PETA - People Eating Tasty Animals

This past Monday, Canada's governor general, Michaëlle Jean, partook in a traditional Inuit meal consisting of raw seal meat.  The event took place during a visit to the Inuit community of Rankin Inlet and was orchestrated as a show of solidarity with the Inuit people, who have been adversely impacted by a new European Union law that bans European nations from importing Canadian seal products based on the belief that the Canadian seal hunt is an act of unnecessary cruelty to animals.

Unlike most events in Canadian politics, this one has garnered the attention of the world press, which has sunk to new lows in its attempts to sensationalize the story.  Today's headline on the main page of the Huffingtonpost.com, stopped just shy of proclaiming African voodoo queen devours raw heart of slaughtered baby seal.  The article comes complete with a photo of Jean placing a bloody piece of meat into her mouth with the frame zoomed in just tight enough for readers to make out the seal blood covering her fingers, which, as I understand it, she even licked clean afterward.

In the media maelstrom that ensued, Jean has come under fire from critics in both Canada and Europe including an EU spokeswoman who pompously labeled Jean's actions as "too bizarre to acknowledge".

Now, I'm an extremely picky eater, who can be made queasy by the mere sight any food that's unfamiliar to my sheltered palate.  But what makes me want to throw up in this instance is the self-righteousness of the legislators and animal rights activists attacking the governor general for what I see as a courageous and noble gesture.

While reading the Huffpost article, all I could think was, "how dare these white, middle-class legislators and activists tell Canada's indigenous people that their traditional lifestyle is wrong after the way Europeans have raped and pillaged this planet for the past five centuries?  How dare they tell the poor, rural father in Atlantic Canada that the lives of seals are more valuable than the well-being of the family he provides for with his earnings from the annual seal hunt?"

The truth is, activism has always been a fad among the privileged classes, and there is no group of activists that is more homogeneously white and middle-class than the animal rights crowd.  Still, in many ways I see their cause as a just one.  I agree that we should work to minimize the suffering of animals as much as possible and I think we could probably do without things like circuses and other institutions that exploit animals and force them to live in unhealthy and unnatural environments for our childish amusement.  But a lot of the time, the activists go far beyond the limits of reason and ethics in their struggle for animal equality.

Take, for example, the most recognizable of the animal rights organization, PETA, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.  It is a little known fact about PETA that, according to their founder and president Ingrid Newkirk, the ultimate goal of the organization is to achieve total animal liberation.  In addition to banning all human consumption of meats, this means no zoos, no aquariums, no medical testing on animals, no fishing, and no pets - not even seeing-eye dogs!  While most people, including many PETA supporters, wouldn't endorse such an extreme agenda, they do tend to embrace the underlying philosophy that gives rise to these radical objectives.  PETA and their supporters generally believe that all sentient species are equally capable of suffering and therefore they all have an equal right to freedom from suffering inflicted and the hands of humans.

This belief has spawned some highly controversial and highly publicized ad campaigns (one of PETA's biggest mediums for spreading their ideology).  Most notable among these was a 2003 ad that compared the warehousing of animals on large corporate farms to the Nazi concentration camps used during the Holocaust.  Two years later, PETA released another ad that juxtaposed images of chained elephants and slaughtered cows with pictures Black slaves and child labourers accompanied by the caption, "Are animals the new slaves?"

Perhaps in an effort to underscore the piousness with which PETA clings to this idea that all species are equal, in 2003 PETA president Ingrid Newkirk, responded to a Jerusalem terrorist attack in which a donkey was stuffed with explosives and blown up, by writing a letter to then-P.L.O leader Yasser Arafat.  Rather than condemning the attack for it savage targeting of innocent human civilians, Newkirk took issue with the use of the donkey and requested that Arafat refrain from using animals in future strikes.

These vile machinations by Newkirk and her minions are at the more extreme end of the spectrum but the same underlying philosophy drives both PETA and the critics of the Canadian seal hunt, and that is the bogus notion that all species are equal.  Not only does this ideology lead to the moral bankruptcy epitomized by PETA and their hideous publicity stunts, but it is also logically vacuous on three very significant levels.

First let me say, equality is overrated.  In the context of social justice, the term is trite and meaningless.  The idea itself is rooted in theistic doctrines and implies that there is some higher being in whose eyes all Earthly creatures have equal value (whatever that means) hence the cliche, "all men are created equal in the eyes of god."  But my guess is that the PETA people aren't huge fans of the Abrahamic scriptures, what with their rampant sanctioning of animal sacrifice and repeated claims that humans and only humans (male humans at that) are created in god's image.

There are two ways in which living beings can be considered equal.  One way is equality in the eyes of god, which is completely arbitrary and void of any practical meaning.  The other is based on equal ability and potential.  That all humans are afforded equal rights under the law is partially due to the fact that we are all believed, as a species, to have equal intellectual ability.  There have been times and places where it was believed, incorrectly, that women or certain races had diminished cognitive abilities and therefore they were denied certain rights enjoyed by the ruling class.  Similarly, children under the age of 18 have less cognitive aptitude than adults (in some respects) and therefore they are denied certain rights and freedoms enjoyed by those who have reached the age of consent.  In this respect, not all species are equal and therefore it is preposterous to expect all species to be given equal rights.

Further to this point, there is no conclusive evidence that all sentient species experience and process pain in the same way as humans.  To make this claim unilaterally is to anthropomorphize these animals which is anathema to the entire mission of PETA and other animal rights groups.

Finally, let's just assume that all species are equal.  Then should we not all have an equal right to favour our own species above others?  Lions hunt, kill and eat animals from other species just like humans do.  Based on my limited knowledge of zoology, I would venture to say that all species place higher value on the lives of members of their own group than on the lives of outsiders.  I would further postulate that any group of animals lacking this trait would have long ago punched it membership card for the club of extinct species who failed the test of natural selection.

So why single out just humans?  Surely if anyone is being speciesist (as the animal rights activists like to say), it is PETA and their allies for not holding other carnivores to the same standards they demand from humans.

At the end of the day though, PETA will never achieve total liberation of animals and they know it.  This is why they've resigned themselves to tackling only the most egregious and widespread cases of animal abuse.  In short, this entire debate is nothing more than an exercise, a convenient and engaging topic of conversation to wax over while enjoying our daily helping of animal flesh.  Bon appetite!

*** Notes:

1)  The title of this article is taken from the name of an actual group dedicated to making fun of the PETA movement.

2) Huffington Post uses attention-grabbing headlines on their homepage to entice readers.  These headlines are often different from the actual titles of the articles.  The headline for the article referred to in the second paragraph above read, "Canadian Governor General Eats Raw Seal Heart."

AlexsJenkins