Critter News

DECEMBER 9, 2008

The Islamic practice of slaughtering animals by means of a sharp cut to the front of the neck has frequently come under attack by some animal rights activists as being a form of animal cruelty, the claim being that it is a painful inhumane method of killing animals. What an utterly grotesque project.

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Slaughter Slaughtered Humane Germany 100

Animal Person

JULY 1, 2009

Angus directed me to a story about the Calgary Stampede (rodeo) and the Calgary and Vancouver Humane Societies which had me asking: Whose side are they on? The Calgary Humane Society works with the Stampede to make sure the animals are safe (and by the way that's impossible if the animals are being used in the rodeo.

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Animal Person

JULY 25, 2010

Thanks, once again, to James LaVeck and Jenny Stein of Tribe of Heart for kindly and carefully bringing attention to what should be a stunningly-obvious moment of hypocrisy by groups that exist to advocate for and save animals. Tags: Activism Current Affairs Ethics Film animal rights Tribe of Heart.

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Critter News

OCTOBER 17, 2008

A judge has found five animal-rights activists not guilty of getting too close to seal hunters during the 2006 hunt off Canada's east coast. They are representatives of Humane Society International and Humane Society of the United States. Tags: seal hunters humane society. Lawrence, not far from Cape Breton.

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Critter News

APRIL 26, 2009

I not only learned about Harvey Milk, but about the early stages of the gay rights movement (which is ongoing today when one looks at all the right-wing flutterings over gay marriage.) It made me think though about the animal rights movement. Are we really a social movement like gay rights and civil rights?

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Animal Rights Movement Factory Farm Factory Farming Animal Rights 100

Animal Person

FEBRUARY 26, 2010

I've been having a difficult time blogging both here and at Animal Rights & AntiOppression lately because I feel like my thoughts are like " Groundhog Day." There are few animal rights stories in the news. The stories we humans create for ourselves to justify--or even glorify--our behavior are fictions.

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Chickens Slaughter Slaughtered Animal Rights 100

Animal Person

APRIL 1, 2010

Here are some of the my favorite quotes: In reality, species don't evolve toward greater humanness but toward greater adaptiveness in their ecological niche (105). No living group of nonhuman animals--no existing species of invertebrate, fish, amphibian, reptile, bird or nonhuman mammal--is ancestral to humans.

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Animal Person

APRIL 14, 2009

There is a profound difference between what Sea Shepherd does and what the Animal Liberation Front does, but there are also similarities, and those similarities increase in number if a direct action by the ALF (or anyone else) is an open rescue and therefore a direct defense of sentient nonhumans being attacked by humans.

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Critter News

JANUARY 18, 2010

An experiment in which anesthetized pigs were buried alive in snow to learn how humans live or die in avalanches was halted today in Austria after animal-rights groups denounced the research as cruel and useless. Tags: austria animal research pigs. Well, there's always some unexpected nonsense to discover.

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Pigs Austria Animal Research Research 100

Critter News

OCTOBER 26, 2008

I came across this 2005 book from the Society & Animals Journal titled Confronting Cruelty Moral Orthodoxy and the Challenge of the Animal Rights Movement. Readership: This book will be of interest to anyone who wishes to understand the animal rights movement in England, the United States and Australia.

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Cruelty Animal Rights Movement Factory Farm Factory Farming 100

Animal Person

JUNE 5, 2009

Why are Leftists to shoulder the blame for the exploitation of animals simply because of their tardiness in arriving on the animal rights scene? But they apparently don't think animals are important enough to stand up for, as they're not part of the platform of the average Leftist. And I think they should be.

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Vegan Animal Rights Humane Ethics 100

Critter News

OCTOBER 12, 2009

I don't believe they are working for human welfare. I don't believe they want an honest dialogue about what they are doing to animals. I do believe they want prestige, tenure, royalties and patent rights. I don't believe they are "brave" for "standing up" to animal rights activists. I'm sorry, but I am not moved.

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Animal Research Research Medical Research Animal 100

Critter News

JANUARY 4, 2010

whether it be animal rights or human rights. Tags: India wildlife trafficking poaching tigers china. I don't trust the Chinese government on any issue. What kind of protection do they really mean? You can put tigers on a farm for legal parts harvesting and still call it "protection." I'm too, too cynical.

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Tigers China Protection Trafficking 100

Critter News

AUGUST 15, 2010

A recent agreement between farmers and animal rights activists here is a rare compromise in the bitter and growing debate over large-scale, intensive methods of producing eggs and meat, and may well push farmers in other states to give ground, experts say.

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Critter News

MAY 11, 2009

And it's especially the case in animal rights advocacy. Others say that emotion is the only way to move humans to care about anything other than themselves. Tags: animal rights advocacy. You'll find this dilemma surrounding issues such as the death penalty, abortion and gay marriage. I'm really torn.

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Critter News

JANUARY 11, 2009

I found a link to them on ANIMAL's blog (ANIMAL is a Portuguese animal rights group.) These scientists are NOT an animal rights group. They do support some animal-based studies (which sucks); HOWEVER, they acknowledge that much animal research is useless. Tags: animal research.

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Critter News

MARCH 28, 2009

The German constitutional court has ruled that animal rights organisation PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals) must end its campaign in which it draws a comparison between the Holocaust and industrial farming. Tags: PETA.

