Thursday, January 6, 2011

Virgil Butler

I am getting more involved all the time in trying to end horse slaughter in Canada and tonight I was trying to catch up on some of my filing, paper seems to grow on every surface of my house lately. Anyway I came across some stuff from earlier in the year when I had went to a local mall to get signatures on a petition and to try and educate people about the horrors of horse slaughter. As I was filing, my mind went over the event and the people I had met and how they had responded to my request for support. Most were shocked to learn that we slaughter horses in Canada to ship overseas for human consumption, but the people who stand out in my mind were those who accused me of somehow neglecting people by giving my time and effort to animals. At the time I wasn’t sure how to respond to those people. It was like I was a bad person because I was somehow extending the suffering of humanity by my defending animals.
Then I came across an article about Virgil Butler, a man who worked on the kill floor for Tyson foods in a chicken slaughter house. Virgil had risked his life by changing how he lived it and became an outspoken activist to change the cruelty of the chicken slaughter industry. I had printed this off the internet, and as I sat and leafed through the article before filing it, I had a eureka moment.
Suddenly I realized that I do support people and humanity in my efforts to end this incredible cruelty. The workers are people with wives, husbands and children who commit these acts of cruelty. It is workers who show up every day to spend it immersed in death, pain and suffering, wearing rubber boots and aprons to wade about in the blood that covers the floors and work surfaces of the slaughter plant.
I have no doubt in my mind that they are affected by doing this work and I wonder how it spills over into their personal lives. Do they go home and yell at their wives/husbands and children? Do they respond with violence when angered? Do they drink too much? Do they sleep well? Or do they go totally the opposite direction and become totally shut down and removed from their families and friends?  I think that having to work in a job where the very air is full of fear from the animals and brutality cannot help but change a person’s psyche and that eliminating this type of job environment cannot but help improve the human condition. As I always say people are not born cruel they don’t go to kindergarten and tell their teacher I want to grow up and work in a slaughter house where I will kill horses and cut them up. If a child said that they would immediately be sent for psychological evaluation. So how do small children grow up to have a career in a slaughter house?  An even more interesting question I am constantly asking as I learn more and more about not only horse slaughter but about factory farming methods is “who thinks of these ways to treat/ torture animals and call it farming?”
So the next time someone accuses me of ignoring people and children by supporting animal causes I will tell them about Virgil Butler and how he felt about the job once he stood back and really took a look at what he did for a living.
To learn more about Virgil Butler go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cra55ly_CsA
Virgil passed away December 15,2006 but he is still spreading the message throught the miracle of the internet. God Bless you Virgil, may I have the emotional strength that you did to stand up for what you believe is right.

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