158
Testimony Studies on Diet and Foods
There are but a few animals that are free from disease. They
have been made to suffer greatly for the want of light, pure air, and
wholesome food. When they are fattened, they are often confined
in close stables, and are not permitted to exercise, and to have free
circulation of air. Many poor animals are left to breathe the poison of
filth which is left in barns and stables. Their lungs will not long remain
healthy while inhaling such impurities. Disease is conveyed to the
liver, and the entire system of the animal is diseased. They are killed,
[72]
and prepared for the market, and people eat freely of this poisonous
animal food. Much disease is caused in this manner. But people can
not be made to believe that it is the meat that they have eaten, which
has poisoned their blood, and caused their sufferings.
Many die of disease caused wholly by meat-eating, yet the world
does not seem to be the wiser. Animals are frequently killed that have
been driven quite a distance for the slaughter. Their blood has become
heated. They are full of flesh, and have been deprived of healthy
exercise, and when they have to travel far, they become surfeited and
exhausted, and in that condition are killed for market. Their blood is
highly inflamed, and those who eat of their meat, eat poison. Some are
not immediately affected, while others are attacked with severe pain,
and die from fever, cholera, or some unknown disease. Very many
animals are sold for the city market known to be diseased by those
who have sold them, and those who buy them are not always ignorant
of the matter. Especially in larger cities this is practiced to a great
extent, and meat-eaters know not that they are eating diseased animals.
Some animals that are brought to the slaughter seem to realize by
instinct what is to take place, and they become furious, and literally
mad. They are killed while in that state, and their flesh prepared for
the market. Their meat is poison, and has produced, in those who have
eaten it, cramps, convulsions, apoplexy, and sudden death. Yet the
cause of all this suffering is not attributed to the meat. Some animals
are inhumanly treated while being brought to the slaughter. They are
literally tortured, and after they have endured many hours of extreme
suffering, are butchered. Swine have been prepared for market even
while the plague was upon them, and their poisonous flesh has spread
contagious diseases, and great mortality has followed.