Beyond Belief: June 2008 Archives

"I hate the whole god damn human race" - this is making me crazy, this world we live in, these people, this system. I see nothing of value in anyone who doesn't acknowledge our moral culpability.

"The video content shows a highly placed PRCA official repeatedly and covertly applying an electrical shocking device to horses necks, faces, and other body parts to force them to buck out of their stalls...even within sight of a "judging official". One horse collapses moments after being shocked and does not get up."

This treatment may appear innocuous, however, common sense would suggest otherwise. Consider the violence of a high-charged electrical pulse; High Life Gal collapsed after being "encouraged" with just such a pulse. What a crime this is, and we know who the victims are.  

And just like eating individual chickens because we enjoy the taste of their flesh, rodeos are simply abuse and cruelty for entertainment. That's it; no need, nothing essential, just the good down home fun of using a weapon to force a feeling horse to jump about. Indeed, the very use of the shocking device is an implicit acknowledgment that the horse does in fact experience the pain to such a degree that they're literally transformed (through force) into the bucking and aggressive horse so prized in this so-called "sport."

How do we not understand that this is finding pleasure in seeing cruelty done and nothing more? I think it's telling that those who were caught doing this denied their actions, quite telling indeed.         

From Showing Animals Respect and Kindness, or S.H.A.R.K.

Thanks go out to 4th Time for bringing this to my attention.

Hidden camera video recorded in early 2008 at Gemperle Enterprises in Merced County, California, a supplier to NuCal Foods Inc. - the largest distributor of shell eggs in the Western US - reveals:

• Rotting carcasses in cages with live hens still laying eggs for human consumption.
• Birds suffering from untreated broken bones, open wounds, infections and prolapses.
• Workers brutally killing sick hens by grabbing their heads and swinging their bodies around to break their necks, or through neck-twisting, often resulting in a prolonged, torturous death.
• Workers roughly and forcefully handling birds, resulting in injuries, such as broken bones and blunt trauma.
• Hens covered in excrement, confined five to seven per cage the size of a file drawer, unable to stretch their wings, move freely or exercise.
• Crippled hens left to languish in cage aisles without access to food, water, or veterinary care.

From Mercy For Animals: California Egg Industry Exposed!

According to John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America,

the number of animals killed per hour for meat in the U.S. alone is 660,000.  

This means that 5,280,000 individual animals were killed during the eight hours that you were at work today because we think they taste good. That's 211,200,000 lives taken during a single forty hour work week. The end result is 9 billion animals killed annually in the U.S. alone to satisfy our preferences (some estimate that the number is closer to 10 billion).

It's difficult for me to even comprehend these numbers. And some would have us believe that the plight of nonhumans ought to be beyond our ethical concern.     

Thanks go out to Ethical Eating.org   

Watch this video. Before you do, however, you should know that the dogs survived the shooting; although one will loose an eye.

Here is the back-story.

Witnesses argue that these two husky dogs had been playing with each other in the pasture and the surrounding areas for approximately two hours prior to being shot. The man seen shooting the dogs, over seven times if I'm accurate, has attempted to justify his actions by suggesting that he was "protecting his friends property" (properly known as cows!) from these two "predators" - wolves, he said.

Witnesses dismiss this justification because the dogs were in fact posing no threat at all. Indeed, as the dogs had been in the area for hours playing and making their presence known to all, including the cows, this "threat" defense is baseless. The dogs also had tags, and their person can be seen running into the video as the shooting began. It is clear from the evidence that the dogs were simply off-leash, acting as dogs do, indeed as two friendly animals (and people) behave when together: playing, or doing whatever two individuals do.

Officials apparently thought, however, that such behavior warrented a death sentence, as they initially allowed the shooter to leave without being charged with a crime. However, when the video surfaced, showing the man walking up to the stationary animals and shooting them, which he continued to do as they ran away from him and as their person appealed to the shooter to stop, authorities have apparently re-opened the case and are considering animal cruelty charges. An outcome that is likely, from what I understand.

You felt that moral pang inside when you watched the video didn't you? The person recording this indefensable act certainly did.

Now, please watch this video. 

This is occurring everyday. It's happening as you read this sentence, in our country and throughout the world.

You feel the same moral pang don't you?

The experimenters will deny that they feel such a pang, insisting that "animals can't suffer" (well, why do we care about the dogs then?). If you pay attention when discussing this with scientists you will notice that this insistence that animals can't suffer is a little too emotional, to the point of a tantrum, to be plausibly considered driven by a serious consideration of the issue and common sense as opposed to mere necessity. Why do they do this? Because if these scientists admit reality then they are implicitly admitting to cruelty, and they don't want to do that even though they know they are in fact performing acts of torure. 

Bernard E. Rollin points out how the experimenter will use linguistic disguises like "sacrifice," suggesting some kind of noble selfless act for the greater good being undertaken by the monkey, to hide their moral culpability. Do you believe that those monkeys are being "sacrificed" or simply brutalized?

Why, then, the outrage over the dogs and not the monkeys?

"Having granted some protections to animals," Matthew Scully writes,

"we are constantly confronted with the logic of our own laws, troubled by perfectly rational connections between the random "wanton" acts of cruelty that the law forbids and the systematic, institutional cruelties it still permits. If this animal is to be protected, why not his identical one, too?"

Indeed, Mr. Scully. Let's charge the shooter for his attempted murder of the dogs, and let's charge the scientists for their torture and murder of the monkeys. Or we could simply remain irrational and arbitrary, clinging to the old ways like the husband-patriarch who "loves his wife" but refuses to acknowledge and respect her decision to leave the home and find a job of her own because it's natural for her to cook dinner and receive a weekly allowance.    

Crossposted @ Vegan Soapbox