7 posts tagged “animals”

There are many arguments against the existence of zoos, and there are many articles and some books that make a convincing case for their closure. (Among the latter is Peter Batten’s Living Trophies.) Some, but by no means all, of those arguments are:

· Zoo animals are often acquired from dealers who, in turn, have obtained them by brutal means.

· They are transported to their destinations, often over great distances, in a primitive manner with little, if any, regard to what kind of treatment their species requires.

· They are subject to attacks by vandals, and even psychopaths.

· They are often held in sterile cells or cages, suffering the debilitating effects of solitary confinement.

· They receive inadequate nutrition, eating unpalatable synthetic food, and inadequate medical care, suffering illness and disease, because of zoos’ financial constraints and zookeepers’ indifference.

· They are traded like baseball cards among zoos and other animal exhibitors, to satisfy perceived display needs.

· They are cross-bred, creating animals called “tigons” or “ligers,” that are, Frankenstein-like, neither tigers or lions.

· They are denied the life dictated by their genes and nature.

These are but a few of the reasons zoos should cease to exist, and each of them have been elaborated at great length elsewhere.

But the most fundamental objection to zoos, understood and expressed by only a small segment of today’s animal rights movement, is that zoos are an immoral enterprise because they exploit and abuse living creatures for the entertainment of the crowd, and in so doing so cause and perpetuate immeasurable suffering.

Zoos are an outrageous affront to the nature and dignity of the animals imprisoned there. The humans who gawk at zoo inhabitants are co-conspirators in the crime perpetrated against the captive animals.

Why, then, do they exist?

Geordie Duckler has written incisively at 3 Animal Law 189 (1997) that:

Zoo animals are currently regarded as objects by the state and federal courts and are perceived as manifesting the legal attributes of amusement parks. The few tort [civil wrong] liability cases directly involving zoos tend to view them as markets rather than as preserves; the park animals are viewed as dangerous recreational machinery more akin to roller coasters or Ferris wheels than to living creatures. Courts typically treat zoo keepers and owners as mechanics and manual laborers responsible for the maintenance of these dangerous instrumentalities. Disputes concerning the possession, sale and care of exotic animals, as well as the administration of the habitats in which such animals are housed, have also been treated by the courts in terms of control of materials for public exhibit and entertainment.

Note the words that I have italicized, chosen carefully by Duckler to describe captive animals imprisoned in zoos: objects, machinery, instrumentalities, materials.

In other words, zoo animals, though living creatures, are nothing more than inanimate objects.

Consider that. Primates, large cats, the magnificent elephants are no different from chairs, cars, xrays, yarn.

How, one may ask, is this possible conceptually? How can animals, that breathe, eat, drink, sleep, walk, climb, run, copulate, fear, nurture, reproduce, be considered mere inanimate objects?

Putting aside bloody biblical texts, Greco-Roman barbarity, and the influential anti-animal views of Thomas Aquinas, the father of current prevailing attitudes about animals was renowned Christian philosopher-mathematician Rene Descartes. He held that animals were automa­tons—literally. Decartes asserted that lacking a Christian “soul,” they pos­sessed no consciousness. Lacking a consciousness, he concluded, they experienced neither pleasure nor pain.

Decartes’s belief was a con­venient one because it allowed him to rationalize the dissection of unanes­thetized living creatures—all in the name of advancing the knowledge of anatomy.

If “advancing knowledge” as a rationale sounds familiar, let’s look at some of the major excuses, but certainly not legitimate justifications, for the existence of zoos today.

They supposedly “teach people about animals”—as the captive creatures pace interminably in cages, often in solitary confinement, or inhabit the same indoor/outdoor enclosure for life while humans throw them Cracker Jacks.

They allegedly “provide scientists an opportunity to study them”—while they no longer act as their genes and instinct drive them, neither seeking food nor roaming through natural habitats.

They presumably support “breeding programs,” especially of endangered species, both as an end in itself and to use the animals as barter with other zoos.

Even if these and other “practical” rationalizations for the existence of zoos were defensible, and they are not, none of them should be allowed to trump the fact that zoos are an immoral enterprise because they exploit and abuse living creatures for the entertainment of the crowd, and in so doing so cause and perpetuate immeasurable suffering.

Zoos are an outrageous affront to the nature and dignity of the animals imprisoned there. The humans who gawk at zoo inhabitants are co-conspirators in the crime perpetrated against the captive animals.

It is in the name of moral principle that zoos should be abolished, for the benefit of the captive “living trophies” and in the name of humane principle.

www.isaronline.blogspot.com

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Hello!

International Society for Animal Rights (ISAR) is new to Vox and would like to meet new people that could help us help animals by furthering our campaigns.

ISAR is an animal rights organization that utilizes law and education to serve animals as well as promotes the importance of spaying/neutering companion animals and the adoption option from local humane societies.

If anyone is interested in learning more about us and our programs, we would like to invite you to our website at http://www.isaronline.org.

A few of our programs that we would like to devote some more attention to are our petition campaigns. Please feel free to pass these links along to friends and family!

We look forward to your friendship!

http://www.isaronline.org/petition_spay_stamp.html

http://www.isaronline.org/petition_pet_population.html

http://www.isaronline.org/petition_animals_entertainment.html

If you do sign any of the petitions listed above, please let us know where you've heard about ISAR!

Hi Everyone!

We are new to this group and to Vox.

We are interested in meeting new people and making new friends.

International Society for Animal Rights (ISAR) is an animal rights organization utilizing law and education to serve animals. We also promote the importance of spay/neuter and the adoption option from local humane societies to reduce and one day eliminate the unnecessary killing of millions of healthy and lovable dogs, cats, puppies, and kittens each year in shelters simply "to make room".

