Since we all inhabit the Earth, all of us are considered earthlings.
There is no sexism, no racism, or speciesism in the term "earthling."
It encompasses each and every one of us:
warm- or cold-blooded, mammal, vertebrate, or invertebrate,
bird, reptile, amphibian, fish, and human alike.
Humans, therefore, being not the only species on the planet,
share this world with millions of other living creatures,
as we all evolve here together.
However, it is the human earthling who tends to dominate the Earth,
oftentimes treating other fellow earthlings and living beings
as mere objects.
This is what is meant by "speciesism."
By analogy with racism and sexism, the term "speciesism"
is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members
of one's own species and against those of members of other species.
If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification
for refusing to take that suffering into consideration.
No matter what the nature of the being,
the principle of equality requires that one's suffering
can be counted equally with the like suffering of any other being.
Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight
to the interests of members of their own race
when there's a clash between their interests
and the interests of those of another race.
Sexists violate the principle of equality
by favoring the interests of their own sex.
Similarly, speciesists allow the interests of their own species
to override the greater interests of members of other species.
In each case, the pattern is identical.
Though among the members of the human family,
we recognize the moral imperative of respect,
every human is a somebody, not a something,
morally disrespectful treatment occurs
when those who stand at the power end of a power relationship
treat the less powerful as if they were mere objects.
The rapist does this to the victim of rape.
The child molester to the child molested.
The master to the slave.
In each and all such cases,
humans who have power exploit those who lack it.
Might the same be true of how humans treat other animals
or other earthlings?
Undoubtedly there are differences,
since humans and animals are not the same in all respects.
But the question of sameness wears another face.
Granted, these animals do not have all the desires we humans have.
Granted, they do not comprehend everything we humans comprehend.
Nevertheless, we and they do have some of the same desires
and do comprehend some of the same things.
The desires for food and water, shelter and companionship,
freedom of movement and avoidance of pain.
These desires are shared by nonhuman animals and human beings.
As for comprehension, like humans, many nonhuman animals
understand the world in which they live and move.
Otherwise, they could not survive.
So beneath the many differences, there is sameness.
Like us, these animals embody
the mystery and wonder of consciousness.
Like us, they are not only in the world, they are aware of it.
Like us, they are the psychological centers
of a life that is uniquely their own.
In these fundamental respects,
humans stand "on all fours," so to speak,
with hogs and cows, chickens and turkeys.
What these animals are due from us, how we morally ought to treat them,
are questions whose answer begins
with the recognition of our psychological kinship with them.
So the following film demonstrates, in five ways,
just how animals have come to serve mankind.
Lest we forget.
Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer
wrote in his best-selling novel, Enemies, A Love Story,
the following:
The comparison here to the Holocaust is both intentional and obvious.
One group of living beings anguishes beneath the hands of another.
Though some will argue the suffering of animals cannot possibly compare
with that of former Jews or slaves, there is, in fact, a parallel.
And for the prisoners and victims of this mass murder,
their holocaust is far from over.
In his book, The Outermost House, author Henry Beston wrote:
"We need another and a wiser
and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals.
Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice,
man in civilization surveys the creatures
through the glass of his knowledge
and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion.
We patronize them for their incompleteness,
for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves.
And therein we err and greatly err.
For the animal shall not be measured by man.
In a world older and more complete than ours,
they move finished and complete...
...gifted with extensions of the senses
we have lost or never attained...
...living by voices we shall never hear.
They are not brethren. They are not underlings.
They are other nations...
...caught with ourselves in the net of life and time...
...fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the Earth."
For most of us, our relationship with animals
involves the owning of a pet or two.
So where do our pets come from?
Of course, one of the most obvious ways animals serve man
is as companions.
For these pets, it starts with a breeder.
Though not all breeders are considered professional.
In fact, in this profession,
just about anyone and everyone can be a breeder.
For pet stores, most of their animals are acquired from puppy mills,
even if they may not know it.
Puppy mills are low-budget commercial enterprises
that breed dogs for sale to pet shops and other buyers.
They are often backyard operations that expose animals
to filthy, overcrowded conditions
with no veterinary care or socialization.
