In Praise of Open Rescue

by Stephanie Ernst

categories: Activism and Actions, Farm Animals, Investigations and Rescues

Published March 12, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT

It takes bravery and great dedication to be a part of open rescues. It is an emotionally taxing form of activism that puts the rescuers at real risk, but it is lifesaving and eye-opening work, and such rescuers have my utmost admiration. From the Open Rescue site, for those who aren't familiar:

Open Rescue is based on giving aid, rescue and veterinary treatment to any animal known to be suffering and in pain, yet trapped in confined conditions where they have been neglected and/or abandoned to slowly die. The focus is primarily on factory farms, the largest area of animal abuse in the world. The immediate aim of open rescue is to save lives and secondly to document the cruel conditions forced upon literally billions of animals around the world.

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Rescue workers openly identify themselves and work as professionally and diligently as their colleagues in other rescue areas such as fire fighters, state emergency services or ambulance personnel. Unfortunately, until the rights of non-human animals are universally accepted it is necessary to sometimes trespass to perform the life-saving rescue work.

Open Rescue is based on the moral premise that it is wrong to knowingly let any individual, regardless of their species, die an unnecessarily slow, agonizing and painful death. Rescue workers are bound by compassion, competence and a willingness to always help others in need.

Patty Mark, founder of the open rescue movement and of Animal Liberation Victoria (ALV) in Australia, is a remarkable, inspiring advocate (and I take completely illogical pride in the fact that she hails from rural Illinois, as do I). We could use so many more like her. And animal activists in the United States and around the world agree--including, clearly, a group of increasingly active advocates in Spain (basic English-language site here), for example, whose recent open-rescue work I have posted on before (see "Pig Farm Investigation: A Video You Must See").

Below is one of the videos from ALV's Open Rescue archives: It documents the rescue of six hens and the conditions of the animals at a "broiler parent breeder farm"--like the hens who are exploited and ultimately killed for eggs, the chickens who are raised and killed for their flesh must come from somewhere. Here is one such place.