What do farmers write? ? In agricultural professional journals and books there is hardly any direct reference to animal suffering. One needs to bring in a critical perspective, as well as considerable information, to decipher the dry data of crowding, disease or death - in terms of what animals go through. In general, the animals are described as resources to be efficiently used - and no more. Sometimes, however, a more personal attitude becomes visible, and this allows us to see how farmers think about the animals they exploit. It appears that the torture of animals in farms does raise in farmers a certain moral disquiet. Not so as to make them change their ways of treating animals; but this moral disquiet is a background against which fantasies arise that calm, perhaps, such pangs of consciousness practitioners might have.

"Cattle and Dairy Husbandry". The organ of the Union of Cattle Growers in Israel, "Cattle and Dairy Husbandry" is one of the most professional agricultural journals in the Hebrew language (spiced with a few light sections and even caricatures, displaying cows as women in ponographic positions, such as that to the left!). In 1993 the journal featured The Incredible Story of the Cow "Lima 824". The feature includes words from the cow-farmer, Shuka Alima, and an impassioned monologue that he puts in the mouth of the cow. This is a rare occasion: the journal mentions a cow's suffering. The feature is by no means typical of agricultural literature, but it does represent a way of mind common among the professionals. The monologue was quoted in the Veterinary Services Monthly, and "Animal Rights This Week" quotes it again, adding in explanatory notes:

"I am Lima of Kibutz Schiller, a cow."
How did the cow get named Lima, we do not know. 824 is a more typical name. Unlike most of us - who are named by a breath - "824's" name got burned onto her body through branding.

"But tell you what? An outstanding cow. In short: what they call a real cow!"
"Outstanding" as to what, precisely? Lima daily carried on her body, on average, 55 liters of milk. Did she already suffer from a bad limp? Could she walk more than a few hundred meters? As to this, we are not told.

"They treat me well, give me food just fine. Life is really good. Till that fateful day that will remain engraved in my memory for ever and ever."
"Treat me", "give me" - that's how a prisoner writes home from jail. A cow does not need to be provided food, unless she is prevented - by her imprisonment and by the destruction of her body through the over-production of milk - from finding her food for herself. And what does that "just fine" menu include? Many by-products of various agricultural industries, and garbage. Had it not been for the Mad Cow disease, cows would still go on enjoying eating the remains of their dead relatives. Life indeed is good.

"I leisurely eat my lunch, and then, without any previous warning, the tractor suddenly appears. I try to get my head out of the yoke, but the yoke is clamped".
When did you last try to eat leisurely as your head is locked between metal bars? Or perhaps you get used to that, and it's the food that matters? Depending on how long lunch takes. Agricultural literature warns that if cows are left locked in the yoke for more than four hours, they expand more energy struggling to set themselves free, than the energy they had received through their "leisurely" meal.

"The tractor approaches near, another meter, and another one, and then - a massive hit on the head. The jaw breaks in two, blood in every direction, they destroyed my face. I wish I was dead, what to do oh God, what to do?"
Deja vu? Quite possibly this is not the first time Lima's bones get smashed. When she was a heifer, she may well have been put in a yoke: her horns were broken, blood spattered in every direction (and got stopped by fire). As then, so now, Lima can not defend herself or run away, and can only watch how her disaster approaches slowly and hit her. But enough criticism! The accident is terrible, Shuka is truly shaken, and the cutting of horns without anesthetics, too, is now forbidden.

"And then Shuka arrives, the one who always keeps shouting, I see tears stand in his eyes. Look what they have done to me?!"
OK, so perhaps it is not that they always "treat me well". Perhaps the shouts are accompanied by a few hits with a hose, or an electric shock - as is usually done when cows are hurried to get milked? And there's Shuka crying, too. And why? "In my way to the place of the event", he tells us, "I had a hard feeling, that this might be one of our best cows. And in my heart I said: 'Only let it not be 824'". "A hard feeling" in face of the property that might get lost: according to Shuka, they had pumped out of Lima's body until that day 39,000 liters of milk. There's a reason for crying.

"I know that in my state, the only solution is 'Marbek'" [name of slaughterhouse] "But I want to live so, don't wanna die, it's so good here with you. They brought the doctor, Michael. Michael's a nice guy, the playboy kind, every few months tickles me from behind."
Was the censor here? The nice playboy is no doubt the man who inserts into Lima's sex organ a sperm squeezed out of some bull, so as to plant it in her uterus. Tickling indeed! This must be the reason why cows are restrained by a yoke during the artificial insemination.

"Now he himself says there's no choice, 'a lost cow'. But Shuka doesn't agree, he has a good heart, Shuka, there's hope. In short, then, they call the veterinary hospital and decide to operate me. They say the surgery is going to cost lots of money. What, don't I deserve this? After all it's not my fault. They carried me to Beit-Dagan."
Not only a good heart: Shuka has a good head for figures, too - and a willingness to gamble on an "outstanding" cow as against the costs of the operation. He explains: "Today, four months after the operation, Lima is at her fourth milking period and reaches 60 liters a day. There is no doubt that the investment in the operation and the hospilatlization was good value!"

"All that time, I was worried, what's going to happen now with the pregnancy. Just let me not lose my daughters."
This worry was taken into consideration, of course, as part of the business calculation. Two more future "outstanding" cows.

"I was anaesthetized. When I woke up it was morning. I was stitched all over the head. They told me straight away the operation was a success. After ten days of hospitalization I got back to the dairy I like so much. They treated me like a baby and little by little I returned to myself. I gave birth to twin heifers and I make twice as much the effort producing milk."
Congratulations! The twins were separated from Lima immediately after birth, so that they shall not take away from the milk Lima "makes such as an effort" producing.

"I want to thank from the bottom of my heart - and of my teats - the cow-farmers who did not lose their humanity, to the doctors and to all those who helped me recoved and return to myself. I truly forgive Karni, only he should be more careful. The Mooral…: never lose hope. And we, animals, also need a little love. All the best to you, and go on enjoying us! Lima."
As long as cow-farmers believe in happy ends. Poultry farmers would not have bothered. Chicken are cheap, and if they get injured - they belong to the garbage heap.

Sources:
Shuka Alima, "The Incredible Story of the Cow 'Lima 824'", Cattle and Dairy Husbandry, April 1993, pp. 55-58.
"Lima 824", The Veterinary Services Monthly, Ministry of Agriculture, June 1993, pp. 21-24.