Tag Archives: Peter Singer

PETA and Bestiality, Round 2

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In March, one Harold Hart, 63, of Neillsville, Wisconsin was arrested for allegedly had committed sexual acts with cows at a Greenwood, Wisconsin farm more than fifty times since 2004. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, of course, was all over this, but their reaction was a bit odd given Ingrid Newkirk’s previous claims about bestiality.

PETA’s Daniel Paden sent a letter to Clark County District Attorney Darwin Zwieg urging Zwieg to order psychological testing for Hart and waxed on about how people who have sex with animals are also supposedly more likely to engage in other criminal behaviors,

A recent study by Jory, Flemming, and Burton shows that 96 percent of offenders who had engaged in bestiality also admitted to sexual assaults on humans. When asked how many serial killers had a history of abusing animals, FBI supervisory special agent Alan Brantley, a psychologist who was formerly on staff at a maximum security prison, said, “The real question is, ‘How many do not?Â’” Experts agree that it is the severity of the behavior, not the species of the victim, that matters.

PETA’s Martin Mesereau also maintained there was a link between bestiality and other sex crimes, saying in a press release,

Studies show that offenders who commit bestiality often go on to commit sex crimes against humans. The community should follow this case closely because anyone capable of this kind of cruelty poses a definitive risk, not just to animals, but to fellow human beings.

If people who have sex with animals are so much more likely to engage in other criminal sexual acts, why was Ingrid Newkirk so nonchalant about it when defending Peter Singer’s claims about bestiality?

Singer, you might remember, was roundly criticized by most animal rights activists and groups for saying the following in a book review,

The potential violence of the orangutan’s come-on may have been disturbing, but the fact that it was an orangutan making the advances was not. That may be because [Birute] Galdikas understands very well that we are animals, indeed more specifically, we are great apes. This does not make sex across the species barrier normal, or natural, whatever those much-misused words may mean, but it does imply that it ceases to be an offence to our status and dignity as human beings.

The only prominent activist who came to Singer’s defense was Ingrid Newkirk, who said of bestiality,

If a girl gets sexual pleasure from riding a horse, does the horse suffer? If not, who cares? If you French kiss your dog and he or she thinks it’s great, is it wrong? We believe all exploitation and abuse is wrong. If it isn’t exploitation and abuse, it may not be wrong.

Following Newkirk’s claims, shouldn’t investigators first establish whether or not the sex between Hart and the bovines was consensual and or not? Certainly the fact that he apparently tied the cows up first might initially lead one to conclude that it was not, but perhaps the cows on this particular farm have some sort of bondage fetish. Either way, at a minimum — using Newkirk’s benchmark — bestiality may not even be wrong, much less lead people to commit sex crimes against humans.

Perhaps Hart’s defense should claim that he was merely taking noted animal advocate Ingrid Newkirk’s advice. No, wait a minute . . . if a judge learns Hart takes Newkirk seriously, that would be proof positive that he’s nuts.

Sources:

PETA pressures DA in cow-sex case. Marshfield News-Herald, March 9, 2005.

Peta Demands Jail Time, Psychiatric Intervention If Alleged Neillsville Animal Rapist Is Convicted. Press Release, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, March 8, 2005.

New AVMA President Calls for More Leadership on Animal Welfare Issues

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Incoming American Veterinary Medical Association president Dr. Bonnie Beaver said at that group’s convention that the AVMA must more directly engage in issues of animal welfare or risk ceding that territory to the animal rights movement.

