There’s trouble in the country and it’s not just blight on the tomatoes. Five calves which should have gone to the cattle market last Monday are still in the shed.

When a calf is born and taken from its mother, for about two days the cow bellows and the calf bleats. The cows are made to give birth each year, this bereavement is repeated and the cows are kept lactating and machine-milked all their lives.

If you want to know about human cruelty, visit the countryside. It’s a concentration camp for the product of the meat and dairy industry. There’s a euphemistic vocabulary for the imprisonment and killing of creatures.

J.M.Coetzee asks for a change of heart towards animals. He believes that children provide the brightest hope - that a glimpse into the slaughterhouse would make them vegan.

I wish we were all vegan and ate artichokes braised in broth with broad beans fennel and polenta, or mushroom risotto, or sweet potatoes, or okra stewed with tomatoes, or apple tart and brownies. I wish we’d free animals into a better life.

Pigs have the intelligence of dogs. Scratch them under the chin and they laugh. Years ago on Lundy Island there was a tame sheep called Happiness. She’d graze with the others but was exempt from slaughter. If you stood in her field with corn flakes in your pocket and called her name she’d come running.

Perhaps farm animals are aware of the violence we plan for them. Perhaps they communicate their fate to each other. When I walk the lanes I try not to meet their eyes.

The five calves wait in a shed. Until the f and m scare ends they’ve another few days of a short non-life. Escalope Milanese?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 9:40 am and is filed under Ranty Blog, Away. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.