Proof That Meat is Murder

Mar 16, 2020

"All beings tremble before danger. All fear death. When you consider this, you will not kill or cause someone else to kill."
-Buddha

*Disclaimer

Please note, as I said in "Proof That Dairy is Rape," that my intention here is to not call farmers or slaughterhouse employees murderers. I have absolutely no ill-will towards anyone working in this industry. They are also victims of our society that forces them to kill. The point of this is to bring awareness to animal suffering and to show just how similar animal slaughter is to human murder.

Definitions

Murder: "the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another"[1]

Slaughter: "Kill (animals) for food"
"Kill (people or animals) in a cruel or violent way, typically in large numbers"[2]

Violence: "Behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something"[3]

Victim: "A person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action"[4]

Though there is no single legal definition of murder, as different states, provinces, and countries have varying laws regarding it, there is a common theme along all definitions. The distinguishing factor between murder and other homicides, like manslaughter, is premeditation, often referred to as malice aforethought.[5] Malice doesn't necessarily mean that the killing is particularly malicious; this just "is the common law way of saying that it is an unjustified killing."[6]

The Victims of Violence

Many humans have issues with the term "violence" used in relation to farm animals. However, if we simply read the definition above, there is no way to get around the fact that what happens to animals is indeed violent. Using physical force to kill someone or something (as many people also argue that these animals are not someones) is exactly what happens at a slaughterhouse. Farm animals aren't treated like dogs being euthanized at the vet; they are pushed and pulled and hung and cut. Henceforth, I will be referring to the act of slaughter as violence. Additionally, I will also refer to farm animals as victims, as they are killed as a result of some "action" (being bred and slaughtered), per the definition above.

*Note: For simplicity, I will be calling nonhuman animals simply "animals" and human animals "humans" to avoid the redundancy of differentiating between human animals and nonhuman animals continuously. However, I recognize that "humans" are also animals, and that the entire context of this argument would be essentially meaningless if this simple fact were accepted as proof that the premeditated killing of any animal is murder.

Spot the Differences

Now, let's look more at the differences between the definitions of murder and slaughter. What is it specifically that differentiates these terms? It seems that there are three distinctions: motive, human-to-human vs. human-to-animal violence, and legality.

Motive

What differentiates murder from another homicide like manslaughter is the intent to kill, the "malice aforethought" to take someone else's life. In both human murder and animal slaughter, there is this premeditation; both acts are planned to happen. However, the key difference between the two is the motive, or, more importantly, the lack thereof. With human killings, there is absolutely no requirement for motive: as long as one person kills another person, that is murder. The killer doesn't need to prove why they did it to be exonerated, because that's irrelevant. Taking human life is a crime regardless of the reasoning behind it.

But when a cow is killed in a slaughterhouse or on a farm, the motive behind that is to produce meat, dairy, and/or leather. Therefore, because that motive is incentivized with economic benefits, it cannot be considered illegal, let alone murder. An interesting caveat to this difference is that if a person were to take that same cow out of the slaughterhouse or off the farm and into a public place, even with the same intent of harvesting their carcass for meat, killing the animal then would be considered animal cruelty. It would seem that privacy, or keeping this out of the public's perception, also influences the legality of killing animals.

Victims' Species

The most obvious difference between murder and slaughter is the species of the victims. Today, murder only applies to humans, while slaughter generally is reserved for animals. One thing to note is that if we look at the definition, slaughter also means to "[k]ill (people or animals) in a cruel or violent way, typically in large numbers." It seems strange that something so inherent in our lives as slaughter, something most of us depend on at least three times a day for sustenance, something that, for all intents and purposes, should be a completely normal -- revered, even -- practice, could also mean something so cruel as to kill many living creatures violently. But that's exactly what happens in a slaughterhouse. It can't be both a justified part of society and mass murder.

Lawfulness

Finally, the last distinction is the legality of the killing. As I said earlier, it seems killing an animal in a slaughterhouse is completely different from killing an animal on the street outside a slaughterhouse. But it doesn't matter if a human is killed inside or outside; it's murder regardless. A law that is based solely on the location and publicity of the killing of an individual (or many individuals) is illogical. Either taking the life of an animal is right or it is wrong. When it comes to the massive scale of animal agriculture -- breeding tens of billions of lives every year with the sole intent of ending those lives -- it seems particularly spiteful, cold-hearted, and even vindictive to claim that their "sacrifice" for humanity's gluttony for animal flesh isn't worthy of being called murder.

When it comes down to it, there are very few differences between slaughter and murder, but to use them interchangeably (regarding animals at least) is often offensive to many people. The only real difference, the only one that matters, is that one is seen as a crime against nature, to take away the most basic of human rights -- the right to live -- from someone, while the other has become a normalized part of society. However, many injustices in the past were also normalized until enough people stood up and rejected those beliefs: slavery, male supremacy, even the "cigarettes are healthy" myth perpetuated by actual doctors! The law will always follow what the people want, so it doesn't matter if it's legal to murder trillions of animals every year; that doesn't make it right.