Dogs from puppy mills often exhibit physical and psychological problems
as they grow up.
Strays, if they are lucky,
will be picked up and taken to a shelter or a pound,
where they can only hope to find a new home again.
An estimated 25 million animals become homeless every year.
And as many as 27% of purebred dogs are among the homeless.
Of these 25 million homeless animals,
an average of 9 million die on the streets from disease,
starvation,
exposure,
injury,
or some other hazard of street life.
Many others are strays,
some of whom were presumably dumped in the streets
by their caretakers.
The remaining 16 million die in pounds or shelters
that have no room for them and are forced to kill them.
Sadly, on top of all this, almost 50% of the animals brought to shelters
are turned in by their caretakers.
Many people claim they don't visit shelters
because it's depressing for them.
But the reason animals are crowded into such dreary places as these
is because of people's refusal to spay or neuter their pets.
Several pet owners feel, particularly men for some reason,
that neutering a pet emasculates the owner somehow.
Or they may just want their children
to someday experience the miracle of life, so to speak.
In either case, pet owners like these unknowingly take part
in the euthanasia of over 60,000 animals per day.
Euthanasia, generally defined as the act of killing painlessly
for reasons of mercy,
is usually administered by an injection in the leg for dogs
and sometimes in the stomach for cats.
It is a quick and painless procedure for the animals
and by far the most humane.
But not always the most affordable.
Due to the increase of euthanasia in shelters
and the growing, constant demand for drugs like Euthasol,
some shelters with budget constraints
are forced to use gas chambers instead.
In a gas chamber, animals are packed very tightly
and can take as long as 20 minutes to die.
It is, by far, less merciful, more traumatic, and painful.
But the procedure is less expensive.
Perhaps some of the tough questions we should ask ourselves
about animals that we keep as companions are:
can we keep animals as companions and still address their needs?
Is our keeping companion animals in their best interest,
or are we exploiting them?
The answers to these questions
may lie in the attitudes of the human caretakers
and their abilities to provide suitable environments
for companion animals.
Most human beings are speciesists.
This film shows that ordinary human beings,
not a few exceptionally cruel or heartless humans,
but the overwhelming majority of people,
take an active part, acquiesce in,
and allow their taxes to pay for practices that require the sacrifice
of the most important interests of members of other species,
in order to promote the most trivial interests of our own species.
The hope for the animals of tomorrow is to be found in a human culture
which learns to feel beyond itself.
We must learn empathy.
We must learn to see into the eyes of an animal
and feel that their life has value because they are alive.
Oh, I missed...
I missed you, honey...
But I'll get you again...
I got you!
What happens in slaughterhouses is a variation on the theme
of the exploitation of the weak by the strong.
I got you!
That a boy...
More than 10,000 times a minute,
in excess of 6 billion times a year, just in the United States,
life is literally drained from so-called "food animals."
Having the greater power,
humans decide when these animals will die,
where they will die, and how they will die.
The interests of these animals themselves play no role whatsoever
in the determination of their fate.
Killing an animal is, in itself, a troubling act.
It has been said that if we had to kill our own meat,
we would all be vegetarians.
Certainly very few people ever visit a slaughterhouse,
and films of slaughterhouse operations
are not popular on television.
People might hope that the meat that they buy
came from an animal who died without pain.
But they don't really want to know about it.
Yet those who, by their purchases, require animals to be killed,
do not deserve to be shielded from this
or any other aspect of the production of the meat they buy.
So where does our food come from?
For those of us living on a meat diet,
the process these animals undergo is as follows:
For beef, the animals are all branded.
In this instance, on the face.
Dehorning usually follows.
Never with anesthetic, but rather a large pair of pliers.
In transportation, animals are packed so tightly into trucks,
they are practically on top of one another.
Heat, freezing temperatures,
fatigue, trauma, and health conditions
will kill some of these animals en route to the slaughterhouses.
Milking cows are kept chained to their stalls all day long,
receiving no exercise.
Pesticides and antibiotics
are also used to increase their milk productivity.
Eventually, milking cows, like this one, collapse from exhaustion.
