POLITICS JANUARY 9, 2012
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A week before Christmas, Russia banned the import of harp seal pelts—the skins of those undeniably cute animals with their big, melting eyes and their cuddly bodies. This followed a similar ban in the E.U. and the U.S., both of which have forbidden the import of almost all seal products. Prominent animals rights activists, like Paul McCartney and Pamela Anderson as well as groups like Humane Society International, hate seal hunting—and I understand their objections. I had a toy stuffed seal when I was a kid. (Name: Sealy). But, ethically speaking, seals are the last animals activists should be trying to protect—and the latest example of misguided animal rights priorities. It’s time to pay attention to the animals who suffer most, not the ones that are most photogenic.
First, let’s consider questions of scale. Seals are killed in much smaller numbers than most of the hundreds of millions of animals killed in North America every year. In 2009, Canadian hunters killed 72,400 harp seals (that’s out of 9 million harp seals, four times more than existed in the 1970s—they’re not an endangered species). That same year, over 113 million hogs were slaughtered in the U.S., not to mention 33 million cattle and 2.6 million sheep.
Some activists, however, seem to care more about justification than absolute numbers and find it egregious that seals are killed so that we can make things from their skins, but more acceptable that we kill most pigs and cows for food. The International Anti-Fur Coalition, led by one Mitzi Ocean (whose name sounds like it came from P.G. Wodehouse), goes to protests brandishing signs that say “Don’t Kill Babies for Fashion and Money.” This logic extends beyond seals. Responding to the killing of bulls in Spanish arenas, the comedian Ricky Gervais has said, “It sickens me to know that in this day and age, people are still paying money to see an animal suffering in such a horrific way.” Killing seals for fashion or bulls for entertainment, the logic goes, is even more loathsome than killing them for food.
There are a few responses to this. If you’ve ever cooked for yourself without relying on meat, you quickly realize the stuff is hardly more necessary for survival than a seal pelt coat. (Mark Bittman, among others, has long been promoting the idea that we all can and should eat less meat, regardless of our feelings toward vegetarianism.) Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, raising animals for food—in most places in America—prompts as many ethical questions, if not more, than hunting them for fashion or killing them for entertainment. The abuses endemic to industrial agriculture have been well documented: pens that prevent animals from seeing the light of day, animals that are pumped full of steroids, death via conveyor belt. Not only are factory farm animals killed, they’re forced to live constricted, painful lives. Seals, on the other hand, live in the wild their whole lives. They get to flop around on their bellies to their hearts’ content until some hunter tiptoes around a snow bank and bops them on the head. And a bull’s life is also immeasurably better than the lot of its factory brethren, at least until it arrives in the ring. It paws the dry earth of Andalusia and charges around under the Spanish sun until it is big and strong, then experiences an afternoon’s pain, then death. (And by the way, contrary to what many people think, the meat of bulls killed in the ring is eaten. Before I became a vegetarian, I had a plateful in a pilgrim’s hostel in northern Spain.)
Yes, a bull’s death in the ring is more painful than a cow’s death in a slaughterhouse, and I don’t wish to excuse the brutality of this tradition. But slaughterhouses often provide animals with a gruesome death, too. According to a 2008 federal audit, the stun guns meant to knock cows out before they’re killed sometimes don’t work, which means animals end up being cut into pieces while fully conscious. And this raises another question: Why is the brutality of the animals’ death set above the brutality of their lives? Shouldn’t we be more concerned about animals with a terrible quality of life and an often-miserable death than about harp seals and fighting bulls, which have charmed lives but more starkly violent deaths?
The inordinate sway of emotional appeal (whether it stems from appreciation of adorableness or disgust toward gruesomeness) has affected the recent debate over horses as well. In late November, Congress effectively re-legalized slaughtering horses for human consumption when it approved funding for horse meat inspections after a five-year lapse in the practice. (President Barack Obama signed the bill.) Animal rights activists had a conniption. One Daily KOS blogger said the decision made him “sick.” The Animal Law Coalition vented it’s displeasure at length. A whole slew of animal groups jumped on the bandwagon.
