Ethical treatment of animals - Part II

This is a follow up a previous article - Ethical treatment of animals Part I.

In a recent online chat with an old friend it came out that Jonathan Safran Foer’s book ‘Eating Animals’ had convinced her to become vegan. The book is a great introduction to the world of the meat industry and it certainly convinced me to reevaluate my relationship with food.

Among the arguments in Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer's makes an interesting point: for many people, becoming vegetarian means breaking with a lot of the cherished food memories that have made us who we are. But beyond breaking with food memories is there a greater break with animals that is implicitly undertaken by vegetarians and vegans.

The most common justification I hear for vegetarianism is “the meat industry causes unnecessary suffering of animals and eating meat is therefore wrong.” There are other motivations, such as health, religion and environmentalism but this is one of the more common reasons.

Food is rarely just food, especially if that food was once a living being. Food is also culture - it is also the stories and the values that surround it, and it is also a relationship between humans and the broader environment.

William Sidney Cooper - A River Side Pasture with Sheep

There exists a symbiotic relationship between humans and animals. For the majority of animals this is defined by thousand years of mutual co-dependence. Indeed, York and Mancus in a recent anthrozoological paper argue that animals have had "profound influence" in driving the evolution of human societies.

Factory farming distorts and perverts the relationship between humans and animals. But is vegetarianism and veganism the appropriate redefining of that relationship?

The social construction of animals not only affects their fate, but the material properties of animals affect our fate, conditioning society and the consciousness of us as a people. In a section of York and Mancus’ paper, the authors address the question: "Who Made Whom?" They argue that animals are complex creatures, not just "putty that humans sculpted to fit their needs”. In an attempt to improve the lot of animals vegetarianism and veganism may be a movement that has removed themselves from that important animal relationship, or at least removed themselves to the extent that it assuages their guilt. This relationship with animals is important and should not be dropped so quickly.

Agricultural animals live in a symbiotic mutualism with humans. Cows, for example, benefit from their human-managed access to fodder, veterinary services, and protection from predators, while humans benefit from access to milk and meat. Sheep, goats, pigs, cats, dogs, and pigeons all have developed alongside and evolved with human development.

Dutch designer Christien Meindertsma decided to document all products traced to an actual pig from a farm in Netherlands, the pig identified by an ear tag 05049. In his book he describes each derivative product that came from this very pig, an astonishing 185 products in total. Is it possible to escape the societal influence that this animal has had?

Beyond the material benefits of animals I think there is something to be said for the benefits accrued by continued animal husbandry. There are cultural benefits of a continued agricultural history; the stories and imagery of farming are beautiful and culturally important. A connectedness to the broader animal world and a greater appreciation of death as a distinct part of life deepen our own acceptance of our limited time on earth.

Vincent van Gogh - Farmer Huts in Auvers

Animals have had a profound influence on human societies, playing a major role in the course of human history. I believe that factory farming will be remembered in history as one of societies greatest ethical failures. Anthony Bourdain highlighted it well: ‘the cruelty and ugliness of the factory farm – and the effects on our environment – are of course repellent to any reasonable person’. (note: Bourdain is certainly NOT a vegetarian)

Yet, I remain unconvinced that vegetarianism and veganism is the appropriate model for the symbiotic relationship between humans and other animals. I think there is still a morality to the swathes of human endeavor that come from our relationship with animals. Our relationship with animals is paradoxical, perplex and deep and hopefully it can grow to be a stronger one.

Note: It is okay to want to reduce the suffering but pretending your dietary lifestyle absolves you is a misconception. In Mike Archer’s article ‘Ordering the vegetarian meal? There’s more animal blood on your hands’. In it he outlines how death for protein is very difficult to avoid.

To give or not to give

yes, I am using the most overused Banksy image ever... deal with it

‘A day without a buzz is a day that never wazz’ – Melbourne Street Person

Those eloquent words were the response given to me when I asked how a panhandler was going to use their money.

