Santandercito's senseless slaughter — senseless to me, anyway

@wwaycorrigan

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I've long held the opinion that we'd have far more vegetarians in the world if we all had to kill our own animals.

Many of us like meat, but how many of us would be willing or able to slaughter the actual animal providing such fare? I'm pretty sure I'd struggle in any case. And I don't think I'm on my own in this.

Bloodletting: The site where Jairo breathed his last after receiving a fatal stab wound to the heart.

A load of bull

Even though I grew up and laboured on what effectively is a beef cattle farm, our family enterprise is but just the first step in the chain: the cows my father keeps have calves each year that, when they are around a year old, he sells to other farmers who then feed them to 'finish' them, i.e. once sufficiently meaty, have them sent to a factory to be killed for human consumption.

Thus, I was removed from the slaughter. There was no life-ending blood on my hands, not directly anyway.

The closest I came to delivering the fatal blow to one of our herd was when, on an extended visit to Ireland from Colombia, I helped my father take a bull calf to the local factory.

This young bull had contracted a disease that prevented my father from selling him in the normal way — some EU directive was at play, a bovine infection that Europe wanted to eradicate; hence the animal couldn't be sold as livestock to another farm. The young bull's meat, though, was considered fine for human consumption.

So he was locked away from the rest of the herd and fattened up until he was deemed ready for butchering. A few days after his date with destiny, his body was brought back to the family home in conveniently packaged portions and placed in a deep-freeze, to be eaten as our family saw fit.

'The savage nature of it is particularly disturbing. To stab somebody in the heart requires one to be face to face with the target. It also requires physical force to plunge the knife into the body of the victim; one really has to mean it.'

My normally omnivorous mother, who was effectively chief caterer to this bull during his isolation period, couldn't bring herself to eat his meat. The sight of it made her feel sick.

I had less of a connection with him, so I didn't feel as bad eating his flesh. Had I been charged with ending his life, though, there's a good chance he would have received a last-minute pardon. In fact, I felt rather uneasy just forcing him off the cattle trailer at the factory. The little bull, clearly smelling blood, did his best not to follow the path to his demise.

Bloodletting

I am, however, quite a queasy sort. The only time I was allowed to donate blood here in Colombia — see 'Your Irish blood's not wanted here' for more on why I now can't give blood — I became faint on seeing it flow through the tubes and into the adjacent bag. Indeed, the mere thought of it now is making me a little nauseous.

Others seem less bothered by blood. Just as well, or we'd have no one willing to work in the life-saving health sector. Less critically, and perhaps less benignly, we'd also have little to no meat to enjoy.

Unquestionably malignantly, on the other hand, there are those who have no problem with bloodletting for purely nefarious purposes; nothing revelatory in that, of course.

Mercifully, though, most of us will not have our lives brutally cut short at the hands of a crazed killer. Nor do many witness such an act.

Now while Colombia is somewhat more violent than my native Ireland, I like to reassure myself that, for the most part, the killings happen at a safe distance from me. And at that, these days, those who do the killings tend to focus their wrath on fellow Colombians; a case of taking the law into one's own hands in a country where the justice system frequently fails its less powerful citizens.

I still, more or less, believe that as a foreigner I'm less likely to be deliberately killed in Colombia. I can no longer say the same for killings occurring at a safe distance from me.

Brutal beast

At around five o'clock in the evening on Sunday 06 September 2026, the senseless, savage stabbing of Jairo Manuel Avilés Martínez, an acquaintance of mine, happened just a couple of metres in front of me. I had been the last person to chat with Jairo, apart from the man, another acquaintance — for legal reasons, I won't give his name here — who fatally thrust a six-inch knife into his heart. A brutal, cold-blooded, calculated assault, inflicted without warning.

Jairo's murder — for what else can it be but murder? — came just three months after the killing of another acquaintance of mine from Bogotá's Santandercito barrio. However, as I described in Mingling with Colombia's killers, this earlier homicide was gangland-related. It was, to put it crudely, strictly business. The young guy who was killed knew, forced or otherwise, that he was engaged in potentially deadly dealings.

From all that I can gather, Jairo's murder was nothing of the kind. His killer had some sort of a grudge, no more, no less.

The savage nature of it is particularly disturbing. To stab somebody in the heart requires one to be face to face with the target. It also requires physical force to plunge the knife into the body of the victim; one really has to mean it. It's certainly not for the queasy amongst us.

If I were told I had to kill somebody and I had to do it with either a knife or a gun, I'd choose the gun. At least one can put some distance between weapon and target with a gun; not so with a knife.

For sure, many of us at times get angry with our fellow humans to the point where malice aforethought may enter the mind. Some may even consider it more acceptable to do away with another person than an innocent animal. Yet few are capable of following through on these homicidal thoughts.

