ANIMAL MARTYRDOM

Editor’s Note: This is a slightly revised version of an original piece filed by our  Science & Ecoanimal Issues editor, Anthony Marr, in 2009.  His views are bound to prove controversial even among our audience, but whatever quibbles we may have about historical or other points he raises, we’re in complete agreement with his views on the ecoanimal crisis and its man-made causes. 

By Anthony Marr

Marr and friend, in back.

I was born in China during the Japanese invasion which murdered some 20 million Chinese civilians. My mother was almost captured as a “comfort woman”, i.e. a sex slave to be eventually killed when used up. Had this happened, I wouldn’t be here writing this essay.

So right off the bat, I was born to think that Japan was anything but great. And though after the war I tried to forgive and forget, Japan turned the same blood-lust against the whales and dolphins, which has kept me seething. No, Japan is not a great nation, not by a long harpoon shot. They do make great motorcycles at an affordable price, though, I’ll grant them this.

BY THOMAS RIGGINS, People’s World

I THINK WE ALL KNOW, or should know, that there is something wrong with killing animals for their meat. Modern science has shown that animals have both sentience and consciousness, feel pain and experience an emotional life. From insects to us there is a great chain of awareness that we, who claim to be at the top of the chain, should respect as much as possible.

Like the Morlocks in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, our behavior is much to be regretted and we are under an obligation to model ourselves after our future, hopefully, Eloi incarnations. (The Morlocks and the Eloi were the cannibalistic human mutants and the gentle veggie-eating humans of the future, respectively, in the book.) We are also obligated politically to strive towards a world where the exploitation of humans by other humans comes to an end – and beyond that the exploitation and infliction of suffering on our fellow creatures in general.

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  July/August 2011:

Park described the suicides of some of the workers who performed the live burials,  and said she found the scenes she videotaped so depressing that she wanted to jump into the pits herself,  but she could not get close enough…”

South Korean quarantine officers throw live piglets, taken from a farm suffering from an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, into a hole prior to burying them alive in Ansung, in this 2002 file photo.

BY MERRITT CLIFTON & KIM BARTLETT

Mercy for Animals,  having already produced more shocking undercover videos of mistreatment of animals on factory farms than all other U.S. animal advocacy organizations combined,   on June 29, 2011 shocked television and web viewers yet again with footage from inside an Iowa Select Farms facility in Kamrar,  Iowa.

Iowa Select Farms supplies Swift,  one of the biggest names in meatpacking.  

Due to industrialization of production (hence “factory farming”), the magnitude of animal suffering is so staggering now it has become literally mind-numbing… In poultry alone, forty thousand million chickens are killed every year and the figure is mounting… Meanwhile, nearly 60% of the world’s pigs live and are slaughtered in China. The U.S. is second in world pig production,  but China has sixteen times as many pigs on farms at any given time–and has comparably greater animal welfare and pollution problems.”—Eds.

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