But it seems likely that these activists are swayed by the epic and admirable connotations we attach to horses. (Think Black Beauty, National Velvet, Seabiscuit, Secretariat, Barbaro, and War Horse. You’d probably be hard pressed to come up with a similar list of heroic cows.) When you set these associations aside, why should horses get a free pass from the slaughterhouse? Compared to most animals killed for their meat, horses have it easy; they aren’t raised for their meat, and they are usually kept by doting owners in lavish stables with plenty of room to graze and gallop.
There are plenty of animals in more urgent need of the intercession of Congress than these equine prima donnas. Assisting them would be like sending humanitarian aid to a small colony of starving supermodels, while ignoring a famine in a country of five million frumpy cleaning ladies. You could almost call such a thing barbaric.
Eric Andrew-Gee is a former New Republic intern.
11 comments
"But, ethically speaking, seals are the last animals activists should be trying to protect" Huh? "Ethically speaking" it is a very different proposition to say we should not club baby wild animals to death than to promote the end or massive constraints on animal agriculture. You may want to sign on to both, or you may not, but to say that one trumps the other seems to be no more than crankiness in the service of saying something contrarian enough to get attention.
- IowaBeauty
January 9, 2012 at 8:44am
iowa, right, this is definitely the work of an intern. "equine prima donnas" Seriously?? I get he is talking about proportionality but he sounds like an aggrieved High Schooler who resents the in crowd. Down here all the meat I eat is free range but that is pretty much the necessity of it, I doubt the economy would function if it were tried in the states. As to the poor little miss Piggies, if you can show me way to ease their plight without pricing Pork off the menu for the poor and Middle class, then do so, otherwise don't try to force your food preference on the poor and middle class, things are bad enough as it is, now the writer seems to think that only the well to do should be able to afford meat. "let them eat rice" is a ridiculous rallying cry.
- blackton
January 9, 2012 at 10:21am
" I understand their objections. I had a toy stuffed seal when I was a kid. (Name: Sealy). " ha.
- subterran
January 9, 2012 at 11:39am
"Compared to most animals killed for their meat, horses have it easy; ... and they are usually kept by doting owners in lavish stables with plenty of room to graze and gallop." That would be news to me. Perhaps this is true of the horses little girls get to ride, but "usually" would be a pretty big stretch for say, the racing industry. As for "... and bops them on the head" - while not wanting to diminish the foul conditions industrially farmed animals live in that the author is absolutely correct about, engaging in white-washing of other animal termination practices probably isn't the best way to get your message across. These aren't birds (most of which can be fairly reliably killed with a single bop to the head) we're talking about here.
- Nari224
January 9, 2012 at 2:15pm
Where to begin. First Eric conflates the slaughtering of animals for fashion, pleasure and entertainment and slaughtering of animals for food. The two are not equal on an ethical level whatsoever I think. The argument made by most animal-rights activists is that killing animals for the former is nothing more than speciesism. Whether you believe that to be true or not doesn't matter. I think most could agree that clubby a baby seal to make a hat for Lady Gaga or leg-trapping a Bengal tiger to make a jacket for Kanye West is complete nonsense and is not related to how Tyson chicken raises it's pork. There is a distinction between what was historically used for clothing and what is now used for decoration. Humans have always (since we walked the earth and had the need for leather) made use of animals. But the hunter / farmer relationship was different 100/200/1000 years ago. Do we have obligations to treat animals raised for food in an ethical manner and process them equally so? Yes. Does this mean that because National Beef doesn't slaughter cows in an ethical and humane manner that we should stop paying attention to Japan's whaling or the use of minks for fur coats? The slaughtering of animals for food however is a completely different discussion when we start framing the debate between the ethical way of raising and processing animals for meat and by-products and the unethical way that the meat/poultry/pork industry has been commoditized and industrialized through the maximization of CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations). As an omnivore, I've pretty much cut 90% of meat from my diet because 95% of the meat out there is tainted, raised unethically and slaughtered equally so. I still eat