In an July 23 speech to the AVMA House of Delegates, Beaver outlined her vision of the AVMA’s role in promoting animal welfare saying (emphasis added),

The third area of importance to AVMA is animal welfare. Veterinarians are the ultimate authorities in animal welfare. It is important that we retain this authority in light of challenges by animal rightists and humane organizations, as has been evident in recent newspaper attacks. Peter Singer, president of the Animal Rights International which was one of the sponsors of the New York Times ad, told the AVMA Animal Welfare Committee that when his group goes to a legislative body asking for a new law, one of the first questions he gets is “What does AVMA think about this?” When it becomes clear our positions differ, our position was chosen over his. Mr. Singer made it clear to the Committee that he was determined to remove obstacles in the way of his issues. As the world changes, our need to become more outspoken in this area has increased so that the image of the veterinarian being the one true advocate for the animal is not lost. Animal rightists are pushing their agenda in small increments under the guise of animal welfare and with mistruths, but the public is not aware of the slippery path ahead. Just as happens in many of the other areas we touch, we have accomplished a lot for a little. As an example, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has a $17 million budget with a staff of 200. The Humane Society of the United States has a $70 million budget, 300 staff members, and no animal shelters to support. Other animal rights organizations have a combined income of over $14.5 million. How about the AVMA? As you know, our $24 million budget is divided into many areas. Currently we devote around $200,000 and one FTE to animal welfare activities! Truly, a mouse that roars.

For several years the issues associated with animal welfare have been on our radar screen, but as you know they have become increasingly visible over the last few years. In the Executive Board visioning sessions during this past year, animal welfare moved into the highest concern for issues we face. The Executive Board then reemphasized the importance of AVMA’s role in the animal welfare arena, with veterinarians as the experts. Only in this way can we serve our biggest public–the animals.

Good for Dr. Beaver.

Sources:

New AVMA president calls for leadership in animal welfare. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, September 1, 2004.

Building for the Future by Serving Society. Bonnie Beaver, September 1, 2004.

Peter Singer Looks Back at 30 Years of Animal Liberation

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Peter Singer wrote an article in May for The Guardian looking back 30 after the publication of his essay/book review in The New York Review of Books, “Animal Liberation.”

Singer writes that, “A lot has changed since the appearance of that review and of the book, also called Animal Liberation, that grew out of it.” Of course what has not changed are Singer’s specious arguments. For example, Singer still apparently thinks this is a good argument for animal liberation,

Being able to reason better than another being doesn’t mean that our pains and pleasures count more than those of others — whether those “others” are human or non-human. After all, some humans — infants and those with severe intellectual disabilities — don’t reason as well as some non-human animals, but we would, rightly be shocked by anyone who proposed that we inflict slow, painful deaths on these intellectually inferior humans to test the safety of household products. Nor, of course, would we tolerate confining them in small cages and then slaughtering them in order to eat them. The fact that we are prepared to do these things to non-human animals is a sign of “speciesism,” a prejudice that survives because it is convenient for the dominant group — in this case, not whites or males, but all humans.

It is still difficult to understand how Singer can make the leap from how we treat human beings with differing reasoning capabilities to how we treat members of other species where not a single member of that species shows any evidence of higher-level cognitive skills.

Moreover although Singer concedes later that “evolutionary theory effectively debunks the idea that God gave humans dominion over the animals,” he is apparently oblivious to how other developments in evolutionary thought, including evolutionary psychology, have undercut what little substance there was to Singer’s claim that “speciesism” is mere prejudice. In fact what Singer dismisses as mere prejudice in fact is the best hypothesis yet on the evolution of moral foundations.

Another thing that has not changed is Singer’s selective citing of scientific research, such as his reference in his Guardian article to studies claiming that fish feel pain. In fact that study simply demonstrated that fish are capable of nociception and are able to respond to external stimuli, not that they feel pain.

Even Singer is forced to concede the obvious — 30 years later there is no society on the planet that is close to adopting his view of human/non-human relations,

Still, no society is even close to giving equal consideration to the interests of all animals. The spread of western methods of intensive farming to China and other nations in the developing world is threatening to incarcerate billions more animals in factory farms. After 30 years, the most that can be said is that — at least in the developed world — we are beginning to move in the right direct.

Singer seems to be pinning his hopes here that an increasing awareness of animal welfare issues will inevitably lead to animal liberation. Europe seems the only place where that even has a shot, but even there it is Europe’s increasingly anti-science, anti-technology views that have allowed the animal rights movement to gain ground rather than any serious contemplation of granting animals equal interest.

