A n i m a l W r i t e s © sm
The official ANIMAL RIGHTS ONLINE newsletter
Established in 1997
Editor
~ JJswans@aol.com
Issue # 06/15/03
Publisher ~ Susan
Roghair - EnglandGal@aol.com
Journalists ~ Greg Lawson - ParkStRanger@aol.com
~ Michelle Rivera
- MichelleRivera1@aol.com
~ Dr. Steve
Best - sbest1@elp.rr.com
THE ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE ARE:
1 ~ Legally Blind: The Case For Granting Animals Legal
Rights
By Dr. Steve Best
2 ~ Labels By Eileen Robbins Rohde
3 ~ Media Tools For Activists
4 ~ The Hidden Lives of Chickens
5 ~ An Eye For An Eye By Peter Byrne
6 ~ Memorable Quote
*´`³¤³´`*:»§«:*´`³¤³´`*:»«:*´`*´`³¤³´`*:»«:*´³¤³´`*:»³¤³´`*:»§«:*´`´`*:»«:*³¤³´`³¤³´`³¤³´`*:»³¤³´`
~1~
Legally Blind:
The
Case For Granting Animals Legal Rights
By Dr. Steve Best - sbest1@elp.rr.com
In corrupt social systems such as the U.S., the
relationship between law and ethics is rarely parallel. Laws exist to protect
the powerful rather than the powerless, and ethics serve as an alibi for
wrongdoing and evil. Thus, what is ethically right is not typically embodied in
law, and what is legal rarely seems moral. In fact the real scandal about the
U.S. government is what is perfectly legal.
A dramatic case in point is the antiquated laws regarding animals. In a society
that parades as humane, compassionate, and the beacon of civilization, billions
of animals are killed each year for the most trivial reasons. The laws relating
to the contemporary treatment of animals derive from ancient times when both
people and animals were held as common slaves. The legal distinction between a
person and property goes back at least to Roman society: free men were subjects
with rights, whereas women, children, slaves, and animals were considered
objects and property. The arbitrary viewpoints that reduced human beings
to slaves and property have been overturned, but there has not yet been
widespread recognition that the theories justifying the exploitation of animals
are just as arbitrary and wrong and that the same logic that freed human slaves
ought to emancipate nonhuman slaves.
Karl Marx observed that strange things happen in the “topsy-turvy” world of
capitalism where marketplace values trump human or moral values. He saw
capitalist society as structured around a process of “commodity fetishization”
whereby the characteristics of subject and object are reversed: living beings
are defined as inanimate property, and property and money become animated
subjects more sacred than life. Only from this distorted viewpoint does it make
sense to speak of Animal Liberation Front property destruction as “terrorism,”
and the everyday killing of animal industries as routine “business.”
From a legal standpoint, the problem of animal exploitation is 3-fold: what
animal “protection” laws exist are still weak, they are poorly enforced, and
they do not apply to animal exploitation industries that enjoy full legal
rights to confining, torturing, experimenting on, and killing billions of animals
every year. The root cause of these problems is that animals are still regarded
as property, and are hardly differentiated from physical objects. Despite
monumental revolutions in science beginning in the 16th century, and in
philosophy in the 19th and 20th centuries, both of which challenged core tenets
of the Christian-Greek worldview, the basic legal framework dealing with
animals has remained untouched and for all intents and purposes animal law is
still Roman law. The theological and
philosophical foundations informing the Western legal framework are outmoded
and untenable.
For present purposes, I characterize Western thought as deeply flawed by 4 key,
interrelated fallacies. In the first fallacy, essentialism, human and
nonhuman animals are denied a changing, evolving nature and instead are
assigned a static essence or being. Specifically, humans are defined as
rational, linguistic, technological beings made in the image of God, whereas
nonhuman animals are defined as beings without minds or souls, as mere
creatures of instinct, appetite, and sensation. Second, the fallacy of
rationalism states that the entire cosmos is infused with a rational nature
that reflects the mind of God. The world is orderly and a product of divine
design. Mind or soul is the essence of human beings too, unlike animals who are
mere creatures of sensation. Thus, the third fallacy of dualism holds that
reason and language capacities sharply delineate human beings from animals. We
have one essence, they have another; moral and legal considerations belong only
to the human realm, and human beings have no direct obligations of any kind to
animals. The fourth fallacy of teleology claims that behind the law-governed
and rational nature of the universe lies a purposeful scheme where every order
of life is arranged in a hierarchical “Great Chain of Being” that ranges from
the most simple and imperfect to the most complex and perfect. Because animals
are inferior to human beings, the purpose of animals is to serve human needs, and
we can use them as we see fit. As Aristotle put it, “Plants exist for the
sake of animals, just as animals exist for the sake of men.”
