Animalkind: What We Owe to Animals

Food for Thought:

»        We eat the same animals that we admire. At the Sea Life Center in Seward, Alaska, there are crabs and shrimp in display tanks and on the lunch menu.

»        Perplexity about animals is nothing new.  Eskimos justified killing whales with the belief that they “give themselves to the people.”  Meat eating is an issue in the very first chapter of Genesis, where God tells the first humans to be vegetarians.

»        Aristotle teaches that animals exist to be eaten, like a mother’s milk exists to feed her babies.  Yet he never went as far as philosophy’s most extreme animal demoter, 17^th century philosopher Rene Descartes, who saw animals as nature’s robots.

»        The line between human and animal minds is gradually fading, as psychology sees more that is instinctive and non-rational in human minds, and more that is “smart” in animal minds.

»        Nothing upset America after Hurricane Katrina like scenes of abandoned animals.  Congress has mandated advanced planning for pets, but how far should we go?  Is it “speciesist” to give priority to human beings?

»        A new wave of animal advocates (like Temple Grandin and Matthew Scully) are seeing that equality isn’t the concept best suited for animal advocacy.  Kazez proposes “all due respect” as the prime directive where animals are concerned.

»        Giving animals all due respect rules out using them for luxuries, but permits using them for necessities.  Fur coats and ivory piano keys are obviously luxuries. Once meat was a necessity, making it hard to see that today it’s a luxury.

»        Animals aren’t being respected in factory farms where pigs and chickens are packed together as tightly as cars in a parking lot.

»        One third of the earth’s surface is now covered in grazing livestock—mainly cattle and sheep--and feedcrops.  The resulting deforestation is a cause of global warming and species extinctions.

»        An animal advocate guided by respect does not have to condemn a Jonas Salk, but should ask for better regulation of animal research in the US.  The Animal Welfare Act does not mandate holding researchers to the highest ethical standards.

»        The animal conundrum won’t be resolved in a flash of moral clarity, since animals are “in between”—not just furry robots, as Descartes thought, but not “people too.”