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7 Info. Rep.: Animal Welfare Inst. 1 (1958)

handle is hein.animal/awiqu0007 and id is 1 raw text is: II Nu F0hiITIN ANIMAL WELFARE INSTITUTE 22 EAST 17th STREET, NEW YORK 3, N. Y. January-February, 1958 Vol. 7, No. I CALLOUSNESS ENCOURAGED BY WRONG KIND OF SCIENCE TEACHING In emulation of the Russian satellite experiment in which a dog was sent into space, high school boys in Austin, Minnesota imprisoned a mouse in a home-made rocket and sent it 1,642 feet in the air. In perpetrating this unneces- sary cruelty, the boys doubtless felt they were being very scientific. They sent the mouse off with the approval of their science teacher. Honest and mature American scientists take a more hu- mane and intelligent view than this science teacher, who appears to have been as lacking in biological knowledge as she was in humane feeling. A United Press dispatch from Washington, January 22 stated: The United States will put a simple form of life in one of its baby moons to be launched between now and March, it was learned today Dr. Hiden T. Cox, executive director of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, said Navy scientists are now altering satellite designs to accommodate a culture of yeast cells. Dr. Cox said this simple form of life will yield 'infinitely more significant data than putting a mam- mal, such as a dog' in space at the present time. The same would of course be true of any mammals, including mice. But the experiment done with the mouse in Austin, and the other cruel animal experimentation done increasingly in recent years by children in secondary schools, has never had any relation to serious scientific knowledge. The boys in Austin were preparing to send up a second mouse, when protests were heard from all over the country. The New York Herald Tribune published the following editorial on December 5, 1957: To a Mouse On Being Shot Up 1,642 Feet in a Rocket Wee, sleekit, coiv'rin', tim'rous beastie, 0, what a panic's in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa' sae hasty, wi' bickering brattle! I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee. wi murd'ring pattle! Robert Burns was certainly absent from that conclave of the Austin, Minn. Rocket Society, composed of high school boys, which launched a home-made rocket with a live mouse inside it last Saturday. Powered by a 'solid' fuel, the contraption rose 1,642 feet over the countryside at a speed of over 200 miles an hour. Then, quite logi- cally, it crashed back to earth, its tiny passenger being killed instantly on the impact. 0 Perhaps this experiment proved something, though we doubt it. Let youngsters fire off tiny Sputniks if they can. But why imprison a mouse, or any other living creature, in one, if no knowledge is to be yielded by its death? Killing a mouse, suddenly, may be necessary to prudent housekeeping. Subjecting one needlessly to 3,284 feet of darkness and terror shows little reverence for life. If in- (Continued on page 4) HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES PASSES COMPULSORY HUMANE SLAUGHTER BILL On February fourth, the United States House of Repre- sentatives took the greatest step that has been taken in the past fifty years to prevent cruelty to animals. They passed overwhelmingly the compulsory humane slaughter bill, H.R. 8308, introduced by the Hon. W. R. Poage of Texas. In the three-hour-long debate, the supporters of the legislation fought with vigor and assurance against the largely niggling and underhand attacks of the opponents, and the bill was passed without any weakening amendments. The Hon. Harold D. Cooley of North Carolina, Chair- man of the House Committee on Agriculture, was a powerful defender of the bill which his Committee had approved, and the Hon. William Dawson of Utah, spcak- ing from the Republican side of the aisle, worked cour- ageously for the measure despite the flat oppositio_ of Secretary of Agriculture Benson who resides in his Con gressional District. Mr. Poage Describes Slaughterhouse Cruelty Mr. Poage began by pointing out that the meat packing industry had up until a few months ago done practically nothing to meet the requirement of human kindness, and even decency in the slaughtering of animals. He described the routine slaughter of hogs, stating, They still kill pigs by bleeding them to death on the gruesome wheel- an instrument of torture to which live, conscious hogs are shackled in an endless line with a dozen or more being lifted some 12 or 15 feet into the air, to slowly and re- lentlessly move through possibly 50 feet of space where they come even with a sticker. A sticker, my colleagues, Mr. Poage continued, is a man who stands on a bloody pedestal with a knife-sharp at the beginning of the day but certainly on many occasions in need of grinding- with which he sticks the jugular vein of the hog. He does not kill the hog. He is not there to kill the animal. The hog-or lamb and in some packing houses the calf- dies from the loss of blood as it is carried ever onward by the inexorable movement of the endless chain to which it is attached by a steel chain around one hind leg. If the animal is a hog, it is shortly dropped into a vat of boiling water. In most cases it has lost consciousness but numer- ous exceptions are reported. Mr. Poage gave credit to those packing plants which have voluntarily adopted humane methods, and he con- tinued, Our committee has made an on-the-spot investi- gation of packing house killing practices. It was not a pleasing duty. We recognize that the slaughter of living animals is never a pleasant task. We found that the pack. ers have great difficulty securing and retaining men to do the cruel and dirty work of knocking and sticking. Most workers take these jobs because of economic necessity and qjuit them as soon as they can. Unfortunately, the few who seem to want to stay with this work are generally either without any kindly feeling of compassion for the suffering of God's dumb creatures or are of such low intellect them selves that they are immune to any pain except their own /7

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