A disservice to animal rights

Published April 26, 2005

When it comes to having a central nervous system, and the ability to feel pain, hunger and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.

- Ingrid Newkirk, animal rights activist

Except for that part about the boy - and that is mainly due to a bias in favor of our favorite species - you cannot argue much with this statement.

If you have ever owned a dog or a cat, or spent just a little time observing the social life of pigs on a farm, you know that animals feel things, and feel them intensely.

They don't just feel pain or hunger. My dog is happy when praised, wretched when scolded, reproachful when ignored. He knows and shows up whenever he is discussed. A question such as, "Did you already take him out, or should I?" - though it requires that he find himself behind the grammatical curtain of an objective personal pronoun - summons him from anywhere in the house.

You don't have to be a member of an activist animal rights group to know this, or to extrapolate from experience as a pet owner a respect for the innate sensitivity of all animals - including those we butcher for food, the 20 million a year we sacrifice in laboratories in the name of science and those that are euthanized by the tens of millions each year to keep the population of strays in check.

All animals like being alive as much as we do; and the growing movement toward improving conditions for them, known generally as the animal protection movement, hates it when extremists undermine the effort by doing violent or stupid stuff.

"The conditions for non-humans in the world have become increasingly harsh, and our center was founded to explore that reality," said Professor Paul Waldau, director of the Center for Animals and Public Policy at Tufts University in Boston.

He teaches the ethics of human-animal relationships, and about the implications of environmental policies on animals. He was asked about organizations such as the Animal Liberation Front, a group that gained attention decades ago by freeing lab chimps and which yesterday was being investigated by police in the alleged harassment of a Laurel Hollow couple connected to a company conducting animal laboratory tests. The group, on its Web site, claims to have spray-painted the couple's house, broken into their car, stolen credit cards and run up charges.

"I certainly understand feelings of anger, but organizations like the Animal Liberation Front suffer terribly from the moral inconsistency of using violence to achieve a more nonviolent world," said Waldau.

"If I get 20 calls a month from members of the media," he added, "18 of them concern acts by fringe groups like these, and two are about the issues we look at."

The issues he looks at, mainly, concern how rough we are on animals. "One in four species of mammals is facing extinction," he said. "One in two primate species. One in four species of birds ..."

The fact that industrial farming imposes cruelties on pigs, cows and chickens is also an issue explored at Tufts.

"We are not abolitionists," said Waldau, meaning they are not opposed to taking the lives of animals for food, "but we ask the careful, rigorous questions that we hope will lead to changes in public policy."

Is it true then that " ... a pig is a dog is a boy?"

What's true, he said, is that many animals have emotions, social bonds and family bonds. "And when you pull them away from family members, they have a complex set of reactions that could justifiably be called suffering."

Whatever you want to call such a being - and despite what you may think of animal rights extremists - you probably have to fit it in your definition of fellow earthling.

Copyright © 2005, Newsday, Inc.