Reason Magazine - Topics > Animal Rights

When Vat-Grown Cold Cuts Come to Subway, Thank PETA

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:37:00 EDT

Foie Gras apologist Baylen Linnekin of the uber-tasty food blog Crispy on the Outside writes in praise of anti-carnivore group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which just announced $1 million contest to spur development of murderless meat, A.K.A. vat-grown or in vitro meat:

PETA claims the contest is a way to advance its so-called anti-cruelty agenda, stop harming the environment, etc.
I think it's really just an admission by the group of what carnivores and omnivores have always known: meat tastes good. So good that it seems the overwhelming majority of manufactured vegetarian food-plant life that didn't grow from the ground (or ocean)-serves little more than to provide calories that mimic the taste of meat....
Bravo to PETA. This is exactly the sort of thing groups like PETA should have been doing all along. Not terrorizing or suing or intimidating what should be free choices made by peace-loving meat eaters. But putting their money where their ~~breasts~~ mouths are in order to effect voluntary consumer change. All while helping vegetarians eat better tasting food.

More here.

reason on vat-grown meat—it even sounds delicious!

Didn't the awful Subway chain miss a golden opportunity to have Warren "Enjoy Every Sandwich" Zevon become their posthumous pitchman? Move over, Jared, and tell Lon Chaney the news.

Snoop Kabobs

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:31:00 EDT

Will Saletan explains how he can be both sympathetic to animal rights and in favor of legalizing the trade in dog meat.

Who Was Dumping the Dead Dogs of Hamden, Connecticut?

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:41:00 EST

The town police chief, that's who, and he had to answer for it at a recent town meeting:

Police Chief Thomas J. Wydra and the animal control officers were quizzed on why unclaimed, untagged dogs were dumped over a cliff at the landfill and transfer station.

Whenever I see the words "police chief" ~~I reach for my Browning,~~ I think about Chief Brown, Encyclopedia's dad, the Bull Conner of Idaville, Florida.

Beyond the seeming inhumanity (inhumaneness?) of the act, Chief Wydra said he dumped the dead dogs in the interests of taxpayers:

Wydra says all domestic animals will be cremated instead of buried. He says he wanted to save about $2,000 in yearly cremation costs.

So, libertarians, it's still all about tradeoffs. What do you want, good government or less spending? Arguably, that's not really a tradeoff. But would you be willing to spend more to treat dogs humanely? And in what other situations might greater expenditures be worth the added tax burden?

Whole story here.

reason on animal issues here.

Note: This story caught my eye because Reason Foundation Vice President (and former publisher of reason magazine) Mike Alissi lives there.

Michael Vick: All Shook Up

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 10:31:00 EST

Not sure what to get your loved ones for Christmas this year? Why not cheap out and go for a cheap shot? Send your mom a virtual Michael Vick snow globe courtesy of PETA.

When you click through, you're treated to a snow globe featuring Vick in the prison yard spouting semi-identifiable catch phrases. Click on the globe and wiggle your mouse to shake it.

Or if you prefer sappy to snarky, you could always opt for the cartoon kitties and puppies (and, oddly, monkeys) reminding the recipient that Jesus loves them, too. Apparently because they're just so darned adorable.

For more reason on animal rights and/or Michael Vick--sorry we don't have our own Christmas animations on the topic--go here.

For a website that suggests the people at PETA sometimes fail to be fully Christ-like, go here.

You=11,500 Sheep

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 12:10:00 EST

Want to know what people really think about animal suffering? Check out this quirky new poll from the Farm Bureau, which finds that people are willing see a heck of a lot of cows in pain before they'll hurt a farmer.

The proposition was phrased thusly, in a telephone survey of 1,000 people:

If a new technology were created that could either eliminate the suffering of 1 human or the suffering of X farm animals, it should be used to eliminate the suffering of the 1 human.

Different respondents were asked the question with the number of farm animals randomly set at 1, 10, 50, 100, 500, 1,000, 5,000, or 10,000.

At an exchange rate of one human's suffering for one animal's, 86 percent chose the human. As the numbers grew, the percentage choosing the human tapered off. At 10,000 only 50 percent chose the human, with 34 percent rejecting the proposition (the remainder chose "don't know" or a similar response).

Extrapolating outwards, says assistant professor in the Oklahoma State University Department of Agricultural Economics Bailey Norwood, "the suffering of one human was found to be equivalent to the suffering of 11,500 farm animals."

