Okay, here\’s my prediction about Responsible Policies for Animals\’ 10,000 Years is Enough Campaign to eliminate animal agricultural programs at universities in the United States — toward the end of this century, the group will need to change the title to 10,100 Years is Enough.

The group continues to send out letters to universities, including Cornell whose student newspaper recently ran a story on the group\’s efforts, urging universities to drop their animal agriculture programs. The Cornell Daily Sun quotes RPA president David Cantor as saying,

Systems are set up so that billions of animals each year live extremely short lives and are never treated humanely; I don\’t see much of a way that that could change as long as schools are teaching people to run those systems that have animals enslaved.

RPA\’s abolitionist perspective is so outside the mainstream, that a lot of the coverage of the 10,000 Years is Enough campaign miss the point and talk about issues specific to contemporary, intensive agricultural practices. But as Cantor makes clear, his goal is not to go back to enslaving animals using 19th or early 20th century practices, but rather to abolish animal agriculture altogether. As Cantor was quoted in a November 2003 PR Week piece,

We\’re an abolitionist organization. We want an end to the animal industry, and we want an end to the teaching of that industry.

In September 2003, Responsible Policies for Animals launched another campaign called \”This Land Is Their Land\” attacking wildlife management policies in the United States. As RPA\’s web site puts it (emphasis added),

But wildlife suffer even more than people from suburban sprawl, automobile dependency, forest fragmentation, 24 million acres of U.S. land covered with nonnative turf grass, and other disruptions of natural ecosystems. RPA\’s This Land Is Your Land campaign maintains it is inhumane and unethical to kill animals short of their species\’ natural lifespans other than to remedy irremediable suffering. The deer and goose slaughters perpetrated throughout the East Coast, in the Midwest, and elsewhere are unethical and reflect an unfortunate determination on the part of our government to rely on anti-environmental approaches.

Because \”wildlife management\” policies and poor land use have created virtually all situations that now lead to complaints about wildlife from many people, every complaint about free-roaming nonhuman animals should be assumed to indicate a change in human practices is required, not further or harm to animals.

Sources:

Animal activists call for change. Andrew Beckwith, Cornell Daily Sun, January 30, 2004.

This Land is Their Land. Press Release, Responsible Policies for Animals, September 2003.

Animal Rights Vs. Industry Battle Moves To Campuses. John N. Frank, PR Week, November 10, 2003.