AnimalRights.Net

The Canadian territory of Nunavut occupies almost 1/5th of that country but is home to only about 30,000 people — and quite a few polar bears. The territory is occupied largely by Inuit who have long hunted polar bear, and is also home to a multi-million dollar industry in selling polar bear hunting permits to foreigners.

But how the annual polar bear quota is managed and how to best optimize the money earned from the hunt are topics that came to the fore this summer.

In July, the Polar Bear Specialist Group warned that as the Arctic appears to be shrinking from the increase in global temperatures, polar bear habitat is likely to decline as well which could put population pressures on the polar bear. It warned that by 2055, the polar bear population worldwide could decline by up to 30 percent.

Scott Schliebe, a researcher with the Polar Bear Specialist Group, told the CBC News,

We’re seeing some fairly significant reductions in the actual area that pack ice occupies in the Arctic, and we’re seeing some thinning in the thickness of the ice.

Schliebe and his fellow researchers issued their warning after Nunavut announced it was going to increase polar bear quotas for 2005. Again, Schliebe told the CBC News that his group believes Nunavut has overestimated the number of polar bears, adding that,

We would like those levels to be adjusted to the current population abundance estimate, 950 animals, and we would like the adjustment to be calculated as sustainable over time,

Nunavut announced in January that it was increasing the 2005 quote by 28 percent, saying that the population of polar bears is on the increase. But if the CBC is to be believed, its method of determining the polar bear population leaves a lot to be desired,

Nunavut’s environment minister, Olayuk Akesuk, says government officials decided to increase the quota after consulting with Inuit elders and hunters about how much the bear population has increased.

He said the government is open to making more decisions like this on the basis of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, or traditional knowledge.

“We will respect more the say of the community and we want to see more of Inuit knowledge and western science included into one,” he said.

Especially given the potential profit from polar bears, such increases should be based on sound scientific estimates of the number of polar bears, not hunters opinion about the status of the bear population.

When it comes to profiting off of the bear hunt, however, an economic study of the bear hunt suggests that Nunavut is not maximizing the money it could make off the hunt. In a study funded by Nunavat and the Safari Club, Dr. George Wenzel of McGill University found that of the $2.9 million hunters spend on the polar bear hunt, only half of that ends up in the pockets of the Inuit.

One of Wenzel’s major findings was that the Inuit may be underpricing polar bear tags. Currently it only charges $30,000 to $35,000, depending on the specific locale, to hunt a polar bear. Wenzel noted that in contrast U.S. hunters pay up to $400,0000 to hunt bighorn sheep in Alberta. As Wenzel told Nunatsiaq News,

If you can sell a sheep for that much, I’m sure you could sell a polar bear for more money than is coming in.

Currently, only about 50 polar bear hunt tags are sold to outside hunters. The rest are used by traditional Inuit hunters. Wenzel estimated that if Nunavut sold all its polar bear tags to outsiders, it could increase its income from the hunt to $14 million annually even if it stuck with the current $30,000 to $35,000 price.

Sources:

Nunavut hunters can kill more polar bears this year. CBC News, January 10, 2005.

Rethink polar bear hunt quotas, scientists tell Nunavut hunters. CBC News, July 4, 2005.

Boost price for polar bear hunt, researcher says. John Thompson, Nunatsiaq News, August 26, 2005.

Animal testing firm Covance Inc. recently purchased 38 acres of land in Chandler, Arizona, which prompted People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Citing an undercover video it shot of Covance’s Vienna, Virginia, laboratory and a several hundred page complaint PETA filed against Covance with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, PETA wants Chandler to prevent Covance from building a facility in that city.

In a press release, PETA’s Mary Beth Sweetland said,

Chandler should be showing Covance the door, not rolling out the red carpet. Covance has an abysmal record of animal abuse and threats to public health that shouldnÂ’t be welcomed by any city.

PETA’s Alka Chandna told the Chandler News,

We have to petition Chandler Mayor Boyd Dunn and the Chandler City Council to pull up the carpet and prevent Covance from setting up shop. These are hardly the sort of people Chandler residents want as their neighbors.

For its part, Covance is suing PETA and the undercover activist who shot the video, and denied that it engages in animal cruelty.

The land that Covance purchased is currently zoned agricultural, so any decision by Covance to build a facility on the land would require a zoning change. A Covance spokesperson told the Chandler News that it has no immediate plans to build on the site and has not applied for any building permits yet.