Normally, cows can live as long as 20 years.
But milking cows generally die within 4.
At which point, their meat is used for fast-food restaurants.
At this slaughterhouse, the branded and dehorned cattle
are brought into a stall.
The captive bolt gun, which was designed
to reduce animals unconscious without causing pain...
...fires a steel bolt that is powered by compressed air,
or a blank cartridge, right into the animal's brain.
Though various methods of slaughter are used,
in this Massachusetts facility,
the cattle is hoisted up, and his or her throat is slit.
Along with the meat, their blood will be used as well.
Though the animal has received a captive bolt to the head,
which is supposed to have rendered him or her senseless,
as you can see, the animal is still conscious.
This is not uncommon.
Sometimes they are still alive even after they have been bled
and are well on their way down the assembly line to be butchered.
This is the largest glatt kosher meat plant in the United States.
Glatt, the Yiddish word for "smooth,"
means the highest standard of cleanliness.
And rules for kosher butchering require minimal suffering.
The use of electric prods on immobilized animals is a violation.
Inverting frightened animals for the slaughterer's convenience
is also a violation.
The inversion process causes cattle to aspirate blood,
or breath it in, after incision.
Ripping the trachea and esophagi from their throats
is another egregious violation,
since kosher animals are not to be touched until bleeding stops.
And by dumping struggling and dying steers through metal chutes
onto blood soaked floors,
with their breathing tubes and gullets dangling out...
...this "sacred task" is neither clean or compassionate.
Shackling and hoisting is ruled yet another violation,
nor does it correspond to the kosher way of treating animals.
If this was kosher, death was neither quick nor merciful.
Veal, taken from their mothers within two days of birth,
are tied at the neck and kept restricted
to keep muscles from developing.
Fed an iron-deficient liquid diet, denied bedding, water, and light,
after four months of this miserable existence, they are slaughtered.
Sows in factory farms are breeding machines,
kept continually pregnant by means of artificial insemination.
Large pig market factories will "manufacture,"
as they like to call it,
between 50,000 and 600,000 pigs a year each.
Tail docking is a practice derived from the lack of space
and stressful living conditions
so as to keep pigs from biting each other's tails off.
This is done without anesthetic.
Ear clipping is a similar procedure,
also administered without anesthetic.
As well as teeth cutting.
Castration is also done without painkillers or anesthetic
and will supposedly produce a more fatty grade of meat.
The electric prods are used for obvious reasons: handling.
Electrocution is another method of slaughter, as seen here.
Throat slitting, however,
is still the least expensive way to kill an animal.
After knife sticking, pigs are shackled,
suspended on a bleed rail, and immersed in scalding tanks
to remove their bristle.
Many are still struggling as they are dunked upside down
in tanks of steaming water,
where they are submerged and drowned.
In regard to poultry,
Americans currently consume as much chicken in a single day
as they did in an entire year in 1930.
The largest broiler companies in the world
now slaughter more than 8.5 million birds in a single week.
Debeaking prevents feather-pecking and cannibalism
in frustrated chickens, caused by overcrowding in single areas,
where they are unable to establish a social order.
Today, done with infant chicks, the procedure is carried out very quickly,
about 15 birds a minute.
Such haste means the temperature and sharpness of the blade varies,
resulting in sloppy cutting and serious injury to the bird.
As for their living conditions, anywhere from 60,000 to 90,000 birds
can be crowded together in a single building.
The suffering for these animals is unrelenting.
It is a way of life.
Although their beaks are severed, they attempt to peck each other.
For hens, they live in a laying warehouse,
crammed inside so-called "battery cages."
Many lose their feathers and develop sores
from rubbing against the wire cage.
Crowding prevents them from spreading their wings,
and the hens cannot even fulfill minimal natural instincts.
During transportation, all animals suffer and many die.
And they suffocate when other animals pile on top of them
in overcrowded, poorly loaded cages.
Chickens and turkeys are slaughtered in numerous ways.
Some may be clubbed to death or have their heads cut off.
But most are brought through the assembly lines of factory farms.
