Steve Coogan's Animal Rights Controversy

One of the silliest animal rights controversies in recent months has to be the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisectoin’s outrage over a planned new television show by comedian Steve Coogan.

Coogan’s new animated for the BBC series is “I Am Not an Animal.” As UK Newsquest Regional Press describes it,

The adult cartoon . . . will portray animals living a pampered life in a luxurious club class wing of a secret lab. The characters — a horse, cat, sparrow, monkey, cat and dog — are fed vintage wine and exquisite food and are blissfully unaware of the outside world. They are appalled when they are liberated by animal rights activists and forced to rough it in their natural surroundings.

The BBC is marketing “I Am Not an Animal” as a UK answer to “The Simpsons,” but BUAV says the concept isn’t funny.

BUAV claims the cartoon needs to remember that animals in laboratories endure “horrendous cruelty.” BUAV’s Wendy Higgins said,

We really hope these rumors are false because to portray the lives of lab animals as antyhing other than a living torture would not only be deeply crass but also irresponsible.

A spokesman for the show responded that the series, “. . . looks at anti-vivisection in a satirical way.” Of course there’s no other option, since most activists don’t even to take their own movement seriously (if they did, they wouldn’t keep spouting the same old distortions and lies).

Source:

Coogan in animal rights row. Barbara Davidson, UK Newsquest Regional Press, November 16, 2002.

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