Interestingly, most people believe that their private purchasing decisions impacted animal welfare:

Consumers understand animal welfare is a result of their shopping decisions, in addition to farmer decisions. A majority of consumers believe their personal food choices have a large impact on the well-being of farm animals, and that if consumers desire higher animal welfare standards, food companies will provide it. Thus, when consumers choose to purchase traditional meat instead of more expensive meat raised under alternative production systems (e.g. organic meat or free-range meat), they understand that their purchase directly determines the level of animal care provided.

Norwood concludes that "if consumers are happy purchasing traditional meat, this signifies they approve of the animal care provided on traditional farms."

This may overstate the case for a variety of reasons, including the fact that most consumers--perhaps the urban consumers most likely to have choices from alternative production systems in particular--don't really know what happens on farms. And one must, of course, consider the source.

Still, these figures provide some food (cud?) for thought.

Horselover Facts

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 10:29:00 EST

Animal welfare activists are pushing the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, which would ban "the shipping, transporting, moving, delivering, receiving, possessing, purchasing, selling, or donation of horses and other equines to be slaughtered for human consumption." Ken Silverstein parses the problems with the bill:

Are French horse eaters worse than American cow, pig, or chicken eaters? Keep in mind that unlike the last three animals, horses aren't raised for food. Animals raised on factory farms live in infinitely more squalid circumstances than horses destined for the dinner plate. [The law's supporters] say that transport conditions to Mexico are appalling, with, in the words of the American Welfare Institute, horses "typically hauled for more than 24 hours without rest, water, or food in trailers that provide little protection from weather extremes. They are often forced onto cattle trailers with ceilings so low they injure their heads." That may well be true, but shutting down the domestic slaughterhouses has increased exports. So now more horses are being sent off to Mexico.

But, runs the counterargument, if the AHSPA passes and the export trade is banned, American horses will roam free and live happy lives. There are hundreds of horse rescue operations in existence, they say, and unwanted horses that would otherwise be slaughtered would be adopted and cared for.

But is that really the case? Most horses sent to slaughter are past their prime and unwanted by the farmers or ranchers who own them. Patricia Evans, of Utah State University's Animal, Dairy, and Veterinary Sciences Department, says that more horses are being abandoned now that domestic slaughterhouses have been closed. The advocates "predicted that shutting down domestic slaughterhouses wouldn't increase neglect and abuse, but we're in the real world," she said. "Unfortunately, kids get abused and so do animals."

"Hey Meaty, You're Making Me So Hot!"

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 16:00:00 EST

There's something about vegetarianism that co-opts other causes—animal welfare, health, yogic meditation. Everyone seems to want to have a side of philosophy with dinner these days. The hottest, newest cause to be assimilated into the vegetarian-anti-industrial complex is global warming. Environmentalists and vegetarians have long maintained excellent relations, but the dawning of broader awareness about fossil fuels expended in food production and the other environmental impacts of farming have brought the two causes into an extremely cosy relationship.

And behold the strange offspring of that alliance:

The sweaty woman featured above is Heather Mills, the very-soon-to-be former Mrs. Paul McCartney. She was glamour model before she lost her lower leg in a motorcycle accident, and she recently strapped on her dancing leg and competed to excellent effect on Dancing with the Stars. She's tabloid famous, but she has put her fame to some good use: Her Adopt-a-Minefield charity campaigning deserves the high praise it has won her.

In the midst of her messy, minutely chronicled divorce—and just after her public relations rep quit and the law firm that was representing her in the divorce made the unusual decision to "fire" her as a client for being a little too chatty with the press—she has launched this bold, strange new campaign for environmental veganism.

The idea, it seems, is to convince people who bike to work, buy carbon offsets when they fly, and only exhale CO2 when they absolutely must that they're still terrible environmentalists. They simply haven't given up enough. Meat will have to go as well. And eggs. And milk.

The State of the World report focused on consumerism in 2004, and reported that "belching, flatulent livestock" are to blame for about a fifth of the world's production of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, a figure that several subsequent reports more or less agree with, though usually not quite as colorfully.

Viva! director Juliet Gellatley reinforces that statistic: "Meat and dairy animals are the second biggest cause of greenhouse gases at 18 per cent compared to 13.5 per cent from all the world's different modes of transport combined."

Since the proportion of greenhouse emissions from transportation are similar to those produced by raising animals for food, the logic goes, having a burger undoes all the good of your virtuous bicycling, and not just around the waistline. Indeed, after they have made so many sacrifices, the prosthetic-wearing Mills says to meat-eating enviros:

Viva, the British group sponsoring the billboards, warns us "eating meat, fish and dairy amounts to a "Diet of Disaster," complete with histrionic capital letters. The basis of this claim is the idea that farm animals, cows in particular, are emitting greenhouse gasses at an astonishing rate, grazing on lots of land that could have been carbons sinking forests, and otherwise causing environmental havoc. But Viva is primarily a vegetarian outfit, not an environmental group—it cites environmental concerns as just one of four reasons to "go veggie." This might explain why they're not willing to publicize that there's a lot of middle ground on the issue of vegetarianism and global warming. It's not as simple as veganism versus and environmental apocalypse.