Dangled upside down on a conveyor belt,
their throats are slit,
and they are left to bleed to death.
Others may be placed head-first in tubes to restrict their movement
while they slowly bleed to death.
Surely, if slaughterhouses had glass walls,
would not all of us be vegetarians?
But slaughterhouses do not have glass walls.
The architecture of slaughter is opaque,
designed in the interest of denial,
to ensure that we will not see even if we wanted to look.
And who wants to look?
Let's go, motherfucker!
Don't fucking stop!
Let's go, let's go!
Come on, bitch!
It was Emerson who observed, more than 100 years ago:
"You have dined,
and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed
in the graceful distance of miles,
there is complicity."
Fuck on, bitch!
And for those who think eating seafood
is healthier than land animals,
just remember how much irretrievable waste
and contaminated sediments are dumped into our oceans.
In the past,
oil, nuclear, and chemical industries have done little
for the protection of marine environments,
and dumping on or under the seabed
has always proved a convenient place to dispose of inconvenient wastes.
Today's commercial fishers intensify this situation on massive scales.
They use vast factory trawlers the size of football fields
and advanced electronic equipment to track and catch fish.
Huge nets stretch across the ocean,
swallowing up everything in their path.
These factory trawlers, coupled with our increased appetites for seafood,
are emptying the oceans of sea life at an alarming pace.
Already, 13 of the 17 major global fisheries
are depleted or in serious decline.
The other four are overexploited or fully exploited.
The recent outbreak of Pfiesteria,
a microorganism 1,000 times more potent than cyanide,
spawned from millions of gallons of raw hog feces and urine,
poured into rivers, lakes, and oceans,
turning their ecosystems into unflushed toilets,
is proving the most alarming.
Threatening sea life and humans alike,
Pfiesteria has killed over one billion fish,
the Southeast's largest fish kill on record.
And it's spreading.
Traces of Pfiesteria have already been found
from Long Island to the Florida Gulf, at distances of up to 1,000 miles.
In fact, this water-based Pfiesteria invasion
stands as one of the worst outbreaks of a virulent microorganism
in U.S. history.
It is a Level 3 Biohazard.
Ebola is a 4.
AIDS is a 2.
And this bug mutated as a direct result
of our mass consumption of animals, particularly pork.
With hog farms fattening millions of pigs for slaughter,
grain goes in and waste comes out.
This waste finds its way into our oceans and water-supply systems,
contaminating the animals that live in it,
as well as those who eat from it.
Finally, whaling.
Though the International Whaling Commission
prohibited commercial whaling in 1985,
many countries continue to kill whales for their so-called "exotic meat."
They use harpoons...
...firearms...
...blunt hooks...
...even explosives...
...or drive them into authorized whaling bays,
where they are made to beach
and can be killed with knives in the shallows.
Every winter, between the months of October through March,
thousands of dolphins are confined and brutally killed
in small towns across Japan.
Sounding rods beneath the water's surface
interfere with the dolphins' sonar.
Once disoriented and enclosed within the nets, the dolphins panic.
Fisherman often injure a few captive dolphins
with a spear thrust or knife slash,
since dolphins never abandon wounded family members.
Mothers and babies call out in distress as they are separated,
hoisted up, and dragged off,
soon to be mercilessly hacked to death.
These are benign and innocent beings.
And they deserve better.
Yet here, as they lay stricken and needful,
writhing helplessly on cement floors,
they are cut open with machetes...
...and left to slowly suffocate...
...convulsing and contorting in the throes of agony,
while schoolchildren walk on by.
Such images of slaughter and bloody red water
clearly show the Japanese government
has little respect for the state of the world's oceans
with their inhumane methods of fishing,
often in violation of international treaties, laws, and conventions
designed to protect over-exploiting the oceans
and the creatures that live in them.
Dolphin meat is later sold in markets and restaurants,
though often mislabeled as "whale meat."
But as though cruelty toward animals raised for food wasn't enough,
we've also found ways of making use of them for all our clothes:
jackets, shoes, belts, gloves, pants, wallets, purses, and so on.
The next question is obviously: "where do our clothes come from?"