How to deal with panhandling raises a number of issues. For what reason do you give or not give? Do you give to children? To the clearly intoxicated? Do you buy the Big Issue or other street magazines?

Jeremy Waldron has characterized begging as "ethical confrontation" and there is certainly a lot to consider when choosing whether to give or not to give. There are a number of common assumptions about begging which often sit in direct confrontation with each other.

Do you think that panhandlers beg because they have fallen through the social safety net OR do you think panhandlers make considerable amounts of money and spend most of it on their addictions? These assumptions raise the questions of whether giving money to panhandlers is beneficial to them or not.

Inevitably the reality is complicated and it is clear from studies carried out in Australia, Canada and the US that many people would not gain a steady middle class income through begging outside McDonalds or on public transport.

Louise Stark commented that “Panhandling is generally engaged in when other economic resources . . . have been exhausted. Earnings are rarely saved. They are spent on short-term purchases, generally alcohol or drugs, occasionally food.”

As with more conventional occupations, alcohol and drugs put a crimp in a beggar's earnings potential. In her 1992 study Stark claimed that the 'average' panhandler works the streets only until he or she has enough money to purchase a bottle of beer or fortified wine, a vial of crack, or, rarely, a meal at a fast food restaurant.

A study in Toronto found that the average income of a panhandler was 638$ a month; about 21$ a day. When you factor in food, accommodation and the high instances of drug problem this is not an easy living. The amount of money panhandlers spend on alcohol and illicit drugs is significant, but much lower than commonly assumed.

While we have all heard anecdotal stories of how beggars can earn X-amount a day and all of it went to their addictions the majority of panhandlers in Toronto are homeless and living in extreme poverty.

Michael Scott summarized matters as well as anyone: "Most evidence confirms that panhandling is not lucrative, although some panhandlers clearly are able to subsist on a combination of panhandling money, government benefits, private charity, and money from odd jobs such as selling scavenged materials or plasma."

Well!!! Should we give!?

The key arguments that I have come across against giving are:

• That if you give money to panhandler, you almost certainly spend your welfare budget helping the wrong people.
• That giving panhandlers money is irresponsible because it reinforces negative behaviour (note: this logic dictates that begging is inherently deemed a negative behavior).

These claims somehow discriminate between 'good' and 'bad' panhandling, with the bad variety being easily recognizable. The problem with these kinds of optimisations is that they rely on a mental and financial compartmentalisation that doesn’t make sense nor equates to real action. You have to differentiate personal indulgence money from altruism money, but if it is ethically sub optimal to give your charity money to a panhandler, then what does that make the next few dollars you spend on an expensive coffee or practically anything non-essential?

There’s no easy answer, only stories of how we wrestle with the issue. It’s always an internal conflict. Whether you give or not give will still be your decision but the largest factor that should be taken into consideration is that behind that request for money is a person. A person who should be respected, even if you do not respect their current mode of income.

Arthur Schafer summarized it well:

“When society silences a panhandler or banishes the panhandler from places which have traditionally been public places, such banishment comes close to being a denial of recognition. Each of us has a fundamental need to be recognized by our fellow citizens as a person with needs and views. The criminalization of panhandling is not only an attack upon the income of beggars, it is an assault on their dignity and self-respect, on their right to seek self-realisation through public interaction with their fellow citizens.”

note: In Australia begging is a criminal offence in most of the states and territories. 

Jews and Money

When I was last in NY I had the unfortunate experience being in the presence of someone making an ignorant, but not malicious, racist comment. I had decided a number of years ago to not let these kinds of comments slip by unnoticed and tried, somewhat successfully, to explain the fault of their statement.

I followed up our conversation with this letter:

When Jews are labeled as good with money, stingy or gold hungry you are using the same stereotypes that were used in the Middle Ages. Jews were legally restricted to occupations as moneylenders, usually to Christians. This led to, through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the association of Jews with greedy practices. 

So when you play into the stereotype of Jews being bankers and good with money you are reinforcing the stereotypes that have been pushed on Jews for over two millennia. This type of anti-Semitism continued throughout the centuries and reached a climax in the Third Reich and the Holocaust; in which 30 Einfeld's died alongside 6 million other individuals - 1.5 million of which were under 15. 