Source:

Some are more equal: Why do we insist that rights to life, liberty and protection from torture be confined to humans? Peter Singer, The Guardian (London), May 19, 2003.

Joan Dunayer on Steven Wise and Peter Singer

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In 2001 Joan Dunayer and Peter Singer were involved in a public dispute over the intricacies of animal rights arguments. Singer partially panned a book written by Dunayer for her claim that the death of an animal such as a chicken was just as tragic as a human being. Dunayer shot back that this, of course, is at the heart of what animal rights is about and criticized what she said was Singer’s reform-minded agenda as opposed to Dunayer’s abolition perspective.

Dunayer recently distributed the text of a speech she gave at an Austrian national animal rights conference attacking Singer and animal rights lawyer Steven Wise.

Dunayer’s main complaint against Wise revolves around the model he offers in Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights which relies on a number of criteria related to the mental capabilities of animals to decided whether or not they should be accorded rights. Wise’s argument is basically that animals that, in his view, share some cognitive abilities with human beings should be given legal protection — only humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, and bottle-nosed dolphins clearly meet Wise’s criteria.

Dunayer is upset by this argument because Wise denies rights to insects, which she maintains are capable of reasoning. She offers a long-winded and not terribly coherent description of honeybees “reasoning”,

In his first book, Rattling the Cage, Wise completely dismissed the idea that insects might reason. I told him I knew of much evidence that honeybees and other insects reason. He requested references. The evidence I supplied included the following: When a honeybee colony requires a new hive site, honeybee scouts search for a cavity of suitable location, dryness, and size. Each scout evaluates potential sites and reports back, dancing about the site that she most recommends. A honeybee scout may advertise one site over a period of days, but she repeatedly inspects her choice. She also examines sites proposed by others. If a sister’s find proves more desirable than her own, the honeybee stops advocating her original choice and starts dancing in favor of the superior site. In other words she’s capable of changing her mind and her “vote.” Eventually colony members reach a consensus.

Dunayer says this and similar evidence proves that honeybees reason, and apparently Wise agrees with her. But Wise still denies rights to honeybees and other insects, “Because, he says, they’re invertebrates. If they were vertebrates — like us — he’d grade them .75 or .8, and they’d qualify for rights. Too bad, honeybees.”

Dunayer, on the other hand, would clearly grant rights to honeybees and the rest of the invertebrate kingdom.
Dunayer also objects to Wise’s use of a common animal rights argument — that since some animals have cognitive abilities similar to those of some human patients such as very young children, the animals should be accorded rights. Dunayer finds this argument insulting . . . to the animals.

Wise advocates assessing the intelligence of nonhuman animals by giving them tests designed for human children, even though, by his own admission, tests designed for children may not be valid for nonhumans. Comparing nonhumans to human children insults humans. Some birds, such as Clark’s nutcrackers, can remember thousands of soil locations in which they’ve buried seed. What test designed for children, or even adult humans, possibly could reveal that? If captive adult gorillas and bottle-nosed dolphins seem to resemble human children, it’s because certain humans choose to view them that way and because they’ve been placed in stultifying environments that tallow scant expression of their natural adult nonhuman abilities. Personally I’m grateful that nonhuman animals aren’t like children. Imagine how annoying it would be if fishes, birds, and other nonhumans started going around whining, “I wanna cookie. I wanna cookie. I wanna cookie.”

Dunayer takes this argument to its logical extreme several paragraphs later (emphasis added),

We need to create the moral outrage that American abolitionists created about black enslavement, until the groundswell of public opinion forces legislation that recognizes sentience as the basis for rights. If some individual judges rule that a chimpanzee is a rights-holder because the chimpanzee shows human-like intelligence rather than because the chimp is sentient, we’ll have set the wrong kind of precedent. We don’t want a few nonhuman animals to be regarded a honorary humans. We want to get rid of humanness as the basis for rights.