City spokesman Dave Bigos, however, told the Chandler News that the city council sees attracting biosciences firms to the area as crucial,

Biosciences is a growing presence in the Valley. It’s critical for the future of the Valley and Chandler.

Sources:

Bioscience firm irks PETA, Covance busy land in Chandler. Alex Pickett, Chandler News, August 23, 2005.

PETA calls on Chandler to reject CovanceÂ’s proposed animal-testing lab. Press Release, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, August 15, 2005.

Researchers at the Great Ape Trust of Iowa and colleagues from major zoos are teaming up to discourage the use of apes in advertisements and entertainment.

Robert Shumaker, director of orangutan research at the Great Ape Trust of Iowa, said that for awhile the use of monkeys in advertisements and entertainment seemed to have died down. He told the Des Moines Register,

It seemed like it was dying down for a while, but now it’s coming back. . . . I think that the commercial use of great apes, whether in entertainment or pet trade or photo ops, is impossible without some kind of abuse. . . . The abuse comes when no one is looking.

Companies that use apes in advertisements defend the practice and note that regardless of welfare issues, apes in ads work. Erin Fifield of Taco John’s, which has been running an ad campaign the past couple years featuring Whiplash the Cowboy Monkey, told the Des Moines Register,

People love him. Whiplash has a fan base worldwide. He’s just a lovable character who, even before he joined Taco John’s campaign, was appearing at rodeos riding around on his dog. Since he joined Taco John’s, sales are up and visibility is up. . . . This little monkey is treated better than most people. He has his own trailer. He’s like another kid. . . . Someone will always find a reason to complain, but he is not abused.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ Amy Rhodes told the Des Moines Register that it has had some success in convincing companies to not use apes in advertising. She cited Honda, Puma, Keds and USA Warehouse as companies that agreed to pull ads featuring apes or monkeys after PETA raised objections.

I suspect this is one area where the animal rights movement is likely hurting the cause of animal welfare. It would be preferable, in my opinion, that non-human primates not be used in entertainment. The problem is that thanks to the actions of groups like PETA with their whining about renaming Fishkill, New York or their comparison of animal agriculture to the Holocaust/slavery, serious animal welfare issues will get swept away as just another ridiculous animal rights complaint (as Fifield clearly dismisses the animal welfare concerns).

Sources:

Use of apes in ads worries scientists. Perry Beeman, Des Moines Register, August 15, 2005.

At August’s Fifth World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences, a number of animal rights groups signed on to a resolution calling for the worldwide end to all medical research involving primates.

Those agreeing to the resolution included the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, Royal Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Humane Society of the United States, and the German Animal Welfare Federation.

The full text of the resolution read,

Call to end the use of non-human primates in biomedical research
and testing from animal protection organisations worldwide
Berlin, August 2005

Non-human primates are highly intelligent, sentient animals. They form intricate social
relationships, interact with their environment in a dynamic and complex way, and
engage in imaginative problem solving. It is also widely accepted that primates
experience a range of negative emotions (e.g. anxiety, apprehension, fear,
frustration, boredom and mental stress) as well as a range of positive emotions (e.g.
interest, pleasure, happiness and excitement). In short, they are very close to humans
in their biology and capabilities, and the users of non-human primates argue that this
makes them ideal ‘models’ for research. However, this also means that primates have
the capacity to suffer like humans, so there can be no question that primates can
experience pain and distress.

Confining animals who would normally live in a very large and complex home range in
the laboratory, must have a significant adverse effect on their welfare. At its best
laboratory primate housing represents only a small fraction of their home range. The
worst, still commonly used in many countries, is a small, barren metal box in which the
animals can only take a few steps in any direction. Other aspects of the lifetime
experience of laboratory primates also cause stress and suffering, particularly where
they cannot control their environment, social grouping, or what is done to them. Any
pain or distress associated with experimental procedures is therefore compounded by
additional adverse effects resulting from capture of wild primates, breeding practices,
transport, housing, husbandry, identification, restraint, and finally, euthanasia.

For these reasons alone, the use of primates in research and testing is a matter of
extreme concern to the animal protection community worldwide and to the significant
sector of the public who they represent. This concern has been recognised at a
regulatory level with some countries making special provisions for primates in their
legislation, and emphasising the need to reduce and replace primate experiments.

