The Animal Manifesto (16 page)

“In one of the training videos, a live vervet monkey is anesthetized and then injected with a dose of physostigmine, a
simulated nerve agent. . . . The military says trainees observe the effects of the physostigmine and then take steps to relieve them, injecting the animal with an antidote. . . .

“ ‘The animals recover completely and display no behavioral or physical ill effects from the exercise,’ a military spokesman said in an email about the procedure. ‘No animal has ever died as a result of the exercise.’

“In another video, a medical instructor uses a scalpel to slice open the leg of an anesthetized goat. The video goes on to show medical personnel applying a tourniquet and then dressing the wound. A third video shows a chest tube being inserted into an anesthetized goat.”

“A dolphin has died after colliding with another dolphin while performing aerial tricks at a US marine park. Sharkey, a 30-yearold dolphin, died after the accident on Saturday at the Discovery Cove park —a sister property to Sea World in Orlando, Florida.

“About 30 visitors were standing in a lagoon while the dolphins did tricks, but something went amiss when the two mammals leapt from the water and collided mid-air.

“The second dolphin did not appear to have been injured. . . .’This is a very unfortunate and very rare incident,’[a spokesperson] said.”

“The Berlin Zoo is under pressure to explain the fate of hundreds of animals which have vanished amid claims they were
slaughtered and in some cases turned into potency-boosting drugs. Claudia Hammerling, a Green party politician, backed by several animal rights organisations,. . . claims to have evidence that four Asian black bears and a hippopotamus were transported to the Belgian town of Wortel, which has no zoo, but which does have an abattoir.

“According to Ms. Hammerling these animals were slaughtered. She said the systematic ‘overproduction of animals’ at zoos, designed to attract more visitors, was to blame. Ms. Hammerling said she also knew of several tigers and leopards from Berlin that ended up in a tiger breeding farm in China that promoted itself as a purveyor of traditional potency-boosting medicines made from big cats. She alleges the animals’ remains were turned into drugs.

“[The zoo director] strongly denies the charges. . . . Rearing animals was central to his work and visitors should have the chance to observe the rearing process, he said.

“However, at Nuremberg zoo, the deputy director. . .has been reported as saying: ‘If we cannot find good homes for the animals, we kill them and use them as feed.’ At Nuremberg recently an antelope was fed to caged lions as visitors watched in outrage.”

“Senior zoo experts, staff and the RSPCA have accused the Melbourne Zoo of abuse and neglect of animals. . . . A confidential internal memo. . . reported the stabbing in May last year of a 13-year-old elephant, Dokkoon, with a marlin spike — a large, needle-like implement used to untie rope knots.

“The memo. . . says[the] animal trainer. . . was trying to control the elephant using a hooked implement known as an ankus or bullhook. ‘After a time trying to control the elephant,[the trainer] appeared to become extremely angry and used his marlin spike to stab at the elephant’s leg repeatedly in excess of a dozen times. The elephants seemed obviously distressed, standing back to back, vocalising and defecating.’

“In other incidents confirmed by the zoo:. . . Four seals have suffered partial blindness after being moved to a small swimming pool — out of public view and possibly for up to three years. . . . The eye problems have been caused by chlorine in the pool.

“The eyelids of a Malayan tapir were sewn together, also because of eye trouble. . . . Lack of tree cover and over-exposure to the sun is believed to have contributed to the animal’s eye damage.”

“Staff at a Hamburg zoo say one of their orangutans died needlessly after a visitor broke park rules against feeding animals. The animal, they claim, drowned in pursuit of a bread roll that had been lobbed into her enclosure.

“The chief zookeeper. . . said a visitor was responsible for the drowning. ‘Leila wanted to get the roll, but instead fell into the water and drowned.’”

“Thirty-two research monkeys at a Nevada laboratory died because human errors made the room too hot, officials for the drug
company that runs the lab said Thursday. . . . Charles River Laboratories Inc. issued a statement saying the monkeys died in Sparks on May 28. The company, based in Wilmington, Mass., attributed the deaths to incorrect climate-control operation.

