Back in May, David Cantor announced the formation of a new animal rights group, Responsible Policies for Animals. The group’s goal is to get universities to drop their animal agriculture programs. But it was the title of the group’s first press release/fact sheet that really catches the eye,
10,000 Years Is Enough
The factsheet claims that “animal agriculture today bears no resemblance to the original” form of animal agriculture 10,000 years ago, which is belied a few paragraphs later,
Universities must not serve industries that torment and destroy animals, breed animals in order to kill them, and perpetuate the animals-as-property ethical disaster.
So 10,000 years ago animal agriculture did not mean breeding animals to kill them and treating animals as property? Apparently Cantor has a very idiosyncratic idea of what animal agriculture means.
The group argues that universities should abandon teaching animal agriculture because,
Teaching animal agriculture diminishes our universities’ credibility and intellectual integrity.
Somehow I doubt most universities are going to be concerned about having their intellectual integrity questioned by animal rights activists who apparently believe that animal agriculture originally did not involve breeding animals to kill them for food (many animals did have multiple uses, of course, including cattle for milk and labor and sheep for their wool).
Oddly enough, though, the group concedes the much-debated issue of animals being killed as a byproduct of crop growing, although it is spinned here as an argument against animal agriculture,
Far more mice, voles, and other small animals are killed in crop harvesting and protection than if crops were not grown to make animal products. Such carnage is based on destructive, archaic attitudes rejected by intellectual and spiritual leaders and much of the general public — all who have “done their homework.” Universities should reject them as well.
Much of the general public opposes the killing of mice and voles in the act of crop harvesting? Twenty bucks to the first person who can show me a scientific poll by a major polling organization showing even 25 percent of Americans oppose crop harvesting because it is cruel.
On the other hand, does this mean Cantor is willing to take vegans and vegetarians to task for all the poor voles who die to provide their cruel diets?
Source:
10,000 Years Is Enough: Time to Stop Teaching Animal Agriculture. Responsible Policies for Animals, Press Release, May 2003.