loved by you
They want to be loved by you