Are some lives more important than others?

W

e moved from Manchester to our smallholding last year, and, as I wrote about in my last post, we are now keeping livestock for food - both in terms of eggs and meat. This has been a massive change, and whilst we knew that this was what we wanted to do, the feelings surrounding these new experiences of small-scale farming are all new. In particular, rearing an animal and then killing it for food. We now witness more death than we ever have in the past. I have witnessed a kestrel take a young blackbird chick from its nest while its parents', helplessly, try to rescue it. Chickens eating live worms and snails. Cats killing young rabbits. Our own chickens being killed by unknown diseases. A dog killing a young pheasant. My own killing of accidental killing of snails, or intentional killing of midges. All this death makes me consider death more, and consider my own mortality. Some existentialists would say that death is the crucial theme to our lives, and that what is important is how we, as conscious mammals, come to terms with it.

Death is pervasive (possibly an understatement?). It affects all living beings. It is there in black and white: you are either dead or not. There is no middle ground. However, our consciousness brings in an added dimension: the ethics of death. Whether another living being should live or die, and whether it is right or wrong. I doubt, but do not know, that when a cat kills a mouse, it debates the ethical stance that it should take on that death: "Mmmm, I do feel a bit guilty about killing that mouse, maybe it was wrong of me to kill it!" But we, as humans, do do this. There are many people who choose not to eat meat based on the principle that taking another life so that one can eat meat is not a good enough reason. I can definitely understand this point of view. In fact, it is the one point that shakes the foundations of my carnivorous inclinations. On the other hand, there are others who believe that we have a divine right to kill animals for our own nutrition.

To look at this in a little more depth, I wonder if we humans weigh-up the deaths of different living organisms as being more or less important? So, I might feel nothing at pulling up and killing a nettle plant, but feel guilt at killing a chicken for meat. Where does a nettle plant stand on the scale of a right to life. I can say for certain that the vast majority of people (in the west?) think that the death of a snail is not nearly as important as the death of a human. But why? Is it because we are human, and since we do not want to die, we think that that person will not have wanted to die too? And a snail is so small, there are so many of them, and they do not have conscious thought, so it doesn't really matter if they die. Really?

What I struggle with is that we seem to judge the death of different species as acceptable, and not others. So, talking to a friend about killing mosquitos which are trying to bite me is acceptable, whilst speaking of killing mammals for food is seen as less acceptable. But why the distinction? A life is surely a life, regardless of size. Non-human animals kill, such as the kestrel with the blackbird chick or the chicken with a large worm, and it does not appear that they are considering the ethical implications of their act of killing. I wonder if survival is the motivation, and that often comes before ethics.

But are we any different? It could be argued that since we seem to have the capability for conscious thought (whatever that is!), we are able to make ethical decisions. So where a kestrel kills from an inability to make a choice, it is simply surviving, we do have the ability to make a choice: we do not have to kill. Is this what makes us different? I daydream about how: (1) we evolved from a state of not being able to make a choice (like the kestrel) and killing for survival; (2) to being able to make a choice about killing, but still needing to survive; (3) to modern times when we have both the ability to make a choice, and day-to-day survival is not such as pressing issue as we have a supermarket round the corner which never seems to run out of food. Is this what has changed?

On being an Omnivore

I

 eat meat as well as vegetables. I have done so all my life. As I was growing up, when I couldn't or didn't want to eat anymore, the rule was always to at least finish the meat, even if I couldn't manage the vegetables. And the reason for this was because an animal had had its life taken so that I could eat it. I was taught that meat was not to be taken for granted, and that it was special in a way that potatoes were not.

As I have grown older, this awareness of the 'specialness' of meat has grown into my belief that if I cannot go through with rearing and then slaughtering animals for my family's consumption, then I will have to become a vegetarian.

Now that we have some space on which to rear animals, we have chickens and pigs, and soon to be sheep. For the first time last Friday we slaughtered our two meat chickens (as opposed to our hens from whom we get eggs). I have shot and eaten rabbits before, and whilst there is always some guilt and feeling involved with that, it was nothing compared to the emotions that I had after slaughtering our chickens. We had raised these chickens for only three weeks (they are mutants, being bred purely so that they grew muscle incredibly quickly - we won't be getting these types of chickens again, poor things), which meant that they were only seven weeks old when we killed them. Yet they were larger than our hens who are a couple of years old. Once they had been prepared, they weighed 1.7kg before cooking - so they were medium to large chickens. It made me think that all these 'free range' chickens that we buy are probably only 8 to 12 weeks old. Mutant chicks, who look like adults, and are slaughtered having only had 2 to 3 months of life on this earth. That does not feel right.

I felt guilt at killing them, and that they had had a raw deal having only been alive for 7 weeks. I felt sadness as I had had quite an affection for them. They used to waddle towards me when I went outside, having a naive security around humans, that the older hens have lost. They were so young. It feels like I have betrayed them, even though that was the reason for us getting them in the first place.

So, my first real experience away from 'normal' western culture where someone else does the dirty work of killing, was much harder than I thought. Our pigs will be slaughtered soon, and I'm not sure if it will be easier or harder. We've had them since May, when they were 8 weeks old. Someone else will be doing the killing in the slaughterhouse, but I will be there throughout to witness their deaths, and not disrespectfully turn away from it. Something about needing to face up to the reality of eating meat, and all that it entails, emotions and all.

Our two lovely Gloucester Old Spot piggies, Bernie and Penny, having an after-breakfast nap

Life even when all appears dead

I

 spent most of yesterday de-limbing a number of beech and oak trees that had fallen in the high winds last November. This is in preparation for getting the trunks out of the woodland and sawn into planks. The trunks are straight and long, and so it seems a waste to simply turn them into firewood! The interesting part of all this is that although these trees came down over nine months ago, roots and all, there is still growth on the oak trees. Young, thin limbs protrude out from the trunk, covered with green leaves. Life still exists within them, and they still survive. Modern culture suggests that once something doesn't work, its broken for life - 'It'll cost you more to repair that than to buy a new one!'. Yet nature, and the will to survive, keeps going even when it appears damaged.

I am currently reading a large tome simply titled Woodlands by Oliver Rackham. Within it he looks at various aspects of woodland in the UK, from the history of it over the past several hundred thousand years or so, to the life-cycle of woodlands. At the very beginning he speaks about the UK storms of 1987, which surprised most people as "Most uprooted trees survived...Fallen trees, responding to the change in the direction of gravity, sprouted at least from the base, and sometimes all along the trunk." (p. 10) This mirrored my experience of seeing all those oak trees lying on their sides, and seeing leaves sprouting out from the trunk. The sadness I felt at seeing all these trees lying over, and 'dead', has come to be replaced by my realisation that this is just part of the life-cycle of woodlands, and trees. Life continues.

Rackham goes on, saying that "...storms were an unmitigated benefit for wildlife...They renewed the habitat of ground-nesting birds and...of deer. They call into question the assumption that the 'normal' state of a tree is upright." (p. 10). I had to re-read that final sentence twice as I had thought that that 'assumption' was pretty watertight! So, it appears that the 'destruction' of woodland is actually beneficial for wildlife, and that the trees have actually evolved to deal with being blown over.

I think that modern society believes that nature is a fragile thing, and that we are the masters or custodians of this fragile earth. A very arrogant and human-centric approach, if ever I heard it! Any yet those oak trees have survived, and seem to be thriving, without any input from humans. Every time I look closely at the natural world around me, I learn. Every time. 

References

Oliver Rackham (2006): Woodlands. Harpercollins