Cynthia Bateman

Spring 2008

Cow Hell: A Personal Account of Ontological Shock

I am old enough now to understand that there are, in fact, moments in every

person’s life that define who they are, where they’re going, and what they will become.

At times, these moments are difficult to recognize. Other times they are blatantly obvious

such as the birth of a child, the discovery of a true love, or the shock of a particularly

traumatic event. What is common among all of these defining moments is that the person

involved in them is one version of him or herself before the event and another version

after the event. Sometimes a blessing and sometimes a burden, truly defining moments

are usually not expected. They are the events that take our breath away. They are the

times that try our souls. They are the experiences that shake our moral cores.

The summer of 2006 should have been an uneventful one for me. Recently

promoted to a management position at my current place of employment as a leukemia

and lymphoma registered nurse, my life was finally at a place that seemed secure. Having

moved my then nine-year-old daughter and myself from Missouri back to our home state

of Illinois, I remember feeling a sense of peaceful contentment. That summer my

daughter and I set out to continue our tradition of an annual road trip. Every summer she

and I take to the open road with a tentative destination in mind, more interested in the

getting there then the being there. July of 2006 was no different. We had a planned to

drive to Roswell, New Mexico in search of the legendary aliens. To my surprise that
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drive included an experience that not only altered the way I look at the world but also

catapulted me down a path where peace and security are illusive.

About 15 miles south of Amarillo, Texas, Interstate-27 runs right into Route 60. It

is near that point that the lights of civilization along that portion of the Texas Panhandle

begin to fade. Heading southwest into New Mexico, my journey called for an exit from I-

27 onto Route 60. My memory of that day is very clear. It was unusually hot in Texas

even for July. The thermometer in my car read 113 degrees. I had the air conditioner on

while driving, but it was of little use, more an extra strain on the car than a comfort to its

passengers. Taking the Route 60 exit, I immediately noticed how brown and burnt the

land looked in the distance. We were leaving the city behind and heading into a place that

was not the grassy plains of Illinois that I knew nor was it the desert to which I was

heading. This was what I pictured the Dust Bowl in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath

must have looked like. I was aware of the extreme drought in the southwest that year. I

could not help but be aware of it as fire warnings were posted at every rest stop and along

billboards down the highways. It was not until I made the turn onto Route 60, however,

that the meaning of those fire warnings became real to me. There it was obvious. The

earth was parched. Brown, cracked dirt filled the horizon as far as the eye could see. No

trees, no houses, no fast food advertisements decorated the two-lane road. One word

came to mind as I drove along that summer day, desolation.

We traveled along the emptiness of Route 60 for about 30 minutes before I could

see something in the distance ahead. In the gleaming July sun, at first it just looked like a

sea of light colored spots. As we drove closer, the spots came into focus. They were, in

fact, masses of cows. Just as suddenly as we had been abandoned by the comforts of
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civilization as we merged onto Route 60, we were now surrounded by thousands of cows.

I did not realize at first, but I had slowed the car down in an attempt to take in the picture

that unfolded in front of us. The cows were inside an eight to ten foot chain-linked fence

with barbed wire around the top of it. Inside the fence, the land was sectioned off into

smaller areas defined by yet more metal fencing. There were so many cows packed into

each section that I could not count them. The air was filled with dust from their shuffling

hooves. The stench of manure mixed with ammonia was so thick that it burned our noses.

Scattered among the sections of cows were what, at the time, I thought were small hills. I

thought it odd that in the midst of the vast Texas plains were all of these mounds of dirt. I

did not know any better. I have since learned that those were mounds of manure

strategically placed to dry up and decay under the merciless Texas sun not but a few feet

from the cows that produced the waste.

As we crept along Route 60 passing the sea of animals, what came into my mind

were the pictures I had seen of Nazi Germany’s concentration camps. The image of

masses of shell-shocked human faces pressed against metal enclosures seemed

synonymous with the empty stares of the countless captive cows. Also I thought of the

film Cool Hand Luke and the vacant faces of the men on the chain gang blistering in the

summer sun. As we drove, the cows closest to the fence and nearest to the road just

stared out not appearing to be looking at anything. They were contained so closely

together that their movement was greatly restricted. I could see troughs of water aligning

the front of the fences in each section. I wondered how the animals in the middle and

back of the crowded subdivisions were able to make it to the front to reach the water.

Again I looked at the thermometer in my car. It read 111 degrees.