Resolution

The animal protection organisations attending the Fifth World Congress on
Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences in Berlin in 2005 have united to
call for an end to the use of non-human primates in biomedical research and
testing. We urge governments, regulators, industry, scientists and research
funders worldwide to accept the need to end primate use as a legitimate and
essential goal; to make achieving this goal a high priority; and to work together
to facilitate this. In particular, we believe there must be an immediate,
internationally co-ordinated effort to define a strategy to bring all non-human
primate experiments to an end.

In a press release announcing the resolution, the Humane Society of the United States noted its objections to the continued use of non-primate species in medical research as well,

At the occasion of the World Congress, the Vice-President of the German Animal Welfare Federation (Deutscher Tierschutzbund), Dr Brigitte Rusche, the Director of Eurogroup, Sonja van Tichelen, and the Vice President for Animal Research Issues of the Humane Society of the United States, Dr Martin Stephens, also expressed concern about the continuous use of other animals in research and the slow progress in the development, validation and acceptance of non-animal alternatives. As a result in the EU alone, over 10 million animals continue to be used in experiments every year including mice and rats but also fish, pigs, goats, cats, dogs and primates.

Of course this is the same Martin Stephens who in 1999 conceded that we owe much of our advanced understanding of human biomedical knowledge to animal research.

Sources:

Worldwide call for primate testing ban. UKPets.Co.UK, August 22, 2005.

Animal Protection Organisations from Around the World Call for an End to the use of Primate Testing. Press Release, Humane Society of the United States, August 22, 2005.

In August, the Animal Liberation Front claimed responsibility for stealing a dog and her five puppies from Jennersmead Research Farm at Massey University in New Zealand.

What makes the dogs in this case so special is that they are carriers of mucopolysaccharidosis, a degenerative genetic disease that in human beings typically leads to death before the age of 10. In dogs, the disease typically results in death by the second year of life.

The owner of the dog, who carries a copy of the defective gene but does not suffer from the disease, had apparently loaned her to the university for breeding purposes.

Grant Guilford, head of Massey’s Veterinary School, told The Dominion Post,

It [the genetic disease] causes wasting of the nervous system till by the end the dogs — and humans can only stagger about. We were given the dogs by a farmer who is very upset that they have been stolen. We were working with the Adelaide Women’s and Children’s Hospital on gene therapy to find a cure for this disease . . . Rehoming these dogs will put the families who take them at risk of serious trauma when the well-loved dog dies down the track.

Not that Guilford had to worry for very long. The dog and five puppies turned up at an animal shelter after being turned in a few days later by people who said that they had found the animals “dumped by the river” near the animal shelter. The shelter recognized the dogs as the stolen animals and returned them to the university.

Massey University is now in the process of reevaluating its security arrangements at its animal facilities. Guilford told the New Zealand Press Association,

The bigger problem [beyond this theft] is that the animal rightists are generalising their attacks beyond this one farm and now are doing their best to defile everything that Massey does, and so we’ve now got issues to consider whether the veterinary school itself is safe. That’s a problem, there’s 800 students and staff a day in the building.

Sources:

Bitch and puppies stolen from lab handed in. Michael Daly, New Zealand Press Association, August 29, 2005.

Activists ‘liberate’ diseases lab dogs. Don Kavanagh, The Dominion Post (New Zealand), August 27, 2005.

In Defense of Animals in August asked a judge to reconsider a July decision that rejected its efforts to stop the National Park Service’s plan to eradicate wild pigs on Santa Cruz island in California.

Pigs were first introduced to the island in the mid-19th century. Ever since, according to the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy, they have been eroding the soil and damaging native plants and animals.

To put an end to the problem once and for all, the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy plan to hire a New Zealand firm, Prohunt, to eradicate the pigs. The firm will only receive its $3.9 million fee once there are no more pigs left on the island. Prohunt began killing pigs on Santa Cruz in April 2005.

In Defense of Animals has so far unsuccessfully attempted to challenge the plan in court. Their objections to the slaughter of the animals provides an interesting look at how animal rights ideology conflicts with environmental protection efforts.

The major claim made by the park service is that the presence of the pigs indirectly threatens the Santa Cruz Island fox. According to the park service, golden eagles are attracted to the island to feed on pigs, and while they’re there they also feed on the foxes to the point where there are believed to be only about 150 foxes left on the island.