The demand for leather comes primarily from the United States,
Germany, and the U.K.
Just about everybody wears it,
with little or no thought of where it came from.
Thousands of India cows are slaughtered each week
for their skins, purchased from poor families in part of rural India
who sell them only after the assurance
that the animals will live out their lives on farms.
To relocate the animals to a state where they can legally be killed,
since cattle slaughter is forbidden in most of India,
the animals must be shoed and roped together in preparation
for a harrowing "death march," which could last for several days.
Forced to walk through the heat and dust without food or water,
coupled with the sheer stress of this terrifying experience for them,
many of the animals collapse and are unable to continue.
Bear in mind that most of the cattle are being placed in a truck
for the first time in their lives and are likely to be frightened,
especially if they have been handled hastily or roughly
by the men loading the trucks.
The noise and motion of the truck itself is also a new experience,
one which makes them ill.
After one or two days inside the truck without food or water,
they are desperately thirsty and hungry,
especially since it is normal for such cows
to eat frequently throughout the day.
But when the cattle become weary and grow faint,
the bones in their tails are broken
in an effort to get them back up on their feet.
This is done by repeatedly pinching the tail in several areas.
Handlers must constantly keep the cattle moving,
pulling them by nose ropes, twisting their necks, horns, or tails.
They lead, or rather force, the cattle down embankments
and in and out of trucks without ramps,
causing injuries like broken pelvises, legs, ribs, and horns.
Chili pepper and tobacco are also used to keep the animals walking.
This practice is done by rubbing the pepper directly into their eyes,
in order to stimulate the animal back onto his or her feet.
And all this before the slaughter.
As many as half of the animals will already be dead
by the time they arrive at the slaughterhouse.
But to make the experience even more traumatic and terrifying,
they are often killed in full view of each other.
And instead of the required
"quick slice" across the throat with a sharp knife,
they are generally killed through hacking and sawing with a dull blade.
Afterwards, the skins from these animals
are sent to tanneries that use deadly substances
like chromium and other toxins to stop decomposition.
Remember, leather is dead flesh.
It is dead skin,
and, therefore, it's natural for it to decompose and rot away
unless treated with such potent substances as these.
And for people, the health effects of such chemicals in tanneries,
in lieu of the continued demand for leather goods,
is yet another issue.
Ultimately, leather from Indian cattle
make their way to clothing stores all around the world.
Most major chains sell Indian leather.
Leather that comes from completely different cows than those we eat.
And what about fur?
Over 100 million wild animals are murdered for their pelts every year,
25 million in the United States alone.
These animals, obtained by hunting and trapping,
are kept on fur farms in conditions like these.
Naturally, these undomesticated, wild animals
are not accustomed to being caged.
And cage madness develops when frightened and frustrated animals
are driven crazy from the stress of confinement.
These wild, free-roaming animals and their offspring
find themselves unable to live a natural life,
can never take even a few steps or feel the earth beneath their feet.
Instead, they are reduced to scratching,
circling, and pacing endlessly.
The physical injuries these animals endure on fur farms
involve broken and exposed bones...
...blindness...
...ear infections,
dehydration and malnutrition,
exposure to freezing temperatures,
lack of veterinary care,
and slow death.
No laws indicate the killing of animals on fur farms.
Therefore, the least expensive methods are the most appealing.
Carbon-monoxide poisoning, strychnine, suffocation,
breaking the neck, and anal electrocution
are some of the more common methods used.
Removed from his or her cage with a heavy neck pole,
the animal is walked past the rows of bodies of slaughtered foxes,
sables, raccoons, and wolves, among others.
Death by anal electrocution is a crude process
that requires a probe to be inserted in the rectum
while the animal bites down on a metal conductor.
Oftentimes this inept procedure must be repeated
to actually kill the animal.
And the skinned carcasses seen here
will later be ground up and fed to the animals still caged.
And so we move on to entertainment.
Mark Twain once said:
"Of all the creatures ever made, he (man) is the most detestable.
He's the only creature that inflicts pain for sport,
knowing it to be pain."
In rodeos, bulls and broncos don't buck because they're wild,
but because they're in pain.
