Month: June 2003

UK Proposes Banning Halal & Kosher Slaughter

Back in November 2002, UK Animal Welfare Minister Elliot Morley revealed that his office was looking into revising animal slaughter rules and possibly changing the way those rules governed Kosher and Halal slaughter. This month the Farm Animal Welfare Council formally proposed removing the exemption for Halal and Kosher slaughter that was included in 1995’s Welfare of Animals Regulations, in effect banning such slaughter.

The basic dispute is over whether it is cruel to slaughter animals without stunning them first. Currently, all animals slaughtered in Great Britain must first be stunned, except for those slaughtered for religious communities.

Both Islam and Judaism include dietary rules that prohibit eating animals that are injured in any way before they are slaughtered. So instead of stunning the animal first, such animals are killed by severing the neck and then hoisting the animal so that the blood drains out of the body.

Critics of this method say it is cruel. Compassion in World Farming’s Peter Stevenson told The Independent (London),

Scientific research shows that animals whose throats are cut while they are fully conscious can suffer terribly over relatively lengthy periods as they bleed to death.

In its report, the Farm Animal Welfare Council claims that it can take up to two minutes for animals slaughtered in this method to die.

But supporters of Halal and Kosher slaughter point out that stunning is also painful to animals, and studies show stunning animals occasionally goes wrong and results in animals suffering. Rabbi Yehuda Brodie told The Independent that, “There can be no doubt that every animals feels pain from the stunning, and moreover some 14,000 animals a year are stunned badly or wrongly.”

Both Muslims and Jews are united in seeing the proposal as an attack on religious minorities, with Brodie noting that, “One of the first enactments of the Nazis in 1933 was to outlaw the Jewish method of slaughter.”

Writing in The Guardian, Brian Klug notes that efforts to ban Kosher and Halal slaughter have been around for a long time in Great Britain and other parts of Europe (going back to the 1890s in Switzerland). Klug writes,

Whichever method is used, all animals at the point of slaughter are subjected to a violent act while fully conscious. All are cut or “stuck” (stabbed). All die by bleeding to death. Every method can — and does — go wrong.

. . . So what is the outcry really about?

The answer lies in the very terms in which the issue is framed (though not by FAWC itself): “humane” versus “ritual” slaughter. These are not merely labels for different methods. They imply two totally opposed sensibilities. . . .

Hence the lurid canards about animal being left to “slowly bleed to death”, as if every ounce of pain were being wrung from their tortured bodies, and as if their more fortunate confreres, the ones who are “humanely” killed, are gently put to sleep.

Sources:

The animal welfare lobby is wrong: Humane and ritual slaughter are racist metaphors for Us and Them. Brian Klug, The Guardian, June 11, 2003.

Muslims unite with Jews to defend animal slaughter rites. Paul Vallely, The Independent (London), June 11, 2003.

Washington State Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Animal Traps

On June 19, 2003 the Washington State Supreme Court rejected a legal challenge to a November 2000 voter-approved initiative that banned the use of body-gripping traps and a number of poisons when used to capture mammals for recreation or commercial purposes.

Citizens for Responsible Wildlife Management had challenged the ban claiming the wording of the initiative violated several sections of that state’s constitution. Specifically CRWM pointed out that the Washington State Constitution required that,

a. “no bill shall embrace more than one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title?

b. ?no act shall ever be revised or amended by mere reference to its title, but the act revised or the section amended shall be set forth in full length?

But the Washington State Supreme Court rejected that argument. Justice Faith Ireland wrote for the majority that,

A more moderate interpretation, as compared to those offered by the parties, is that the title deals with banning methods of trapping and killing animals. Using the above quoted examples of general and restrictive titles to guide the determination here, I-713’s title is general. I-713’s title contains specific topics as well, namely, body- gripping traps and pesticides. As in Amalgamated, however, those topics are merely incidental to the general topic reflected in the title – a ban on methods of trapping and killing animals. The title for I-713 is most accurately described as general and does not contain two subjects. However, even if we assume, arguendo, that the title is restrictive, it is still a constitutionally valid title. The subjects of trap and pesticide use for animals are related so as not to be the individual, disjointed subjects that Citizens contend they are. The provisions in the initiative governing the types of traps and pesticides that may be used are fairly within the subject expressed in the title.

