Day 092 - 27 Feb 95 - Page 55
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2 Q. No, what I am saying is, is it something, if you care about
3 the animals' welfare which you say you do, yes, if an
4 animal dies before it is killed for slaughter, yes ---
5 A. Yes.
6
7 Q. -- is that something which you do not want to happen for
8 the animal's benefit?
9 A. Of course we do not want that to happen.
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11 Q. So, if an animal dies early, that is cruel, basically?
12 A. No, no. That is not necessarily cruel. That happens.
13 Go around in nature, there are animals that die. Is that
14 cruel? That is nature.
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16 Q. So it is only if they die because of human decision or
17 negligence or something, then that would be cruel?
18 A. That is my interpretation, yes.
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20 Q. So the fact that you decide to kill 100 million chickens at
21 the age of seven weeks old deliberately is cruel, is it
22 not?
23 A. No, it is not.
24
25 Q. But by your definition, it would be?
26 A. No, my definition -----
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28 Q. It would be a conscious decision to terminate the life of a
29 bird when it is only six or seven weeks old and you make
30 that decision ---
31 A. Yes.
32
33 Q. -- for your profits for your company?
34 A. Are you done?
35
36 Q. Is that cruel?
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38 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Ask him a question.
39 A. OK. Now, again, you have to go back and look at the
40 entire picture. The fact that we process some animals does
41 not mean that we are cruel. We process animals because
42 there is a need for food. It is as simple as that. Now,
43 you can go back and say that if we do not process the
44 animals, we are going to starve. I do not want to debate
45 the use of food for human consumption. That is how we
46 evolve. Humans evolve eating everything basically, animals
47 as well as vegetables. There is a need for that. That is
48 how we have evolved. Are we being cruel? Ask Mother
49 Nature. You can go back on the other side, if we do not do
50 that, we are going to starve to death -- that is cruel,
51 because we have a decision, we have a choice.
52
53 Q. You do have a choice. That is exactly right.
54 A. You can go back -----
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56 Q. I believe you said -- it may have been Mr. Oakley -- that
57 there was a concern for chickens in the wild would be
58 subject to predators?
59 A. Yes, I talked about that in the past.
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