fish and try to buy wild and local when seasons allow here in NOLA (oyster season just started!) but the primary source of red meat in our household is from the deer & feral pig that I hunt myself, clean myself and process myself. I choose wisely for what I need for the year and don't take excess. As a hunter and former horse owner, I don't shoot predators and wouldn't unless my life was at risk and protecting livestock can be done with non-lethal means. And I say a little prayer of thanks for every deer or pig I've taken. But that's me. I still, on special occasions will shell out for steaks or chicken but I opt for the humane, free-range options and my cousin-in-law is starting an organic chicken and cow farm two hours away. Which means I'll be able to source from him soon too. In fact, the situation on the ground is changing at the local level. Here's an article about a Jewish cowboy who does ritual slaughtering for his community in Colorado. http://www.hcn.org/issues/43.20/hersh-saunders-transformation-from-prosthodontist-to-kosher-slaughterer Would Eric consider that type of animal husbandry less ethical than clubbing a baby seal? My position on killing animals (tigers, whales, wolves, baby seals, bull-fighting, etc.) for sport/pleasure/fashion is that the much of the reasons given by some are anachronistic and baseless and really only serve to illustrate their biases towards animals in general. We, as civilized animals, be able to take the high road and realize that needless slaughtering does little except hasten the demise of our species as we continue to maximize what we take and minimize what we put back. Eric seems to think horse slaughter is no-big-deal either. I suppose if one is being contrarian but in America the horse-slaughter business has been controversial for a while. Most of the horses slaughtered were sold to international markets (France and China) and most of those horses are abused, neglected, old, diseased, or were culled by the BLM from the wild Mustang herds of the American West. I wonder if Eric would feel as flippant about other animals we shouldn't get to worked up about in the same way if I propose that all "excess" dogs and cats euthanized in America's animal shelters be processed into hot-pockets and sold to America's hungry inner-city kids and exported to China as "chicken".
- singlspeed
January 9, 2012 at 3:40pm
First and foremost, we are purportedly moral beings and that brings with it the obligation to minimize the harm we cause others, regardless of how we value them, and this especially means those that we don't value at all. The "food" argument is specious simply because humans do not need meat to sustain life and health. We eat meat because we exalt ourselves above accountability to the harm we cause our victims, there is no one to hold us accountable for our crimes, and we place our desires above the well being of our victims. So much for any discussion of ethics. The definition of immorality is ignoring the harm we cause others, simply because the perpetrator of harm exalts him or herself above his or her victim. The seals are worthy of consideration and protection because they are sentient and we are "moral" beings, contrary to what sociopaths will argue.
- jeffbiss
January 9, 2012 at 8:35pm
What a stupid column. Speaking as a vegetarian and a horse lover, the fact that bulls are killed in the ring isn't right and neither is the fact that seals are murdered, AND they are not more important than pigs, chickens, turkeys and cows, which are not more or less important than horses. Fact: we should stop the wholesale killing of animals PERIOD. This includes shelter animals and MOST DEFINITELY animals victimized by the wholesale, mindless, stupid destruction of habitat. What is wrong with us.
- Sophia
January 9, 2012 at 9:16pm
OK so maybe it isn't a totally stupid column, at least it raised the subject. So, ok, thanks for doing that.
- Sophia
January 9, 2012 at 9:17pm
Note: I struggle with the ethical issues involved in feeding my pet cats. But they have no choice other than to be carnivores. At the very least we owe our animals, all of them, dignified lives and pain free, terror free deaths.
- Sophia
January 9, 2012 at 9:18pm
I agree with the overall sentiment of this article. What these factory farms do to pigs, cows, sheep, and especially chickens in this country is absolutely unacceptable, and downright insidious. However, Andrew-Gee somewhat ignores the significance of the movements surrounding this injustice. In my former college, I was given pamphlets weekly regarding this issue, and I read about it every now and again in major media. It is a well known injustice, but the author is certainly right that it by all means should be much more well known.
- Madara
January 9, 2012 at 10:41pm
Seals. Mmm, yummy. "Chicken of the Sea"! I had a stuffed seal as a kid too (Name: Clubby)
- mdichner
January 10, 2012 at 2:17pm