Animal Welfare
Wheeler Wilcox, poet, caller herself, “the voice of the voiceless.” She said, “through me, the dumb shall speak; Till the deaf world’s ear be made to hear the cry of the wordless weak. From street, from cage, and from kennel, from jungle and stall, the wail of my tortured kin proclaims the sin of the mighty against the frail” (Hoffman, 2010). Is it not the responsibility of the strong to protect the weak?
When you think of cruelty to animals, what comes to mind? Do you think of football star Michael Vick and his dog fighting case, the stigma attached to Pitt Bulls, or do you think of the commercials that show pictures of abused and neglected animals with the caption below the pictures that reads, “What did I do wrong?” When you think of animal welfare, what comes to mind then? Do you think about the animal rescue and adoptions following Hurricane Katrina, your local Humane Society’s Adoption drives, or the most recent celebrity to pose nude for PETA in their “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” campaign? These issues need to be understood, not for the sake of another vegetarian celebrity, and not for the sake of media interest. The issue is animal cruelty and animal welfare and the problem is people. It is how we think about animals that allows for cruelty to happen, and it is our lack of interest or care in the subject that allows it to continue every day. With the right information and the right mindset, we can make choices that will facilitate change and that change will not only benefit animals, but it will benefit human kind.
Animal cruelty happens on a larger scale than we might feel comfortable recognizing. The span of this problem reaches from each corner of the globe in the communities human kind has developed, cleverly masked by the brands, and labels we blindly know and trust. These injustices can be seen in commercial pet stores, in factories, on our grocers shelves, in our medicine cabinets, our make up bags, on the cover of our magazines, in the drive thru, on the coat or handbag of a passer-by, from our oceans to the forests, and even in our neighbors home. If you could see the pain on the faces of the animals who suffered to produce the brands you use everyday, and the choice was just that, a simple choice, would you make the decision to change?
The problem exists because the whole of people do not see intrinsic value in the lives of animals, although we keep some as pets and some companions. The problem I will discuss is the unnecessary suffering of animals, what we have done to police the issue, where we see animal cruelty happening, and what it means to society to allow it to continue. Some problems seem so out of reach or they don’t seem to directly effect us daily, making it easy to turn our heads away from it. We can see some effort made in the history of animal welfare when the first minimum standard was put into place by Congress.
The Animal Welfare Act came into existence on August 24th, of 1966. What it does, is “it authorizes the Secretary of Agriculture to regulate transport, sale, and handling of dogs, cats, nonhuman primates, guinea pigs, hamsters, and rabbits intended to be used in research or ’for other purposes.’ It requires licensing and inspection of dog and cat dealers and humane handling at auction sales” (AWIC, 2009). This law set a standard for animal treatment, unfortunately, the scope of this law provides little protection for a great number of animal who fall victim today. With the coming of the Internet, there has been an increased threat to domestic animals. The Internet has fostered the growth of puppy mills, expanding the reach of puppy mill sales to the public. The sale prospects of direct-sale breeders, or puppy mills are greater than ever before. It is only the “whole sale” breeders that are regulated by the USDA, even when the direct-sale breeders or puppy mill sales are equal to a wholesale breeder. This leaves a loophole for brokers. Brokers buy dogs from puppy mills and sell them to the pet stores. The brokers may be investigated, but they don’t do the actual breeding so the investigation stops there, leaving pet stores unaccountable for whether or not their pets come from a responsible source. This loophole enables puppy mills to thrive and go unthreatened by the very laws that were meant to protect animals. After that it is left up to the state to regulate breeding. According to the Humane Society of the United States, at the federal level the Animal Welfare Act is lacking with regard to the protection of the animals that are within its legal realm to protect, the ones kept and/or sold by licensed breeders:
“Under the AWA… Inspection records obtained by the HSUS show that many USDA-licensed breeders get away with repeated violations of the Animal Welfare Act. These violators are rarely fined and their licenses are rarely suspended. Facilities with long histories of repeated violations for basic care conditions are often allowed to renew their license again and again.” (“American Humane Association,” 2010).
