Ms. Travers begins by saying, "Whenever someone calls me an animal rights advocate I take it as an insult."

Considering she also says that she has worked with animals for most of her adult life, what a thing to say! Does she mean that animals should not have rights, and that people should not be advocating for the rights of animals? Even her own BC SPCA says animals have the right to the Five Freedoms.

She slams PETA's Ingrid Newkirk for comparing the plight of people in concentration camps to the endless plight of battery hens.

Well, the species is different, and I would never trivialize the plight of the concentration camp victims, but where are the saviours for the battery hens, who suffer their entire lives, for our convenience? I see them, and they are the animal rights advocates, the animal rights activists.

Travers say that Newkirk would be against animal experimentation even if it would help find a cure for AIDS. Well, animal experimentation will not find a cure for AIDS, and if you don't believe that, talk to the folks at Fauna Foundation, who have rescued laboratory chimpanzees who were injected with up to ten thousand times the lethal dose for people of HIV/AIDS, and they didn't get sick! The experiment merely rendered the unfortunate animals unsuitable for further experimentation, and they now live in a sanctuary, many of them terribly emotionally and physically scarred from their years of torture - to line the scientists pocketbooks.

Ms. Travers writes off Paul McCartney, because his deceased wife used chemotherapy for her cancer. I only have Travers' word for McCartney saying nothing on some occasion but I can say that he devotes thousands of hours to many animal welfare causes, time that could earn him millions of dollars. Most recently, he joined anti-seal butchering protests. Travers is on the board of the BC SPCA which is a member of the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies which issued a statement that it is not against the seal hunt. And she has the gall to criticize him?

Ms. Travers says that "Animal rights people don't even think we should have companion animals" - and implies that we would set them all loose to fend for themselves.

I'm an animal activist and I have never said that. I haven't heard any other animal activist say that. Ms Travers is using a false argument, but one that is believed by the gullible. The five companion animals that share my home currently, consist of four cats born to feral mothers (the result of human stupidity), and one dog, whose previous "owner" became too ill to care for him.

I love them all dearly, would never set them loose to fend for themselves, but do not promote the breeding of more - even if that meant I would someday not have "companion animals" to share my life with. They were not, and should not be, born to keep me company - just as I was not born for their entertainment.

Lastly, Ms. Travers said that "Medical research is now carefully monitored so that protocols are in place which eliminate unnecessary testing."

Nice if it were true, but it isn't. We certainly have the means via in vitro methodologies, computer modelling, and human volunteers, but no, animal testing is big business, huge business in medical research (despite the fact that it is ineffective), in the bio-tech industry, and in factory farming.

It's sad to me that someone who spends her life working with animals and is a person who directs the policies of the BC SPCA is not better informed.