Nature Conservancy spokeswoman Julie Benson told the Los Angeles Times that the choice was clear — wild pigs exist in large numbers throughout the world, whereas this particular fox only inhabits this island. Killing the pigs to save the foxes is, to Benson, the obvious choice.

Not so to IDA president Elliott Katz who told the Los Angeles Times that trying to make this sort of decision is attempting to foist human morality on to nature (emphasis added),

Northern California veterinarian Elliot Katz said that allowing the deaths of thousands of pigs for the benefit of a few foxes
doesn’t seem to be a fair balance of nature. Katz, founder and president of In Defense of Animals, a nonprofit animal rights
organization based in the Bay Area city of Mill Valley, supports halting the pig slaughter and says he intends to contact
Feldman about lending his support for the lawsuit.

“Our position is to take a step back and not to be killing animals for man’s belief of what’s right and wrong,” Katz said.
“Allowing an injunction will permit everyone to step back and rethink this thing and also to further evaluate whether it’s
necessary to remove each and every pig from the island.”

Presumably since relying on human standards of morality is not possible, Katz will be channeling supernatural powers to guide human interaction with the environment.

Sources:

Suit Filed to Halt Pig Eradication on Santa Cruz Island. Gregory W. Griggs, Los Angeles Times, May 20, 2005.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ celebrity spokeswoman Pamela Anderson was interviewed by Larry King recently, Anderson’s knowledge of and adherence to her animal rights views pretty much speaks for itself (emphasis added),

King: Why are you a vegetarian?

Anderson: I don’t like meat. I don’t like, you know, I don’t like meat. I don’t like the texture of meat. I don’t like where it comes from. I don’t like the cruelty that’s involved. And being involved with PETA so long, you get to know a lot about how meat is prepared and slaughtering and all that stuff. So, I’ve chosen, after I’ve kind of educated myself, you know, through PETA, that I don’t want to eat it.

King: No fur coats?

Anderson: No.

King: Leather soles?

Anderson: Sometimes — I have a lot of leather shoes actually — a lot of — but I’ve tried to actually create a clothing line — a shoe line that is non-leather and I have a lot of great shoes, too, from Stella McCartney that are non-leather as well.

But that’s the hardest thing is the leather part of it. A lot of things are leather. Even your car interior. I just ordered and car, and I’m getting all, you know, pleather interiors. There’s no leather interior in the car that I’m getting, bt the car that I have has a leather interior.

King: Are you against vivisection, the treatment of animals to detect disease?

Anderson: I don’t know much about that part. Sorry.

King: But you’re certainly against the killing and slaughter of the animal?

Anderson: Yes and the slaughtering. You know, PETA is — they really — they just want people to be humane about killing animals, too, when it comes to fast food restaurants like KFC. And it’s just so inhumane, how they handle their animals and that’s the first step.

King: Good luck in all you do, Pam.

Anderson: Thank you.

King; Great seeing you.

Anderson: Thank you. Vivisection. I thought you meant vasectomy.

King : no.

Anderson: I’m against those, too. No.

Not quite sure whether she’s against vasectomies or animal research in that last comment. If it is animal research she is against, she has an easy method of protesting against the alleged horrors and cruelties involved in such researcher — simply stop supporting the pharmaceutical industry by continuing to buy things like the medicine she takes to treat her Hepatitis C.

Given that she cannot even give up leather shoes (while complaining about others’ wearing of fur), don’t expect her to leave the stable of PETA hypocrites anytime soon. Presumably she and Dawn Carr can get together and commiserate at how horrible it is that their lives are prolonged due to the efforts of animal researchers.

Source:

CNN Larry King Life, August 22, 2005.

In August, two People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals activists were arrested in Peoria, Illinois, after they stripped to their underwear and stepped in to over-sized displays designed to look like a supermarket meat package. A sign on the package read, “Only cannibals eat animals. Go vegetarian.”

Eric Deardorff, 24, and Melissa Sehgal, 28, were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct outside the headquarters of Caterpillar Inc.

PETA campaign coordinator Chris Link was also ticketed for obstructing the public right of way. Link told the Peoria Journal Star that the arrests came as a shock,

This was quite surprising. The officers didn’t give us any warning or say we were doing anything wrong. They just started throwing blankets [over the protesters].