We would like to extend an invitiation to visit our website at www.isaronline.org to learn more about our programs, but there is one in particular that this group may be especially interested in.

Since 1992, ISAR has set aside the third Saturday of August to commemorate and memorialize the animals that have lost their lives to the pet overpopulation epidemic. The day is titled International Homeless Animals' Day. With candlelight vigils, prayer services, speakers, etc...basically anything to raise awareness for the millions of animals killed each year, organizations and concerned individuals get together and promote campaigns and ignite new programs to educate others that the spay/neuter solution is the answer to eliminating pet overpopulation.

This year's International Homeless Animals' Day will be held on August 16, 2008.

If you are interested in learning more about this special day please visit ISAR here: http://www.isaronline.org/f/2007_autumn.pdf

If you would like to participate in ISAR's International Homeless Animals' Day please contact us:
http://www.isaronline.org/f/animals_day_coupon.pdf

Hi Everyone!

We are new to Vox and would like to introduce ourselves to your group.

International Society for Animal Rights (ISAR) is an animal rights organization that utilizes law and education to serve animals. We also promote the importance of spaying/neuter companion animals and the adoption option from local humane socities to reduce the numbers of loving and healthy animals killed in shelters each year simply "to make room".

We would like to invite you to our website (http://www.isaronline.org) to learn more about ISAR and our programs.

Since this is a group focusing on the legal side of things, we would also like to make mention of our monograph titled, "Harming Companion Animals: Liability and Damages". Many lawyers and State Representatives are requesting and making use of this booklet to fight for animal rights.

If anyone is interested in receiving a complimentary copy of Harming Companion Animals: Liability and Damages, simply contact us and let us know where you've heard about us.

Please stop by our Vox page and say hello!

Also, you may find below an excerpt of the introduction to "Harming":

Too often, especially with the advent of the Internet, advice is sought from International Society for Animal Rights from the custodians of companion animals about harm done to them by veterinarians through misdiagnosis, prescribing the wrong medicine, operating unnecessarily or not when they should, and committing every other kind of malpractice imaginable. We also receive heartbreaking reports of intentional acts of cruelty perpetrated against companion animals: dogs shot by neighbors, cats stoned by teenagers, horses maimed by sadists.

The media exposure now being given to the harm being visited upon companion animals causes nightmares for their custodians, who live in fear their animals may be the next victims.

Given what is now known about the emotional aspects of the human-animal bond, and how the millions of companion animal caretakers experience that bond, it’s not surprising that when harm is caused the custodian seeks some kind of recourse.

Often a complaint is made to prosecutors, the licensing authorities, or the Better Business Bureau. Sometimes newspaper announcements are placed, reporting what the wrongdoer did, or failed to do. Mostly, however, the reaction of choice is a lawsuit—usually not to recover damages for their own sake, but to expose the wrongdoer’s conduct, to prevent him from harming any animals in the future, and/or to punish him financially... http://www.isaronline.org/harming_animals.html  

Hi Everyone!

We are new to this group, heck we are new to Vox completely.

We wanted to say hi and introduce ourselves.

International Society for Animal Rights (ISAR) is an animal rights organization focusing on law and education to serve animals, as well as promoting the importance of spay/neuter and the adoption option from your local humane societies.

We look forward to making new friends and maybe even gain some new volunteers.

We would like to invite all to visit our website at www.isaronline.org if you are interested in learning more about our programs.

Please stop by our Vox page or website to say hello!

Over two decades ago, Harvard University’s Office of Government and Community Affairs sponsored an in-depth study of the animal rights/welfare movement, including its goals and strategies

In its Report, Harvard noted that “[P]hilosophically, animal rights/welfare groups can be classified as abolitionists or regulationists. The abolitionists, such as ISAR…constitute a minority within a movement. They are, however, also the most diligent, tactical and clear thinking. They use the law; publications and education to work for their ultimate goals.”

What Harvard said then about ISAR remains true today.

International Society for Animal Rights (ISAR) was chartered in the District of Columbia nearly a half-century ago, making our organization one of the oldest humane education organizations in the United States.

ISAR is a tax exempt non-profit corporation, and contributions to it are tax deductible.

ISAR was the first organization in the United States (and probably the world) to use in its corporate name the moral principle of “animal rights.” The first federal and the first state court legal decisions to invoke the moral principle “animal rights” were in cases brought by International Society for Animal Rights.

ISAR’s founder, the late Helen Jones (click here for obituary), was one of the few pioneers in what would decades later become known as the animal rights movement. She fervently believed that humans have a moral responsibility to animals that could be satisfied only by working for an end to their suffering and exploitation. In furtherance of that goal, Helen Jones originated dozens of innovative educational programs and campaigns on behalf of animal rights, one of the most prominent being International Homeless Animals’ Day™.

One of Helen Jones’s most profound insights led to an ambitious program that for its audaciousness was unique to ISAR.  Miss Jones, whose father was a small town lawyer, understood that an essential strategy for securing rights for animals was through the American legal system—a strategy that ISAR has employed for over three decades.

The history and accomplishments of International Society for Animal Rights are presented in our Power Point presentation, which can be accessed here. 

International Society For Animal Rights
Law and Education Serving Animals
965 Griffin Pond Road
Clarks Summit, PA  18411

(570) 586-2200    Voice

(800) 543-ISAR   Voice

(570) 586-9580       Fax

Contact@isaronline.org Email

http://www.isaronline.org Website