“[A PETA spokesperson said]: ‘That monkeys were literally cooked to death by a heating system failure, as a whistleblower alleges, shows that the facility did not even have a simple alarm system in place to alert staff to the malfunction.’”

“A monkey, slotted to be used in a drug-product research experiment, was instead boiled alive inside an Everett laboratory, a KIRO Team 7 Investigation found. It’s a deadly error, but not the first one. . . uncovered at SNBL USA. . . .

“KIRO Team 7 Investigators confirmed someone placed a wire kennel, with a healthy female macaque monkey still inside, into a giant rack-washer. The 180-degree water, caustic foam and detergent killed the primate at some point during the 20-minute cycle. . . .

“[A former Animal Care Supervisor for SNBL] says she was recently fired after telling federal inspectors that some SNBL employees were abusing primates and failing to follow other US Department of Agriculture guidelines. Her list of complaints include: employees carelessly spraying monkeys with acid and intentionally slamming primates on the floor.”

The number of animals used by humans is staggering. Far and away the most animals are used in agriculture, but we
encounter animals in numerous different venues in our complex and demanding world. Indeed, we typically don’t even realize how extensive animal use is. Each of us is pulled in many different directions as we go through the day, and it’s easy not to notice or to forget about the animals imprisoned in laboratories, slaughterhouses, rodeos, circuses, zoos, fur farms, and more. It’s hard to coexist and be compassionate with beings we never see. Out of sight, scent, or hearing is out of mind and out of heart.

Yet when one looks at the number of animals who are routinely and cavalierly abused behind closed doors and shaded windows, it makes for a frightening portrait that is at once sobering, stunning, and sickening. It makes me embarrassed to be human.

Consider scientific research. U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics for the fiscal year 2005 listed a total of 1,177,566 primates, dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, and other species as being subjected to experimental procedures; this was an increase of 7 percent from the previous year. This included 66,610 dogs, 57,531 primates, 58,598 pigs, 245,786 rabbits, 22,921 cats, 176,988 hamsters, 64,146 other farm animals, 32,260 sheep, 231,440 other animals, and 221,286 guinea pigs. However, animals such as mice and rats are not protected by the federal Animal Welfare Act and they are not even counted; if they were, the total would be over 20 million animals in the United States alone. Worldwide in 2005, it was estimated that in 179 countries about 58.3 million living nonhuman vertebrates were subjected to fundamental or medically-applied biomedical research, toxicity testing, or educational use.

Veterinarian Andrew Knight has estimated that 68,607,807 additional animals may have been killed for the provision of
experimental tissues, used to maintain established genetically modified strains, or bred for laboratory use but then killed as surplus to requirements. Knight also cautions that the estimate of 17.3 million living vertebrates used within the United States is significantly less than a 2000 U.S. Animal Plant Health Inspection Service estimate of 31 —156 million. In November 2008 it was reported that primate experimentation increased to a record of 69,990 animals, and at least 20 million animals are killed in biomedical research and in laboratories that test various products.

Despite a growing consensus among scientists that animal testing should be decreased for ethical and practical reasons, it nevertheless increases. In 2008, Britain reported that experiments on animals rose to 3.2 million in that country, an increase of 6 percent over the previous year. Further, animal experiments in England have increased steadily over the past eleven years by a total of 21 percent. In the United States, there has been a marked increase in primates imported from other countries: in 2006, the total number was 26,638, a 44 percent increase since 2004, and in 2008 the total number rose to over 28,000. Nearly all were destined for research labs.

While many people certainly show kindness to the animals they meet in their everyday lives, that doesn’t mean everyone does. England reported that in 2007 the number of people convicted of cruelty to animals in that country rose by 24 percent. One newspaper story said: “In all, 1,149 people were convicted in 2007 for crimes against animals, up from 927 the previous year, the RSPCA said. Convictions for cruelty to dogs went up by 34% to 1,197, to cats by 15% to 277 and to horses by 13% to 119. The number of jail terms rose by 42% while suspended prison sentences rose by 39% to 71.” Uncounted in these numbers
are the approximately 40,000 retired racehorses that are slaughtered each year and the millions of cats and dogs killed in animal shelters.

