ANIMAL FOOD USED IN THE CITIES.
By J. H. W.
Some time ago we published an extract from a Toledo paper on the abuse of cattle going to the eastern market, and their consequent unfitness for food. The following is an extract from remarks on that subject by Mr. Henry Bergh, president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, made before the Farmers Club at N. Y. City, as reported in the Tribune. People eat such food because they stifle reason and consult only a depraved appetite. How few, alas, consult right and duty in eating! J. H. W. “Notwithstanding the astonishing apathy or reckless indifference to it, there is no subject affecting the temporal well-being which deserves as serious consideration as the mode of transporting cattle, destined for human food, to market. I venture to declare that not one person out of five thousand pauses to reflect on the probable health and general physical condition at the time of the death of the animal he is about to dine on. Were he to do so, or, what is still better, were he to journey to the West as far as Chicago, and after observing the cattle-yards there, and the manner of treating the helpless brute consigned to the care of beings wearing the form of men, but possessed of the instinct of devils, then take passage back to this city on a cattle-train, and note the accumulating tortures heaped upon these inoffending prisoners, even to the moment when the unfeeling butcher murders what little of life remains to these feverish, bruised, maddened animals—were he to do this, I say, I hazard little in affirming that his appetite for such kinds of animal food would receive a shock not to be forgotten for the remainder of his days. From the confines of Texas even to the wharves of the metropolis are these creatures—the offspring, like ourselves, of Omnipotent power—doomed to endure on foot the ceaseless motion of the train, deprived of food and water from four even to six days, as I have been informed, exposed to the blazing rays of the summer’s sun, and the freezing blasts of the winter’s wind, with no spirit to care for them but the soul of stinted avarice. And yet, gentlemen, the directors and owners of these mobile inquisitions—they that hold in their hands the powers of affording to these poor wretches the nourishment which God and nature declares indispensable—wickedly and meanly trusting to chance or the power of animal endurance, day after day and year after year inflict these dreadful torments on uncomplaining brutes, and thus endanger not only the health but the moral and mental attributes of mankind. For what end? To add still greater luxuries to their already pampered existence. If there be any doubt on this subject, let the skeptic take passage, as three of the society’s agents have done, and observe the fearful treatment inflicted on the helpless and submissive victims of mammon. Having done this, notice the brutal manner of overloading them in this city, the clubbing and breaking of legs and horns! Go with such as can stand to the cattle-yards where they are imprisoned, still deprived of food and water, left without shelter from either sun or storm. And finally, if you have the courage and the nerve to witness the last act in the barbarous tragedy, go to the shambles and look at the supreme and concluding torments which the monsters heap upon the creatures which the day following appear as food upon our tables.”