The pig that wants to be eaten After forty years of vegetarianism, Max Berger was about to sit down to a feast of pork sausages, crispy bacon and pan-fried chicken breast. Max had always missed the taste of meat, but his principles were stronger than his culinary cravings. But now he was able to eat meat with a clear conscience. The sausages and bacon had come from a pig called Priscilla he had met the week before. The pig had been genetically engineered to be able to speak and, more importantly, to want to be eaten. Ending up on a human’s table was Priscilla’s lifetime ambition and she woke up on the day of her slaughter with a keen sense of anticipation. She had told all this to Max just before rushing off to the comfortable and humane slaughterhouse. Having heard her story, Max thought it would be disrespectful not to eat her. The chicken had come from a genetically modified bird which had been ‘decerebrated’. In other words, it lived the life of a vegetable, with no awareness of self, environment, pain or pleasure. Killing it was therefore no more barbarous than uprooting a carrot. Yet as the plate was placed before him, Max felt a twinge of nausea. Was this just a reflex reaction, caused by a lifetime of vegetarianism? Or was it the physical sign of a justifiable psychic distress? Collecting himself, he picked up his knife and fork … Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universeby Douglas Adams (Pan Books, 1980) Concern for animal welfare is not confined to the small percentage of the population which is vegetarian. This should not be surprising since, if mere killing were the issue, then vegetarians would not swat flies or exterminate rats, which many, though by no means all, are happy to do. There are two main reasons for maintaining that the rearing and killing of certain animals is wrong. First, there is the issue of the conditions animals are kept in. Here the problem is the alleged misery of an animal while it is alive, rather than the fact of its death. Second is the act of killing itself, which brings to an end the life of a creature which would otherwise have a decent future. The first issue can be dealt with simply by making sure the animal is kept in good conditions. Many people who are concerned for animal welfare will nonetheless eat meats such as free-range poultry and lamb, which cannot be intensively reared.