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Down the road farther I saw three large metal grain storage houses set back off

the road. On one of the feeders were the words “Cactus Feeders.” I have since discovered

that the company Cactus Feeders is the world’s largest cattle feeding company operating

nine feed yards with a capacity of roughly 500,000 heads of cattle. It was not until I saw

those grain houses that I realized we were driving through a massive feedlot. Feedlots are

where cattle are brought to be fattened up prior to slaughter.

We continued down the road at our slow, awe-struck pace when we were

assaulted by the most offensive odor to which I have ever been exposed. My daughter

immediately exclaimed, “What is that? It burns my eyes.” It burned my eyes as well. We

had the windows up and the air conditioner on full force and still we were overcome by

what, as a nurse, I can most easily describe as the smell of bloody gastrointestinal waste

roasting in 110 plus degree weather. My years as an oncology nurse tending to the

wounds of necrotic tumors and infected tissue had not prepared me for this type of odor.

My daughter panicked thinking she was going to vomit in the car. I sped up to escape the

stench. Suddenly, the cows stopped. The fencing ended revealing yet more parched

brown earth. In the near distance sat a large brown warehouse with smoke rolling out of

large metal pipes in the roof. That building was the origin of the smell that encompassed

us. As we neared the warehouse, I saw a truck exiting from the gravel road that I assumed

led to the building. As the truck turned onto Route 60, I could see the stone sign behind

it. The sign read Caviness Packing Company: Largest Meat Production Plant in Texas.

That was the last piece of the puzzle for me. That horrid place was where the life of an

animal was turned into the product of meat. I drove as fast as I could drive away from

that building, that smell, and those imprisoned animals. Overall, we spent about 45
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minutes driving through what my daughter and I coined “Cow Hell.”

We went on to New Mexico and had a lovely vacation. I do not think I realized at

the time, the full impact that drive had on me. For example, the last meal I consumed that

contained meat was a turkey sandwich I purchased at the Amarillo Subway restaurant we

had lunch at just prior to heading to Route 60. My newfound vegetarianism was not a

conscious decision. After driving through Cow Hell, my own morality would not allow

me the desire to eat meat. Returning from our trip, I plotted a course that took us two

hours out of our way but prevented us from having to revisit Route 60. I came home from

New Mexico with a giant stuffed green alien, a new vegetarian diet, and question after

question regarding the politics, the policies, and the morality of the meat industry.

After spending many hours on the computer and in the library on my own time

researching the ethics of the meat industry and the overall lack of consideration given to

animals and their interests, I decided to return to college to learn about politics and

philosophy in a more formal fashion. I enrolled in January of 2007. I began to talk to

anyone who would listen about my experience in Texas. I asked questions of people

concerning their own reasons and rationalizations for consuming meat-based diets. I

wanted to what rights other people thoughts animals possessed and what responsibilities

they thought humans had regarding animals. What I saw in Texas seemed to me like an

absolute violation of a being’s most basic rights. In the very least, a cow should be

allowed to pursue its interests of being a cow. The animals I saw were being grown for

human benefit rather than being allowed to live for their own purposes. I came home

from Texas needing to know why people thought the way they did about animal rights.

When I had an opportunity to take an ethics class at the university in which I enrolled, I
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was very excited. Naively, I thought I would learn all of the philosophies that would

answer all of my questions. I was wrong. While I did learn many philosophical ideas in

that course, most of the theories have left me with more questions than answers. The

remaining portion of this essay will be spent exploring such theories as utilitarianism,

deontology, and rights ethics as they pertain to the consideration of nonhuman animals in

the moral community.

The theory of utilitarianism is mostly simply described as the greatest net

happiness for all involved, including human as well as nonhuman beings (Boss, 2001).

Utilitarianism is the philosophy that states that what is a morally right action and what is

a morally wrong action is determined by the consequences of said action on the happiness

of the greatest number of individuals. Happiness is determined by what causes a being

pleasure and what causes a being pain. Those things that are pleasurable create happiness.

Those that are not create pain.

Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham wrote, “Nature has placed mankind under

the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point

out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do” (Boss, 272). Bentham

believed that a principle of equality existed under utilitarianism and stated that, “The

pleasures of a pig should count no more or less than those of a human” (Boss, 2001).

