Hunting
EU Committee Endorses Ban on Seal Products; Hunt Is "Inherently Inhumane"
Published March 02, 2009 @ 12:51PM PT
The European Parliament's committee on market and consumer protection today endorsed a bill "that would impose a tight ban on the import of all seal products to the 27-nation bloc."
The bill calls for EU rules "prohibiting the placing on the market and the import to, transit through, or export from" the EU of seal products.
It does, however, grant a "limited" exemption for Inuit communities from Canada and Greenland to continue to trade pelts, oils or meat derived from their seal hunts "for cultural, educational, or ceremonial purposes."
The lawmakers endorsed a plan that branded the hunting of seals, notably in Canada[,] as "inherently inhumane," and called on the EU to answer public demands for a ban on what many animal rights groups have called a senseless slaughter.
To become law, the bill will still need the approval of the entire EU assembly and EU governments, which could come as soon as April.
Read the rest of the Canadian Press article here.
Need more information on the annual, brutal commercial seal hunt in Canada? Check out this informative page, in FAQ style, from Canadian animal rights group Liberation BC. See also Liberation BC's take on PETA's new Olympics-themed campaign against the seal hunt.
Killing the Lions to Save the Deer--To Kill the Deer
Published February 16, 2009 @ 07:56AM PT
Yes, we again enter the bizarre land of hunting and "wildlife management" logic, otherwise known as WTF? 101. Some of you may recall that I posted on the "management" of deer in late November, featuring excerpts from and linking to some excellent commentary and evidence supplied by Doris Lin of About.com. Here's the introduction from that post: "Think that hunting is all about reducing deer populations? What if you learned that state wildlife agencies actually work to keep deer populations high--for the benefit of hunters who want to kill the deer and for the financial incentives involved for the state?"
And from one side of the country to the other these days, the so-called management of deer and other animal populations is a hot topic.
But Nevada--oh, Nevada takes the cake, at least for the moment. I learned via AP and the San Jose Mercury News this morning that "state wildlife officials have announced a plan to kill more mountain lions to help increase the deer population." And when asked to defend this decision, whom did Nevada's director of its Department of Wildlife cite as his expert advisers recommending this action? Hunters. Shocking. "Some hunters think the solution to the deer problem is to kill a lot of lions and the deer will come back." The hunters--that's what this is all about. This isn't about "saving" any deer; it's about preserving the chance to kill them for a species that doesn't need to kill them by killing off another species that does need to hunt them for survival. It's about humans needlessly killing one set of animals so that humans can have the perverse pleasure of needlessly killing another set of animals. From the Mercury News:
Nevada's deer population fell from 240,000 in 1988 to 108,000 in 2008, while its current lion population ranges from 1,500 to 2,400, according to the wildlife department.
"Basically, what they're doing is applying the Sarah Palin method of wildlife management, which is to remove animals with big teeth in order to promote the animals hunters like to shoot," said D.J. Schubert, a wildlife biologist with the Animal Welfare Institute based in Washington D.C.
"It's an archaic form of wildlife management. Unfortunately, they're making the mountain lion a scapegoat, despite the importance of the mountain lion as a top-line predator in any ecosystem," he said.
And of course, who gets to kill all these mountain lions? Sport hunters! "The state Board of Wildlife Commissioners, meeting in Reno last week, directed agency staff to pursue the policy with the help of sport hunters and contract employees from the U.S. Agriculture Department's Wildlife Services." It's a win-win for the hunters. They want to keep killing deer, and now the state government is telling them that they can kill bunches of mountain lions too, to make their deer hunting even easier.
Tell you what, Nevada. You implement a program to thin the herd of human hunters who are out there killing Nevada's deer every year, and maybe I'll take your concern for deer populations seriously. Until then, I'm reminded of the following pre-election Friends of Animals ad, which I shared with you in early October. Unfortunately, it's not true that you must be in Alaska. It happens all over.
