Furtean Times 7: Changes » Animal Rights

Now, I have written material for this online publication that may well not be popular with some and will certainly not be popular with 2: The Ranting Gryphon (the yiffing tailhole), but I think that this article will not doubt be one of my most controversial so far. However, this is my personal viewpoint and who do not have to agree with me. I am not some Richard Littlejohn or Bill O’Reilly figure who constantly believes he is correct all the time. I’m not right-wing enough for starters.

I’ll be blunt - I’m not a big animal rights supporter. Even though I am a furry, and therefore the idea of wanting to help animals is appealing to me, I do not support the animal rights movement.

It all begins when I was a schoolboy at a Catholic school (the worst five years of my life). One day in my R.E. class, some pro-life campaigners came in and gave a lecture teaching us about how abortion was supposedly wrong and against God. The main method these campaigners used was slides of foetus that had been aborted. To put it simply, these campaigners where making 15-year-old children watch a slideshow containing blood and guts, trying to shock them and myself into believing the abortion was wrong.

As a result of this experience, I have come to think of both pro-life campaigners and pro-animal rights campaigners tend to use the exact same basic method of making people believe in their causes - shock tactics. For me, the arguments go, “Picture of the mangled up corpse of a baby. Picture of the mangled up corpse of a fox. THIS IS MURDER!!!”

My apologies by the way for those who found the last image slightly distasteful or sensationalist, but that is how it feels to me. I feel that the shock tactics are the main reason I cannot support animal rights. To give a recent example I read on The Guardian website, the American animal rights organisation PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) recently launched a leaflet campaigning against KFC, attacking its farming methods. Now, I can understand people’s concerns about the treatment of birds. It is an issue that needs to be dealt with, but in a serious, careful, considerate and tasteful manner. What is not appropriate is for PETA to have a drawing of a grinning Colonel Sanders covered in blood, holding up a life, bleeding chicken stripped of its feathers in one hand and a blood-stained knife in the other. If you want to persuade people to your argument is it not better to use methods that are more tasteful than this?

One issue that I believe needs to be brought up is the difference between “Animal welfare” and “Animal rights”. Animal rights is the view that animals are the same as people and should not be treated as property by humans (i.e. keep them as pets or in zoos), or used for food, clothing, experimentation or entertainment. Animal welfare is the view that it is acceptable for humans to keeps animals as property, or use them for food, clothing, experimentation or entertainment, provided that the animals do not suffer unnecessarily.

I myself support animal welfare. I am happy to eat meat and wear leather. The issue of experimentation is more controversial but I believe that if animal testing can help cure human illness then it is something that should be considered. I am not so keen on animals for entertainment purposes. I suppose my view is that animals and humans technically do not have the same rights. Humans are currently the most evolved and the most intelligent creatures on the planet. If a certain animal was to evolve and reach sentience however, then I would happily support their rights, because they would be on the same level as us.

Now I know these views will not popular with many readers. I admit to having problems with the animal rights issue before, including the controversial issue of fox hunting. My idea on solving this particular issue (fox hunting that is) is to use the concept of the “Modest Porpoisal” as created American satirist Stephen Colbert. Colbert plays a mock right-wing political pundit on the comedy series The Colbert Report (currently on FX in the UK) and most of his act is basically ironic praise of George W. Bush and right-wing commentators. He is one of the most successful and popular comedians in America at the moment, reaching third on the latest Time Magazine list of the 100 most influential people of the year. In one edition of his show last year, he covered a news story about deer from a German zoo being sold as meat. He then said, mockingly, that in order to preserve endangered species, you should market such animals as food and therefore give people an incentive to keep the animals alive.

Now I realise that Colbert was being ironic, but this idea could be adopted in a useful manner. For example, instead of people hunting down foxes, with hounds or with any other means, you could instead try and find a way of making fox meat palatable. I am sure that someone like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall would be willing to experiment. You could sell both the meat, as well as the fur for clothing. If you encourage people to eat foxes, farmers could instead farm them for the food and fur; rather than hunt them down as a means of pest control or sport, and therefore making fox hunting redundant. It sounds crazy, but it might work.

Anyway, that is the end of this article. Now if you’ll excuse I’m off to Burger King.