Like Viva, Mills mixes her environmental vegetarianism with other reasons to go veg. Or she tries to anyway. During a media appearance to promote the campaign at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park (a favorite spot for political pronouncements and the occasional loony rant since the late 19th century), Mills appeared in a green t-shirt touting veganism to speak to the people. She said: "There are many other kinds of milk available. Why don't we try drinking rats' milk and dogs' milk?" Mills later clarified that she meant to highlight that drinking the milk of any animal was unnatural and shouldn't be done at all, but the incredible weirdness of the campaign makes it hard to tell the distortions of the notoriously slapdash British press from the truth.

But does it really help either cause to equate part of an ordinary to drinking milk from rats? Will asking the bike-riding green to give up steak at dinner parties help him spread the word? Why this strange desire to bring together the self-denying, ascetic streak in both vegetarianism and environmentalism? Why guilt and accusations instead of good cheer?

As an antidote to Mills' cheeky but still depressing billboards and all that they represent, below is a list of a handful of the many promising possibilities for minimizing the methane output of cows in the works--including genetically altered bovines, better feeds for animals, and other technological solutions that can make possible a vast middle ground for those who like a steak, but would also like for there to be some ice left somewhere on Earth to chill the martini they're washing it down with.

There's the $53 million dollar Methane to Markets program to capture methane and use it for good and not evil, sponsored by the U.S. government.

Last month, Greenpeace suggested that kangaroo meat might make a better low-methane meat for those concerned about the effects of global warming.

In one of the tastiest mixed metaphors in recent memory, the Center for International Forestry Research addressed the land use issue that same year: "In a nutshell, cattle ranchers are making mincemeat out of Brazil's Amazon rainforests." (Mmm, mincemeat in a nutshell.) But here again, it's not meat-eating per se that's the problem. It's irresponsible grazing. This is an issue that can be addressed in a variety of ways, not least is giving property rights in rainforests to responsible stewards.

This is just a sample of the neat technological fixes coming down the pipeline. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, though, and it's hard to beat the image of sweaty Heather Mills. Here is the best I can offer:

Rather than forfeiting the option of the occasional juicy hamburger in the name of saving the planet, why not buy one of these patented methane harvesters for your friendly neighborhood bovine to wear? Catches greenhouse gasses from both ends!

Katherine Mangu-Ward is an associate editor of reason.

No More Rabbits Wearing Mascara

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:23:00 EST

Worried about animal testing? Mildly disturbed by the idea of gerbils wearing lipstick? Celebrate freaky new advances in biotech that allow cosmetic companies to test on "reconstructed eye tissue and tiny circles of skin developed from donor cells harvested from cosmetic operations."

The lede of The New York Times report captures the surreal nature of the advances:

The delicate hybrids thriving in the balmy climes of Provence, southern France’s traditional perfume region, include sweet jasmine, May roses — and fresh layers of artificial human skin.

Companies are hustling to get on board with non-animal cosmetics testing because of an upcoming EU ban, but many companies have been moving in this direction voluntarily for years as improving technology has offered the luxury of being more moral.

When testing on cuddly bunnies was the only way to be sure new products wouldn't hurt people, we had to suck it up and coat Flopsy in Lancome. Now we have options--and the fact that some beauty products are being tested on an artificial skin product made from the cells of plastic surgery patients has a kind of Palahniukian poetic justice to it.

To make Episkin, donor keratinocyte cells, collected after breast and abdominal plastic surgery, are cultured in tiny wells of collagen gel, immersed in water, amino acids and sugars, and then air-dried for 10 days or aged to mimic mature skin by exposure to ultraviolet light.

Lots more on animal rights here.

Doggies and Demerol

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 15:16:00 EST

PETA's Ingrid Newkirk broke her arm and told the sad tale of her injury thusly:

"Just as I was setting out to launch my new book, Let’s Have a Dog Party!, I met a wet floor and went splat, neatly snapping the bones in my wrist. Ooh, the pain! Thank goodness for IV drips."

