The following essay, but Nicholas Kristof, an Opinion Columnist with the New York Times, makes you ponder how we can justify the inhumane treatment of animals that are not our dogs -- but who are just as capable of feeling pain and emotional connectivity.... It's a lengthy article, but so important to reconstructing the moral fiber of our society.....
Dogs Are the Best! But They Highlight Our Hypocrisy.
Aug. 3, 2024, 7:00 a.m. ET
Over the past couple of decades, dogs have evolved into humans.
Well, at least that’s how we think of them now. Some 97 percent of Americans consider dogs (or other pets) part of their families. A majority of dog owners celebrate canine birthdays, and nearly two-thirds report that they take more photos of their dogs than of family members.
If you’re dating someone with a dog, bring a biscuit: A majority of dog owners say they would consider ending a relationship if the pet disapproved of the partner.
America now has more dogs than children, and households are spending lavishly on pets. Warning that dogs may suffer storm anxiety, one company offers canine noise-canceling headphones for $200. Dog people spend thousands of dollars on oil paintings of Rover, not to mention large sums on dog spas, dog restaurants, dog bakeries and dog fashion.
“When your pooch is wearing clothes from Dog & Co., you know they’re going to be part of the most fashionable pack in town,” one site explains.
Then there are high-end dog foods and sophisticated health services and, if the chemotherapy doesn’t succeed, pet cemeteries. Because people don’t want to be separated from their pets, the Hartsdale Pet Cemetery outside New York City says that it has accommodated more than 800 people who asked to be buried with their pets.
I understand all this. Our last dog, Katie Kuvasz Kristof, was a saint (but not to squirrels), and if Pope Francis is right about dogs going to heaven, Katie is now barking in paradise. There are a few statues of heroic dogs around the world — in Tokyo, in New York City, in Scotland — and in the United States I would love to see more. Perhaps we could replace some statues of Confederate generals with ones of dogs who represented a higher standard of, er, humanity?
Still, the point of this column isn’t to highlight why dogs are the best people, but rather to highlight our hypocrisy: While we increasingly pamper our dogs, we blithely accept the torture of pigs.
Just as today we wonder how people like Thomas Jefferson could have been so morally obtuse as to own and abuse slaves, our own descendants will look back at us and puzzle over how 21st-century humans could have tolerated factory farming and the systematic abuse of intelligent mammals, including hogs.
“Farmed animals are just as capable of experiencing joy, social bonds, pain, fear and suffering as the animals we share our homes with,” Leah Garcés, the president of Mercy for Animals, told me. “The level of cruelty and disregard for their welfare that is endemic to industrial animal agriculture is nothing short of a moral atrocity.”
I’ve given up eating meat from farmed animals, partly because of personal experience: The hogs we raised on our farm when I was growing up were smart, sometimes ornery and equipped with very different personalities. In their variety, they reminded me of my human friends.
Yet pigs are mostly invisible to us before they end up as sausages on a plate, so we typically ignore their suffering.
Female pigs often spend nearly all their adult lives confined to coffin-size pens so narrow that they cannot turn around. They don’t go outside, touch soil, see the sky or exercise.
“Smart, social and playful, sows will demonstrate resistance when first confined (screaming and bar chewing),” the Kirkpatrick Foundation writes in a recent report about industrial hog production. “Distress eventually gives way to despondency: A 3-year-old pregnant sow rarely responds to a nudge or dousing of water.”
In a nutshell, we indulge dogs and abuse hogs. A dog is neutered by a vet under anesthesia. A pig in an industrial hog barn often has his scrotum slit without anesthetic by a farmhand who then yanks out each testicle.
Someone mistreats a dog and we’ll call 911. But if a company tortures millions of hogs as a business model, we dine on its products, invest in its shares and honor its executives.
“The discrepancy is so stark,” Peter Singer, a moral philosopher, told me. “People are horrified by the very idea of eating dogs, but pigs are just as intelligent and make fine companions, too.”
Singer notes that when meatpacking plants closed during the pandemic, at least 240,000 hogs were euthanized by raising temperatures to 130 degrees so that the animals perished from the heat. While some 31 states have laws making it illegal to leave a dog in a hot car or provide immunity to a person who rescues such a dog, it’s fine to torture and kill pigs in that way.
Crystal Heath, a veterinarian who co-founded a group called Our Honor, which addresses animal rights, told me that the mistreatment of livestock weighs on many veterinarians.
Gas chambers for unwanted dogs are being phased out from animal shelters, she said, while more gas chambers have been installed in hog barns to kill pigs — using carbon dioxide, which (as I’ve written) appears to amount to torturing animals to death.
It’s true that we also tolerate cruelty to dogs when it’s out of sight. Some research labs sometimes confine dogs in small cages in ways that are unconscionable.
