I Am Not Better Than a Pig

By Mike Jaynes

Originally appeared in Paragon Music Magazine Issue #41 December 2008

What could be sadder than the accepted practices of current mass confinement factory hog farming? I can come up with very few answers. Only one truth rings true in the depths of my being: Our greatest calling is to show compassion to all living creatures who are helpless before us. For some reason, this view often gets me labeled as "radical" or "misguided" or even "psychotic." Call me crazy, but I feel animals are not ours and we are not free to do whatever we wish to them. Today on a well run website, I came across a post entitled "Would C.S. Lewis be an Animal Rights Activist Today?" submitted by someone only identified as John.

John was responding to a post he read discussing C.S. Lewis' views on animal suffering. Consider his words:

Lewis was not against animal abuse simply for the sake of the animals. Lewis was against it because he saw that the Judeo-Christian idea of total difference between man and beast might be abandoned. And, with animal abuse rampant, human abuse could easily follow.

Here is a disturbing idea permeating our culture. And this is faulty, in my opinion. If the "idea of total difference between man and beast" was abandoned, I argue it is faulty and pessimistic to assume we would begin to treat humans in the sick and inhumane way we currently treat animals. If they were seen as equals in suffering, then we would treat animals more like we treat humans today. Example: Some of you may be familiar with the South American artist who took a stray dog from the Honduran streets and tied him into a space in an art museum and allowed the animal to starve to death. This was his artistic expression, and apparently people observed the dog for several days as it expired. My question is why people such as John assume that we would treat humans in such a manner. I do not think his pessimistic position, and Lewis' if John is correct, reflects a probable truth. If animals were considered equal to humans in the important ways, humans would not be chained to starve to death under the false banner of "art." And neither would dogs. And beside the point, to say that "human abuse could easily follow" is a little inaccurate as well. Human abuse is currently rampant as can be: Sudan, China, American socioeconomic slavery, and the like. The truth is animals should be given compassion and care from the humans who are their guardians.

     Secondly, the writer states:

PETA, however, has already placed human life on the same level as animal life (a holocaust on your plate?!). Lewis, I'm sure, would be appalled and disgusted. Animals need to be treated as beings under our care, not as equals on this earth, with the knowledge that human life is absolutely worth more than animal life. Here comes the most disturbingly anthropocentric view expressed on the page. Being obviously a strong reaction to PETA's campaigns designed to shock consumers into animal consideration; I feel John is attacking animal rights groups without considering the facts. I wonder if John is aware of the mass confinement "farming" practices of the corporate factory farms that slaughter 130,000 cattle, 82,000 pigs, and 24 million chickens a day. I am an independent animal advocate and not widely known to be exactly the biggest fan of PETA and all their techniques; however, pigs have been proven to be intelligent as a three year old human child and more so than the average dog. 27 billion animals (including fish) a year are slaughtered not for necessity but for the fact that people think they taste good. Plenty of meat substitutes exist; the only reason people still eat meat is for flavor and convenience. And many pull the blindfold and earplugs of Christian "dominion" over their eyes and ears in order to not hear the screaming, to not see the blood and pain and excrement and torture. Factory farmed pigs never leave the confines of the dim cement, the confining factory farms. Chickens either. They never see the sun, never feel the grass, never raise their young, never experience even the least shred of human kindness and compassion. Animal liberation is simply an outward expression of humanity's love and common sense regarding those creatures under its control. And I do not recognize a divide between animal and human. Americans will not stop eating meat. They won't even attempt to buy free ranging pigs and chickens from smaller family farms (which would most likely improve the animals' condition even though the only truly kind way to live is to not eat any meat products regardless of their origin). All this natural order verbiage regarding animals doesn't fly with someone who has the facts. Even if it is divinely permissible to kill animals for food, the massive death operations and their unbearable confinement and cruelty surely was not the intent. We have abused our animals. They are not machines and they are not ours to use as we see fit. We do not deserve them. They deserve better than what humans are proving to be.

I am curious if John has contemplated the similarities between mass factory farmed animals and Jewish victims in the Holocaust who were considered refuse and given no value as sentient human beings. The absolute ferocity with which ignorant people support these truly terrible farms with their dollars is disheartening. To be unaware of these practices, this billion-dollar automated, robotic, corporation getting rich while polluting consumers with fat, cardiovascular disease, and genetically manipulated growth hormone induced poison is criminally ignorant. To be unaware of these practices and then to glibly attack animal rights and welfare groups who are attempting to ease animal suffering and then stand behind some Judeo-Christian pretext of dominion and absolute difference between man and beasts is causing spiritual bankruptcy in our world and death by the billions. How can someone celebrate the Hope of the World on Easter and Christmasas Matthew Scully so beautifully points out in his book Dominion: The Suffering of Animals, The Power of Man, and the Call to Mercy by increasing the demand for hams, by multiplying tenfold the demand for pigs to be slaughtered as inhumanely as possible?