There are a limited number of states that even bother to regulate breeders at a state level, licenses are not required in all states, licenses are inexpensive compared to the profit being made, and are those licensed are regulated poorly. To find out how puppy mills are regulated in your state you may visit the following link: http://www.humanesociety.org/assets/pdfs/legislation/state_puppy_mill_laws.pdf (“American Humane Association,” 2010).
Another area that requires more stringent monitoring is food production. What we don’t see everyday are the animals who suffer confined to tight, caged-quarters awaiting their inevitable doom for food production. These animals spend their three or four years of life barely able to move inside the confines of an animal production farm. That pork chop or slice of morning bacon doesn’t taste quite as sweet when you know that an animal endured an extended amount of pain and unnecessary suffering to get to your plate. Thanks in part to the Animal Legal Defense Fund and other organizations against animal cruelty, there has been an effort to put legislation into place that seeks to prohibit inhumane practice in animal farming. One specific effort was to eliminate the use of these housing crates in animal farming production, although these laws are not enacted expeditiously without community support and some of these laws only have minimum standards that apply to the transportation of animals. It is up to the public to demand more humane practices in the food production industry as well as in other animal-related dealings.
Puppy mills and animals as food seem to be commonly recognized debates with regard to animal welfare, but what other questions do we, as people, have the responsibility to seek out, what can we regulate and/or take action on to protect animals? Have you ever heard of “canned hunting,” aka “shooting preserves,” or “crush videos?” Neither paint a pretty picture. In one case, animals are exploited for the purpose of the “sport” of hunting and the other, exploited for sex and murdered for the benefit of sexual arousal. When a hunter shoots an animal in a preserved area, it is not a sport. There is no justice for an animal killed to be a mere trophy. This business should be shut down. As for the crush videos that are sold online, where women stomp on small animals for the purpose of arousing certain sick individuals, they should be subject to animal cruelty laws. Unfortunately, when tried against the law, crush videos were deemed legal because a ruling against them would violate Free Speech laws. The court reasoned that if crush videos were outlawed, then hunting films would be outlawed as well. Santich (2010) reports the CEO of the American Humane Association as saying, “Deliberately killing animals for entertainment has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Americans are within their right to keep blatant animal torture and killing our of the marketplace, and the Supreme Court should have made that the priority over the supposed protections of those who take sick pleasure in this material.” How is the law, in this case, not interpreted in a manner fitting the moral standard of society, or is it? The answer then must be that people are simply unaware of the extent of animal cruelty that occurs every day. Knowing the law is lacking in regulating inhumane and neglectful breeders, and knowing that it allows for trophy killings and animal slaughter for the purpose of sexual arousal, are we not obligated to do something about it? It is possible we have limited knowledge on the subject so let us look further into what we may have assumed to be more justified uses for animal life, such as medical testing?
Simply because some medical testing is used to help save human life does not make all testing humane, necessary or justifiable. It is easy to say, “it’s just an animal” and justify testing for the benefit of human beings suffering or dying from disease. What if I told you, it is okay to support animal testing to an extent, but our responsibility to regulate the testing as our obligation to animal life. An animal gives us the ability to live longer, healthier lives, but the bottom line is, it is still a life. This thought puts human beings in a difficult predicament. It is impossible to ask someone if they would watch a loved one die or allow an animal to undergo testing to produce the medicine necessary to save that loved one, but that isn’t the right question to ask at all. We need to ask “are all possible tests done in vitro prior to being administered to the test animal, is the animal a proper test subject for the drug or vaccine being administered, and finally, what is the sole purpose of testing on animals in each specific case (is it to save money or to save a life)?” Not all animals are fitting subjects for testing because they are not biologically comparable to the human body’s chemistry. It is our duty, to nature, to limit the use of testing and to weigh the benefits of testing, or not testing, for all animals involved. It does not need to be a question of one life over another, it is a question of when it is necessary and whether it is humane.