From the Presocratics and the Stoics to the medievalists and the moderns, we
find the same basic framework that is now widely recognized as but a reflection
of the prejudices and fictions of ancient times. On the whole, Western
philosophy has badly misunderstood human and animal natures: it created a
dualistic division where there is only an evolutionary continuum, it attributed
too much reason to human animals and too little to nonhuman animals, it
imagined a purposeful universe that relegates animals to a desert of non-moral
and legal status, and it enthrones human beings at the reign of life.
Animal rights cannot be institutionalized in the legal realm until the
fallacies emanating from traditional religion, philosophy, and science are
thoroughly discredited and abandoned. Postmodern theories have debunked Western
metaphysics, but they have not influenced mainstream legal circles. Nor have
they been adequately applied to animal issues, and postmodernists are as
speciesist as anyone else.
More significant developments have emerged from the fields of philosophy
(animal rights theories), science (cognitive ethology, the study of animal
emotions and intelligence), and law itself (through the works of Gary
Francione, Steven Wise, and others). The changes in science are especially
important, for they have provided abundant proof that animals are far more like
us, and far more complex, than we dared imagine. The data comes from physiology
and anatomy that identifies structural similarities between human beings and
animals, from genetics that discerns our close evolutionary relationships with
other primates, from field studies that shed light on animal behaviors and have
showed many animals too are tool makers and users, from biology that reveals
similar a chemical make-up to human and nonhuman animal brains and emotions,
and from various behavioral experiments that demonstrate animals possess a
remarkable range of mental and communication abilities.
There has been progress in the legal field in terms of punishing wanton acts of
cruelty to domestic animals, as more and more states make animal cruelty a
felony crime. But these laws apply mainly to domestic animals and exist more to
thwart the harm done to humans than to animals themselves (as it is widely
understood that violence to animals can quickly lead to violence to humans
themselves). Initiated by PETA and other organizations, recently there have
been reforms of the treatment of farmed animals used by the suppliers of major
fast food chains such as McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s. “Humane killing”
laws are better enforced and cage sizes are bigger, but of course every year in
the U.S. alone 10 billion farmed animals still are tortured in the factory
farms and meet gratuitous and violent deaths in the nation’s
slaughterhouses. Animals are still
property, and the property “owners” – whether scientists in a laboratory; agribusiness
CEOs on the factory farm; or the management of rodeos, circuses, and zoos --
have every right to do what they wish to animal bodies. The legal rationale are
two-fold: any act causing animal suffering is acceptable so long as it is part
of a “tradition” of animal exploitation and/or has some “rational” purpose such
as making profit or “disciplining” an animal. Thus, while the burning or
beating of a cat or dog is a felony crime in many states, this is so because it
has no redeemable utilitarian function for society, not because it is an
intrinsic wrong. Where animals are property, the property rights of individual
animal “owners” trump public moral concerns, such as voiced by animal advocacy
groups, and many a just battle has been lost in the courts through an
exploiter’s appeal to “ownership” rights over animals.
The hellish reality of animal existence cannot fundamentally change until we
create a seismic cultural shift that replaces the notion of animals as property
with a radically alternative concept, such as animals as persons. Human beings
have no monopoly on the concept of person, which entails qualities such as
sentience, having preferences and desires, and the ability to remember or
project ideas into the future. Personhood is the driving force behind The Great
Ape Project, supported by animal activists such as Peter Singer and Steven
Wise. The Great Ape Project is rooted in the premise that apes are as complex
as human children and if children are persons so too are apes. The idea is that
once our closest animal relatives acquire fundamental rights and the status of
personhood, other animals can follow. A more general change that could grant
substantive moral and legal status to all animals rather than just apes would
be a shift from animals as object to animals as subjects, where it is
understood that both a necessary and sufficient condition of moral and legal
rights is merely to be sentient and have elementary preferences, such as
avoiding pain and remaining alive.