Another PETA protester was arrested in 2001 in almost the same spot after disrobing to protest cruelty. Charges in that case were eventually dropped.

Peoria police Sgt. Henry Minton told the Peoria Star Journal,

They will be charged with disorderly conduct, obstructing the public right of way and maybe protesting without a permit.[Protesters will be arrested] if they come here and take their clothes off, obstruct the sidewalk when they disrobe in the city of Peoria.

Source:

Two anti-meat activists arrested. Elaine Hopkins, Peoria Journal Star, August 25, 2005.

In August, the Research Defence Society announced that more than 500 British researchers had signed its Declaration on Animals in Medical Research, including three Nobel laureates and 190 Fellows of the Royal Society.

The Declaration highlights the important contributions made by animal research to benefit humanity and underscores the importance of further research. Fifteen years ago, a similar declaration was circulated by the Research Defence Society which ultimately garnered 1,000 signatures including six Nobel laureates.

Simon Festing, executive director of the Research Defence Society, said in a press release that,

We are delighted to have gathered over 500 signatures from top UK academic scientists and doctors in less than one month. It shows the strength and depth of support for humane animal research in this country. Abolitionist groups often claim that their position has scientific or medical support, but itÂ’s no surprise that they cannot back this up.

Cancer researcher Nick Wright, dean of Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry explained why he signed the Declaration,

I have signed this Declaration because I recognise the enormous contribution made to modern health care and public health by animals in medical research. As the pace of discovery quickens, it becomes even more important if we are to maintain this momentum. This is why I believe that we should all publicly acknowledge our debt to animal experimentation.

The full text of the Declaration reads,

Declaration on Animals in Medical Research

Throughout the world people enjoy a better quality of life because of advances made
possible through medical research, and the development of new medicines and other
treatments. A small but vital part of that work involves the use of animals.

In 1990, top scientists and physicians from the UK, as well as Nobel Laureates,
signed a Declaration that stated, among other things:

“Experiments on animals have made an important contribution to advances in medicine and surgery,
which have brought major improvements in the health of human beings and animals.”

Fifteen years later

We reaffirm our support for the 1990 Declaration, and for the statement from the House of Lords Select Committee
on Animals in Scientific Procedures (2002) that: “there is a continued need for animal experimentation both in applied
research and in research aimed purely at extending knowledge” and for the statement from the Royal Society report
The Use of Non-Human Animals in Research (2004) that: “humans have benefited immensely from scientific research involving
animals, with virtually every medical achievement in the past century reliant on the use of animals in some way”.

Animal welfare

We acknowledge and respect the sentience of animals. Until we no longer require animals in research, animal
welfare is of paramount importance. We aim to gain the benefits from animal research with minimal suffering
and distress. It is crucial to promote best practice and maintain a culture of care in research establishments.
Every effort must be made to: replace the use of live animals by alternative techniques; reduce the number of
animals used to the minimum required for meaningful results; and refine the procedures and improve housing
to ensure the well-being of the animals.

Controls

The UK is widely acknowledged to have the most rigorous controls on animal research in the world. Both
institutions and individuals must adhere to legislation governing the use of animals in research.

Openness

We wish to see an open and responsible debate about the use of animals for all purposes. This can be difficult
in the face of animal rights extremism. We encourage institutions to provide clear information about animal
research, and foster rational discussion about the ethical, medical and scientific issues.

Ethics

All use of animals by society should be considered in an ethical context. Proposals to use animals in science must
be critically evaluated and justified. The validity, usefulness and relevance of the research need to be demonstrated
in every case. Research using animals should be subject to cost / benefit assessment and ethical review.

Signed (as individual)

Sources:

Animal testing backed by 500 UK scientists. Reuters, August 25, 2005.

15 years on: top scientists and doctors back animal research. Press Release, Research Defence Society, August 24, 2005.

Animal rights activist Andrew Christie — who has previously written that the World Earth Summit should make plans for converting the entire planet to veganism — penned a defense of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ campaign comparing slaves to chickens and cows slaughtered for food.

