This blog is by CUSJ Board member Jim Sannes, a long-time activist for reducing our meat intake and caring better for the animals we do raise for meat. Reducing meat intake and moving from industrial agriculture to agro-ecology are essential strategies in the struggle to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Originally published in The Canadian Coalition for Farm Animals
Have you ever seen or read about how animals are transported to the slaughterhouse? We can say that this is one of the most terrible stages of their life. The animals sentenced to death will be sent on a painful and often long journey.
People do not even remotely imagine how millions of cows and calves, sheep, pigs, horses and millions of birds are subjected to suffering during their transportation in Canada. Animals are packed tightly into trucks or railway cars, and for several hours, and sometimes days, they are taken one way to be killed for our tastebuds. Unable to lie down, distraught with fear, crampedness, thirst, stuffiness, these unfortunate creatures sometimes trample each other to death.
Think about how hard it is to travel in crowded public transport on a hot or freezing day, and multiply that several times. Should we continue to torment them, knowing that no animal product or material is necessary for our survival or the satisfaction of our basic human needs?
Jim Sannes live in Kitchener, Ontario. He is the Canadian Representative for the Unitarian Universalists Animal Ministry.