Saturday, February 02, 2008

Slaughterhouse Redux

"The treatment of animals in this video is appalling, but more than that, it raises significant concerns about the safety of the food being served to our nation’s children,” Durbin said. “The apparent slaughter of sick and weak animals not only appears to violate USDA regulations, but could be a danger to our nation’s food supply.” – Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin

By all accounts, liberal apologists for the continued existence of cleanly run slaughterhouses had gone the way of the gradualist faction of the abolitionist movement. Weren’t they eradicated during the last major outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease?

Apparently not. Sen. Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat, stepped forward this week to proclaim that we should be worried—very worried—about the nation’s food supply because cows are being sadistically mistreated prior to their slaughter. He fears for the health of humans, not for the health of the cows. Eating contaminated cow flesh could send meat-eaters to the bathroom, or even the emergency room. Only clean animal flesh must be delivered to the nation’s kitchens, he argues. Launch the investigations and threaten the slaughterhouses with hefty fines, if necessary, according to the senator.

Didn’t apologists for slavery, the Holocaust, and cleanly run slaughterhouses get thrown into the dustbin of history a long time ago? Hadn’t total abolition, rather than campaigns to sanitize the suffering of the oppressed, become the only acceptable method for addressing organized and established systems of exploitation and murder?

Advocating for less overcrowding in slave quarters did not free the slaves. Such campaigns benefited the slave owners by generally allowing the slaves to be more productive. Not overfilling gas chambers may have reduced the anxiety of prisoners, but it did not prevent their murder. Such methods benefited the operators of the death camps by ensuring a regular and simultaneous death rate, thereby reducing the uncertainty and costs associated with the operation.

It was assumed liberal apologists for these types of horrors had been left in the past. But here we have Dick Durbin, not only refusing to call for the immediate abolition of slaughterhouses, but tacitly endorsing slaughterhouses as long as the workers aren’t cruel to crippled cows before they are killed.

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