Continuing with the idea that the pleasures and pains of all sentient beings should be

considered equally, Bentham derived a list of criteria for calculating the total amount of

pleasure or pain an action creates. This list came to be known as Bentham’s utilitarian

calculus (Boss, 2001). Using this calculus, an action can be determined to be morally

right or morally wrong based upon the net amount of pleasure or pain it creates.
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I suggest that the cows I saw in Texas were not experiencing pleasure by being

held in such crowded and filthy quarters, in extreme weather, and having little access to

fresh drinking water. I also suggest that those cows endure the length of their short lives

under such conditions. Consequentially, as we, as humans, allow for the disregard of an

animals ability to experience pain or pleasure, we ensure that many more cows and other

animals will suffer the same existence as those Texas cows. Using Bentham calculus, it

can be decided that the pain those hundreds of thousands of cows experience each day is

far greater than the pleasures human beings experience in the act of eating meat.

Therefore, the raising of cows for human consumption is an action that is morally wrong

because it does not lead to the greatest happiness for the greatest number of beings.

Another famous utilitarian philosopher, John Stuart Mill, believed that pleasures

and pains can be qualified or ranked and it is the ranking or quality of pleasure an action

creates that makes it right or wrong (Boss, 2001). Mill is well known for his statement,

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates

dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is

because they only know their own side of the question” (Denise, White, & Peterfreund,

2008, p. 162). Mill believed than human life is better than animal life because the quality

of pleasures humans can experience are greater such as the intellectual pleasure of

reading a great novel (Boss, 2001). In regards to the cows and the larger issue of raising

animals for human consumption, perhaps Mill would say that the pleasures human beings

experience in enjoying the meat they eat are qualitatively greater than the pain the

animals experience on a factory farm, that is, an animal agriculture farm that mass

produces animals for slaughter. I must say this idea seems quite egotistic to me. Granted
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while, as a human, enjoying a great novel is pleasurable to me, I do not believe I can

make the determination that rolling around in a mud pit is not equally as pleasurable for a

pig. Also, many humans do not enjoy reading. Mill seems to be saying that a human that

enjoys reading is living a better and a more pleasurable life than a human who does not

enjoy reading.

Mill goes on to write, “ The main constituents of a satisfied life appear to be two,

either of which by itself is often found sufficient for the purpose: tranquility and

excitement. With much tranquility, many find that they can be content with very little

pleasure: with much excitement, many can reconcile themselves to a considerable

quantity of pain” (Denise et al., 2008, p. 163). If that is true, if all that is necessary for

happiness is tranquility, the notion of being left alone to pursue one’s own interests, than

human beings should be able to achieve happiness without eating meat and inflicting pain

and suffering on nonhuman animals. It would seem that abandoning a meat-based diet

would still allow for human happiness and also allow for the happiness of hundreds of

thousands of cows and millions of animals worldwide. Such a way of life would by far

lead to the greatest happiness for the greatest number of sentient beings.

The next theory I learned about in my ethics class was the theory of deontology,

specifically concerning the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Unlike Bentham and Mill who

determined an action right or wrong based on its consequences, Kant believed in a

categorical imperative that stated that we ought to do something regardless of its

consequences, that we should act from a sense of moral duty (Boss, 2001). He believed

that the morality of humans lies in their rational nature and it is the same for everyone.

Following this thinking, Kant proposed that his categorical imperative consisted of two
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guidelines. He wrote, “Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will

that it should become a universal law” (Denise et al., 2008, p. 151). Simply put, one

should only commit an act if one can visualize that act being committed by all rational

beings in existence. Also Kant wrote, “So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own

person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only”

(Denise et al., 2008, p. 153). Simply stated, one should never use another human being

just for personal gain alone. Kant believed we have a moral obligation to treat human

beings with respect and dignity (Boss, 2001).

Unfortunately, Kant believed that only human beings are rational creatures and

only rational creatures are worthy of moral respect. Kant believed that animals are merely

a means to an end for human beings. He wrote, “So far as animals are concerned we have

no direct duties. Animals are not self-conscious and are there merely as a means to an

end. That end is man” (Boss, 2001). Despite Kant’s disregard for nonhuman animals, I

do not believe he would condone the treatment of the cows I saw in Texas. As rational

human beings we have a duty to act out of compassion and gratitude. If everyone on this

planet acted cruelly and selfishly toward one another, our civilized society would break

down. If a human being consistently disregards an animal’s comfort and safety simply

because they can, then it does not seem like much of a moral leap to consider that same

human being disregarding another human’s comfort and safety for the same reason. If, as

a society, we say we have a duty to be respectful and caring towards one another, does it

not hold true that we should foster that spirit of respect and caring in all aspects of our

lives? Because if we do not, if we allow ourselves to build our moral framework upon the

idea that sometimes it is okay to be cruel and disrespectful and uncaring, then it appears
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we have established our morality on a very slippery slope. I know I would not will that

cruelty, inhumanity, and greed become universal laws.

