Editorial feature: Moral leadership, big groups, & the meat issue

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2007:

 
Exemplifying moral leadership consists of
departing from typical conduct to demonstrate
standards of behavior which may never be fully
met by most people, yet will be respected,
appreciated, and emulated to whatever degree
others find comfortable and practical.
This is risky business. To lead, one
must step beyond the norms, taking the chance of
ostracism that comes with being different.
Trying to be “better” than most people
incorporates the risk of being perceived as
“worse,” especially if the would-be moral
exemplar is asking others to take the same risk.
Hardly anyone chooses to be considered a
“deviate,” a word which literally means only
varying from routine patterns of conduct, but
connotes perverted menace.
But mostly the behavior and qualities of
moral leadership are not consciously chosen in
the first place, and are not exhibited as the
outcome of an intellectual process.
Despite the labors of moral
philosophers–and editorialists–the study of
behavioral evolution strongly suggests that the
components of “morality” evolved out of the
intuitive gestures and responses associated with
social cooperation. Humans did not invent
codified moral behavior to make ourselves
different from each other; rather, the effort
was to make behavior more standardized, more
predictable, more conducive to social harmony.
“Thou Shalt Not Kill,” “Thou Shalt Not
Steal,” and “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery,”
for instance, all seem to have unwritten
antecedents in the social norms of many species
much older than humanity.

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Defending Animal Birth Control after a fatal dog attack

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2007:
Defending Animal Birth Control after a fatal dog attack
by Poornima Harish

None of us are as smart as all of us. This was illustrated
in how the animal welfare organizations of Bangalore handled a recent
fatal dog attack.
Bangalore electrocuted street dogs until 1999, killing about
200 dogs per day, yet still suffered nearly 40 human rabies deaths
per year, plus dog population growth commensurate with the rising
human population.
Finally, in keeping with the Indian national policy adopted in
December 1997, the city opted to stop the killing and instead
support an Animal Birth Control program.
Beginning in October 2000, Banga-lore was divided into three
zones for ABC, to be handled by the Animal Rights Fund, Compassion
Unlimited Plus Action, and the Bangalore SPCA. At about the same
time the Krupa 24-Hour Helpline for Animals was commissioned to
counsel people about animal welfare and the ABC program.

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Livestock gift charities do not help poor nations, say global critics

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2007:
LONDON–Sixty years after Heifer
International founder Dan West pioneered the idea
of soliciting donations to give livestock to poor
families in disadvantaged parts of the world,
criticism of the practice at last cracked major
mainstream news media during the pre-Christmas
2006 peak giving season.
At least three major British newspapers
and news syndicates amplified critiques of
livestock donation programs, quoting most
extensively from a prepared statement
distribu-ted by Animal Aid director Andrew Tyler.
“This year about a dozen agencies are
using your money to punt goats, chickens,
sheep, camels, donkeys, pigs and cows to the
world’s starving,” Tyler warned donors. “Prices
vary: £70 will get you a cow from Help The Aged.
Send A Cow demands £750 per animal. Farm Friends
wants £30 for a goat, whereas World Vision will
settle for £91 for a whole herd.

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Closing stray kennels to the general public reduces adoptions, increases killing

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2007:
Closing stray kennels to the general public
reduces adoptions, increases killing

by Bill Meade, founder, Shelter Planners of America
It is common for some shelters to maintain stray kennels
which the public are not allowed to enter, unless they say they have
lost a specific type of animal.
This is done because of concern that people may claim animals
who are not theirs; because the staff may be burdened with having to
explain that certain animals are not ready for adoption; because
explaining why an animal must be euthanized may be awkward; to
protect the public from bites; and to reduce the spread of disease
by keeping people from touching animals.
However, when an animal shelter prevents stray animals from
being seen–and touched–by the public, the shelter reduces the
number of interactions that may lead to the animals being adopted.
Failing to give each animal maximum exposure to the adopting public
can lead to avoidable killing.

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REVIEWS: Earthlings

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2006:

Earthlings
Written, produced & directed
by Shaun Monson;
narrated by Joaquin Phoenix
Nation Earth (4000-D West Magnolia Blvd., Suite 260, Burbank, CA
91505; www.isawearthlings.com), 2006. DVD, 95 minutes. $19.95.