You might want to know that every Jew has had that stereotype pushed on them by people who are ignorant on this issue. That you contribute to this ignorance by repeating it. That Jews have been beaten up, sometimes by many people all at once, because of the continuation of this stereotype. So when you say it, it brings it all back up.

While I write about Jews in my letter the overal notion of how all too often stereotypes and the labels arise from violent histories that have worked to devalue others.

In a recent article on theconversation.edu.au Amelia Johns noted that -

"Some of the most harmful long-term effects of racism on individuals is not the hate-filled intent of the minority who engage in racial abuse. Though such experiences are rightly terrifying, the real harm is caused by the silence of the majority, who do nothing to stand up for victims but instead look away. The effect of this for the abuser is a sense of entitlement that they are representing the majority view. For the victim, it is a feeling that the majority somehow condone these acts, or at the very least are unmoved by them."

Do you fall into the same traps? Are you comfortable sitting quietly when someone makes ignorant statements about immigrants, arabs, women, gays or aboriginals?

the taboo of male cutting

‘I’m angry about circumcision. I’m angry that … millions of people are still cutting off part of theirs sons genitals, for no good medical reason and against all good medical advice, because Bronze-age goat-herders thousands of years ago thought their god demanded it.’ – Greta Christina.

Despite a continuing reduction over recent years, thousands of healthy Australian baby boys are circumcised annually. Medicare figures for 1997-1998 reveal almost 20,000 fee- for-service circumcisions on boys, excluding public patients and those outside the medical system.

For some reason there is still as misplaced acceptance of circumcision within our society to the point where it is still legal to perform non-therapeutic circumcision on healthy children as young as 8 days old.

If you think this practice is just a small snip with a knife then take a moment to reflect. During circumcision, the baby's sensitive foreskin is crushed audibly, and the flesh is cut with medical scissors. In all infant circumcisions, forceps or other probes are inserted into the delicate foreskin, scraping, tearing apart and destroying the normal erogenous tissues of the child's sex organ. If a clamping method is used, the foreskin is crushed over a bell-shaped device, to enable amputation.

Are cultural practices or cosmetic reasons enough to justify this ongoing practice?

Any sane parent would be repulsed at the idea of getting breast implants for their young child, or Botox. Why is circumcision outside this cultural taboo of infant cosmetic surgery? Because it has a rich cultural history?

In regards to the cultural practices ask yourself - would it be okay to chop of the tip of the pinky finger from just above the knuckle of an infant? What if it is what your cultural heritage deemed appropriate?

The same people who would cringe at the idea of foot binding for children and become nauseous when confronted with the realities of female genital mutilation are still quite comfortable to have their new born baby’s penis cut with a blade.

In a paper given at the Keel conference on genital integrity in 2008, Dr John Warren shows how the harm of circumcision arises from the operation itself.

Abstract:  Male circumcision results in permanent changes in the appearance and functions of the penis. These include artificial exposure of the glans, resulting in its keratinization and altered appearance. Additionally, circumcision results in loss of 30–50% of the penile skin, loss of at least 10,000–20,000 specialized erotogenic nerve endings, loss of reciprocal stimulation of foreskin and glans, and loss of the natural coital gliding mechanism, etc. From the point of view of sensation and function, the most important effect is caused by the tissue loss itself. The most sensitive part of the penis is removed, and the normal mechanisms of intercourse and erogenous stimulation are disturbed.

While Warren’s study did not deal with the instances of complications it is clear that since genital integrity is always destroyed, and sexual function is always compromised, the true complication rate of circumcision is in reality 100 per cent.

But surely male genital cutting is not as bad as FGM or foot binding? I think it is a dangerous ethical path to walk when we start quantifying human suffering in this way. Is it not enough to realize that thousands of infants a year are having their genitals cut without their permission is not an appropriate practice to have legal protection? These practices are outdated and ultimately abhorrent. Non-therapeutic circumcision is a huge invasion of the individual’s rights to bodily integrity.