Yet in general we draw a distinction between dogs and farm animals that is difficult to find a moral basis for. Americans were upset by Koreans and Chinese eating dogs (South Korea this year passed a law that will abolish the trade in dog meat), but it’s not obvious why dining on dogs is ethically more problematic than eating bacon. (Sorry, Katie!)
These are the moral contradictions we live with, and I think we tolerate them only because we don’t reflect on them. So let’s reflect.
We have created a system of industrial agriculture that is exceptionally good at producing cheap meat, but only because it systematically abuses livestock. Are we really OK with that trade-off?
oOur Throw-away Society....
Posted originally in May 1997, but it still seems to apply today -- September 23, 2024:
When we asked the woman who wanted to "get rid of" her 14-year-old Golden Retriever why she felt it was necessary, she explained that it was a matter of convenience. She was moving from her house into an apartment, and she would have to walk the dog rather than simply let her out into the garden as she always had at her house. No, she herself was not old or infirm. No, it was not a question of money. She told us she couldn't take much time to talk because she was extremely busy packing. Besides, she said, she didn't think the dog would live much longer anyway and she wanted to "get rid of her" as soon as possible.
Advancing age is a significant disadvantage in the "civilized" and "westernized" nations of the world, whether it appears in a dog or in a person. When the "youth cult" is added to the "throw-away" mentality of our society, the result is that little thought is given to preservation or conservation, and little patience is applied to making possessions or relationships last. If it's deemed "old" or broken, obsolete or unattractive, it's put on the trash heap. When it comes to dogs, we see heart-breaking examples of this mentality, in many cases because people think of a dog as a disposable possession rather than a companion with whom they are in a relationship. And, of course, even if there is a relationship, if it becomes inconvenient, well, then, why not just end it?
Triage at the shelter: If you are a dog lover and visit a shelter, it's bound to be the older and therefore "less desirable" dogs that break your heart the most. You know that the puppies have a fighting chance of being adopted because they are cute, cuddly and irresistible. You also know that, if the shelter runs out of space, it's the older dogs who will be out of luck. The shelter's reasoning is that, since old dogs are the least likely to be adopted, space in the shelter is best used for the younger, more appealing dogs.
Questioning the current state of affairs: Although many shelters are changing their attitudes toward older dogs, there's a basic assumption that it's okay to kill the dogs who don't find homes before space at the shelter runs out. According to statistics published by the ASPCA in 2023, "Each year, approximately 920,000 shelter animals are euthanized (390,000 dogs and 530,000 cats)," A significant number of these animals were adoptable, but had to be euthanized because no one showed up with an offer to adopt.
Why is it okay to euthanize so many innocent creatures? Why is it that our taxpayer dollars are spent killing adoptable animals while breeders continue to add to the population -- perpetuating an industry that is designed to bring more companion animals onto a planet already overcrowded with them? The answer is that it's not okay, and the best thing we can do, as conscientious members of society working for change, is to "adopt don't shop."
A throw-away society is no place for the loyal and wonderful canine species. But we believe that society can be changed by opportunities to demonstrate compassion. A dog can bring out the best in people; a dog unwanted because of age reaches to the very depths of human kindness and compassion. We believe that the more examples there are of compassion around us -- whether toward our outcast dogs or fellow-humans -- the better will be humanity's chances for peaceful survival.
The Ripples That Create Change....
"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lots of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." -- Robert F. Kennedy
Over the past 25+ years, the Senior Dogs Project has seen the effect of ripples that have created a climate for an increasing number of senior dog rescue groups and senior dog adoptions. We continue to believe in the ripple effect and hope that you, too, will find opportunities to create some ripples......
Other Quotes We Like…..
"Blessed is the person who has earned the love of an old dog." Sidney Jeanne Seward
“Always hold firmly to the thought that each one of us can do something to bring some portion of misery to an end.” Author unknown
“The assumption that animals are without rights, and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance, is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.” — Arthur Schopenhauer, German Philosopher
“A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.” — Albert Schweitzer, Alsatian Theologian, Musician, and Medical Missionary
“Producing animals for sale is a greedy and callous business in a world where there is a critical and chronic shortage of good homes for dogs, cats, and other animals, and the only ‘responsible breeders’ are ones who, upon learning about their contribution to the overpopulation crisis, spay or neuter their animals, and get out of the business all together.” – PETA, Animal Rights Uncompromised: There’s No Such Thing as a ‘Responsible Breeder’
“You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist
“As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.” — Leo Tolstoy, author
“I cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect…always when I have done I feel it would have been better if I had not fished.”– Henry David Thoreau, author
“Atrocities are no less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research.” — George Bernard Shaw
“. . .if we treated animals as they deserve, human inhumanity to humans would stand out all the more appallingly. We might then turn our attention to the next step beyond human civilization: humane civilization. Justice for all.” — Carl Safina, Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, p. 411.