Published on Common Dreams, Christie first fired a rhetorical shot at Carl ’s Jr.’s for a spate of recent ads for its chicken,

Last July, the Santa Barbara News-Press asked Carl’s Jr. CEO Andrew Puzder about complaints concerning his company’s “edgy” ads — including “soft-porn images of a sexy babe gyrating on a mechanical bull or Paris Hilton’s washing a Bentley while barely dressed” — and his company’s current campaign encouraging viewers to think of animals as too dumb to live . . . Pudzer’s reply, that the ads are “not intended to insult or demean anybody,” would not seem to merit a response, but it’s worth noting that these ads are all of a piece and in fact insult and demand one more group beyond the obvious: The 18-to-34-year-old male demographic they’re aimed at. They all send an unmistakable message: We know what level to reach you on. Women and animals are here for your pleasure. Use them.

Not surprisingly, Christie doesn’t waste a single word of his essay on any of PETA’s far more provocative ads that depict women in sexual situations with the explicit message that going vegan is all that stands between the male viewer of the ads and sexual satisfaction with a mostly naked model. Not to mention the PETA ads which depict women being explicitly brutalized.

As for PETA’s ads comparing slaves to farm animals, Christie argues they don’t go far enough,

PETA got it wrong in New Haven in only one respect: Animals are not “the new slaves.” They’re the first ones. They’re the ones who got the worst a dominator culture had to offer, and the worst has lately gotten much worse, as a quick tour through a Confined Animal Feeding Operation will demonstrate to anyone in possession of two or three of his senses and lacking a vested interest in the company’s quarterly profit statement.

One can imagine a slave hunting to fortify his meager diet and being informed that he is part of dominator culture oppressing the original slaves.

The larger lesson of Darwin (there are no superior species, only differently adapted ones) has not yet sunk in; instead, we are still ruled in every way that matters by the medieval Great Chain of Being, on which we placed ourselves one rung below the angels and far above all other manner of beaste, most low, foule and uncleane. When a black man in New Haven sees images of his ancestors and a cow side by side, equally mistreated and commodified, he is conditioned to see only the comparative sullying of his godliness, not the cruelty that is the lot of sentient beings who have no rights. He fears he will be cast down by the implication that the lot of the oppressed should be raised up.

. . .

Changing those paradigms were (and are) hard fights, but the animal rights movement is fighting 10,000 years of cultural conditioning (memo to the 18-to-34-year-old male demographic: it’s like The Matrix, dudes) and the tendency of the disenfranchised, in the words of Howard Zinn, to fall upon each other “with such vehemence and violence as to obscure their common position as sharers of leftovers in a very wealthy country.”

Thus the good people of New Haven recoil, the NAACP shouts at PETA, and the pundits trot out safe, predictable outrage, using generations of conditioning to studiously miss the point. It’s a fight amongst ourselves on a deeper level than usual. It misses not only the fact of our increasing disenfranchisement but the dysfunctional ways in which the disproportionately distributed wealth is produced by a system that is impoverishing the Earth and our ethical sense alike. One of that system’s most fundamental control measures persuades people that in their visceral rejection of the truth PETA is laying down, they are standing up for their dignity and humanity, when, in reality, they are defending a system in which commonality of suffering is not on the agenda, the members of only a single species have any right to life, liberty and freedom from harm, a chicken is of value only as a sandwich, and the idea that a chicken might be of value to the chicken is an idea that must not be thought.

The animal rights reading of Darwin always amazes me. Christie’s view is common — before Darwin was this oppressive Great Chain of Being (at least in the West), and afterward we’re all one great big family, none of us more or less equal than the other. But by eliminating God from the equation, Darwin also obliterated traditional moral foundations. Before Darwin, it might have been a legitimate question to wonder why a creature like a tiger or a disease like the plague existed that could attack man. After Darwin, the answer was fairly straightforward — natural selection had, in each instance, acted without intent to create such creatures. The same reasoning applies to human beings. Why did human beings hunt other animals or develop settled agriculture? Because, in at least a very broad sense, of natural selection. If we are to reduce morality to the genes, everything I do is neither necessarily moral or immoral but rather is simply my best effort to pass along my genes to the next generation.

To say that killing animals is bad or good requires introduction of moral theories external to natural selection. The fact that all species are descended from the same small set of organisms at some time early in life’s history tells me nothing about whether or not it is morally permissible to eat beef.

Sources:

The Elephant in the Living Room Is a Cow. Andrew Christie, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Undated.

Tags: Andrew Christie, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
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