Certainly the laws are not consistent. It is a flagrant contradiction to grant
a severely impaired human being personhood but deny it to a more intelligent
and aware ape, or any other complex animal. If entities such as corporations
can be considered as a “person” in the courts, it shouldn’t be too far a
stretch to treat an animal as such. Moreover, Western history is rife with
bizarre cases of prosecuting and punishing animals for “crimes” such as eating
crops, thereby assuming they are persons responsible for their actions when
convenient, while regarding them nonetheless as unthinking objects.
Hopeful signs of change are unfolding. The Great Ape Project is educating a
worldwide audience about the minds of our closest evolutionary relatives.
Steven Wise’s book Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights For Animals (2000)
widely publicized the cause of legal personhood for great apes, as his new book
Drawing the Line: Science and the Case For Animal Rights (2002) extends the
argument to other animals. In large part because of Wise’s lead, “Animal Rights
and the Law” courses are taught at universities such as Harvard, Yale,
Georgetown, and dozens of other law schools. Thousands of lawyers are already
practicing some form of animal law, representing their unique clientele who can
neither speak for themselves nor pay their legal fees and are always innocent.
The campaign sparked by In Defense of Animals to declare human beings the
“guardians” not “owners” of animals and to change legal language accordingly is
being implemented in communities across the U.S. Increasingly, courts are
awarding animal guardians not only market “property value” for animals
wrongfully injured or killed by another party, but also additional damages for
loss of companionship or emotional distress, signaling a belief that animals
are more than commodities. Wise and others expect cases litigating the rights
of great apes and other animals to be coming to courtrooms soon. This augurs an
intense struggle over social perceptions of nonhuman animals and fundamental
changes in society as a whole as human beings increasingly will be able to
represent the interests of exploited animals and sue on their behalf. Sundry speciesists declare legal personhood
for animals “a dangerous idea” and a slippery slope toward nonsense like
bacteria rights, as animal exploitation industries fear their bloodletting may
become limited or banned. Such hyperbolic reactions can be expected amidst
creaking paradigm shifts. Caricatures and self-interests aside, the movement to
abolish the property status of animals, and to secure them basic moral and
legal rights, above all the right to bodily integrity, is one of the most
important struggles of the contemporary period.
We are today at a similar stage in moral debate as we were over a century ago
with the moral and legal status of blacks. In both cases, there is a movement
to expand moral boundaries, to abolish a form of slavery, and to overcome
entrenched prejudices. The law always has changed with evolving social norms,
and it currently is in the midst of dramatic transformation. Animal rights
stands not only to liberate animals, but the human mind itself as it begins to
enter the next stage in its moral evolution.
*´`³¤³´`*:»§«:*´`³¤³´`*:»«:*´`*´`³¤³´`*:»«:*´`³¤³´`*:»³¤³´`*:»§«:*´`´`*:»«:*³¤³´`³¤³´`
~2~
Labels
By Eilene Robbins Rohde - egress@dotnet.com
In my work for the Pet Facilities Law for the
State of Wisconsin, I have talked to many legislators. Tonight, one of
them called me to report that despite his efforts, he is running into
opposition for the law from other legislators who view our advocacy as nothing
more than the work of "a small bunch of animal rights
activists."
Why is the term "animal rights activist" used in an attempt to
belittle and marginalize humane-minded people? As children, we are taught
in school, in church and in scouts to be actively "kind to
animals." Scout troops give children merit badges for animal
work...our whole culture tries to teach children kindness. But when we,
as adults who learned our childhood lessons well, speak out for animals and
express the "humane-ness" that has become part of our
personalities... we are labeled as crazy, "humaniacs" or tagged as
"animal rights activists" as if our activism were a disease.
This is a sad and tragic aspect of our culture...that humane people have to
defend their very spirit of kindness...and to those who "represent"
us, at that.
People who speak and work for animals are in the company of great scholars like
Jane Goodall and Albert Schweitzer, great authors like Jim Willis and Mathew
Scully, and great statesmen like Mohandas Gandhi. I am far more
comfortable in their company than that of any legislator who would belittle our
efforts with trite tags and insulting labels. I am satisfied knowing that
we understand natural beauty, incredible loyalty and unconditional love from
animals. And I, for one, could do without "representation" from
anyone who viewed our compassion as a liability. I'd rather not have
"lawmakers" who would discredit us for being "humane".