The hypocrisy squad at The Center for Consumer Freedom is on Newkirk like white on rice:

We agree that IV (intravenous) drips of painkillers are a good thing. And we don’t know which drug she was on, assuming it didn’t come from PETA’s “Let's Have a Dog Party!” tackle box. But the most commonly prescribed IV painkillers, fentanyl and meperidine (Demerol), have both been extensively tested on animals.
In fact, the IV drip mechanism itself was tested on several species of animals during the 1930s, during the development of techniques for surgical anaesthesia.

The kicker:

Ingrid Newkirk, you may recall, once told a reporter that “even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we’d be against it.” Fair enough. But there’s a big difference between talking the talk and walking the walk.

Ron Bailey-style disclosure: My husband used to work for the Center for Consumer Freedom.

Addition disclosure: I, too, love IV Demerol.

"Flesh, Castration, and Unbridled Capitalism"

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:54:00 EDT

From the always-entertaining Columbia Spectator, a dose of capitalism-is-responsible-for-all-evil. On today's slate: speciesism:

Distorted notions of capitalism have been the impetus for our complete apathy towards the issue of animal rights. We see it as meat, not flesh; we see it as Donald Duck, not the beakless animal that died from noise distress and claustrophobia; we see it as just another meal, not the senseless murder of a real, living creature. What is essentially wrong about this is that we’ve allowed capitalism to turn a blind eye to moral and ethical considerations, and it has hit the ground running for profit.

The knowledge that he is being manipulated by Disney and the robber barons hasn't quite managed to turn the author vegetarian, though:

There was once a time when I could casually drive my fork into one of John Jay’s steaks and then slice it swiftly with my knife—without wincing. I haven’t become a vegetarian, but my relationship with the steak in front of me has changed greatly within the last month. I eat it with a strong subconscious sense of awareness. Those cows have suffered for us! They’ve sacrificed their lives!

From my lofty vantage point as an old, wise 26-year-old, I note the unsurprising tagline:

The author is a Columbia College first-year.

No Word From Professor Teabag

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 10:57:00 EDT

Ah, bureaucrats:

Six years ago, Mantei said, an ordinary morning took a turn for the exotic when Filipetti was driving some of their six children to catch a school bus. Lying on the roadside was a white fawn, dappled with brown spots. She was weak, with deformed back legs and hooves that curved inward, cutting her when she tried to walk.
Filipetti scooped her up and brought her home. He took her to a veterinarian in Woodburn, who fitted her deformed legs with tiny casts to straighten them, changing the casts every 10 days. At home, they put carpet scraps on the wood floors to keep Snowball from slipping. And come holiday season, they let Snowball nibble their Christmas tree.
The doe lived in the house for almost a year, Mantei said. She slept at their bedside and picked up mannerisms from the family dog -- Tasha, a cocker spaniel -- pawing at people with a hoof when she wanted attention.

You know what happens next:

In March, police received a tip from an anonymous source -- Mantei believes it was an estranged family member -- that the couple were keeping deer on their property. State troopers inspected the grounds in early April.
Then, about 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, Mantei went to the front door to find the police had returned.
[...]
For more than eight hours Wednesday, a Molalla family pleaded with police and wildlife officers to take away their trailer and dart gun and let them keep two deer they'd raised as pets.
"These deer wouldn't even be alive without us," said Jim Filipetti, 43, who was working in Bend Wednesday and negotiating by phone. "I brought that deer (Snowball) to the vet every 10 days. We raised it in our house. And they want to take her away. It's ridiculous."
But after a day of tears, frantic phone calls and failed compromises, officers darted Snowball, a mottled 6-year-old doe, and Bucky, her yearling buck, and prepared to haul them away. The animals will be evaluated, with three possible outcomes: transfer to a licensed wildlife facility, release into the wild or euthanasia.

After nearly the entire state of Oregon flooded state offices with calls in protest, state officials are now promising that neither animal with be euthanized, and they may even allow the family to take Snowball back. Bucky will stay in state custody, or be released into the wild (where he isn't likely to survive).

Friday Funnies

info@reason.com (Chip Bok) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 06:10:00 EDT

Beyond Animal Rights: Animal Politics

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:56:00 EDT

Longtime Hit & Run readers know I have a running interest in encounters between human beings and organized animal communities: elephants, baboons, bees. (OK, the bees are a stretch.) I wouldn't say those animals are asserting rights -- or that they have a moral concept of rights in the first place -- but they do assert claims, which for much of human history was all we ever did ourselves. When those claims run up against the territories marked by human beings, the results look a lot like low-intensity warfare.

A recent case in point, as described by the BBC:

A troop of vervet monkeys is giving Kenyan villagers long days and sleepless nights, destroying crops and causing a food crisis....