If these cultural traditions are so important let them be made by a consenting adult. If an adult male wants to have his genitalia cut for cosmetic or cultural reasons that is his choice. We should be very wary to be making those choices on behalf of infants.

Legal action should be taken to safeguard the physical genital integrity of male children, but what precedes that is strong public censure of the practice.

note: You may have noted that I avoided the religious argument for circumcision because there is simply no way to test the assertion that God wants 8 day old boys to have foreskinectomies.

The Extent of Modern Slavery

In 2007 the UN marked the 200^th anniversary of the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The following year the international day of remembrance of the victims of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade became an annual observance.

At its peak 80,000 people were being sold each year. Conditions on board the slave ships reflected the outsider status of the cargo; the sexes were separated, kept naked, packed close together, and the men were chained for long periods of time. 1 in 4 of those on board were children. Unfortunately the situation has not gotten better.

Today the UN estimates that there are 27 million people living in slavery in the world. That is double the number that came out of Africa in the entire history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

It is estimated that there are 800,000 people trafficked illegally per year. Nearly 18,000 people are trafficked within the United States alone.

Three out of four of those trafficked are female and half of the current population living in slavery are children. This bears repeating - in the world today, in the year 2013 there are estimated to be 13.5 million children living in slavery. That is greater than the population of London and its surrounding area.

I want to be very clear; I am referring to real slavery. This is not about lousy marriages and this is not about jobs that suck. This is about people who are forced to work without pay. People who are operating 24/7 under the threat of violence and unable to walk away. It is real slavery in the same way that slavery would be recognized throughout all of human history.

Can't imagine it?

"Rambho Kumar was rescued from a carpet loom in India where he was forced to work 19 hours a day with no pay. The loom owner and trafficker seduced Rambho’s mother with promises that Rambho would go to school and send money home to the family. Rambho’s father had just died and his mother could not feed the family. She sent Rambho with the trafficker. 

When Rambho’s fingers bled from overwork the slave owner would dip them in oil and light a match to them. He wasn’t allowed to play or go to school. He was never allowed to visit his family or leave the loom." - source freetheslaves

Rambho's story is not unique (unlike his name), nor is it limited to India which can so easily be dismissed as "over there".

So what is being done about this on the international level?

Unfortunately victims of child slavery cannot look to the United Nations Human Rights Council for help. In 2012 the Special Rapporteur on Contemporary forms of Slavery, Gulnara Shahinian, reported to the Human Right’s Council that she is convinced that the mandate given to her does ‘not adequately cover all slavery practices, and the issue of contemporary slavery needs to be given greater prominence’.

Compounding Shahinian’s report is the human rights history of those who are currently on the Council or have been endorsed as candidates for the Council.

India is a sitting member of the Council but has the largest population in the world of people living in slavery. Malaysia and the Philippines, also member of the Council, suffer from vast internal enslavement in domestic services and trafficking into sexual exploitation into the Gulf States and Japan. The largest number of slaves in the world in Asia, estimated to be as high as 24 million.

In July 2012, the African Group endorsed the candidacy of Sudan in the upcoming UN General Assembly elections for membership in the Human Rights Council. Sudan has a long and bloody history of severe human rights abuses. Estimates of the number of people now enslaved in Sudan vary from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.

Slavery happens in nearly every country in the world, and the US and Europe are not immune. Research that Free the Slaves conducted with the University of California, Berkeley found documented cases of slavery and human trafficking in more than 90 cities across the United States.

In order to effectively eradicate slavery in all its forms, the root causes of slavery such as poverty, social exclusion and all forms of discrimination must be addressed. In addition, we need to promote and protect the rights of all especially the most vulnerable in our society. Where human rights violations have already been committed, we are called upon to help restore the dignity of victims.

You can calculate your slavery footprint here

If you were not aware of the extent of this problem, you are now. Ignorance can no longer be your excuse… nor mine.