by Monique Kuschel

Created on: May 31, 2008   Last Updated: June 03, 2009

Working animals should be retired the same way working humans are.

During the history of human kind, working animals have allowed us to create the productive society we have become and in most of the world today, animals are still the working machinery needed to produce a crop, haul goods from one town to another and allow millions of humans to produce their crop and survive because of the dedicated work of the horses, donkeys, cows, goats, etc...

Animals that we trained thousands of years ago to become our slaves to produce our crops and allow us to create society as it is known today, for it allowed us to stop wandering as hunters and become a village society, create a civilized village, reproducing the sheep, goats, cows, bulls, horses we needed to create a village, in the fertile crescent of the Mediterranean landscape, these animals allowed us to become a society.

It might seem far fetched, however it is the reality of our ancestry, the Mediterranean fertile crescent was the the creative center of civilization, for the fact that the crops they could grow and the animals they could use as labor, allowed civilization to progress to where we are today, over 2000 years later..

If we are able as modern humans to recognize the importance of animals in the evolution of our past, then we owe them. We owe them the labor their ancestors have given us to allow us to take us to the modern society we enjoy today. The only reservation I might have, is that we are treating their offspring's as cattle, meat, steaks, a roast, a pork chop. a mac burger, sloppy Joe!

Working animals should be retired the way we are retired, respectfully, according to our own standard of human decency. I wonder if non working animals, like all the animals ready for slaughter have the same choice, or is it all about which category one is determined to end up with!

Just like humans, some are determined to end up in jail, some in a rehab program, some on Wall Street, some in the White House, some in the all the suburbs known in all our cities, some in the clinics or the Bowery.

Human or animal, some of us end up either at the Kentucky Derby or the slaughter house!

I wish that we treat our human fellows and our animal friends the same way, for they helped us to take us to the world we achieved today. It is a sad day when the animals that allowed us to take us to where we are today, when our technology does not need any longer and just use them as pure meat.

It is the worst of Humans characteristics to dismiss the creatures that allowed them to survive the agricultural revolution.

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