Factory farmed animals are treated as economic commodities and there is no need for this. We do not need meat to survive; meatless protein options exist. The reason Americans continue to buy cheap meat from corporate factory farms is simply because people like how it tastes and they are not willing to give up the taste of dead flesh in order to ease the suffering of animals, of social chickens and wise, quiet pigs. People do not see the horrendous mass exodus of blood and filth. As a result, they remain happily, greedily, and gluttonously surrounded by and bathed in meat products. Out of sight, out of mind appears to be the American consumer's take on the factory farms. Smaller farms that raise free ranging and organic hogs, lamb, chickens, and cattle are being plowed into the ground by the billion dollar factory farms with their billion dollar government subsidies who also plow non-egg-producing hens into the ground in nailed wooden crates. The small farms can't exist anymore, and the few who are hanging on are suffering because people won't pay a few more dollars more per pound of bacon for their meat. Or even better, people won't do the right thing and adopt a true vegetarian diet.

But you know, detractors will say, America is free and it is our right to eat meat if we want. And I say right you are. All that matters is what you want. If someone wants something, then they have every right to get it. So buy the meat because you want it. Condemn wise and silent pigs to miserable existences because you like how sausage tastes, you want bacon. Keep chickens in unendurable filth and sadness because you want chicken and it's your right. Pigs are not dirty. Pigs never urinate or defecate where they sleep. But because it is your God-given right as a free American to have meat if you want it, go ahead and force pigs to live in tiny stalls barely wider than their unseen bodies, force them to live and suckle their young in feces and filth when they never do this in the wild. Then force their young to be snatched from their mothers months earlier than in nature, artificially impregnate them again, and force them to endure the whole process again, covered in filth, again and again until they can no longer produce anything except stillborn piglets and are then killed and thrown into landfills like unwanted trash. Just like trash.

I will not apologize for my passion, and I am destroyed by this. I cannot believe people use Christianity to support the mass confinement factory farming of animals. According to the religion, John professes, when God created the beasts of the earth he declared it "good"; the exact same word used after creating Man. The only difference seems to be that at one time in history, he actually tried to destroy Man for his evil ways. But Noah survived and repopulated the planet. That's a good thing. Now we have factory farms, human slavery, and the imminent destruction of our endangered planet. And about free will, about our rights: no one can force us to be kind to animals or to not be kind to animals. We have free will and reason and if we were moral we would be kind to all living beasts under our protection. Many people are; many people are not. It saddens me as a human to see so many wasting the awesome power of free will and the capability to show kindness to lesser beings. As for the natural order many Christians profess in justification of meat for cookouts, consider it was once acceptable to own humans as slaves. It was considered part of the "natural order." Slaves were not people, the wise leaders of the time would tell the populace, and therefore you could do with them what you would. Also at one time, not too long ago, women were treated as property. It was natural, the smug proselytizers said. Women were not "equal" to men the same way slaves were not "equal" to white men. The same way misguided people feel animals are not "equal" to humans. One day the kindness of humanity will prevail and extend rights and respect to animals, and humans will become proper stewards of the Earth. But as the 80,000 pigs who were slaughtered this very day after a lifetime of confinement indoors without experiencing the least shred of human kindness or love can attest to, that day is not today. Another way of considering this: Each time your heart beats, three hundred animals are slaughtered for food.

I say this without the least bit of embarrassment: I beg all of you, all of us, to please make compassionate choices regarding the animals in our lives. And please care for not only the fluffy cute animals, but extend your love and compassion to all of the animals who are taken, abused, and mass consumed by us. Finally, here's what keeps me up at night with racking sobs and spirit-breaking depression. Surely on their way to the slaughterhouse, some of the pigs on the perimeter of the trucks peer through the slatted sides of the truck with squinted weak eyes, feel the air on their faces, squint at the sun or stars above and dream there must be something better. Out of the dim dungeons of their lifelong indoor confinement, they must look at the grass and the plains and the trees for the very first time as they are passing in their rusted trucks and wonder what it all is. Maybe they wonder what they have done wrong to suffer so cruelly, why they have been denied this wider world of possibility and hope. They have done nothing wrong and you and I and all the animal lovers in the world can't let them know it's not their fault. We can't even hold them for a moment before they are torn apart by mechanized robotic efficiency. We can't even lie to them and tell them it's going to be alright. We also can't tell them that this world, the air they feel, the trees they smell, is theirs, always has been theirs, and has been usurped by us. We have taken their paradise from them and we are destroying it with our crushing weight of indifference and disregard. The world denied these pigs is disrespected and raped and subdued by human inhumanity. So the pigs leave the brief scent of pine and enter the abattoir of screams, terror, blood, and finality. If you eat factory farmed meat, you send them there. You order them there. You force them there.