Seeing only the benefits over the tragedy has its consequences and they should be as obvious as a disappearing species. Our efforts to protect wildlife are for the purpose of protecting ourselves from economical, medicinal and aesthetic losses, and are not for the sake of the animals themselves. We restrict and prohibit trade but we do not prohibit the killing of or unnecessary suffering of animals in the way that a humane society should. If we cannot see beyond our own benefits, then let us consider how by allowing animal cruelty to take place we make ourselves vulnerable to violence and suffering.
This problem, when left unanswered to, extends further, beyond the damage and suffering to animals. Experts in psychology say that a human being with the capacity to harm or kill an animal has the capacity to harm or kill another human being. “Animal cruelty problems are people problems. When animals are abused, people are at risk” (Arkow, 1994). We can see this with regard to domestic abuse, child abuse, and other violent behavior that includes murder. According to the Humane Society of the United States, “13% of intentional animal abuse cases involve domestic violence” (American Humane Association, 2010). The abuser uses the animal or pet against the victim. Loar (1999) explains how “abusers kill, harm, or threaten children’s pets to coerce them into sexual abuse or to force them to remain silent about abuse,” and Ascione (2005) informs us that “disturbed children kill or harm animals to emulate their parents’ conduct, to prevent the abuser from killing the pet, or to take out their aggressions on another victim” (American Humane Association, 2010). These are children. When we allow children to bear witness to the abuse of animals we only perpetuate this vicious cycle. Without an effort to stop all inhumane behavior against animals, we as a society, are not doing what is fully within our power and obligation to society to respect and protect one another.
It is our ethical and moral obligation to the society we live in to change the way we regard animals and more humanely regulate what we subject them to. If we do not respect nature and life than why try so hard to protect it? We can’t have it both ways. We need to demand more of ourselves and of humanity. Gandhi once said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated” (Frans, 2008). In order to make a difference, we can refrain from using products that are tested on animals, you can write these companies to tell them how you feel, we can choose to not wear fur or leather, adopt family pets or buy from a responsible breeder, report suspected neglect and abuse, eat less meat, or only buy “humane food” (uses cruelty free methods). These are only a few of the things we can do to prevent animal cruelty. For a list of cruelty free products, visit the following weblink: http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/1410669, and for a list of alternatives to some of the common household product brands that do test on animals visit PETA site: http://living.peta.org/2009/instead-of-this-buy-this.
The purpose of educating the public is to understand that the benefits of respecting animal life outweigh what we stand to lose from the unnecessary suffering we allow. If we understand that it takes minimal effort to make choices that might help protect animal life from such injustices, we are working for the greater good and protecting human life as well as respecting the living creatures we benefit so significantly from. As Robert Garner says in his book, The political theory of animal rights, “Animals cannot campaign for their own liberation, and it requires an unprecedented level of altruism from members of a species who stand to lose from the protection of animals, to fulfill this objective on behalf of them” (p. 42). Make conscious decisions to protect life. Through awareness and by making simple choices, we can have such a tremendous impact on this issue. The bottom line, is we do not do enough to regulate the issue. It is not about outlawing animals as a food source or as domestic pets and it is more than a respect for the lives of animals, it is about the respect we have for ourselves, life, decency and humanity.
References
American Humane Association; American Humane Association: Cruelty to Animals Is NOT Free Speech or Entertainment. (2010, May). Pediatrics Week, 198. Retrieved April 30, 2010, from ProQuest Health and Medical Complete. (Document ID: 2021237421).
Arkow, P. (1994). Animal abuse and domestic violence: Intake statistics tell a sad story. Latham Letter 15(2), 17.
Garner, R. (2005). The Political theory of animal rights. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
Kate Santich. (12 October). Pet lovers crusade against domestic abuse. McClatchy - Tribune Business News. Retrieved April 30, 2010, from ProQuest Newsstand. (Document ID: 1877363891).
McAdams, M. (2009, April 29). Dogs suffer abuse at puppy mills, says animal rescue group. The Communitarian Delaware County Community College.
RSPCA, Initials. (Photographer). (2010). We Help deal with all kinds of animals. [Web]. Retrieved from (picture courtesy of RSPCA, 2010, http://www.rspca.org.uk/home)