This was a victory for the Humane Society of the United States which successfully pushed the initiative.

Having lost in this case Citizens for Responsible Wildlife Management is still pursuing a separate lawsuit to invalidated both I-713 and I-655, which passed in 1996 and banned bear-baiting and cougar hunting with hounds. For that lawsuit, the CRWM is using a Public Trust Doctrine argument which it summarizes as,

The doctrine, simply stated, recognizes that sovereign (representative government) has the sole and exclusive administrative obligation and responsibility to protect, manage and conserve navigable waters, fish and wildlife for the enjoyment and use by the public for transportation, commerce and related activities and purposes.

CRWM is arguing that while a state legislature could ban bear baiting, such a ban could not be enacted via a voter initiative because it impinges on the Public Trust situated in the representative legislature.

Source:

High court upholds state trapping ban. Paul Query, The Associated Press, June 20, 2003.

A Brief Explanation of the NO-713 and Public Trust Doctrine Lawsuits. Washingtonians for Wildlife Conservation, Press Release.

Winer Pulls Scripting News

So Dave Winer has decided to take his ball and go home,

So I’m shutting down Scripting News now, to give me some time to think, and to give you all a demo of what it would be like if it weren’t here. These last few days have been really awful. You can’t imagine what it’s like to have so many people screaming at you. It’s inhuman, especially considering that my health isn’t that good. The only conclusion I can come to is that I shouldn’t be doing this.

This is a classic case of can dish it out but can’t take it. The latest round of “we can’t work with Winer,” of course, came about after he started sniping at Userland competitors because they produced “funky” RSS feeds. Of course the feeds were completely compliant with the RSS 2.0 spec and passed fine through RSS validation tools that Winer himself had praised, but as several folks noted, they failed to pass through the ultimate RSS 2.0 validator, Winer himself.

Winer, of course, refused to say explicitly why these feeds were “funky” preferring to simply continue to throw out vague accusations — and then it turned out he was upset because Movable Type and others were daring to use namespaces, which are part of the RSS 2.0 spec, to accomplish useful things within RSS (such as routing around Userland’s habit of wanting to display the e-mail address of authors).

So Winer throws out all of these bombs toward his competitors, and then when people push back he again does the “how can people be so mean when I’m in such poor health” and walks away.

Krugman Heads Off Into Nutball Conspiracy Land

Normally I don’t bother to read Paul Krugman, for much the same reason I don’t read Bob Novak — dullard political hacks just aren’t that interesting. But I couldn’t help but notice Krugman’s latest, Toward One Party Rule, which was posted on some extreme Left wing e-mail lists I subscribe to. One of these folks, for example, posted a link to this and noted that with the tied it in with the deaths of Sens. Wellstone and Carnihan (murdered by the Republicans, of course).

Like all the best conspiracy theories, Krugman is specific enough to imply a lot, while vague enough to leave a lot of room for whatever interpretation the reader wants to take away. This paragraph, for example, shows a mastery of the conspiracy form,

As a result, campaign finance is only the tip of the iceberg. Next year, George W. Bush will spend two or three times as much money as his opponent; but he will also benefit hugely from the indirect support that corporate interests — very much including media companies — will provide for his political message.

The media’s in cahoots with Bush, but of course Krugman never quite tells us how. In fact, this is so vague that indirect support from media companies could be anything as innocuous as the fact that the media will cover the pointless staged conventions to some nutball theory about Roger Ailes pulling all the strings behind the scenes.

Similarly, Krugman is also very good at introducing plausible deniability into his prose,

Mr. Confessore suggests that we may be heading for a replay of the McKinley era, in which the nation was governed by and for big business. I think he’s actually understating his case: like Mr. DeLay, Republican leaders often talk of “revolution,” and we should take them at their word.

Did he just accuse Republicans of planning a revolution to install a one-party state at the behest of big business? Yes, but the language leaves Krugman plenty of wiggle room to say “oh, I never meant that.”

I’ve read plenty of Lyndon LaRouche screeds on the Internet alleging that Bush plans to install a fascist dictatorship — I just never expected the Times to reprint them.

