McCarthy on Slaughterhouses

I was compelled to answer the nonsensical, meandering diatribe by Colman McCarthy entitled “Slaughterhouses: Butchery for Animals, High Danger for Those Who Kill and Hack” (Op-Ed Page, April 12).

If ever a title set the tone for the “discussion” of an issue, this humdinger has to get the Kewpie doll. Regardless of your feelings on the issue, would you feel you had to read on, in the interest of gaining some new glimmer of insight, if you saw an article “The Soviet Union: Bloodsucking Dictatorship or Android Factory?” Not everyone is in it to waste time, so most articles of this nature are passed up.

Still, being a confirmed omnivore, I felt that the offhand slap against this society’s “allegedly” civilized behavior of eating the flesh of animals could not just lie there. I am, by association, merely “allegedly civilized.”

First of all, it is not a “lie” that animals have no rights. It is as true as the fact is that I do. Human beings, in the interest of living harmoniously, invented the concept of “rights.” The mortally wounded brontosaurus, bleeding out its last in a swamp after escaping its carnivorous enemy, had no more rights than the flies hitting McCarthy’s windshield or the ants crunching under his shoes. The same goes for the zebra that breaks its leg in a burrowing animal’s hole, and awaits its fate among the hyenas. Rights, in the purest sense of the word, exist only when a sentient mind invents them.

Civilization demands we discard the cycle of cruelty and forgetfulness that marked the behavior of some of our ancient ancestors, but it does not demand that we elevate animals other than ourselves to our stature. Possession of a nervous system does not confer upon its owner any guarantees--either the creature in question can survive, or it cannot. We have banded together to ensure that we will. Our abysmally stupid and brutish neighbors carry us, feed us and clothe us. So it will be until they join us.

KEVIN CAREY

Olancha