They estimate there are close to 300 monkeys invading the farms at dawn. They eat the village's maize, potatoes, beans and other crops....In addition to stealing their crops, the monkeys also make sexually explicit gestures at the women, they claim....

The residents say the monkeys have killed livestock and guard dogs, which has also left the villagers living in fear, especially for the safety of their babies and children.

All the villagers' attempts to control the monkeys have failed -- the monkeys evade traps, have lookouts to warn the others of impending attacks and snub poisoned food put out by the residents.

"The troop has scouts which keep a lookout from a vantage point, and when they see us coming, they give warning signals to the ones in the farms to get away," said another area resident, Jacinta Wandaga.

In less Hobbesian times you get something that looks like a negotiated peace, or at least a rough mutual understanding. One reason the rise in human-elephant conflict is so notable, for example, is because it follows a period when such violence was rare. (I should probably add that it isn't always the beasts who are the aggressors.)

Discussions of animal rights and animal welfare usually focus on nonhuman captives in human societies. But aren't these boundary disputes at least as interesting as dogfighting or foie gras? Such micro-wars imply something about human-nonhuman relations, even if it can't be reduced to a simple moral principle. Readers are invited to debate just what that something is -- or, better still, to point me to any anthropologists or political scientists who are already studying these conflicts in a systematic way.

More Money Than Sense

jsamuel@reason.com (Juliet Samuel) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 14:46:00 EDT

In the civilized world’s latest sordid military venture, the Australian military has revealed plans to forcibly sterilize and displace thousands of innocent kangaroos. The army originally planned to just shoot the beasts, whose grazing has eroded military bases and endangered other animals, until public uproar prompted a rethink. The new thinking: the best use of taxpayer resources would be to simply move the animals.

The kangaroos would be herded into a padded pen and sedated, then shot with a paintball gun to mark them as ready for transport. They would be released in a fenced area covered with shadecloth, the report by the Wildcare protection group for the Defence Department said.
At A$3,600 a head, the cost of moving each animal is more than a standard economy class return air ticket from Sydney to London on Qantas, the national carrier which features a kangaroo on its tail.

Michael Vick's Base Offense

info@reason.com (Jeff Taylor) — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 06:15:00 EDT

West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd (D) thundered from the floor of the Senate, "Barbaric! Barbaric! Barbaric!"

The former Klansman was reacting to the 19-page federal indictment of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick on charges of staging and betting on dog fights up and down the East Coast. The charges detailed brutal treatment of the dogs by partners in Vick's Bad Newz Kennels, including culling weak fighters via gunshot or electrocution. Vick faces six years in prison and makes his first court appearance on Thursday.

The alleged abuse of the animals has understandably driven public comment and media attention. However, the NFL can sustain the substantial PR hit that would accompany a court case portraying one of its biggest stars as a closet sadist. A bigger problem for the integrity of the league is the possibly that Vick was a principal in an illegal gambling operation for the past six years.

On cue, as if to underscore this continual tension between sports betting and the sports the betting public loves, comes a parallel scandal involving an NBA referee. The FBI is investigating veteran ref Tom Donaghy, who is under suspicion of betting on NBA games, including ones he officiated.

Donaghy reportedly racked up large gambling debts at Atlantic City casinos, making him a classic target for a "reach out" from mobbed-up bookies. This is more or less the traditional mode for criminal infiltration of legitimate sporting leagues.

The sensitivity to even the perception that gambling interests might influence either an official or a player have long motivated league officials to try to wall-off their operations from any kind of betting. There is reason booming Las Vegas does not have a major league franchise. The NBA, in particular, has shied away immersing its impressionable young millionaires in the gaming culture there.

Elsewhere, even among dedicated gamers, betting on your own league is the bright-line virtually all athletes and coaches instinctively respect. Once that threshold is breached, it is far too easy for organized crime to ensnare an active player/coach gambler, perhaps merely by threatening to expose the activity and claim it influenced on-the-field performance. Leagues understandably want no part of trying to prove otherwise and have long imposed harsh penalties for dallying with gambling.

In 1963 Paul Hornung and Alex Karras, two of the NFL's biggest stars at the time, were suspended for a year from the league merely for associating with the wrong type of people at a bar owned by Karras. That and betting on NFL games. And it is Pete Rose's penchant for betting on baseball games, and then refusing to admit he had done so when questioned by league officials that has kept him out of the baseball Hall of Fame thus far—and perhaps forever.