For most of us these days, the slaughter — be it of animals for consumption or humans because they are considered a threat — happens at a safe distance from our everyday lives. Let somebody else deal with those blood stains.
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A pet hate

@wwaycorrigan

[For an audio/vlog version of this story, click here.]

A farmer's work is never done. Be it tillage or livestock, caring for animals and crops is a perpetual process.

Anyone who has worked on a farm appreciates — or at least should appreciate — this.

Cute but costly.

Therein lies a problem in today's urban-centric world. Many people haven't worked on a farm. They do little to nothing to produce the food they eat. And no, driving to the supermarket or, for the more affluent and smug, the farmers' market is not a step in the production of foodstuffs.

So it wouldn't be the worst idea ever mooted to have city dwellers, particularly the wealthier ones who will most likely rise to positions of influence and power, spend a year of their young lives labouring on a farm.

In this way, they might acquire a greater appreciation for the work required to keep the masses, rich and poor, munching contentedly.

Even better, with more hands-on labourers, the use of that damaging, polluting farm machinery would be reduced. It's one way to address the pullulation of princes and princesses which has resulted in a paucity of proles in high-income nations.

Virtuous vegans

Yet, for those earmarked to serve their time on livestock farms, I've no doubt there would be a fair few conscientious objectors.

The objection: 'Raising animals for human consumption is a cruel and immoral practice, and one that also causes substantial environmental damage. Today's humans don't need meat and other animal products to survive. Thus, to partake in livestock farming is to knowingly and unnecessarily destroy the planet as we know it. I shall have no part in it whatsoever.'

Many who hold this view practice what they preach. They don't eat meat, and some don't even consume food from farmed animals that must be kept alive to get their produce, such as dairy products and eggs.

The vegetarian/vegan versus omnivore debate is far from novel. A recent renewal of it can be heard on BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze.

'The worst of these activists are those with an aggressive mongrel who believe that their little ball of fur is the God of dogs.'

I've mentioned before on these pages that many in the comfortable classes could do with eating less meat. Some could do with eating less, full-stop.

Also, as somebody who was raised on a small cattle farm, I do realise that some livestock holders could, indeed should act in a more environmentally friendly way. What's more, in certain areas, cattle-raising is perhaps not the best use of the land at one's disposal.

So, I'm not unsympathetic to certain elements of the vegetarian/vegan stance.

Dog dinner

Where I do cry foul — and f·o·w·l —however, is with the militant-esque no-more-meat activists who are also pet owners, particularly those who keep cats and/or dogs.

If one is vehemently against livestock farming in terms of cruelty and environmental damage, these same arguments can be aimed at pet owners.

Speaking about domesticated dogs specifically, most of them, particularly in urban areas, only get out and about when allowed to by their owners. They're not exactly free, are they? Their wild cousins in Africa would surely view such an existence as, at best, restrained.

OK, pet dogs are just that. They've been kept for centuries as human companions. Some of them are put to work, so they're not just a drain on the planet's finite resources. They contribute, they provide a tangible benefit. In certain parts of the world, people make a meal out of their mutts: not a dog's dinner but an actual dog dinner.

Yet, most dogs around today are pets and pets only. It's why, from the perspective of humans who like to be controlled and have most of their concerns taken care of by someone else, we have the expression, 'It's a dog's life.' (If I had to be one or the other, I'd choose to be a wild dog rather than one tied to a Homo sapien.)

These pets, of course, have to be fed and watered.

Carnivorous curs

According to Gregory Okin, a professor from the University of California Los Angeles quoted in an earth.org article, it's estimated that an average-sized dog generates 770 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions annually. For an even bigger dog, the figure can be upwards of 2,500 kg, which is twice as much as the emissions from the use of a standard family car per year. An average-sized cat, for the record, can produce carbon dioxide emissions of about 310 kg in a year.

That earth.org article also states that the meat consumption of pets in the US generates about 64 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, the equivalent of driving 13.6 million cars. If cats and dogs in the US were their own country, they would rank in the top six for meat consumption globally. (Another piece that delves into this area is The Guardian's Throw a dog a bean: how to reduce the carbon footprint of your pets. See, I'm not completely anti-The Guardian.)

This should give some pause for thought to any cat- and/or dog-owning vegan activist who hounds pet-less meat-eaters. One may not be as green as one thinks.

In my experience, the worst of these activists are those with an aggressive mongrel who believe that their little ball of fur is the God of dogs. A my-pet-can-do-no-wrong green Gestapo. It's often the case that the most vociferous on a certain topic are the most hypocritical.

Thus, it can be argued that farming livestock is closer to a net benefit for humanity, and perhaps even the environment overall, than keeping pets.

If we had to scrap one and keep the other, would humanity suffer more from the loss of pets or the loss of livestock?

Human consumption of dog meat might shoot up around the world if the latter were to come to pass.
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