Obviously, people love their pets, but the market for purebred or pedigree dogs has led to the rise of abusive “puppy mills,” in which dogs are consciously and intentionally bred and inbred, leading to severe anatomical, physiological, and genetic defects that shorten their lives and cause them to suffer when they’re alive. Renowned Australian veterinarian Paul McGreevy laments, “Pedigree dogs, as they are currently defined, are doomed. Inherited disorders will only become more and more common unless the breeding rules are changed.” In March 2009 the BBC dropped its coverage of the prestigious Crufts dog show because of the way in which dogs suffer after they’re bred for various physical traits to achieve “winning looks.” Public outcry was concerned with such breeds as pugs and Pekingese, whose faces are so flat that they have difficulty breathing and regulating their body temperature. An editorial in the
Times of London
noted, “It is difficult to see dog as man’s best friend when we castrate them, make them commit incest and parade them under bright lights in Birmingham.”

Internationally, millions of wild animals are traded illegally as if they were mere commodities like televisions or couches. The commercial trade in wild animals is a multibillion dollar business that threatens the survival of many species, and it involves a vast range of people, desires, and businesses, from finding exotic pets and stocking zoos to providing unusual leathers, furs, food, traditional medicine, and more.

Clearly, many people still consider leather and fur stylish, but that doesn’t make them necessary as clothing. And what is the cost in lives and suffering? It’s been well documented that
fur farms are purveyors of pure torture, in which the bones of a fox, chinchilla, or mink go snap, crackle, and pop in the process of turning them into a coat. Yet the number of animal skins needed to make a forty-inch fur coat may surprise you — 60 mink, 50 muskrats, 42 red foxes, 40 raccoons, 20 badgers, 18 lynx, 16 coyotes, and 15 beavers. According to animal activist Camilla Fox (in my
Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior),
over 50 million animals worldwide are killed for their fur annualy. Although the number of wild animals trapped in the United States has decreased from nearly 14 million in 1987 to less than 4 million in 2005, increasing overseas fur markets and the growing popularity of fur trim could reverse this trend. Moreover, many former fur trappers, unable to profit from their trade, have switched to “nuisance” or “damage control” trapping, a fast-growing, highly unregulated industry capitalizing on increased urban/suburban conflicts with wildlife and employing the same body-gripping traps used in fur trapping. Fox also stresses the suffering that trapping causes. Ethical concerns abound. Many animals caught and killed for their fur suffer out of our view beneath the surface of lakes and rivers. Consider what Fox wrote about trapping aquatic animals: “Leghold and submarine traps act by restraining the animals underwater until they drown. Most semi-aquatic animals, including mink, muskrat, and beaver, are adapted to diving by means of special oxygen conservation mechanisms. The experience of drowning in a trap must be extremely terrifying. Biologists Frederick Gilbert and Norman Gofton discovered that animals display intense and violent struggling and were found to take up to four minutes for mink to die, nine minutes for muskrats to die, and ten to thirteen minutes for beavers to die. Mink have been shown to struggle frantically prior to loss of
consciousness, an indication of extreme trauma.” Most animals caught in aquatic traps struggle for more than three minutes before losing consciousness.

The time it takes an animal to die is one way to judge the cruelty of a method of killing. Whales are another prime example: once they are harpooned or shot, as cetacean expert Philippa Brakes documented in
Troubled Waters: A Review of the Welfare Implications of Modern Whaling Activities,
it can take from two to more than forty minutes for them to die, depending on how they are hunted and how wounded they are; during this time, Brakes wonders, “Do whales scream?” Worldwide, as many as 300,000 cetaceans slowly meet their death when they get entangled as accidental bycatch in fishing nets. When their bodies are recovered, it’s obvious that they had desperately struggled to escape from their entrapment and that they sustained horrific injuries while doing so; there is nothing quick about this. Trapped individuals sustain deep cuts and skin abrasions from the rope and the netting, and fins and tail flukes can be partially or completely amputated. They also have broken teeth, beaks, or jaws, torn muscles, hemorrhaging, and serious internal injuries.