[img]7|left|||no_popup[/img]If, to paraphrase Christian scripture, our society is to be measured by how the least among us are treated, then perhaps we should consider how we treat animals. Let’s start with Vice President Joe Biden, whose new puppy set off an earthquake of outrage among animal welfare activists. His mistake? He got his puppy, a German Shepard, from a breeder. What he should have done: Gone to the local animal shelter or contacted any number of rescue groups, many of which specialize in particular breeds.
There’s no excusing the death threats allegedly received by breeder Linda Brown, but setting aside the contemptible overreaction of some people, breeders do present a problem when it comes to animal health, welfare and population. According to the ASPCA, “Five out of ten dogs in shelters and seven out of ten cats in shelters are destroyed simply because there is no one to adopt them.” You can do the numbers: The total number of stray dogs and cats living in the States defies ASPCA estimates, but they believe the number of cats alone to be around 70 million. In terms of spaying, “Only ten percent of the animals received by shelters have been spayed or neutered.” Compare this to owned pets, 75 percent are spayed/neutered. The problem sums up thusly: There are too many animals, and most must be killed. This means we don’t need breeders. We do need responsible animal stewards who will spay/neuter the animals in their care.
But it gets worse because a number of breeders operate large-scale commercial puppy mills, whose dogs are at high risk of disease, genetic defects, abuse and more. “In order to maximize profits,” the ASPCA reports on its website, “female dogs are bred at every opportunity with little to no recovery time between litters. When, after a few years, they are physically depleted to the point that they no longer can reproduce, breeding females are often killed. The mom and dad of the puppy in the pet store window are unlikely to make it out of the mill alive—and neither will the many puppies born with overt physical problems that make them unsalable to pet stores.”
Cruelty to animals, overpopulation with horrific consequences; whether Biden intended it or not, by choosing to buy a puppy from a breeder instead of adopting a dog from a shelter, Biden sets a bad example and contributes to the problem instead of the solution. But while the Vice President outrages the national stage, our own backyard offers its own serious concerns. Barkworks, for example, at Westside Pavilion. Like many, my wife and I would stop by and ooh and aah at the cute puppies available for sale, many at prices exceeding $1,000. Of course, being suspicious that Barkworks, like many pet stores, sold dogs from puppy mills, I asked a clerk about the provenance of those adorable little fuzzy things. I was told they came from reputable, human breeders. A few months later, on the theatre side of the mall, we came across a table run by A Puppy Store Free LA – a part of the Best Friends network – who were protesting Barkworks for, in fact, selling puppy mill dogs. While we never would consider getting a dog or cat from anywhere other than a rescue – our two cats are rescues – that so many animals are needlessly killed because people choose not to adopt makes it unconscionable to even offer moral support to Barkworks by ogling the puppies in their windows.
How We Treat the Human Animal
This brings me to the release of a few of the infamous “torture memos,” such as this one by John Rizzo, Acting General Counsel for the CIA in 2002. In reading the memo, which outlines “interrogation” procedures used on the Zubaydah, we begin with the seemingly harmless:
“With the facial slap or insult slap, the interrogator slaps the individual's face with fingers slightly spread. The band makes contact with the area directly between the tip of the individual's chin and the bottom of the corresponding earlobe. The goal of the facial slap is not to inflict physical pain that is severe or lasting.”
Then we move on from cramped confinement, sleep deprivations and stress positions to the kind of creepy stuff we see in the movies:
“You have informed us that he [Zubaydah] appears to have a fear of insects. In particular, you would like to tell Zubaydah that you intend to place a stinging insect into the box with him. You would, however, place a harmless insect in the box.”
Finally, it all ends with waterboarding in which a cloth is placed over the forehead and eyes. Water is then applied to the cloth in a controlled manner.” This “triggers an automatic physiological sensation of drowning that the individual cannot control even though he may be aware that he is in fact not drowning.”
Beyond detailing skin-crawling methods of “interrogation”, the rest of the memo consists of the worst kind of moral equivocating and rationalizing to justify these techniques; fiddling around with the definition of pain so that these techniques, by sheer sophistry, are interpreted to fall below the torture line.
Taken together – waterboarding and puppy mills – the conclusion is that for all that we say we are a culture of life, that we value human rights as demonstrated by the upholding of civil rights and consistently human treatment of prisoners, our actions do not match our ideals. And for all that it may strike some as silly to compare animal welfare with human welfare, I have to fall back on the rather classic animal rights argument, namely, that if we can’t even show compassion and responsibility – stewardship, as I have argued in the past – towards animals, it shouldn’t be surprising that we can’t show a moral maturity in dealing with people. Of course, this is not strictly an animal rights issue, but one that embodies the scripture I paraphrased earlier: our morality is only as strong as its weakest link and our compassion as meaningful as its consistent practice.
Frédérik invites you to discuss this week’s column at his blog.