A belt called a flank strap or a bucking strap
is secured around the animal's body, over the genital area.
As the animal leaves the chute, a tight jerk on the belt
is enough to start him bucking in pain.
Apart from other injuries animals incur at rodeos...
...such as broken legs...
...they are also worked up by being slapped, teased,
given electric prods, and otherwise tormented,
to bolt out of the chute in a frenzy.
Roping, as seen here, involves throwing a rope
around the neck of a frightened animal
running full speed,
jerking the poor creature to a halt,
and slamming him or her to the ground.
Like any other business, dog racing and horse racing
are industries motivated by a common denominator:
profit.
At fair grounds across the country, animals are used to race,
bet with, and spectate over.
Training for these events is accomplished
by withholding food and sometimes water.
These animals, unfamiliar with their surroundings,
the noise, the crowds,
even what they're supposed to be doing,
are all too often injured and discarded,
in pointless, trivial, outlandish contests
designed to make profits and entertain.
Besides loss of habitat,
hunting is the number-one threat to wildlife today.
Hunters kill over 200 million animals every year.
Deer, rabbits, and squirrels top the list of desirable targets.
There is no denying it.
If hunting is a sport, it is a blood sport.
The targets are living, and they undergo violent deaths.
Fishing is also a death sport, wherein the nonhuman animal suffers.
Researchers have distinguished that fish show pain behavior
the same way mammals do.
Anatomically, physiologically, and biologically,
the pain system in fish is virtually the same as in birds and mammals.
In other words, fish are sentient organisms,
so of course they feel pain.
For those who think fish die "gentler" deaths,
consider that their sensory organs are highly developed,
their nervous systems complex,
their nerve cells very similar to our own...
...and their responses to certain stimuli immediate and vigorous.
When going to the circus,
rarely do we stop for a moment and consider:
What incites an animal to do something unnatural, even dangerous,
such as jumping through flames, balancing on one foot,
or diving into water from shaky platforms high in the air?
Animal trainers would like for the public to believe
that animals are coaxed into such behaviors with the promise of rewards.
But the truth is that animals perform because they fear punishment.
Let's go, let's go, let's go!
All right, let's go. Let's get going.
In essence, circuses condemn animals who are wild by nature
to live out their days isolated in tiny, barren cages,
denied normal exercise and socialization...
...shuttled around from place to place...
...and shackled in chains for up to 95% of their lives.
Elephants are taught to perform with positive reinforcement
and never hit.
Never hit.
Never, never, never will you see anyone use the ankus
as anything other than a guide or a tool.
No!
Dominance, subservience, and pain
are integral parts of the training process.
We know animals feel.
They feel fear, loneliness, and pain, just like humans do.
What animal would choose to spend their entire life in captivity
if they had a choice?
Fucking assholes!
Are zoos valuable educational and conservation institutions?
Sure, zoos are interesting, but they are only educational
in the sense that they teach a disregard
for the natures of other living beings.
Besides, what can we learn about wild animals
by viewing them in captivity?
Zoos exist because we are intrigued by exotic things.
And to zoo-goers, zoo animals are just that:
things.
In both cases, at circuses or zoos,
wild and exotic animals are captured,
caged, transported, and trained to do what humans want them to do.
At best, the term "bullfighting" is a misnomer...
...as there is little competition
between the sword of a nimble matador,
which is Spanish for "killer,"
and a confused, maimed, psychologically tormented,
and physically debilitated bull.
Many prominent former bullfighters
report that bulls are intentionally debilitated
with tranquilizers and laxatives, beatings to the kidneys,
and heavy weights hung around their necks for weeks before a fight.
Some of the animals are placed in darkness for 48 hours
before the confrontation,
then are released, blinded, into the bright arena.
In a typical event, the bull enters
and is approached by men who exhaust and frustrate him
by running him in circles and tricking him into collisions.
When the bull is tired and out of breath,
he is approached by picadors,
who drive lances into its back and neck muscles,
twisting and gouging to ensure a significant amount of blood loss
and impairing the bull's ability to lift his head.
Then come the banderilleros who distract and dart around the bull,
while plunging more lances into him.
