ANIMAL DEFENDERS

P. GREANVILLE—omebody left a few tightly sealed boxes in an alley, and by sheer luck a kindhearted passerby heard some anguished cries and took the boxes to a rescue group. No one knows why this stranger —or strangers—did that instead of simply leaving the boxes right outside a shelter, and then calling to alert the staff. It’s also fortunate they were not killed outright, the fate of untold millions of young animals down the ages. Surprisingly, the kittens were thirsty and demised, and covered in fleas, but otherwise in acceptable health. Also, equally important for their future, they were not wild; they had obviously had human contact.

Modern, capitalist society recognises animals only as material carriers of value and as capital’s means of production, as means of labour and subjects of labour which are supplied by nature for free–as long as no human labour is used to harness it.

The executives in the meat industry, the heart of the animal exploitation complex, earn billions with the killing of animals. In Germany alone, record turnovers of up to 40 billion Euros per year are reached by slaughtering more than 60 million pigs, 3.5 million cows and 700 million chicken, ducks and geese annually. Even in Switzerland, the sales volume amounts to 10 billion Swiss francs. In circuses and zoos, ‘exotic’ animals are usually kept under atrocious conditions to perform excruciating, stultifying show-acts. During hunts, they are killed for the mere amusement of mostly well-off huntsmen. In experiments, they serve as objects of research and labour, while the pet industry overbreeds and sells them off as toys.

PATRICE GREANVILLE—A victim of lead poisoning, an eagle is rescued and rehabbed.  Now she is being returned to the wild.  But why did she get sick in the first place? The short answer is she is an indirect victim of “recreational hunting”.
Lead poisoning can occur from the ingestion of lead slug or bullet fragments found in the systems and carcasses of deceased and live prey. Millions of birds are affected annually. … Eagles frequently scavenge carcasses of deer, pheasants and other wildlife that may harbor lead or lead fragments.

JON HOCHSCHARTNER—What many are not aware of is an emerging technology that will make aligning our values and actions easier. Cultured meat is grown from animal cells without slaughtering nonhumans. It has the potential to remove unimaginable misery from our food system with little to no sacrifice on our part. In some ways, this sounds too good to be true, like promises on a late-night infomercial. But the science is real.

MAXIMILIAN WERNER—Given that the lives of hundreds of black bears, lions and coyotes were at stake, I held out hope that the representatives would subordinate their own personal beliefs in service of the larger truth. But the longer I sat there, the more I realized that the meeting was not designed to consider the bigger picture. It was designed to remain impervious to it.