FoodBanter.com - My Weber Tale (kind of long)

Excerpts from 'Eternel Treblinka; Our Treatment of Animals and the
Holocaust', by Charles Patterson (from
http://www.powerfulbook.com/excerpts.html)

Sumer, one of the earliest and most powerful of the
ancient Mesopotamian city-states, managed its slaves the
same way it managed its livestock. The Sumerians castrated
the males and put them to work like domesticated animals,
and they put the females in work and breeding camps. The
Sumerian word for castrated slave boys -- amar-kud -- is the
same word the Sumerians used for young castrated donkeys,
horses, and oxen. -- from Chapter 1

Henry Ford, who was so impressed by the efficient way
meat packers killed animals in Chicago, made his own special
contribution to the slaughter of people in Europe. Not only
did he develop the assembly-line method the Germans used to
kill Jews, but he launched a vicious anti-Semitic campaign
that helped the Holocaust happen. -- from Chapter 3

Although the purpose of the German killing centers was
the extermination of human beings, they operated in the
larger context of society's exploitation and slaughter of
animals, which to some extent they mirrored. The Germans did
not stop slaughtering animals when they took up slaughtering
people. Auschwitz, which its commandant Rudolf Hoss called
"the largest human slaughterhouse that history had ever
known," had its own slaughterhouse and butcher's shop. The
other death camps likewise kept their personnel well
supplied with animal flesh. Sobibor had a cow shed, pigpen,
and henhouse, which were next to the entrance to the tube
that took Jews to the gas chambers, while Treblinka had a
stable, pigpen, and henhouse located near the camp barracks
of the Ukrainian auxiliaries. -- from Chapter 5

When young [Isaac Bashevis] Singer set out to become a writer in
Warsaw, he purchased an account book in which he jotted down sketches,
sayings, and ideas for stories, novels, and plays. One of his entries
was about the Ten Commandments and how they might be improved. He
wrote that the Sixth Commandment -- "Thou shalt not kill" -- should
apply to all God's creatures, not just human beings. As if to
emphasize this point, Singer added an Eleventh Commandment: "Do not
kill or exploit the animal. Don't eat its flesh, don't flail its hide,
don't force it to do things against its nature." -- from Chapter 7

That's when the first of three things happened to him
that changed his life. He and his wife went on a short trip
to Mexico where they decided to do what one is supposed to
do there -- watch a bullfight. "When the first animal was
killed, I broke down -- emotionally and physically. I had
never witnessed such unabashed animal torture before and
simply couldn't believe what I saw -- the suffering of the
desperate animal and the blood lust of the cheering crowd!
They couldn't wait to see the next animal brought in and
tortured. I left, and the memory of what I saw haunted me
for several years." -- from Chapter 8