Thought for today...
Jan. 22nd, 2003 05:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gemfyregleaned from the lecture on animal ethics/welfare I had today.
Use of animals for teaching/research purposes has become very restricted nowdays. Some of this is for the good (some experiments are totally cruel and uneccessary) but sometimes it borders on depriving students of vital opportunities to learn properly.
Animals are also used for food, too many people are cruel to domestic animals, fishing is an accepted recreational sport, land clearing kills millions of animals pretty much every day, and in the wild most things die by being eaten alive.
So...
Are teachers and researchers an 'easy' target for concerned groups?
discuss.
Use of animals for teaching/research purposes has become very restricted nowdays. Some of this is for the good (some experiments are totally cruel and uneccessary) but sometimes it borders on depriving students of vital opportunities to learn properly.
Animals are also used for food, too many people are cruel to domestic animals, fishing is an accepted recreational sport, land clearing kills millions of animals pretty much every day, and in the wild most things die by being eaten alive.
So...
Are teachers and researchers an 'easy' target for concerned groups?
discuss.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-01-22 09:29 pm (UTC)Short answer yes, Long answer... yes :).
I hate any filthy animal that disturbs my way of life and will smish it a second notice *also btw how do you sex roaches, I want to know if I discriminate*. Why don't the activists complain at the companies which produce bug zappers and bug sprays?.. if they did you'd hear stories of the phantom demonstrator squisher.
Why are teachers easy targets? cause they advertise that they kill animals to 30 students a day, of course someone little girly is gonna get offendede.
Why are researchers easy targets? cause tv says they are bad ppl cause they put make up on pigs and teach monkeys to smoke.
The question should be do animals deserve to be a pawns in creating a better future for a offspring (and not to include researchers looking for the next lipstick colour). How many lives should warrent slaughtering a monkey? Or 2 monkeys? Or a zebra? Or a dozen chickens?...
Ok chickens are "different" cause we eat them anyway, but I think monkey would taste nice too if they breeded fast enough :). I think the problem is monkeys is the researchers fault, if darwin didnt point out evolution then people would care less-er if they killed the *catch 22*.
And thats all I have to say about that.
PS. I think we are doing BJ's homework and this her evil way of getting a public opinion on her subject :)
Re:
Date: 2003-01-23 12:06 am (UTC)I'm actually hoping Lisa will read this and reply. :)
no subject
Date: 2003-01-23 08:27 am (UTC)Well since you asked....
Date: 2003-01-25 09:57 pm (UTC)Are teachers/researchers easy targets?
Yes, becuase you can sit down and have an intellectual discussion with most of them, even the ones who think you should vivisect & kill everything. On a regular basis I sit down with researchers and we discuss various animal ethics related issues and come to an agreement civilly. Even when debates get heated they aren't physically violent or unable to listen to reason.
Sorry but the majority of intensive animal farmers (& I say majority but not all) I've met aren't willing to talk to you about it in any form of civil manner. Ditto the majority of circus people- even the clowns when we make a specific point of saying that we think human acts are great it's the animal usage we have a problem with.
Another thing is people often don't like thinking about the impact they themselves have on the world. For example there are heaps of people against the Live Sheep Trade who eat animals becuase they don't like to think the way their lamb chop was produced wasn't as cruel as the trade is. It is easy to say oh that's bad to something they aren't going to benifit from. It's easy to say testing for drugs that someone won't use is cruelier than looking in their own feet and seeing the leather they are waring.
Animal experimentation often uses animals that urban people can identify with (eg dogs, domestic rats and mice, rabbits, cavies etc) rather than pigs, cows, sheep etc that urban people don't even identify with as being dinner. You can think of it in terms of "it could be my cat Fluffy, and Fluffy has feelings therefore it is wrong" rather than people thinking hang on maybe the cows and pigs they eat have feelings as well.
Also what the majority of wider community think is very inaccurate such as we need meat to be healthy, farm animals are free to wander, baby roosters aren't gassed to death at a few days old becuase they don't lay eggs and the majority of experimentation is on cosmetics or on weight loss pills.
Oh & someone else said that rats & mice were not covered under the Animal Welfare Act. That is *wrong* in regards to experimentation/usage the WA AWA which comes into effect mid 2003 means that the NHMRC guidelines are complusory by law (rather than being recommended). They do extensively cover rodents. Also many places do make exception for observational work in reguard to the everyone has to be killed rule. I also know of some places that try to rehome suitable animals if possible.
As for experiments having to be passed even if they are on so called "pest" animals, you could also say that disabled people are "pests" as well (after all they don't make any valuable contribution to society) so why don't we use them for experiments, after all the results when applied to humans would be more accurate? Why are you willing to do an experiment on a cane toad if you aren't willing to do it on a tree frog?
BTW Peter Singer will be giving a free public lecture at UWA on Feb 14th which you might find of interest, it's about ethics without the species barrier.
HTH
-L.