Vick, if government claims are true, has by-passed gambling debts and mobbed-up bookies to go straight to running his own illegal gambling operation. Violence, gunplay, and secretive cash deals being part-and-parcel of the scene. To read the indictment, you would have no idea Vick signed a 10-year, $130-million contract a couple years ago. Government witnesses place him at dogfights in Virginia and the Carolinas hustling for $3000 here, $13,000 there.

The obvious question of motivation pops up, not just in a legal sense. On the face of it, running a Third World dog fighting operation near his hometown must have been as important to Vick as being an NFL star. His football career certainly now hangs in the balance as a result of his choice of associates, and he is likely to leave his team in the lurch for this season as his trial unfolds. Veteran lawyer and journalist Lester Munson has already declared that the media and legal circus around Vick will rival that of the O.J. Simpson trial.

But back to motive. Did Vick's dual lives ever collide? Prosecutors claim Vick lost a net of about $15,000 on his dog fights. Did he ever try to re-coup that by betting on NFL games, and if not, why not? I guarantee league officials have wondered about that question in recent weeks and shuddered about the potential answers.

Shuddered because the massive multi-billion dollar popularity of the NFL and the NBA and MLB rest actually rest on a very narrow premise: That the audience knows the score. That players and coaches are doing their very best to win at all times, and have no outside motivation to rival that goal. Anything else is a fraud, a breach of contract between spectator and participant.

The charges against Vick, at a minimum, remind us that we really do not know our sports heroes as well as we like to think. As the case moves forward, we come to find out that we do not know them at all.

Jeff Taylor writes from North Carolina.

Weekend Open Thread/Libertarian Purity Test

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 10:56:00 EDT

Comments theread is open to any topic.

But to get you started: What's a card-carrying libertoid to think of the Michael Vick situation, and of animal cruelty laws in general? Do animals have rights? Are they property? Both? Is the government obliged to prevent someone from feeding puppies to a wood chipper?

Tibor Machan takes the Cruella de Vil hard line here. Cato's Justin Logan responds here. Archive of reason animal rights goodies here. My take on what should happen with Vick here. Skip Oliva responds at the Mises blog here. And here's a tepid defense of dog fighting by To the People's Baylen Linnekin.

Like Shooting Sheep From a Helicopter

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 09:55:00 EDT

Federal prosecutors are mulling felony charges against Houston billionaire Dan Duncan after he freely admitted to shooting a moose and a sheep from a helicopter during a 2002 hunting trip to Siberia. Duncan says he did not realize shooting game from helicopters is illegal in Russia, relying on his local hunting guide to inform him of any relevant laws or regulations. Duncan's attorney, Rusty Hardin, notes that the guide is now a top official in the Russian agency that issues hunting licenses. Although Russian officials have raised no objection to Duncan's hunting trip, U.S. prosecutors are thinking about charging him under the Lacey Act, which is aimed at trafficking in rare plants and animals. Duncan says neither of the animals he shot was rare. "What the hell is the U.S.' interest in bringing felony charges here for hunting on Russian soil, where not one single person has complained?" Hardin asked in an interview with the Houston Chronicle. "Is this really the best use of our prosecutorial resources?"

[Thanks to Roy Reynolds for the tip.]

Free Armani!

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 05:33:00 EDT

It's not an amazing suit sale; it's the slogan of a burgeoning movement to reunite Elyse Gazewitz, a 42-year-old Rockville, Maryland, woman, with her beloved capuchin monkey, confiscated by Montgomery County officials on public health grounds. While living with Gazewitz, Armani wore baby clothes over Huggies diapers (with holes cut in them for his tail) and watched TV with his owner. Now living at the Catoctin Wildlife Preserve and Zoo in Frederick County, he goes au naturel and watches DVDs with other monkeys, presumably while being ogled by visitors (accommodations for which Gazewitz is billed $1,344 a month). If I were a capuchin monkey, I am frankly not sure which living situation I would prefer. But it seems to me it should be possible to address concerns about monkey-transmitted disease without banning them as pets.

Gazewitz's supporters plead Armani's case here. Here is background on the guy who wrote a protest song for the cause, sung to the tune of "Sloop John B" and ending with the unforgettable line, "I'm lonely Armani, I want to go home."

Addendum: Frederick News-Post columnist Jo Ellen Gluscevich has this to say about Armani:

Obviously, I support laws that are in the best interest of society; and in most instances they make sense. However, I also feel that there are and should be exceptions to certain laws. A recent "exception" to the law with which I did not agree was the manner in which hotel heiress Paris Hilton was allowed to serve her prison time—an insult to society!
As for Armani, I say make an exception and show some compassion. Hopefully, the appeal will be in Armani's favor and he will be returned home soon.
Have a heart, and get over this monkey business!

