Gary L. Francione |
By Gary L. Francione, Animals as Persons, 2008
The following is from pages 26-28 of Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation by Gary L. Francione. Data and citations provided are from the end of 1990s. References are not included. For these consult the book.
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There
is a profound disparity between what we believe about animals and how we
actually treat them. On one hand, we claim to take animals seriously. Two third
of Americans polled by the Associated Press agree with the following statement:
“An animal’s right to live free of suffering should be just as important as
person’s right to live free of suffering ,” and more than 50 percent of
Americans believe that it is wrong to to kill animals to make fur coats or to
hunt them for sport. Almost 50, percent regard animals to be “just like humans
in all important ways.” These
attitudes are reflected in other nations as well. For example, 94 percent of Britons and 88 percent of
Spaniards believe think that animals are to be protected from acts of cruelty,
and only 14 percent of European support the use of genetic engineering that
result in animal suffering, even if the purpose is to create drugs that would
save human lives.
On
the other had, our actual treatment of animals stands in stark contrast to our
proclamations about our regard for their moral status. Consdier the suffering of animals at
our hands. In the United States alone, according to the U.S. department of
Agriculture, we kill more than 8 billion animals a year for food; every day, we
slaughter approximately 23 million animals, or more than 950,000 per hour, or
almost 16,000 per minute, or more that 260 every second. This is to say nothing
of the billions more killed worldwide. These animals are raised under
horrendous conditions known as “factory farming,” mutilated in various ways
without pain relief, transported long distances in cramped, filthy containers,
and finally slaughtered amid the stench, noise, and squalor of the abattoir. We
kill billions of fish and other sea animals annually. We catch them with hook
and allow them to suffocate in nets. We buy lobsters at the supermarket, where
they are kept for weeks in crowded tanks with their claws closed by rubber
bands and without receiving any food, and we cook them alive in boiling water.
Wild
animals fare no better. We hunt and kill them approximately 200 million animals
in the United States annually, not including animals killed on commercial
ranches or at events such as pigeon shoots. Moreover, hunters often cripple animals without killing them
or retrieving them. It is estimated, for example, that bow hunters do not
retrieve 50 percent of the animals hit with their arrows. This increases the
true death till from hunting by at least tens of millions of uncounted animals.
Wounded animals often die slowly, over a period of hours or even days, from
blood loss, punctured intestines and stomachs, and severe infections.
In
the United States alone, we use millions of animals annually for biomedical
experiments, product testing, and education. Animals are used to measure the
effects of toxins, diseases, drugs, radiation, bullets, and all forms of
physical and psychological deprivations. We burn, poison, irradiate, blind,
starve, and electrocute them. They
are purposefully riddled with diseases such as cancer and infections such as
pneumonia. We deprive them of sleep, keep them in solitary confinement, remove
their limbs and eyes, addict them to drugs, force them to withdraw from
addiction, and cage them for the duration of their lives. If they do not die during
experimental procedures, we almost always kill them immediately afterward, or
we recycle them for other experiments or test and then kill them.
We
use millions of animals for the sole purpose of providing entertainment.
Animals are used in film and television. They are thousands of zoos, circuses,
carnivals, race tracks, dolphin exhibits and rodeos in the United States, and
these and similar activities, such as bullfighting, also take place in other
countries. Animals used in entertainment are often forced to endure lifelong
incarceration and confinement, poor living conditions, extreme physical danger
and hardship, and brutal treatment. Most animals used for entertainment
purposes are killed when no longer useful, or sold into research or as target for
shooting on commercial hunting reserves.
And
we kill millions of animals annually simply for fashion. Approximately 40
million animals worldwide are trapped, snared, or raised in intensive
confinement on fur farms, where they are electrocuted or gassed or have their
necks broken. In the United States, 8-10 million animals are killed everybyear
for fur.
For
all these reasons, we may be said to suffer a sort of moral schizophrenia when
it comes to our thinking about animals. We claim to regard animals as having
significant interests, but our behavior is to the contrary.
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