Behind the scenes of the Berger Blanc scandal

A lot has been said about the Berger Blanc scandal, except for one thing. Hundreds of interest groups, foremost pet food companies, Big Pharma, veterinarians, zootherapists, animal welfare activists, several of them deeply embedded in small schools, are doing their utmost to convince kids, and their parents, that life without a pet is unthinkable. People are made to believe that pets are the solution to their every problem, “a solution that would have to be invented if it did not already exist,” says Michel Pépin, former president of the Académie de médecine vétérinaire du Quebec. As a result, thousands of disappointed consumers end up throwing to the bin their newly bought panacea as soon as they find out it doesn’t fulfill their expectations.

One example in a hundred of the many lies that are being told to consumers. Parents buy animals for their children not only for the company, but also because they are told that having a pet will teach their kids to become better human beings—more loving, responsible, and respectful, not only towards their own kind, but also in regards to nature and other species in general. It is commonly thought that children who are raised with a pet have a greater sense of empathy and compassion.

None of these assertions is true.

The Nazis for instance were quite fond of pets and animals in general. Would you believe that they had the strictest animal protection laws ever written? Hitler and his entourage also believed that Germany’s future lay in vegetarianism; they thought that such a change would lead to spiritual growth for humankind. It may be so, but it certainly didn’t stop them from committing the worst atrocities ever recorded.

If you think having a pet makes children more loving and respectful of other species and nature, think again. The problem is in the very concept of pet. Sometimes, indeed, it’s cruel to be kind. Every species has an essence, an innate core that includes a compulsion to engage in a series of intrinsic activities and to meet specific needs that were formed over millions of years of evolution. No animal in captivity can incarnate its essence. Although they have lived by man’s side for thousands of years, today’s pets carry with them all the instincts of their wild predecessors; however, in the interest of survival under domestication, these must be kept in check. The dog will always be a denatured wolf deprived of satisfying its pack instincts; the domestic cat will always be a carnivorous predator in a permanent state of inhibition; the bird in a cage, like the others, will remain a creature deprived of its most fundamental prerogatives: to come and go freely, to explore its territory, to socialize with others of its kind, to reproduce, to eat the right foods.

An animal constrained to life in an environment that is not its own is subjected to an almost constant disequilibrium. Impoverished by captivity, bored by inactivity, it necessarily develops a host of neurotic behaviors due to the emotional ties of total dependence and to the lack of factors that it needs to incarnate its true nature. Says psychiatrist Hubert Montagner in a speech given in 1998 at the French Information Center on Pets:

“Man does not hesitate to control every aspect of his animals’ existence. He tampers with his appearance. He confines it to spaces under his control, imposing exclusive or near-exclusive proximity. He limits his communication with others like it. He selects for behaviors that meet his expectations and conditions his animal to follow rituals. He imposes his whims and self-serving decisions. He encloses it within his own emotions and projections.”

Such violation of any being’s essence is the negation of true love and empathy. And various shows of affection, like hiring a professional dog-walker, putting boots and a coat on your pet, dressing up the relation with feel good words such as love, child, and guardian, will never make things right. Professor Yi-Fu Tuan of Yale University shows in his book Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets how affection, a latent form of violence, is used as an instrument of power:

“Love is not what makes the world go around. […] There remains affection. However, affection is not the opposite of dominance: rather it is dominance’s anodyne – it is dominance with a human face. Dominance may be cruel and exploitative, with no hint of affection in it. What it produces is the victim. On the other hand, dominance may be combined with affection, and what it produces is the pet. […] Affection mitigates domination, making it softer and more acceptable, but affection itself is possible only in relationships of inequality. It is the warm and superior feeling one has towards things that one can care for and patronize. The word care so exudes humaneness that we tend to forget its almost inevitable tainting by patronage and condescension.”

What children are most likely to learn through are self-centeredness and a deep disrespect for animals. These traits of character will become the ground rules for all of their future relationships. More or less, we interact the same way with other animals as we do with human animals – and not always in accordance with safeguards like laws, rules, and principles. According to several ethnologists and sociologists, the animal condition is essentially a reflection of the human condition, “the duplicate in positive and negative of our relationships with our own kind, ” says French sociologist Jean Pierre Diggard. Thus, we treat our own children, spouses, employees, friends, citizens, and on a larger scale, nations, and the environment, like animals, and that is precisely the problem. The damaging nature of our relationship with animals stays out of focus simply because there is no other behavioral point of reference with which to compare it.