Oppression and cruelty are invariably founded on a lack of imaginative sympathy; the tyrant or tormentor can have no true sense of kinship with the v… - Henry Stephens Salt

Has the artist ever considered the history of the "chop" which is brought so elegantly to his studio? … He has first employed a slaughterman … to convert a beautiful living creature into a hideous carcase, to be displayed with other carcases in that ugliest product of civilisation, a butcher's shop, and then he has employed a cook to conceal, as far as may be, the work of the slaughterman. This is what the Spectator calls being "humanised" by schools of cookery; I should call it being de-humanised.

The Animals, you say, were "sent"
For man's free use and nutriment.
Pray, then, inform me, and be candid,
Why came they aeons before Man did,
To spend long centuries on earth,
Awaiting their Devourer's birth?
Those ill-timed chattels, sent from Heaven,
Were, sure, the maddest gift e'er given—
"Sent" for Man's usage (can Man believe it?)
When there was no Man to receive it!

The ignorance, carelessness, and brutality are not only in the rough-handed slaughtermen, but in the polite ladies and gentlemen whose dietetic habits render the slaughtermen necessary.