Dunayer then carries her argument to Singer, criticizing him for having written approvingly of Wise’s argument. Dunayer is upset that Singer does not grant much consideration to chickens or fish. Dunayer responds,

Fourth, Singer’s disrespect for chickens, fishes, and so many other nonhuman animals is inconsistent with his own espoused philosophy, which values benign individuals more than those who, on balance, cause harm. By that measure, chickens and fishes are worthier than most humans, who needlessly cause much suffering and death (for example, by eating or wearing animal-derived products).

Dunayer adds that every animal is literally equal and worthy of rights, including houseflies,

Speciesism’s hallmark trait is denial of nonhuman individuality. In reality, no animal is replaceable. Both physically and mentally, ever sentient being is unique. Every lobster, every crow, every housefly, is an individual who has a unique life experience and never will exist again. But that’s not how abusers see it. For example, the flesh industry. In the flesh industry’s view — and that of flesh-eaters — chickens, fishes, and other nonhumans can be killed by the billions each year provided that others of their species remain available for future killing. Essentially, Singer has the same view.

Yes, that’s right, housefly rights.

Source:

Animal Equality. Joan Dunayer, Speech given at Austrian animal rights convention, September 5-9, 2002.

Gary Francione and Lee Hall Write Scathing Attack on the Animal Rights Movement

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Rutgers law professor Gary Francione and Fund for Animals legal director Lee Hall wrote a scathing critique of the animal rights movement for the San Francisco Chronicle. The op-ed defended Chronicle columnist Debra J. Saunders who recently criticized a California proposal for a “humane education” curriculum in schools.

Francione and Hall raise some points which this author fully agrees with, but in general they disapprove of the mainstream of the animal rights movement because they do not think it is radicalized enough. In Francione and Hall’s view, a group like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is composed of a bunch of sellouts who are little better than cattle ranchers.

Francione and Hall agree with and expand on Saunders’ criticism that the animal rights movement tends to be inconsistent. They note, for example, how quickly people rushed to defend Peter Singer’s qualified defense of sex between humans and non-human animals. Francione and Hall write,

Remarkably, a large number of prominent animal advocates rushed to defend singer. Those advocates who did criticize Singer found themselves reprimanded for “divisive” conduct. Such a response befits a cult, not a social movement.

Francione and Hall also agree with Saunders that Singer does openly advocate infanticide — as is obvious to anyone who reads his writings on the topic — and express contempt at those in the animal rights movement who label as “animal enemies” (their term) those who criticize Singer for this and other absurd positions.

But it is their wholesale attack on the humane education proposals that show Francione and Hall’s true perspective — they consider any attempt at improving animal welfare to be collaborating with the enemy that ultimately undermines the entire movement. Francione and Hall write,

Saunders correctly perceives the meaninglessness of such [humane education] legislation. Who disagrees with the position that we ought to be “kind” to animals? The problem is that as long as animals are our property, as long as we can buy them, sell them, kill them and eat them, it does not matter whether we call ourselves “guardians” or how much we ramble about “humane” treatment. In reality, we are still their masters and they are our slaves.

. . .

It is our view that animals should not be brought under the control of human owners in the first place and, therefore, that humans should stop producing domestic animals for human use.

With Francione and Hall, the problem then is not that procedures for slaughtering cattle is inhumane, but rather that animal rights activists seem to accept things like human beings having pets or abominable practices such as the provision of guide dogs for the blind.

Rather than advocate for humane treatment of non-human animals, Francione and Hall argue for essentially a complete separation and end all contact between humans and animals (except, perhaps, where humans are simply unnoticed observers).

Source:

A deeply confused animal rights movement. Gary L. Francione and Lee Hall, San Francisco Chronicle, August 21, 2002.