It sounds like Gluscevich would like to arrange a Paris-for-Armani prisoner swap. The appeal to which she refers challenges a decision by the Montgomery County Animal Matters Hearing Board rejecting Gazewitz's request for the return of her monkey. Apparently the decision hinged on whether Gazewitz is truthfully reporting the Armani's age, which matters because monkeys owned before May 31, 2006, are exempt from the ban. Gluscevich reports that Armani is in "protective custody," away from the public's prying eyes.

Coincidentally, yesterday I visited Monkey Park, a mini-zoo between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that includes a sizable contingent of capuchins. These monkeys are so smart, our guide informed us, that an attempt was made to train them as assistants for disabled people. The program failed, he said, when it became apparent that the monkeys, which have a strong sense of hierarchy, would only obey people with "strong personalities."

Spider Suffragettes and Lobster Labor Leaders

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:57:00 EDT

The Daily Mail reports:

The Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is investigating whether invertebrates - the family of animals that includes insects, spiders and molluscs - should get the same protection under the law enjoyed by dogs, cats and horses if they are kept in captivity.

The current state of the law is manifestly unjust--I triple-dog-dare you to read the next sentence with a straight face:

"While it is illegal to mistreat a goldfish, there is nothing to stop people mistreating pet tarantulas or lobsters kept in restaurant aquariums."

But don't worry, some things with eight arms will still be beyond the long arm of the law:

While [restaurant owners] would still be able to boil the crustaceans alive to kill them, they would have to make sure they are kept in clean, warm uncrowded tanks up to that point.
Similarly, while little boys will not be punished for pulling the legs off a back-garden spider, people with pet tarantulas will have to ensure they are kept warm and well-fed.

Newt Gingrich: Protect the world "not only for future generations of human beings, but for all living things."

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Mon, 07 May 2007 17:29:00 EDT

If it's Monday, it's time for Newt Gingrich's latest dispatch from the frontlines of World War III, a.k.a. "Winning the Future."

This week, Newt reports on the French election from Berlin (yes, it's very confusing). Sarkozy is, to Newt's eye, "a tough, confrontational leader -- a man who has been preaching things that don't sound very much like the French establishment." Indeed, Sarko is "a different kind of Frenchman"--the son of Hungarian immigrants.

But more important, former Mr. Speaker, how are the zoos there in Berlin?

While we are here in Berlin, Callista and I plan to stop by the zoo to see my namesake, Knut the polar bear. He's getting bigger these days, but you probably remember him from a few months ago when he was a cub recently abandoned by his mother. Some animal rights activists had declared that he should be put to death rather than be raised by humans. I'm going to see Knut, not only because of my great love of zoos and the natural world, but because I think he is a symbol of a growing divide on man's relationship with the environment. The activists who wanted Knut killed represent the radical view that humans are only destroyers of the natural world and that human needs and wants shall always be a distant second to the environment.

More here.

Newt feeds monkeys with Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-[hiccup] R.I.) here.

Chris Elliott performs "Zoo Animals on Wheels" here.

There Oughta Be a Law

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Thu, 03 May 2007 12:55:00 EDT

Massachusetts is cracking down on canines, with proposed new ordinances ranging from requiring dogs in cars to wear seatbelts to regulating ownership of pit bulls the way they regulate the ownership of firearms.

I wrote a piece for Fox News last year examining the pit bull hysteria and the problems with breed-specific legislation.

Disclosure: I have a dog that's sometimes mistaken for a pit bull.

What's Good for the Goose Is Good for the Farmer?

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 12:19:00 EDT

Today in the special "eating well while eating green" edition of the New York Times food section, discussion of a new kind of more ethical foie gras.

One company even claims to have figured out the circumstances in which geese conveniently turn their own livers into foie gras voluntarily when let to "roam freely and gorge on grass, acorns, figs and lupines in the Extremadura region of Spain." Industry experts are skeptical.

But many producers are turning to more humane 6-inch flexible rubber tubes (instead of the traditional 8 to 10 inch steel tube) to make force-feeding less uncomfortable and less damaging to the health of the geese overall:

Using the new machine and his version of the feeding method, [foie gras farmer Tom] Brock raised more than 642 geese last fall. He said that not a single bird was sickened or injured during force-feeding. He plans to raise 12,000 this year.

As usual, animal cruelty activists refuse to give more than ultra-grudging credit for small but significant advances:

“Is a soft rubber tube better than a hard tube?” said Paul Shapiro, director of the factory farming campaign of the Humane Society of the United States, one of the groups that pushed for the California bill [banning foie gras]. “Maybe, but you are missing the point. You are still forcing them to eat more than they would ever eat voluntarily and inducing a state of disease.”

