Animalkind: What We Owe to Animals

The modern factory farm packs chickens and pigs into the smallest possible space, giving them short lives that are not worth living.  Around the world, people will eat over 525 billion pounds of meat this year.   At the same time, the latest fad at American malls is the pet commissary, where customers can buy outfits for their dogs and cats and even stage canine birthday parties.

Clearly we are confused about animals.  
 
In her new book, ANIMALKIND: What We Owe to Animals (Wiley-Blackwell, January 2010), Jean Kazez argues that our confusion comes from a failure to confront the most basic questions about animals and ourselves.  We pretend that we are not animals, and yet we are.  We pretend animals are just like us, and yet they are not. Drawing on recent research on consciousness and animal minds, Kazez puts ethical reflection in a realistic framework.
 
Kazez joins authors like Temple Grandin (Animals in Translation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) and Matthew Scully (Dominion) in both advocating passionately for animals and rejecting one of the orthodoxies of the animal rights movement—that animals are our equals. She makes a carefully argued case that we owe animals not equal status, but “all due respect”—respect that varies with the species.   

ANIMALKIND: What We Owe to Animals (Wiley-Blackwell, January 2010) explores the animal conundrum in vivid detail, beginning on a boat in Resurrection Bay, Alaska, where Kazez puzzles over the way we admire animals and then devour them, often in quick succession.  Though acute in modern times, puzzlement about animals is nothing new.  From Eskimos to the Ainu of Japan to ancient Israelites, most cultures have tried to justify using animals as resources, despite the bond we feel with them. Self-serving stories gave way to theories in the western philosophical tradition, but Kazez shows that philosophers from Aristotle to Descartes and beyond have failed to get a handle on the animal question.
 
The most basic of questions is why a human being’s most acute need to survive ought to take priority over an animal’s, in the primordial scene where prehistoric humans squared off against prehistoric beasts.  If we can understand that, Kazez argues, we can sort out some of our modern dilemmas.  A chapter on modern animal experimentation argues that Jonas Salk had all the sanction for experimenting on animals that a hungry caveman had to kill for survival, but much of what happens in today’s animal labs is indefensible.
 
ANIMALKIND: What We Owe to Animals (Wiley-Blackwell, January 2010) mixes the lucidity of contemporary philosophy with the vivid color of anthropology and a modern newsfeed.   Driven throughout by slices of life and real-world dilemmas, the book entertains as it guides the reader through the vast and varied terrain of our relationship with animals.  Should we eat animals?  Kazez explores not just the arguments for and against (and decides against), but also the struggles of the regretful vegetarian. Kazez guides us toward giving animals their due without being a preacher. This is the sensible man or woman’s guide to animal rights.