Gary Francione on the War Path

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The Summer 2002 issue of Friends of Animals’ Act’ionline includes a long interview with Gary Francione in which Francione makes abundantly clear his disdain for Peter Singer, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, non-vegan activists and anyone else who deviates ever so slightly from his abolitionist perspective.

Francione does not shy away from the implications of his belief that all property interests in animals should be abolished,

Gary Francione: . . .If, however, we did accord animals this one right not to be treated as property, we would be committed to abolishing and not merely regulating animal exploitation because our uses of animals for food, experiments, product testing, entertainment, and clothing all assume that animals are nothing but property. If we accepted that animals have the right not to be treated as our property, we would stop–completely–bringing domestic animals into existence.

I am not interested in whether a cow should be able to bring a lawsuit against a farmer; I am interested in why we have the cow in the first place.

. . .

FoA: So we need to do away with seeing-eye dogs?

Gary Francione: If we are serious about animal rights, we have a responsibility to stop bringing them into existence for our purposes. We would stop bringing all domestic animals into existence for human purposes.

Francione launches several broadsides at the animal rights movement, including arguing that “there is no animal rights movement in the United States. There is only an animal welfare movement that seeks to promote the ‘humane’ exploitation of animals.”

Francione’s main targets on that count are Peter Singer whose ideas have been “disastrous” for the animal rights movement. Francione goes on to say,

Ironically, Singer and PETA together have eviscerated the animal rights movement in the United States. . . .

The movement has set Singer up as some type of deity. To disagree with Singer’s views is interpreted by many as an act of disloyalty to the cause of animal rights. The result is that the movement is now saddled with a representative who praises McDonald’s, who espouses that humans with lives somehow considered as having lesser value can be sacrificed for the rest of us, and who announces that “mutually satisfying” sexual relationships may develop between humans and nonhumans.

Francione also attacks animal rights activists who are vegetarians but not vegans. According to Francione, “Anyone who maintains that she or he is an ‘animal rights’ advocate but is not vegan cannot be taken seriously.”

The odd thing is not that Francione holds such extreme views, but rather that he sincerely believes that the animal rights movement would have a much better shot at achieving its goals if it adhered to his strict abolitionist stance.

Lets hope he can convince the rest of the animal rights movement of that proposition.

Source:

Interview with Professor Gary L. Francione on the State of the U.S. Animal Rights Movement. Friends of Animals, Act’ionLine, Summer 2002.

Peter Singer Reaffirms His Views at AR 2002

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CNSNews.Com wrote an interesting summary of Peter Singer’s speech to the AR 2002 conference over the weekend. For his part Singer did not back down from any of the ridiculous positions that he’s developed over the years.

Does he still believe that it is morally permissible to kill newborns within the first 28 days of birth? CNSNews.Com quotes Singer as saying,

If you have a being that is not sentient, that is not even aware, then the killing of that being is not something that is wrong in and of itself.

. . .

I think that a chimpanzee certainly has greater self-awareness than a newborn baby.

. . .

. . . there are some circumstances, for example, where the newborn baby is severely disabled and where the parents think that it’s better that the child should not live, when killing the newborn is not at al wrong … not like killing the chimpanzee would be.

According to CNSNews.Com, Singer did back away slightly from the 28 day window outlined in his book, Practical Ethics saying,

So in that book, we suggested that 28 days is not a bad period of time to use because on the one hand, it gives you time to examine the infant to [see] what the nature of the disability is; gives time for the couple to recover from the shock of the birth to get well advised and informed from all sorts of groups, medical opinion and disability and reach a decision.

And also I think that it is clearly before the point at which the infant has those sorts of forward-looking preferences, that kind of self-awareness, that I talked about. But I now think, after a lot more discussion, that you can’t really propose any particular cut-off date.

Singer now apparently believes that such decisions should be made “as soon as possible after birth” without setting any specific time period.

Singer also again repeated his view — controversial even among animal rights activists — that human-animal sexual contact could be consensual and therefore, to Singer’s mind, morally permissible. CNSNews.Com reports that,

When asked by CNSNews.com how an animal can consent to sexual contact with a human, he replied, “Your dog can show you when he or she wants to go for a walk and equally for nonviolent sexual contact, your dog or whatever else it is can show you whether he or she wants to engage in a certain kind of contact.