Weakened from blood loss, they run the bull in more circles
until he is dizzy and stops chasing.
Finally, the matador, this "killer," appears
and, after provoking a few exhausted charges from the dying animal,
tries to kill the bull with his sword.
And this bloody form of amusement is bullfighting.
The pleasure derived from all of these activities and sports...
...a communion with nature, some would say,
can be secured without harming or killing animals.
The commercial exploitation of wildlife
erroneously assumes that the value of wild animals
is reducible to their utility relative to human interests,
especially economic interests.
But wild animals are not a renewable resource,
having value only relative to human interests.
That perception can only be that of a speciesist.
Nevertheless, these practices exist
only because we do not take seriously the interests of other animals.
In this light, are humans not the most callous speciesists of all?
The term "vivisection" is used to apply
to all types of experiments on living animals
and is said to be a form of medical science.
The reason for experimentation of this type
is to allegedly discover cures for human ailments and illnesses.
But those who hope to find remedies for human ills
by inflicting deliberate sufferings on animals
commit two fundamental errors in understanding.
The first is the assumption that results obtained on animals
are applicable to mankind.
The second concerns the inevitable fallacy of experimental science
in respect to the field of organic life.
Since animals react differently from human beings,
every new product or method tried out on animals
must be tried out again on man through careful clinical tests,
before it can be considered safe.
This rule knows no exceptions.
Tests on animals are not only dangerous
because they lead to wrong conclusions,
but, furthermore, they retard clinical investigation,
which is the only valid kind.
Just remember the fact that any disease deliberately provoked
is unlike any disease that arises spontaneously.
Unfortunately, such methods still sail today
under the flag of science,
which is an insult to true science, as well as human intelligence.
And so, vivisection applies to medical experiments,
done with the administration of noxious substances...
...electric or traumatic shocks...
...unanesthetized operations...
...burns...
...drawn-out deprivations of food and drink...
...physical and psychological tortures
that lead to mental imbalance, infections, and so on.
Head-injury research involves partially or fully conscious baboons
strapped down with restraints
and their heads cemented into a metal helmet,
which will be thrust at a 60 degree angle
at a force of up to 1,000 gs.
The purpose of this experiment is to simulate auto crashes,
football, boxing, and other head-related injuries.
And this process is often repeated again and again on the same animals.
And finally, military research.
This one speaks for itself.
From sending monkeys into outer space...
...and testing atomic blasts on helpless dogs,
to exposing primates to nuclear radiation.
20 years ago, the number of animals dying of tortures
through the practice of vivisection was astronomical,
estimated at 400,000 per day worldwide
and growing at an annual rate of 5%.
Today that number is almost beyond comprehension.
19,000 per minute.
10 billion per year.
Some uneducated persons pretend to know
that less-intelligent animals don't feel pain the same way we do.
In truth, we know very little about how specific animals may "feel,"
except that they must also submit to the universal law
that causes every organism dying by unnatural means
to suffer greatly before that final release.
But it's nonsense to say that animals do not suffer
because they have a lower order of intelligence.
Pain is pain, conveyed by nerves to the brain.
And there are other nerves than those of intelligence,
nerves such as sight, smell, touch, and hearing.
And in some animals, these nerves are much more highly developed
than in man.
We know that there has never been an epoch
in which we could learn something about the physiology of man
by torturing animals.
We only learned something about animals.
And if there is something we can learn from them on the psychological level,
it is not by means of steel or electricity,
much less so through psychic violences.
The systematic torture of sentient beings,
whatever the pretext and in whatever form,
cannot achieve anything more than it already has:
to show us what is the lowest point of debasement man can reach...
...if that's what we want to know.
Ignorance is the speciesist's first line of defense.
Yet it is easily breached by anyone with the time and determination
to find out the truth.
Ignorance has prevailed so long
only because people do not want to find out the truth.
"Don't tell me. You'll spoil my dinner,"
is the usual reply to any attempt to tell someone
just how that dinner was produced.