Actor Joaquin Phoenix in Earthlings explains video clip after
clip of shock video footage of the use and abuse of animals for food,
clothing, entertainment and medical research. Much of the material
was obtained by activists working under cover.
Earthlings has been compared to The Animals’ Film, narrated
by Julie Christie, which in 1981 helped to raise animal advocacy to
global prominence. Very few people were thoroughly aware, at that
time, of the issues that The Animals’ Film raised, and the shocking
aspects of it were demonstrably effective.

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Editorial: Strategies for changing the world

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2006:
In the 1940 Walt Disney animated cartoon feature Dumbo, The
Flying Elephant, the first and perhaps still most vivid screen
depiction of circus animal handling produced for a paying mass
audience, a troupe of drunken clowns speculate that if circus-goers
laugh at an elephant made to jump from a platform made to look like a
burning building, they will laugh twice as hard if the elephant has
to jump from twice as high.
Activists in every cause could be accused of committing the
same logical fallacy, presuming that if a problem is exaggerated or
described as a crisis it will get more attention, resulting in more
effective response.
However, Che Green, executive director of the Seattle-based
Humane Research Council, pointed out in the November 2006 edition of
the HRC newsletter Humane Thinking that, “According to a study
recently published by Britain’s Economic and Social Research Council,
the most effective strategies for encouraging behavior change are
those that are motivational and informative rather than negative,
such as those that induce fear, guilt, or regret.”
In other words, exaggerating a bad situation is not the best
way to make it better.

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Mink farm raids

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2006:
Midnight raiders on October 14, 2006 released 11,000 mink
from a farm in Oza does Rios, Spain, and released as many as 5,000
from two other sites in Galicia. Galician
farmers produced about 80% of the 400,000 mink who are pelted each
year in Spain, the Barcelona-based animal rights group Fundacion
Altarriba told Associated Press.
About 6,500 mink got past the farm perimeter fences,
Galician authorities said. About 4,550 were recovered within 48
hours, 70% of them dead.
Having fast metabolisms and no hunting experience, ranched
mink rarely thrive after release, but mink who survived in Britain
are blamed for hunting water voles to the verge of extinction.
Efforts to extirpate the mink have not succeeded, but reintroducing
otters is working, reported Laura Benesi of the Oxford University
Wildlife Conservation Research Unit in September 2006.
Bonesi and team released 17 otters into the upper Thames.
“When the otters arrived there were 60 or more mink in this small
area,” Bonesi told Sunday Times environment editor Jonathan Leake.
“The mink did not disappear completely, but within a few months they
were doing much less damage.”

BOOKS: Stealing Love: Confessions of a Dognapper

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:

Stealing Love: Confessions of a Dognapper by Mary A. Fischer
Harmony Books (231 Broad St., Nevada City, CA 95959), 2006. 288
pages, hardcover. $23.00.

Stealing Love: Confessions of a Dognapper is the
autobiography of investigative reporter Mary A. Fischer, a poignant
story of a sad and lonely life. Rescuing abused dogs is both
incidental to, and symbolic of, her own family history.
Fischer was the second daughter of a dysfunctional family.
When she was four years old, her mother had a breakdown following
the death of her own mother, and was committed to a mental
institution by her father, a selfish, inconsiderate rake.
Fischer paints a harrowing picture of life in an American
asylum when psychiatry was still relatively new: “No experimental
therapy was seen as too bizarre.” Shock therapy was the norm,
“with electrode pads in a metal headband on her temples, a nurse
flips a switch and 140 volts of electricity crackle through her
temporal lobes like a thunderbolt of lightning.”

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BOOKS: Capers In The Churchyard

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2006:

Capers In The Churchyard:
Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror
by Lee Hall
Nectar Bat Press (777 Post Road, Suite 205, Darien, CT 06820), 2006.
162 pages, paperback. $14.95.

Friends of Animals legal director Lee
Hall’s short book attempts to provide a lesson in
strategy for animal rights campaigners. Hall
argues that the goal of animal advocacy should be
to change the aspects of human culture that are
based upon dominating and exploiting non-human
animals.
Violent methods, such as those used by
the Animal Liberation Front and Stop Huntingdon
Animal Cruelty, are in Hall’s view merely the
“greening of hate’” and counter-productive.
Most significantly to Hall, they discredit the
campaigns of those who seek radical reform by
non-violent means. Hall sees the excesses of the
environmental thugs ensnaring all animal
activists in the association with terrorism
amplified by threatened industries and their
stooges in government.

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