Onion: "We Raise All Our Beef Humanely On Open Pasture And Then We Hang Them Upside Down And Slash Their Throats"

I’ve always thought the idea of humane meat was absurd. It baffles me that people can even consider that term logical. For sure, I’d prefer that animals be raised in as good of conditions as possible. But the point that they are raised to be slaughtered makes the whole process inhumane. Would it be humane human meat if we raised the humans in half-decent conditions and then slaughtered them? No. So why is doing so considered “humane” with animals. It’s completely absurd, imho.

Cows via Shutterstock
Apparently, some of the folks over at the Onion think the same. The title of one recent piece was: “We Raise All Our Beef Humanely On Open Pasture And Then We Hang Them Upside Down And Slash Their Throats.” Since I don’t think the Onion allows full reposting of its fake news, here’s the intro to the piece:

“Consumers today are more conscientious than ever about the choices they make at the supermarket. They want to know that the food they put on the table for their family is all-natural, environmentally friendly, and humane. And that’s why we here at Nature’s Acres Ranch hold ourselves to a higher standard and produce only the finest grass-fed and 100 percent additive-free beef. We guarantee that our cows are ethically raised on sustainably grown pastures before we hang them upside down from a moving conveyor and slice their throats wide open.

“Our independently owned family farm is committed to one guiding principle: making sure that you, the customer, receive the best-tasting, highest quality beef from cows that are healthy, active, and eventually suspended fully conscious inside a facility thick with hot, blood-choked air and the frantic bellows of dangling, profoundly fearful animals.

“That’s our pledge to you.”

Maybe not 100% how the meat business works — maybe better, maybe worse — but that’s pretty close to it. For the full Onion article, click on through.

4 thoughts on “Onion: "We Raise All Our Beef Humanely On Open Pasture And Then We Hang Them Upside Down And Slash Their Throats"”

  1. Being a vegetarian in profound spirit since watching Dr Doolittle as a child, who not only educated me that I could be one, the Dr. through this book woke me up to the fact that what was on my table was an animal, well that is the Dr. and my older sister who was becoming one as well and guided me. She came to it in the same time due to finding out our neighbor killed a rabbit for rabbit stew, much too like the bunny she had as a pet. However, with some amount of an open mind, the anthropologist, who accepts diversity and strives to remain apart from right and wrong, but observe and record, I have to comment, that this is not the way it has to be if one eats meat. I have been told that in past times,by a hunter, that a fine hunter would-most often hypnotize his prey if killed at short range. This way, not only did he spare the animal the fear of death, he spared the meat that he intended to eat. With hypnotism the fear hormones released as the animal is killed are avoided. Thus for the consumer of this flesh, they do not take on that imminent fear of death via the hormones now released in the meat. So again it is this large farming that has taken the more gentle forms of hunting in one on one. I still would be a vegetarian, given my nature, but this is good to consider.

    1. The old ways of killing animals for the most part don’t seem any better. It was actually quite common to let animals die through a long process full of pain and suffering.

      I’m sure ‘hypnotism’ was not the norm.

      To consider any killing of an animal humane is quite frankly absurd, as this Onion piece notes in a clever way.

  2. Being a vegetarian in profound spirit since watching Dr Doolittle as a child, who not only educated me that I could be one, the Dr. through this book woke me up to the fact that what was on my table was an animal, well that is the Dr. and my older sister who was becoming one as well and guided me. She came to it in the same time due to finding out our neighbor killed a rabbit for rabbit stew, much too like the bunny she had as a pet. However, with some amount of an open mind, the anthropologist, who accepts diversity and strives to remain apart from right and wrong, but observe and record, I have to comment, that this is not the way it has to be if one eats meat. I have been told that in past times,by a hunter, that a fine hunter would-most often hypnotize his prey if killed at short range. This way, not only did he spare the animal the fear of death, he spared the meat that he intended to eat. With hypnotism the fear hormones released as the animal is killed are avoided. Thus for the consumer of this flesh, they do not take on that imminent fear of death via the hormones now released in the meat. So again it is this large farming that has taken the more gentle forms of hunting in one on one. I still would be a vegetarian, given my nature, but this is good to consider.

    1. The old ways of killing animals for the most part don’t seem any better. It was actually quite common to let animals die through a long process full of pain and suffering.

      I’m sure ‘hypnotism’ was not the norm.

      To consider any killing of an animal humane is quite frankly absurd, as this Onion piece notes in a clever way.

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