Even people who are aware that the traditional family farm
has been taken over by big-business interests,
that their clothes come from slaughtered cows,
that their entertainment means the suffering and death
of millions of animals,
and that some questionable experiments go on in laboratories,
still cling to a vague belief that conditions cannot be too bad,
or else the government or the animal welfare societies
would have done something about it.
But it is not the inability to find out what is going on
as much as a desire not to know about facts
that may lie heavy on one's conscience,
that is responsible for this lack of awareness.
After all, the victims of whatever it is that goes on
in all these awful places
are not members of one's own group.
It all comes down to pain and suffering.
Not intelligence, not strength, not social class or civil right.
Pain and suffering are, in themselves, bad
and should be prevented or minimized,
irrespective of the race, sex, or species of the being that suffers.
We are all animals of this planet.
We are all creatures.
And nonhuman animals experience sensations just like we do.
They, too, are strong, intelligent, industrious, mobile, and evolutional.
They, too, are capable of growth and adaptation.
Like us, first and foremost, they are earthlings.
And like us, they are surviving.
Like us, they also seek their own comfort rather than discomfort.
And like us, they express degrees of emotion.
In short, like us, they are alive,
most of them being, in fact, vertebrate, just like us.
As we look back on how essential animals are to human survival,
our absolute dependence on them,
for companionship,
food,
clothing,
sport and entertainment,
as well as medical and scientific research...
...ironically, we only see mankind's complete disrespect
for these nonhuman providers.
Without a doubt, this must be what it is:
to "bite the hand that feeds us."
In fact, we have actually stomped and spit on it.
Now we are faced with the inevitable aftermath.
This is evident in health reports
due to our over-excessive consumption of animals:
Cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, strokes,
kidney stones, anemia, diabetes, and more.
Even our food has now been affected, and at its very source.
With antibiotics used to promote weight gain
in animals who can't gain weight
under the stressful, overcrowded living conditions in factory farms,
with the overuse of pesticides and insecticides
or artificial hormones
designed to increase milk production, litter size, and frequency,
with artificial colors, herbicides, larvicides, synthetic fertilizers,
tranquilizers, growth and appetite stimulants,
it's no wonder that Mad Cow Disease, Foot-and-Mouth Disease, Pfiesteria,
and a host of other animal-related abnormalities
have been unleashed on the human public.
Nature is not responsible for these actions.
We are.
So a change is inevitable.
Either we make it ourselves,
or we will be forced to make it by nature itself.
The time has come for each of us to reconsider our eating habits,
our traditions, our styles and fashions,
and, above all, our thinking.
So, if there is any truth to the age-old saying:
"What goes around, comes around,"
then what do they get for their pain?
Do we even give it a second thought?
If what goes around comes around, what do they get for their pain?
They are earthlings.
They have the right to be here just as much as humans do.
Perhaps the answer is found in another age-old saying...
...and one equally true:
So of course animals feel, and of course they experience pain.
After all, has nature endowed these wonderful animals
with wellsprings of sentiment so that they should not feel?
Or do animals have nerves in order to be insensitive?
Reason demands a better answer.
But one thing is absolutely certain.
Animals used for food,
used for clothing, used for entertainment,
and in scientific experiments,
and all the oppression that is done to them under the sun,
they all die from pain.
Each and every one.
Isn't it enough that animals the world over
live in permanent retreat from human progress and expansion?
And for many species, there is simply nowhere else to go.
It seems the fate of many animals is either to be unwanted by man
or wanted too much.
We enter as lords of the Earth,
bearing strange powers of terror and mercy alike.
But human beings should love animals
as the knowing love the innocent and the strong love the vulnerable.
When we wince at the suffering of animals,
that feeling speaks well of us, even if we ignore it.
And those who dismiss love for our fellow creatures
as mere sentimentality
overlook a good and important part of our humanity.
But it takes nothing away from a human to be kind to an animal.
And it is actually within us to grant them a happy life
and a long one.
On the heath, King Lear asked Gloucester,
"How do you see the world?"
And Gloucester, who is blind, answered,
"I see it feelingly."
Three primary life forces exist on this planet.
Nature.
Animals.
And humankind.
We are the earthlings.
Make the connection.