The last ethical theory I will discuss in this essay is the theory of rights-based

ethics, specifically the notion that all beings have a right to life and a right not to be

harmed. The rights view of morality makes no allowance for race, sex, or social status

discrimination (Mappes & Zembaty, 2002). Utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer extends

this idea to the idea that the rights view makes no allowance for discrimination based on

species either (Boss, 2001). He writes, “…concern for the well-being of children growing

up in America would require that we teach them to read; concern for the well-beings of

pigs may require no more than that we leave them with other pigs in a place where there

is adequate food and room to run freely. But the basic element- the taking into account

the interests of the being, whatever those interests may be- must according to the

principle of equality, be extended to all beings, black or white, masculine or feminine,

human or nonhuman” (Boss, 2001, p. 287).

In proposing that animals should be granted the same consideration under rights

ethics as humans are granted, Tom Reagan writes that it is the similarities between

humans and nonhumans that are important, not the differences (Mappes & Zembaty,

2002). Reagan writes that human and nonhuman animals are all experiencing the subject

of life, that is, we are all conscious creatures having individual welfares that are

important to us independent of our usefulness to others (Mappes & Zembaty, 2002).

Reagan argues that all subjects of life have an inherent value and a right to respectful

treatment, and that we, as humans, cannot override other animals’ rights for our own

benefit (Boss, 2001).

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I suppose the argument against Reagan’s views is that animals do not have

inherent value. But what determines inherent value? Is it the ability to speak as humans

do? Then does a mute human being have no inherent value? If it is the ability to reason,

then a mentally challenged child or a senile elderly man must have no inherent value. If

we disregard an animal’s right to life and fair treatment based on any reason that

addresses a trait or attribute that the animal lacks, can we not also find some sector or

human life that lacks the same attribute? If so, then we must disregard that human life as

being morally irrelevant. To most rational human beings, the idea of such discrimination

towards a fellow human is unfathomable, yet we accept it towards animals.

I can only imagine what it must be like to be a cow. I think what I would need to

find pleasure in my life would be open land, access to my native food, fresh water, the

ability to socialize and mate without restriction. The cows I saw were deprived of all of

those most basic elements of life. After sitting through a semester of that ethics class as

well as reading independently, the only reason I can find that such a travesty of morality

exists is because it can. We allow it to exist. Regardless of how many cows we breed and

slaughter, regardless of the living conditions we subject them to they will never revolt.

They have no voice. There will be no Martin Luther King, Jr. or Elizabeth Cady Stanton

in the animal community. Animals are our ideal victims. They cannot fight back.

I only work part-time as a nurse now. I am a full-time student and single parent.

My daughter and I had to move to a more affordable apartment because of my change in

employment status. College is much more costly now than when I earned my nursing

degree. My mother cried Thanksgiving of 2006 when I refused to prepare the turkey for

our family meal, a tradition I had gladly performed for many years before that. My
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daughter and I are the only vegetarians in our family. My friends think I have over-

reacted regarding the issues of animal rights and factory farming. There is little support

for such a cause in the heart of the Midwest where, for many, animal farming is still the

way of life. I am aware of the obstacles that exist in educating humans about the

immorality of their actions towards animals. Unlike the cows, humans have voices and

they resist…loudly.

I had never heard the term ontological shock until I sat in that ethics class this past

semester. Ontological shock is an experience that forces us to question the way we

currently look at the world. I also learned the term praxis. Praxis, in ethics, is the practice

of informed social action (Boss, 2001). My drive through Cow Hell provided me with the

ontological shock I needed to embark on a mission of educating and awakening humans

to a suffering that is all too easy to ignore. I looked for an ethical theory that would

explain what I witnessed in Texas in a way that made me feel at peace with it. I have not

found one. Moreover, I am increasingly certain that one does not exist.

Most days I wish I had never made that drive. I wish I had never seen what I saw.

Life was easier when I was passing through it with my eyes closed. What I never wish,

though, is that I could be the person who saw what I have described in this essay and did

nothing as a result of it.

Bibliography
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Boss, J.A. (2001). Ethics for Life: A Text with Readings. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Denise, T.C., White, N.P., and Peterfreund, S.P. (2008). Great Traditions In Ethics.

Belmont, CA: Thompson Wadsworth.

Mappes, T.A. and Zembaty, J.S. (2002). Social Ethics: Morality and Social Policy.

New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.