PETA Complains about Using Chickens as Sentinels for West Nile Virus

The Washington Post ran a story in early June about an ongoing project in Virginia to use chickens as a sentinel species to provide advance warning of West Nile virus. Maryland abandoned a similar project in 2000 in large part due to protests by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals along with concerns that the program was ineffective, and PETA’s not to happy about West Virginia’s program.

The $300,000 program has chickens situated throughout the state waiting to be bitten by mosquitoes. Officials take blood samples from the animals twice a month looking for the presence of antibodies to West Nile virus. Chickens do not get sick from West Nile, but any animal that tests positive for the antibodies is euthanized.

PETA, of course, thinks this is incredibly cruel. The Post quoted PETA research associate Cem Akin as saying,

Given the caged confinement endured by sentinel chickens and the painful blood samples taken regularly and the often sub-part conditions these animals are kept in, coupled with the complete ineffectiveness of such testing in general, we think other methods should be used to monitor for West Nile virus, such as monitoring dead bird populations, dead crows specifically.

Cyrus Lesser, chief of the mosquito control section of the Maryland Department of Agriculture, told the Post that Maryland abandoned its sentinel chicken program largely to avoid protests from animal rights activists,

We didn’t want to be on the defensive against another issue. In mosquito control, we have issues of pesticides, disease. We’ve even had people who are inquiring who think mosquitoes have rights, too.

Well, do not forget that PETA thinks ants “are sentient beings” so they would probably be defend the rights of mosquitoes as well.

Source:

Fighting a disease with hidden hens. Annie Gowen, Washington Post, June 6, 2003.

Is Hunting the Moral Equivalent of Rape and Child Abuse?

Andrew Linzey, professor of theology at Oxford University and Great Britain’s most well-known animal rights theologian, recently argued in a report published by the Christian Socialist Movement that hunting foxes with hounds is equivalent to rape and torture.

According to Linzey,

Causing suffering for sport is intrinsically evil. Hunting, therefore, belongs to that class of always morally impermissible acts along with rape, child abuse and torture.

The Christian Socialist Movement is a left-leaning Christian organization that includes as its members Prime Minister Tony Blair and Minister of State for Rural Affairs Alun Michael.

Linzey is the author of several books including Animal Theology which its American publisher, the University of Illinois Press, describes thusly,

Animal rights is animal theology, in Andrew Linzey’s view. He argues that historical theology, creatively defined, must reject humanocentricity. He questions the assumption that if theology is to speak on this issue, “it must only do so on the side of the oppressors.” Linzey’s theological query investigates not only the abstractions of theory, but also the realities of hunting, animal experimentation, and genetic engineering. He is an important, pioneering, Christian voice speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves.

The reader gets a feel for Linzey’s approach from this excerpt of his writings published by the International Vegetarian Union in 1996 (emphasis in the original),

The first is that animals are God’s creatures: not human property, nor utilities, nor resources, nor commodities, but precious beings in God’s sight. The second is the Christ-like suffering of animals. “Think then, my brethren”, preached John Henry Newman at Oxford in 1842, “of your feelings at cruelty practised on brute animals, and you will gain one sort of feeling which the history of Christ’s Cross and Passion ought to excite within you.” Christians whose eyes are fixed on the awfulness of crucifixion are in a special position to understand the awfulness of innocent suffering. The Cross of Christ is God’s absolute identification with the weak, the powerless and the vulnerable, but most of all with unprotected, undefended, innocent suffering.

. . .

It cannot be stressed enough that the picture of God exclusively concerned with human salvation and indifferent to the suffering of the non-human creation has become a source of moral despair. If Christians today care so little for animals, it is because the God they seem to believe in cares even less. For myself, I believe that if God is good and just and holy, it must follow that there will be redemption for each and every creature that suffers. Nothing less than that would make God a truly just God.

Christ died to redeem your cat!

Source:

Labour morality guru compares fox-hunting to rape. Kamal Ahmed, The Observer (UK), June 1, 2003.

The World’s First Professor of Theology and Animal Welfare. Andrew Linzey, International Vegetarian Union, Issue I-96.