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| Metrowest
Daily News Giving Thanks for all Creatures By Elizabeth Eidlitz / Guest Columnist Sunday, November 16, 2003 
Two turkeys named “Thanks” and “Giving” were
lucky birds. Neither genetically manipulated to grow plump and fast,
nor dumped onto a conveyor belt and, fully conscious, hung by their
feet from metal shackles, they found safe haven in a peaceable kingdom
instead. The Veganpeace Sanctuary in Sherborn is an animal refuge for those who Just Said No and escaped from the slaughter house -- like Emily, the celebrity Holstein who vaulted her three-quarter-ton body over a five-foot gate, and Babe, a Yorkshire sow, who jumped off a butcher-bound truck and lived to deliver her litter of nine on three acres behind The Peace Abbey. 
Like Wilbur of Charlotte's Web, Babe's next-to-last piglet, Henry
VIII, may think “Life in the barn [is] very good -- night and
day, winter and summer, spring and fall, dull days and bright days...
the best place to be... with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons,
the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats,
the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure and
the glory of everything.” Foolish anthropomorphism? Scientific studies suggest that cows, pigs, chickens and other animals commonly exploited by agribusiness are not dumb beasts, but sentient creatures, endowed with a will to survive. All vertebrates share the same neuropharmacological basis for the perception of pain and pleasure. Struggling fish can't scream, but they suffer when hooks injure their tissue in the so-called humane sport of Catch and Release. Grieving dairy cows bellow when their one-day old veal calves are taken from them. Do we want to know the history of the dinner on our plates? The graphic details of slaughterhouse atrocities? Cows hydraulically winched by back hoe into trucks, dismembered alive, sometimes conscious, when hung upside down by a hoof; pigs beaten with chains, shovels, boards and scalded. Thankfully, witnessing such torture and humiliation gives me no savage enjoyment. And I'm grateful for an instinct that makes me brake for chipmunks and squirrels -- reassurance that my connection with the noblest part of our humanity is not yet severed. “A little girl is one thing, and a little runty pig is another,” Fern of Charlotte’s Web is told, while she grabs her father's ax. “I see no difference,” she replies, “this is the most terrible case of injustice I ever heard of.” Among the fellowship of animals at The Veganpeace Sanctuary, where Henry VIII and his mother root in mud, supervised by sparrows, I rediscover the child's awareness of kinship with living creatures. I feel profoundly at home in the world. The Rte. 16 STOP sign near the Peace Abbey entrance functions on many levels. I wish I could write that I've eaten my last strip of bacon or steak. But my ideals and my lifestyle are not always aligned. Though disapproving of the betrayal of my convictions, I still grill fresh ground, bloody body parts we call hamburger, arguing that one person's conversion to tofu and peanut butter won't be significant to the cause of animal rights. But those of us who eat meat, fish, poultry and eggs stand on the wide middle ground between enlightened vegans and oblivious carnivores. We can still give respect to the creatures who provide our nourishment with their very being. We can keep our souls and bodies warm without wrapping ourselves in skins or furs of those electrocuted internally to preserve their pelts. We can boycott veal. We can oppose factory farming with its cramped cages and assembly lines so imprecise that those missed by the killing blade are boiled alive in the scalding tank. We can support The Veganpeace Sanctuary and animal welfare organizations like the Farm Sanctuary www.farmsanctuary.org in their campaigns for cruelty-free living and dying. |