More on foie gras bans in Chicago and California here.

Does Bonzo Have Human Rights?

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 09:34:00 EDT

From The Guardian via Slashdot comes a story about whether to grant chimps human rights. Snippets:

He recognises himself in the mirror, plays hide-and-seek and breaks into fits of giggles when tickled. He is also our closest evolutionary cousin.
A group of world leading primatologists argue that this is proof enough that Hiasl, a 26-year-old chimpanzee, deserves to be treated like a human. In a test case in Austria, campaigners are seeking to ditch the 'species barrier' and have taken Hiasl's case to court. If Hiasl is granted human status - and the rights that go with it - it will signal a victory for other primate species and unleash a wave of similar cases....

Primatologists and experts - from the world's most famous primate campaigner, Jane Goodall, to Professor Volker Sommer, a renowned wild chimp expert at University College London - will give evidence in the case, which is due to come to court in Vienna within the next few months.
One of their central arguments will be that a chimpanzee's DNA is 96-98.4 per cent similar to that of humans - closer than the relationship between donkeys and horses. They will cite recent findings that wild apes hunt with home-made spears and can fight battles and make peace. In New Zealand, apes - gorillas, orang utans, chimpanzees and bonobos - were granted special rights as 'non-human hominids' in 1999 to grant protection from maltreatment, slavery, torture, death and extinction.
Sommer, an evolutionary anthropologist, said: 'It's untenable to talk of dividing humans and humanoid apes because there are no clear-cut criteria - neither biological, nor mental, nor social.'

More here.

Reason defended experimenting on animals here.

Are Wild Fish Too Natural to Be Organic?

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 12:22:00 EST

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is trying to figure out what makes fish organic. If you're thinking it's all the carbon molecules, clearly you haven't been paying attention to the debate over which products should qualify for an "organic" label, which attracts consumers who are willing to pay more for food so they can feel better about eating it. Organic in this sense is not a chemical description but a set of seemingly abitrary rules that, like Jewish dietary laws, set one group of people apart from others. As with kosher food, some consumers believe "organic" food is healthier than conventional food. Others say it is better for the environment, or (in the case of dairy, egg, and meat products) less cruel to animals. But since the U.S. government started regulating use of the term, it is whatever the USDA says it is. For produce, it means no artificial pesticides or fertilizer. For livestock, it means organic feed, no antibiotics, and relatively roomy accommodations. But what does it mean for fish?

Companies that sell wild fish say nothing could be more natural. But keepers of the organic faith worry about depletion of fish stocks, which is bad for the environment, and insist that the "organic" label, strictly speaking, applies only to agriculture, which catching fish is not. In that sense, wild fish are too natural to be organic. There also are problems with farm-raised fish: overcrowding, polluted water, and the difficulty of finding organic feed for fish that eat other fish. An expert tells The New York Times that distinguishing between organic and convenional (inorganic?) fish "is a strange concept" and that "the more you look at it, particularly for particular kinds of fish, it gets even stranger.” Observant Jews have a much easier time: Anything with fins and scales will do.

You Want Flies With That?

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 17:47:00 EST

New York Times film critic A.O. Scott calls Fast Food Nation "a movie as necessary and nourishing as your next meal." Health Facts and Fears Editor (and Reason contributor) Todd Seavey, by contrast, seems to consider it as dull and dispensable as your next rice cake:

The main charges against the food industry, if the film were to be taken very literally, seem to be that (1) there is fecal matter in hamburger (though little enough, it is implied, to be rendered harmless through cooking, a reasonable enough admission from what is meant to be a radical film...), (2) illegal immigrants do much of the hard manual labor involved in meat processing, (3) some of them get sexually harassed, and (4) fast food restaurants are boring and homogeneous anyway, like much of our clueless civilization....
Now, I know [director Richard] Linklater and [book author/screenwriter Eric] Schlosser have more sweeping objections to modern food production and industrial civilization, but the film almost seems to imply that if we just slowed down the cow-disassembly line of one particularly bad plant (and we do see the gory details, by the way) enough to ensure that we kept the feces out of the meat, everything would pretty much be OK, aside from the immigration, sex, and boredom issues, which aren't exactly problems exclusive to the food industry. But aesthetically, we're still left with the vague impression that things are too deeply awry for such an easy fix.

At a Hunter College screening of Fast Food Nation, Seavey not only sat through the icky slaughterhouse scenes but endured a panel discussion afterward. The least you can do is read his reaction.