(And omnivores who may be tempted to join the bashing of Nevada's plan, please keep in mind that this is just another version of the "Kill the coyotes-or-other-natural-predators to save the cows--to kill the cows" practice that goes along with ranching and, yes, "free-range" farming.)
Don't Worry, Palin; We're Still Paying Attention to You
Published February 05, 2009 @ 07:04AM PT
Just not the kind of attention you'd like.
A new Web site from Defenders of Wildlife, EyeOnPalin.org, vows to keep "exposing Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's anti-conservation agenda." See the video:
Palin, unsurprisingly, has a few things to say about the campaign. And equally unsurprising is the fact that despite responding, she has managed to say nothing of substance, nothing to counter the obvious truth that her wolf-killing efforts are anything but despicable.
See her indignant response to Defenders of Wildlife here.
And then see Defenders of Wildlife's counter to it:
As we've seen before, what you often get in response from Governor Palin when she is challenged is not a rational defense of what she’s doing, but rather name calling and a very transparent attempt at spin control. But then again, since there is no defense for her aerial wolf slaughter program, it may be that she feels there really isn’t much else she can do.
Governor Palin speaks of "science" supporting her aerial killing program, but in spite of numerous requests, they have never produced anything even resembling reasonable scientific justification. . . . Literally hundreds of wildlife scientists have repeatedly condemned her program and she has not once provided any evidence to refute their charges that what she is doing is unscientific.
The Cycle of Violence
Published February 01, 2009 @ 10:23AM PT
In the comment thread to Saturday's post about the mass killing of starlings in New Jersey, Change.org member Sue shared a thoughtful, thought-provoking quotation about the cycle of violence that humans perpetuate against other animals and fellow humans as well--one form of violence forms the basis for another form, and so on and so on, and if we could stop one kind, we could make real progress toward stopping so many others. I now share that quotation with the rest of you. It features a line of thought that I've considered before and read and heard elsewhere, but I'd not yet seen this quotation in its entirety. Much thanks to Sue for posting it:
Isn’t man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife - birds, kangaroos, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes, and dingoes - by the millions in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billions and eats them. This in turn kills man by the millions, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year sends out a card praying for "Peace on Earth."
– from the preface to Old MacDonald's Factory Farm, by C. David Coats
Close-up of sheep: jpockele at Flickr
Don't Take Away My Gun, Judge--I Only Hit My Wife
Published January 21, 2009 @ 06:53AM PT
Out of Wyoming yesterday came some disturbing news that highlights our society's flippant attitude toward violence once again. And though I'm somewhat hesitant to post twice in a row on an issue not directly related to animal rights, I can certainly make the connections. First is the fact that, certainly, the reason many Wyoming men desperately want to hold onto their guns is to kill animals with them. Second is the truth that all violence, all oppression, is related; whether directed toward animals, women, or those of a race, culture, or religion different from the oppressor's, it is all based in the same foundation and intertwined. So let's get on with it.
From Cheyenne, Wyoming:
A bill that would require Wyoming judges to warn defendants that they would lose their federal gun rights by pleading guilty to misdemeanor domestic violence charges received preliminary approval in the state Senate on Monday.
The Senate unanimously approved Senate File 70, sponsored by Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander. The bill would also classify misdemeanor domestic violence as a serious offense requiring defendants to have lawyers.
Speaking in favor of the bill at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier Monday, Case said, "We still have a situation in the United States of America where you can lose a constitutional right, the Second Amendment, for a misdemeanor crime."
Congress in 1996 expanded the law that bans convicted felons from owning guns to apply to people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence.
The article continues in all its you've-got-to-be-kidding-me glory, but I'll let you read it for yourself. The so-called problem is that we "have a situation" in which men can lose their guns just for beating up their wives or girlfriends (and yes, I know that women can be perpetrators of domestic violence too, but let's be realistic about whom this issue mostly applies to). And what exactly is wrong with this supposedly problematic situation? Does Case really think that victims' and potential victims' right to be safe is less important than clearly violent individuals' right to carry deadly weapons?