Singer also cited “mainstream” and “conservative mainstream fundamentalist” Christianity as a major obstacle to the animal rights movement since adherents of those views “want to make a huge gulf between humans and animals.”

Unfortunately, CNSNews.com chose to interview Barry Clausen as a counterpoint to animal rights extremism. Clausen has written several books about environmental extremism and is occasionally cited in the media as an expert on animal rights and environmental terrorism.

Clausen generally has the same problem with the truth that animal rights activists have. He vastly overstates his evidence and has on a number of occasions been responsible for spreading fictions disguised as fact. Clausen tells CNSNews.com for example that,

I have not come across one of these people [animal rights activists] who I did not consider to be mentally ill.

That statement is absurd beyond belief, especially coming from Clausen who in turn praises Lyndon LaRouche-associate Rogelio Maduro. Clausen and Maduro edit a newsletter, Ecoterrorism Watch.

The last thing we need is anti-animal rights activists who are every bit as prone to bizarre accusations and shoddy research as the animal rights groups they are criticizing.

Source:

Christianity harmful to animals, says animal rights godfather. Marc Morano, CNSNews.Com, July 1, 2002.

Joan Dunayer Attacks Peter Singer, Says Chickens Live Worthier Lives than Humans

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At the beginning of January I wrote about Karen Davis attacking Peter Singer over a review that Singer wrote of Joan Dunayer’s book, Animal Equality: Language and Liberation. Now, Dunayer herself has written a very strong response to Singer accusing him of being “speciesist” in his review.

In her book, as Dunayer writes in a letter to Vegan Voice, Dunayer argues that “Truthful, nonspeciesist language — especially nonspeciesist legal language — would end nonhuman oppression.”

Singer dismissed that argument, writing that, “It is not speciesist to think that this event [the 9/11 terrorist attacks] was a greater tragedy than the killing of several million chickens, which no doubt also occurred on September 11, as it occurs on every working day in the United States.” Singer argued that it was appropriate to use different language to describe the deaths of animals than that used to describe the deaths of human beings.

Dunayer completely disagrees. She writes,

“It is not speciesist” to consider the murder of several thousand humans “a greater tragedy than the killing of several million chickens,” Singer contends. It certainly is. . . . Also, Singer’s disrespect for chickens is inconsistent with his espoused philosophy, which values benign individuals more than those who, on balance, cause harm. By that measure, chickens are worthier than most humans, who needlessly cause much suffering and death (for example, by eating or wearing animal-derived products).

The people who died on 9/11 led lives that were morally inferior to chickens. What a lovely philosophy.

Dunayer criticizes Singer for limiting protection for animals to those species who are self-aware. As Dunayer notes, it is impossible to determine the extent to which non-human species are self-aware. So, she concludes, we should consider them all self-aware. She contends, for example, that jellyfish should be consider creatures possessing rights. After complaining that Singer unjustly refers to animals with the third person pronoun, ‘it,’ Dunayer writes,

Similarly, although he has advocated moral consideration for all sentient beings, he excludes some nonhuman animals from who, thereby dismissing them from consideration. “Am I just showing prejudice if I confess that I find it difficult to think of a jellyfish as a ‘who’?” he asks. Yes, he is. . . . “Let’s wage the winnable battles first, before we go to the barricades for dust mites,” Singer mocks. Language that shows respect for dust mites and jellyfishes doesn’t impede efforts to liberate monkeys or pigs. The main obstacle to such efforts is a human-centered, hierarchical view of animals. By requiring that nonhumans demonstrate human-like traits, and by ranking nonhumans accordingly, Singer perpetuates speciesism and endlessly postpones nonhuman emancipation.

