Today's New York Times, Thursday April 9, includes a column that will be gratifying to activists who have been working for years to try to get animal advocacy issues included as part of mainstream media, legislative and ethical discussions. Columnist Nicholas D. Kristof has penned several pieces of late on animal advocacy issues. Today's is titled, "Humanity Even for Nonhumans."

Kristof opens with:
"One of the historical election landmarks last year had nothing to do with race or the presidency. Rather, it had to do with pigs and chickens - and with overarching ideas about the limits of human dominion over other species.

"I'm referring to the stunning passage in California, by nearly a 2-to-1 majority, of an animal rights ballot initiative that will ban factory farms from keeping calves, pregnant hogs or egg-laying hens in tiny pens or cages in which they can't stretch out or turn around. It was an element of a broad push in Europe and America alike to grant increasing legal protections to animals."

Kristof discusses how work such as that by Professor Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation, has infiltrated mainstream thinking. He raises some ethical questions, then ends his column with:

"Yet however we may answer these questions, there is one profound difference from past centuries: animal rights are now firmly on the mainstream ethical agenda."

Hallelujah.

The column is on line at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/opinion/09kristof.html
Please check it out, and email it from that site to all your friends. Papers note which articles get the most hits and forwards, and a great response to animal friendly work encourages more of it. Please also take this opportunity to keep the discussion of animal issues alive on the editorial page with letters to the editor. Letters appreciative of Kristoff's focus on animals are likely to help further that focus. And as Kristof notes that he eats meat, those of who don't have been given the opportunity to discuss the impact of meat laden diets not only on the animals but also on the environment and on our health, and to note the ease with which we follow and enjoy plant based diets.

The New York Times takes letters at letters@nytimes.com

Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Remember that shorter letters are more likely to be published.

I thank the many people who forwarded Kristof's piece to me, and am delighted to see it whipping around the internet.

Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)

Please go to www.ThankingtheMonkey.com to read reviews and see a fun celeb-studded video and an NBC news piece on Karen Dawn's new book, "Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals," which was chosen by the Washington Post as one of the "Best Books of 2008."