Even "Suzan Pauling, public policy director of the Wyoming Coalition against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault in Laramie, said her group supports the bill. She said defendants should realize that they face the loss of their gun rights if they're convicted," though she "emphasized that Congress had a reason for taking gun rights away from people convicted of domestic violence."
Yes, and very good reasons at that. People who have been violent before are far more likely to be violent again, and they are the last people who need to be carrying around lethal weapons.
I suppose it's not the law itself that bothers me (I can understand why Pauling doesn't oppose it, as a matter of believing all people should at least be aware of their rights, legal consequences, etc.), but rather the reasoning and justification that has the people who support it worked up. They clearly see flaws not only in the failure of judges to directly advise defendants that their gun rights will be taken away but also in the fact that those gun rights are taken away in response to domestic violence convictions and guilty pleas. (Really, go read Case's statement again; the problem according to him isn't that people don't know their guns will be taken away as a result of a domestic violence record, but rather that their gun rights are taken away for such crimes.)
The whole effort is far more concerned with keeping perpetrators of domestic violence from being convicted than with anything else. Even the effort to "classify misdemeanor domestic violence as a serious offense" isn't being undertaken with victims in mind--there's no goal of deterrence or of increased penalties; rather, those pushing this law through want domestic violence to be considered a serious offense only because those accused of it will then be required to have a lawyer. And although I support the right of every defendant of every crime to be represented by a competent, talented lawyer, it's enormously disconcerting that in a discussion related to domestic violence, everything being discussed here is part of an effort to keep perpetrators of domestic violence from pleading guilty to or being convicted of their crimes--because we don't want them to lose the right to carry and use deadly weapons. After all, how will they get out their aggression by killing innocent animals for fun or threatening (or worse) those close to them if they don't have their guns? The logic of this campaign is baffling.
Maybe if Wyoming were simultaneously ramping up efforts to reduce the domestic violence that lands these gun lovers in court in the first place or increasing funding and resources for domestic violence shelters, I'd be less offended. Until that happens, I'm appalled.
Photo credit: Getty Images.
So You Want to Be a Part of the Food Chain?
Published January 08, 2009 @ 08:00AM PT
On Tuesday, when discussing the Florida incident in which a 663-pound hammerhead shark was killed ("A Celebrated Death and Why There's No Seafood in a Shark"), I mentioned that I now wanted to discuss something related here. If you haven't read the first post yet, go do that now, so that we're all on the same page, with the same information, as we move forward.
The MSNBC journalist who brought us this story, after reducing the shark to nothing but fins and "seafood," even went so far as to say what surely many said about this killing--that "it's a good thing that this one's out of the water too; Valusia County leads the country in the number of shark bites per year." Yes, it's best that we went into this animal's habitat and killed him when we didn't need to because there is an ever-so-slight chance that otherwise, when someone else entered into his habitat without killing tools, he might mistake that person for prey. (And the chance that this ever would have happened really is slight, by the way; hammerhead shark attacks are incredibly rare. The shark bites cited aren't results of hammerhead encounters.)
Shark attacks are awful. They are the stuff of nightmares. And my heart aches for every person who has survived one and for every family who has lost a loved one to a shark attack. But do I blame the sharks? No.
We cannot knowingly take the risk of entering the natural habitats of other animals and then demonize the animals who do only what they are naturally supposed to do in those habitats. We cannot put ourselves in such situations and then use the tragedies-for-humans that result as an excuse to go out and kill these animals without need or reason. When nonhuman animals attack humans, they don't do it for sport; they don't do it so that they can have our bodies hung on a tree or an underwater cave wall. They kill for food and in defense of themselves.
