FUR FARM SLAUGHTER METHODS
[To 1.te Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—The letters on painless death for animals, with particular reference to the fox-farming industry, give rise to certain doubts in my mind. Whether the fox prefers death by chloro- form, illuminant gas, carbon monoxide, or the humane killer seems to me an academic point. The truth is that he prefers to live, and to live as a free fox.
Supposing that those intelligent animals the beavers were to become as wise and kind- and god-like as our Western world of to-day.; and suppose they trapped a few of us on Dartmoor and the Downs ; and also took away some of our more eugenic couples to breed skins for them ; should we, Sir, consider that our captive brothers and sisters were happier fin that they were well fed and well cared for, if somewhat cramped in the beaver colony) than we ourselves, who were free to roam where we wished, even though sometimes tortured in a trap ?
Some of us, in such circumstances, would prefer to risk being skinned alive rather than to be bred, born, and to die (however neatly) in the captivity of beaverdom. Indeed, if we came upon a meeting of beavers, the males wearing top-hats made of human skin and the females adorned with the pelts of our relations, we should consider it hypocritical of them to discuss
ways and means of despatching us more happily. why, we should be entitled to ask, should they slaughter us at all ?-
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