Letter to the Editor, Forest and Stream (1886)

AUTHOR: Bergh, Henry

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen)

In his capacity as President of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Bergh writes to the editor of Forest and Stream magazine, to protest that he has been cited as an authority in favor of deer hounding. He makes very clear that he firmly rejects “the cruel and unsportsman like practice” (69). He considers that the practice is similar to “fox hunting, rat baiting, pigeon trap-shooting, prize poultry killing, and the like” and asserts that it has “about the same relation to legitimate sportsmanship as standing a cow up in a field and firing at it. In the deer hounding case the men are technically the sportsmen, but the dogs are the real hunters.”

From “a sanitary standpoint,” the flesh is damaged by this practice, just as the flesh of fish deteriorates in captivity, like that of any animal that is maltreated or abused “at or previous to its killing,” including specifically “the abuse which cattle receive during their long voyages by rail.” Accordingly, “many of the diseases we suffer from” are “the consequence of such abuse”:

Half-starved, thirsting, and terrified by blows and shouting, its blood boiling with fever,  the creature is driven to the slaughter house and killed, and the next day, perhaps, its flesh is put upon the table for consumption. Something equivalent to mind exists in the brute economy. Anger, terror and every extraordinary emotion is liable to poison the milk of female animals to such a degree as to instantly kill the infant that partakes of it (69).

Thus Bergh also opposes the hunting and killing of animals on bith ethical and health grounds.