<><><><><>
Eilene Ribbens Rohde is the director of an effort to pass the important Pet
Facilities Law in WI, which was recently "gutted" by a state finance
committee, and the Wisconsin Puppy Mill Project. For more information on the
PFL (and a model website on a legislative effort), see:
http://www.egressetch.com/WisconsinPFL/
*´`³¤³´`*:»§«:*´`³¤³´`*:»«:*´`*´`³¤³´`*:»«:*´`³¤³´`*:»³¤³´`*:»§«:*´`´`*:»«:*³¤³´`³¤³´`
~3~
Media Tools for Activists
You've organized demos and handed out leaflets,
but does talking to the media still make your palms sweat??? No
worries! In Defense of Animals has pulled together all the necessary
tools to help make you an effective spokesperson in the battle against animal
exploitation.
Nervous about what to write in a letter to the editor? Want tips on how
to jazz up a news release? Get all tongue tied when it comes to doing an
interview??? Never fear, the newly updated Media Tools section of
the IDA website gives you everything you need to be an effective spokesperson
for animals. But it doesn't end there. Whether you want to start your own
animal rights group, document animal abuse in laboratories, distribute
educational materials to the public, or begin living a cruelty-free lifestyle,
you'll find everything you need to get started.
Visit the Media Tools page at http://www.idausa.org/ir.html. Be sure to let IDA
know if there is anything you’d like to see included on the site!
Direct
Link:
Click
here: Information and Resources
http://www.idausa.org/ir.html
*´`³¤³´`*:»§«:*´`³¤³´`*:»«:*´`*´`³¤³´`*:»«:*´`³¤³´`*:»³¤³´`*:»§«:*´`´`*:»«:*³¤³´`³¤³´`
~4~
The Hidden Lives of Chickens
http://www.peta.org/feat/hiddenlives/
Chickens are inquisitive and interesting animals
and are thought to be as intelligent as mammals like cats and dogs and even
primates. When in natural surroundings, not on factory farms, they form
friendships and social hierarchies, recognize one another, love their young,
and enjoy a full life, dust-bathing, making nests, roosting in trees, and more.
Up until a few years ago, few scientists had spent any time learning about
chickens’ intelligence, but people who run farmed animal sanctuaries have had
plenty to say about the subtleties of the chicken world. It may seem odd, since
we don’t know chickens very well, but it’s true that some chickens like classic
rock, while others like classical music; some chickens enjoy human company,
while others are standoffish, shy, or even a bit aggressive. Just like dogs,
cats, and humans, each chicken is an individual with a distinct personality.
Now, scientists are beginning to learn a bit more about chickens, and here’s
what a few of them have to say:
• Chickens are as smart as small human children, according to animal
behaviorist Dr. Chris Evans, who runs the animal behavior lab at Macquarie
University in Australia and lectures on his work with chickens. He explains
that, for example, chickens are able to understand that recently hidden objects
still exist, which is actually beyond the capacity of small children. Discussing
chickens’ various capacities, he says, “As a trick at conferences I sometimes
list these attributes, without mentioning chickens, and people thing I’m
talking about monkeys.”
• Dr. Joy Mench, professor and director of the Center for Animal Welfare at the
University of California at Davis explains, “Chickens show sophisticated social
behavior. … That’s what a pecking order is all about. They can recognize more
than a hundred other chickens and remember them. They have more than thirty
types of vocalizations.”
• In her book The Development of Brain and Behaviour in the Chicken, Dr.
Lesley Rogers, a professor of neuroscience and animal behavior, concludes that
chickens have cognitive capabilities equivalent to mammals.
• Dr. Christine Nicol of the University of Bristol explains, “Chickens have
shown us they can do things people didn’t think they could do. There are hidden
depths to chickens, definitely.”
A Few Examples of Chicken Capabilities
• The video “Let’s Ask the Animals,” produced by the Association for the Study
of Animal Behaviour in the United Kingdom, shows chickens learning which bowls
contain food by watching television, learning to peck a button three times in
order to obtain food, and learning how to navigate a complex obstacle course in
order to get to a nesting box.
• In 2002, the PBS documentary The Natural History of the Chicken
revealed that “[c]hickens love to watch television and have vision similar to
humans. They also seem to enjoy all forms of music, especially classical.”
• Chickens are able to learn by watching the mistakes of others and are very
adept at teaching and learning.
