Why do we root for animals who escape from slaughterhouses?

In 2004, six cattle escaped from the holding pens of a slaughterhouse in Omaha, Nebraska. Four of the six cattle ran into the parking lot of nearby Saint Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, Saint Francis being the patron saint of animals. Yet even this wasn’t enough to spare these cattle from having their throats severed, as they were recaptured and transported back to be slaughtered.

A fifth animal ran down a main road, before eventually being shot six times, at which point the cow tried to keep running but collapsed and died. The sixth turned into an alleyway leading to another slaughterhouse. In the alleyway the police cornered the animal before also shooting them multiple times with a shotgun, much to the distress of some of the workers from the slaughterhouse down the alleyway who were in the middle of their break and watched the animal being killed.

Afterwards, even though they killed animals for a living, these workers remarked on how angry and upset it made them that the cow had been so callously killed. And yet, even though this reaction may be hypocritical, this is the same reaction that we have too when an animal tries to escape.

In fact, animals will regularly attempt to find freedom. They attempt to escape the fate that we have decided for them, the fate of being killed needlessly. They attempt to escape from us, but their efforts are in almost every case futile. 

And yet, why is it then that we root for these animals who escape, even though it’s us they are trying to escape from.

For example, in 2019 a cow - named Daisy by people online - escaped from a slaughterhouse in Carlisle. The cow ran into a nearby cul-de-sac, where the police proceeded to shoot Daisy and kill her. This prompted a huge outcry online from people wishing for Daisy to be rescued, even though Daisy was running away from a fate that only exists because of the actions of many of these people, most of whom would happily have eaten daisy before she escaped.

And in 2018, a cow in Poland escaped as she was being taken to the slaughterhouse and proceeded to swim to a nearby island. The farmer and authorities tried to catch her to take her to the slaughterhouse, but they were unable to, leading to them planning on shooting the cow. However, a Polish politician stepped in and called the cow the “hero cow” stating:

“I am not a vegetarian, but fortitude and the will to fight for this cow’s life is invaluable. Therefore, I have decided to do everything to get the cow delivered to a safe place and, as a reward for her attitude, guarantee her a long-term retirement and natural death.”

Sadly the cow died as people tried to rescue her to a sanctuary.

But why must animals have to fight for their freedom to earn the right to live? Just because others are unable to make a break for freedom doesn't make their death anymore justifiable. And someone’s right to life isn’t based on their courage, we don’t view our own moral worth by that standard, nor do we hold other species of animals that we don’t farm by that standard either.

We don’t look at dogs being farmed in South East Asia and say that only the ones who make a break for freedom shouldn’t be killed.

So why do we root for these animals to live, especially considering that for many of us, the reason these animals are in situations where they try to escape is because of us? So is it not absurd to root for the animals who are trying to be free from the situation our actions have placed them in?

And does the very fact that we yearn for them to live not speak volumes about how we view animals and their lives? 

In reality, most of us never think about the suffering of animals and we certainly don’t think about them being scared in a slaughterhouse. Ultimately their life and death is hidden from us, purposefully kept away from us by these industries that rely on secrecy and unconscious consumerism.

However, when an animal escapes that secrecy is shattered. We become conscious participants in the life of that animal. Their suffering is no longer hidden and the reality of their fate is shown to us. The fate of death in a slaughterhouse.

We see these animals run, try to hide and even swim. We see their panic, their fear. We see their individuality, their personality, their desire to live. We view these animals as underdogs, heroes in a tale of overcoming adversity, and yet the adversity they are trying to overcome is us.

They are not simply running from the slaughterhouse, or the police. They are running from us, the people who had decided their fate long before they were born. It may be the slaughterer’s knife, or the police’s bullets that physically kill the animal, but their death is on our hands.

Thankfully there are also stories of animals who escape and live out their lives in sanctuaries. Such as Freddie the cow, who escaped a New York slaughterhouse in 2016 and now lives at Skylands Animal Sanctuary; and Yvonne, a dairy cow in Germany who escaped from a farm in 2011 and was eventually rescued and placed in an animal sanctuary.

But for every one of these animals whose escape and life of freedom in a sanctuary we cheer and root for, their mother, father, brother, sister and friends will all be killed. For every animal that escapes there are tens of billions whose suffering goes on ignored, and whose life is taken from them needlessly because of us.

It’s not the escape that matters, but what drives these animals to need to escape in the first place. Their fear, their awareness, their consciousness, their experience of life, their suffering. We root for these animals because they reveal to us something that we try to ignore. Their life matters.

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