Got that? In Dunayer’s schema, animals are not to be granted rights because they may be sentient or self-aware, but simply because they are alive. Anything that is classified as an animal is a creature possessing rights, all the way down to jellyfish and similar creatures.

Source:

Letter to the editor of Vegan Voice. Joan Dynayer, January 2002.

Karen Davis: 9/11 Attacks May Have Reduced Pain and Suffering of Chickens

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United Poultry Concerns’ Karen Davis recently posted an open letter to Vegan Voice, an Australian vegan magazine, denouncing Peter Singer for allegedly disparaging chickens in a recent book review that touched on the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Singer, you may remember, argues that morality consist of reducing suffering in sentient persons. Singer has long hedged about where exactly the line between persons and non-persons should be drawn, but has speculated that a chicken might be an example of a creature that is not a person because it may not have a sense of its own existence over time.

That in itself was enough to enrage Davis, who insists that when chickens at her sanctuary “yell and otherwise beg and demand to be let out of their enclosures,” this is all the evidence anyone needs that chickens have a sense of their own existence over time.

But where Singer really crossed the line in Davis’ eyes was when Singer recently argued that it was wrong to draw a moral equivalency between the deaths of thousands of people in the 9/11 terrorist attack and the deaths of millions of chickens. Reviewing Joan Dunayer’s book Animal Equality: Language and Liberty, Singer rejected Dunayer’s claims that people should use the same terminology for the suffering of animals as they use to describe the suffering of human beings. Singer wrote,

Reading this suggestion just a few days after the killing of several thousand people at the World Trade Center, I have to demur. It is not speciesist to think that this event was a greater tragedy than the killing of several million chickens, which no doubt also occurred on September 11, as it occurs on every working day in the United States. There are reasons for thinking that the deaths of begins with family ties as close as those between the people killed at the World Trade Center and their loved ones are more tragic than the deaths of beings without those ties; and there is more that could be said about the kind of loss that death is to begins who have a high degree of self-awareness, and a vivid sense of their own existence over time.

Davis will have none of this, offering two closely related arguments — (a) that, if anything, the suffering experienced by chickens is worse than that experienced by humans in the 9/11 attacks, and (b) that the 9/11 attacks may have produced a net reduction in pain and suffering, since it likely killed several thousand meat eaters.

Davis writes,

For 35 million chickens in the United States alone, every single night is a terrorist attack, if the victim’s experience counts and human agency is acknowledged. That is what “chicken catching” amount to in essence. And it isn’t just something that is “happening” to these birds but a deliberate act of human violence perpetrated against innocent (they have done us no harm), defenseless, sentient individuals.

While I would not dream of using arguments to diminish the horror of the September 11 attack for thousands of people, I would also suggest that the people who died in the attack did not suffer more terrible deaths than animals in slaughterhouses suffer every day. Moreover, the survivors of the September 11 attack and their loved ones have an array of consolations-patriotism, the satisfaction of U.S. retaliation, religious faith, TV ads calling them heroes, etc–that the chickens, whose lives are continuously painful and miserable, including being condemned to live in human-imposed circumstances that are inimical and alien to them as chickens, do not have available. They suffer raw, without the palliatives.

As Davis sums up near the end of her letter, she in fact does think “it is speciesist to think that the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center was a greater tragedy than what millions of chickens endured that day and what they endure every day.”

If a chicken killed for food is morally equivalent to a human killed by a terrorist, then the obvious question is whether or not the victims of the 9/11 attack were truly innocent, and Davis has no problem at all leaping to the logical conclusion of that line of thinking. She writes,

Doubtless the majority, if not every single one, of the people who suffered and/or died as a result of the September 11 attack ate, and if they are now a life continue to eat, chickens. It is possible to argue, using (Peter Singer’s) utilitarian calculations, that the deaths of thousands of people whose trivial consumer satisfactions included the imposition of fundamental misery and death on hundreds of thousands of chickens reduced the amount of pain and suffering in the world.

Some animal rights activists care more about the suffering of animals than people.