So it's interesting that we congratulate our own kind for going out into the waters (or forests or mountains) and killing these animals unnecessarily for fun, profit, and food--and for doing so with killing tools that make the playing field anything but fair--but then we cry foul when one of those same animals does what he or she is intended by nature to do, what he or she must do to survive: hunt and defend.
We justify our killing and eating of all animals with references to the food chain but then want to place ourselves outside of it. A mountain lion attacks and eats a human? Well then, we have the right--nay, the duty!--to kill any suspected mountain lions until the one whose stomach contains human body parts is found. A bear attacks a human? Well then, it's time for a state to open or increase hunting on those damn vicious bears. One rare pig or bull, after great abuse and a time of unbearable confinement and isolation that would make anyone go mad, turns on a human exploiter, and it's just proof once again that we are civilized, and they are not.
We commandeer and invade their habitats because we are humans, and we have decided it is our human right to do whatever we want with land and fellow animal alike. We kill and eat both free and domesticated nonhuman animals because we are humans, and it is our right as members of the food chain to kill and eat whatever and whomever we can. But when we become part of the food chain against our will, we insist we are suddenly outside it, and those animals who would dare try to drag us into it are savage, immoral, evil beasts.
And this thinking makes no sense. If you think you have the right to eat any nonhuman animal you can catch and kill, you must grant that any nonhuman animal who can catch you has the right to kill and eat you too. If your justification for killing and eating animals is that it's all a part of the cycle of life, I must assume that you would accept large free-roaming carnivores coming into your cities and neighborhoods and hunting you too.
They Kill Each Other, So Why Shouldn't We Kill Them?
Published January 06, 2009 @ 05:57AM PT
In conversations about animal rights and about the moral issues with killing and eating animals, people sometimes put forth the argument that we are justified in killing nonhuman animals, whether via hunting or via slaughterhouse, because other animal species kill and eat other animals too. It's an argument that's been suggested on this blog before. As long as wild nonhuman animals keep killing and eating each other, we should be able to keep killing and eating wild and domesticated animals too--what we're doing is no different, right? Wrong. Take it away, Tom Regan:
Sometimes critics object to animal rights because of how animals treat other animals . . . . For example, critics point out that lions eat gazelles . . . then ask how it can be wrong if we eat steak. The most obvious difference in the two cases is that lions have to eat other animals in order to survive. We do not. So what a lion must do does not logically translate into what we may do.
In addition, it is worth noting how much this objection diverges from our normal practice. Most people who raise this challenge drive cars, wear clothes, use computers, and write checks. Other animals do not do any of these things. Should we therefore stop living as we live, stop doing what we do, and start imitating animals? Are the people who raise this objection prepared to go feral? I know of no critic of animal rights who advocates anything remotely like this. Why, then, place what carnivorous animals eat in a unique category as being the one and only thing they do that we should imitate? Without exception, when I have asked this question, no credible answer has been given. (Empty Cages, 2004, p. 67)
Gary Francione has a little something to say about this too (emphasis mine):
Question: But nonhuman animals eat other nonhumans in the wild, so isn’t it okay for us to eat them?
Answer: No. First of all, although some animals eat each other in the wild, many do not. Many animals are vegans. Moreover, there is far more cooperation in nature than our imagined “cruelty of nature” would have us believe.
Second, whether animals eat other animals is beside the point. How is it relevant whether animals eat other animals? Some animals are carnivorous and cannot exist without eating meat. We do not fall into that category; we can get along fine without eating meat, and more and more people are taking the position that our health and environment would both benefit from a shift away from a diet of animal products.
Third, animals do all sorts of things that humans do not regard as morally appropriate. For example, dogs copulate and defecate in the street. Does that mean that we should follow their example?
Fourth, it is interesting that when it is convenient for us to do so, we attempt to justify our exploitation of animals by resting on our supposed “superiority.” And when our supposed “superiority” gets in the way of what we want to do, we suddenly portray ourselves as nothing more than another species of wild animal, as entitled as foxes to eat chickens.