And what for, we might ask. Why do we deny these small creatures their little lives? Why do they meet such a callous and crushingly cruel fate? It's because we want bacon. We want ribs. We want hot dogs at baseball games. We can do without them; they are not crucial to our survival, these meat products. But dangit, we grew up with them, and no pansy environmentalist animal hugger is going to take away our sausage in the morning. I finish this article tonight as sad and as angry and as discouraged with the human race as I may have ever been. The monster of factory farming seems so big, so cruel, so indestructible, and so unstoppable in its slowly gaining momentum, crushing millions of pigs, billions of animals each year beneath its evil weight. Ignorance must be fought; people must know what it truly means to support the American meat industry. Please try to lessen the amount of meat you eat until you can easily phase it o
ut of your diet altogether. That is the most helpful and practical thing you can do for those animals.
And as for those animals, my mind goes to wild places and I'll not stop this article yet, though I should. But I want you to know my honest and wildest feelings during my times of distress and sobbing over these animals. I find a yearning for these pigs' and other animals' suffering.

      But the pigs stick with me.

      The pigs haunt me.

I am not better than a pig; I want to ease their pain. I write and attempt to educate people on factory farming and their massive indifference crushes me. I am not better than a pig. On dark nights such as tonight, when I feel I'm fighting a losing battle with the global demand for pork expected to double in a few short years, I feel my mind and heart shatter. A wild feral part of me wants to go to those sick places like Smithfield Farms in North Carolina. I want to go to those buildings housing the pigs. All A.L.F. sympathies and tendencies aside, I know I can't free the 250,000 pigs often kept in the single mass confinement area.

      So I want to join them.

I want to share their suffering. I do not deserve the freedom and right to pursue my individualistic life they have been denied. The drifting wild part of my mind wants to open those wide doors, see those thousands of eyes look at me with their silence and chewed tails as the faint starlight filters in from behind me in silent eddies. I want to close the doors behind me and leave the freedom and night wind and moonlight I don't deserve behind me for good. They will squeal as I enter; they have learned to associate death, fear, and pain with humans. I mourn their loss of freedom, regardless if they are conscious of this. If they can't have it, I don't want it. And after the terrified squealing dies down, I want to get in their pens with them and be one with them. I am not better than a pig; why do I deserve the amazing life I have while they die in pain, in agony, in darkness? I want to lie down with them, go insane with them, lie on the dank cement with them and dream the dim genetic memory of instinct and curl in a circle, scratch the cement ground with my hooves, and try to make a nest out of nonexistent straw I have never seen but know I need. I want to try to make a nest for my young and be with them, my own kind. I want to try to turn around but not be able to. I want to dream the secret dreams of the mass confined pig, be near them in their loneliness. I truthfully do not think these animals deserve their fate and I do not consider myself more important than a pig. Oh, the pigs. My pigs. Save me your analyses, I realize this is a flight of fancy, but in my darkest moments I want to escape this cruel form of humanity, join these pigs, curl near them in collective forced filth, and to die a cruel and pointless death in horror by hands of alien creatures so that other alien creatures may eat my burned and blackened and cured flesh on Christmas Day and gather their children around the table who will slip the pet dogs pieces of my useless and anonymous body. Then they will say grace before they consume me. They will join hands, feel the love of family gathered together and then say how very humbly and truly thankful they are that Jesus died for their sins and came in human form to take away all the suffering in the world.

The End.

Mike Jaynes is an independent animal advocate who teaches English and Western Humanities at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. His research interests include Animal Ethics, Bio-Conservation, Greek Mythology, Ufology, Tom Robbins, and the Embraced Rogue. His academic and creative writing has appeared in peer reviewed journals, nationally circulated magazines, newspapers, ejournals, and books including Animals' Voice Magazine, Animal Liberation Front: Worldwide News and Information Resource on the A.L.F., The Animal Rescue Site.com, All Creatures, Abolitionist Online, The Vegetarian Site, Farmhouse Magazine, UFO Magazine, and others. He has been interviewed by university graduate programs regarding Bio-Conservation and speaks and has made radio appearances speaking on behalf of animal advocacy and the decline of human compassion. In his Animal Advocacy pieces, he focuses mainly on the plight of the elephant and the whale shark but also argues against "Sustainable Use," Animals Used for Entertainment, Mass Confinement Factory Farming, Whaling, Sealing, Shark Finning, Speciesism and Anthropocentrism.