I would like to respond to The Lantern’s Wednesday editorial on the subject of canulated cows. The writer claims the process of cutting a hole in a cow’s stomach is humane because the cow is anesthetized, but one can do all sorts of inhumane things to an unconscious subject.
For example, one cannot claim that shaving someone’s head while he is asleep is OK because he does not suffer the initial trauma. It is certain that when he wakes up with no hair, he will be negatively affected. The same can be said “in the case of a cow with a hole in its side.”
To claim that a cow is not affected in the long term by this is ridiculous. To actually know this implies that someone on the Lantern staff is communicating with a cow. Instead, people observe that it does not seem to affect the animal namely on the grounds that it does not die.
But the main issue is the claim that animal rights groups should support this procedure because it leads to healthier, happier cows. It appears that The Lantern believes a cow that gets to live a few extra years “in a miserable factory farm” is somehow happier than a cow that succumbed to disease. This is perhaps plausible, but to claim animal rights groups would petition for extending the life of animals – as opposed to defending their humane treatment – borders on incoherence.
The procedure is used to improve the health of cows, but the real issue is figuring out why are they unhealthy. The answer is simple – long before the first cheeseburger, cows ate grass. Unfortunately, this is not economical, so grain has been used as feed instead. Not surprisingly, cows tend to react negatively to an unnatural food source, thus creating the high rates of disease.
There are many ways to argue in favor of animal testing, but the editorial addressed none of them. Let us not kid ourselves – holes are not being cut in cows because people want them to be happy (as the article claimed). It is being done because people want to be economical. To claim it is done for the cows’ best interest borders on satirical. Unfortunately, the editorial was meant to be serious.
Jeremy SimonsJunior in philosophy