Sources:

An Open Letter to Vegan Voice Re: Singer’s Disparagement of Chickens. Karen Davis, December 26, 2001.

Review of Joan Dunayer’s Animal Equality: Language and Liberty. Vegan Voice, Dec. 2001 – Feb. 2002, Peter Singer.

Peter Singer Digs Himself in Deeper in Salon.Com Interview

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Freelance writer Viktor Frolke has conducted several interviews with people associated with the animal rights movement for Salon.Com in which he throws softball questions and generally fawns over those he’s interviewing. Even with such a friendly audience, however, Peter Singer simply digs himself further into a whole with bizarre statements.

Before discussing Singer, though, its important to note the animal rights advocacy that Frolke slips into the introduction of the interview. Describing Singer’s views, Frolke writes,

His central argument is elegant and simple; a child might have come up with it. Humans are animals, therefore animals are in the same league as humans, and should be treated as such. By attacking what he calls “speciesism,” racism based on species instead of skin color, Singer raises the status of animals. (He is generally considered to be the founding father of the animal liberation movement and has turned quite a few meat eaters into vegetarians.) But, and this is the more controversial part, in raising the status of animals — or nonhuman animals, as he calls them — he effectively lowers the status of human beings, just as Charles Darwin did when he showed that all living things are biologically related.

I won’t dispute at all the contention that Singer’s philosophical views often seem like they were conceived by a child or perhaps a rebellious adolescent. But to compare Singer’s philosophy to Darwin’s theory of natural selection is an absurd claim. The claim that natural selection implies that human beings and animals are morally equivalent is just as spurious as the Social Darwinist views of the early 20th century that led to mandatory sterilization of retarded people and cast the poor and other as “unfit” from an evolutionary standpoint.

Animal rights activists would like to pretend that natural selection implies there are no substantive moral differences between species, but in fact evolution provides the converse — it offers an elegant explanation of why I value human beings I have never met far more than animals (such as my cat) who are an important part of my family.

Anyway, on to Singer. Singer is angry that people refer to him as a Nazi (Singer lost three of his grandparents to the Holocaust). The philosopher complains that there is an intolerance of dissenting views in the United States, and besides, they misunderstand his views on things like infanticide. But then Singer turns around and reinforces the worst aspects of his philosophy. For example, consider this exchange between Folke and Singer,

Frolke: Most proponents of the right to die would agree with your ideas about euthanasia. But you lose them when you suggest that it’s OK to kill a baby before it’s 28 days old, because until that time, it is not self-aware and “doesn’t have the same right to life as others.”

Singer: I wrote that in 1995. I have changed my position. Now I believe you should look at every individual case.

Frolke simply lets that go without a serious follow-up question. Shifting from a position that says its okay to kill any child before its 28 days old to saying that, after further consideration, such killings should be considered on a case by case basis, is hardly much of an improvement.

And again, Singer starts out by implying that he’s only concerned about preventing extreme cases, such as preventing massive medical intervention to keep alive an infant born without a brain, but then he turns around and endorses infanticide for what are trivial reasons.

Frolke: Maybe you’re not saying that the lives of disabled people are not worth living, but on a scale they’re closer to that point than you are.

Singer: There are so many more factors important to the quality of life. Maybe the life of a disabled person is much more worth living than mine. All I’m saying is that at birth you can’t tell that. It’s reasonable to say that a life with a serious disability has the expectation of turning out less well than a life without disabilities. And I’m not talking about intellectual disabilities. I can imagine that parents of a newborn that is paralyzed, that’s always going to be in a wheelchair, might decide that they don’t want that child and that they are going to have another one. That’s a decision I can understand.

This, of course, is why his critics accuse Singer of being a proto-Nazi. To say that its reasonable to consider killing an infant who is simply paralyzed and will require a wheelchair is abominable. It is incredible that a man with such a barbaric view is incredible.

Source:

“Professor Death”. Viktor Frolke, Salon.Com, June 25, 2001.