• Chickens also can learn to use switches and levers to change the temperature
in their surroundings and to open doors to feeding areas.
• Chickens have more than 30 distinct cries to communicate to one another,
including separate alarm calls depending on whether a predator is traveling by
land or sea.
• A mother hen will turn her eggs as many as five times an hour and cluck to
her unborn chicks, who will chirp back to her and to one another from within
their shells!
• Chickens navigate by the sun.
• A hen will often go without food and water, if necessary, just to have a
private nest in which to lay her eggs.
• Like us, chickens form strong family ties and mourn when they lose a loved
one.
• Kim Sturla, who runs Animal Place, a sanctuary for abused and discarded
farmed animals, has seen chickens empathize and show affection for one another.
She recalls an endearing story about two elderly chickens who had been rescued
from a city dump. “Mary” and “Notorious Boy” bonded and would roost on a picnic
table together. One stormy night when the rain was really pelting down, Sturla
went to put Mary and Notorious Boy in the barn and saw that “the rooster had
his wing extended over the hen protecting her.”
Save the Chickens
Chickens raised for food in the U.S. are denied all their natural behaviors and
desires. They are crammed by the tens of thousands into sheds that stink of
ammonia fumes from accumulated waste; they are given barely enough room even to
move (each bird lives in the amount of space equivalent to a standard sheet of
paper). They routinely suffer broken bones from being bred to be top heavy,
from callous handling (workers roughly grab birds by their legs and stuff them
into crates), and from being shackled upside-down at slaughterhouses.
Chickens are often still fully conscious when their throats are slit or when
they are dumped into tanks of scalding hot water to remove their feathers. When
they’re killed, chickens are still babies, not yet 2 months old, out of a
natural life span of 10 to 15 years.
The average American meat-eater is responsible for the abuse and deaths of
approximately 2,500 chickens.
Refuse to support cruelty to animals; click here (www.goveg.com/vegkit)
for a free vegetarian starter kit.
*´`³¤³´`*:»§«:*´`³¤³´`*:»«:*´`*´`³¤³´`*:»«:*´`³¤³´`*:»³¤³´`*:»§«:*´`´`*:»«:*³¤³´`³¤³´`
~5~
An
Eye For An Eye
By Peter Byrne - peterabyrne@iprimus.com.au
The only ears that hear them
Aren’t listening
The only eyes that see
Are blind
The only hands that touch them
Cut their throats
And their screams and death rattles
Subside into a disengorging
Of blood
And spirit
And life
And now the hands that touch them
Rend their sacred bodies
And dismember
And fling and sort and stack and pack
And head and heart disperse
In different trucks
And feet too
With nothing wasted
And suddenly the flesh
The sacred sacred flesh
Is in the pot and on the pan
And in the oven and on the grill
And in the mincer and on the plate
And the music blares while the waiters wait
And tables and bellies fill with the cheer
And the grotesque laughter cackles and grows
While the murder goes unnoticed
For years
Until the next death
When the heart explodes
Or the cells implode
And the cancer-ridden carcass
Is stuffed in a bloated box
Right there amongst the grieving relatives
And the long forgotten animal
Exacts its just revenge.
*´`³¤³´`*:»§«:*´`³¤³´`*:»«:*´`*´`³¤³´`*:»«:*´`³¤³´`*:»³¤³´`*:»§«:*´`´`*:»«:*³¤³´`³¤³´`
~6~
Memorable Quote
"The question is not whether we will be extremists,
but what kind of extremists we will be.
The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists."
-- Rev. Martin Luther King
«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»
Susan Roghair - EnglandGal@aol.com
Animal Rights Online
P O Box 7053
Tampa, Fl 33673-7053
http://www.oocities.org/RainForest/1395/
-=Animal Rights Online=-
«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»
(Permission Granted To Quote/Forward/Reprint/Repost This Newsletter In
Whole Or In Part with credit given to EnglandGal@aol.com)
* Please forward
this to a friend who you think
might be interested in subscribing to our newsletter.
* ARO
gratefully accepts and considers articles for publication
from subscribers on veg*anism and animal issues.
Send submissions to JJswans@aol.com
** Fair Use Notice**
This document may contain copyrighted material whose use has not been
specifically authorized by the copyright owners. I believe that this
not-for-profit, educational use on the Web constitutes a fair use of the
copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law).
If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go
beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.