April 19–26, 2001

loose canon

Animal Wrongs

by Bruce Schimmel

I’m not sure what’s worse: people who hate and abuse animals or those who profess an absolute love for them.

Now don’t misunderstand me. I adore the animals who’ve lived and shared in my house. Those birds, cats and dogs evoke intense feelings of affection.

And my feeling of delight for creatures large and small is not limited to household pets, or "companion animals." Readers of this column know I keep bees, and yes, I have confessed that I really, really like this colony of insects that would have no second thought about stinging me to death.

Yeah, I know, insects don’t have first thoughts, much less second ones. And while animals do have feelings and memories, the emotions they produce are still only akin to those that make humans human.

But try telling that to some (not all) of those who profess to be animal "lovers" — a class of humans who dedicate much of their psyches, if not their lives, to the cause of critters.

To be sure, I count several animal activists among my friends. But they make me antsy even when I agree with their agendas.

Should we trap and (essentially) torture fur-bearing animals for fancy coats? Of course not.

Should we protect species, even if we’re uncertain where they fit into the larger ecological picture? Certainly.

Is intensive, factory production of animals for meat wrong, and for all kinds of reasons? Yes and yes.

But, for me, things get dicier on the fault lines, where the natural world of animals meets the social world of humans. When the deer in Fairmount need to be culled, when pigeons foul our parks or when rats overrun our streets.

Animals do have a place in the natural order of things, and it would be arrogant to suppose that humans can understand fully what that means. But our ignorance of how all of nature works is not sufficient reason to award animals the same panoply of rights that humans have, or should have.

To do so, I argue, devalues human rights. Especially since so many human beings lack those rights.

Does this mean that we should send the food we feed pets to starving humans? That’s ridiculous.

People are humanized, in part, by their love of animals, domestic and wild. There’s no denying that. And there’s ample evidence that those who use animals as personal weapons or in blood sport contests breed cruelties that infect human society.

But, however admirable it is to be humane to animals, being kind to humans should come first.