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Campaign PETA Factory Farm Factory Farming 100

Animal Person

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

is clearly someone who advocates for animal rights. Ernst believes we don't have a right to use sentient nonhumans and all of her posts (and those of Alex Melonas, who also posts at animalrights.change.org) are unequivocal about animal use. Tags: Activism Current Affairs Ethics Language.

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Critter News

OCTOBER 21, 2010

Again, work by SAEN (Stop Animal Exploitation Now.) An Ohio-based animal rights organization has filed a complaint against Harvard Medical School, alleging that the school's New England Primate Research Center in Southborough did not properly report its experiments on animals. Sounds awful. From the MetroWest Daily News.

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Animal Person

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

This morning I posted " On California's Animal Abuse Registry Proposal " over at Animal Rights & AntiOppression and welcome any discussion about it. The outcome: "worship of human beings." Tags: Activism Current Affairs Ethics Language. What a fitting addition to discussions about speciesism!

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Animal Abuse Speciesism Animal Ethics 100

Animal Person

MAY 11, 2009

Yesterday's " Do Small Victories Affect Big Picture in Animal Rights Debate? Both, of course, were seen as victories, but the article's author, Richard Foot, asks: Do such successes mean the animal rights movement is winning its long, controversial campaigns to gain the same legal protections for animals as those ascribed to humans?

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Animal Person

AUGUST 12, 2010

The marketing of an operation of breeding and slaughtering sentient nonhumans as a family farm (here, Bell straddles the line) is supposed to trigger some kind of compassion for the humans. Tags: Activism Current Affairs Ethics Language animal rights factory farms family farms. After all, he's part of a family business.

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Critter News

APRIL 4, 2009

The feud between animal rights activists and researchers is among the bitterest in science. But many researchers - although adamant that animal research remains critical to finding cures and expanding medical knowledge - have come to concede that using creatures as human stand-ins is unnecessary for many procedures.

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Animal Research Research Medical Research Animal 100

Animal Person

APRIL 4, 2009

Getting people to understand animal rights is much more difficult than was establishing that Earth travels around the sun. And it's a mediated human world, with billions of people each receiving thousands of messages per day, nearly 100 percent of them promoting human supremacy. Tags: Activism Current Affairs.

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Critter News

DECEMBER 9, 2009

I was browsing for some quotes when I came across this group - The National Animal Interest Alliance (NAIA). They had a page with quotes from animal rights activists, but as I was reading, I noticed that they were very unfavorable quotes from such activists as Wayne Pacelle and Ingrid Newkirk. Tags: corporate lies.

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Animal Welfare Wayne Pacelle Welfare Groups 100

Animal Person

AUGUST 5, 2009

The animals on farms are created for the sole purpose of human consumption. And their lives of exploitation, torment, torture and slaughter cannot be compared to an animal's life in the wild. I can, however, question the motives of a human who has no need to kill a sentient being or have someone kill for him, yet does so anyway.

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Animal Person

JUNE 1, 2009

But " Minding the Animals: Ethology and the Obsolescence of Left Humanism " is a great look back at how we humans have managed to always find a way to consider ourselves unique, despite what the reality of the nonhuman world tells us. Here are some of my favorite passages. [S]ince

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Speciesism Morals Humane Vegan 100

Animal Person

JUNE 16, 2010

From the Introduction : "Humans are fascinated by animals. For all our devotion, though, we sometimes seem not to recognize the needs and wants of animals. Do animals have rights? Do human beings have duties toward them regardless of whether they have rights? What kind of souls do animals have?

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Advocacy Vegan Ethics Animal Rights 100

Animal Person

JUNE 20, 2009

Bea sent me a link to an article in Gourmet called " Humane Slaughterhouses ," by Rebecca Marx, that is absurd. They believe you can take a life that doesn't want to be taken in a humane way, and I don't agree. It’s how we treat humans, too. To treat animals fairly, he needs to treat his workers fairly." Not eating them.

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Critter News

MARCH 19, 2009

"Our Pork Quality Assurance Plus and Transport Quality Assurance Programs are designed to demonstrate the care we are giving to our animals everyday on our farms," Cunningham said. The only real concern comes from the spread of illness to humans from eating diseased meat, but they only need to provide minimal care to avoid that.

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Industry Factory Farm Factory Farming Animal Welfare 100

Animal Person

MAY 23, 2009

I notice that if I use "animal rights activist" or anything with the word "rights" in it, because it's loaded and misunderstood, my listener often has an immediate bias of some kind. People have a relationship, whether or not they are aware, to the term "animal rights." They've hijacked enough already!

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Animal Advocacy PETA Animal Advocacy 100

Animal Person

NOVEMBER 18, 2009

Because I've been thinking about the evolution of my own thinking--and languaging--regarding animal rights. Both animal rights groups and animal welfare groups use "compassion" frequently. Then again, so do people who kill animals for a living. No matter how they are treated, is it right to use them?

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Compassion Psychology Tnr Vegan 100

Animal Person

MAY 9, 2009

My self-appointed job in this blog is to think critically about how our human lives intersect with those of sentient nonhumans, in action and thought. The message I hear is: tormenting animals before you brutally torture and slaughter them is wrong, but brutally torturing and slaughtering them without the preceding torment is okay.

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Animal Person

JANUARY 27, 2010

I've been blogging here less partly because I've been blogging at Animal Rights & AntiOppression (check out my latest post " On Corporate Personhood and Animal Rights " and the better-than-the-post comments) but also because I've been feeling like a broken record and I don't want to bore anyone. What do you think?

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China Cats Dogs Speciesism 100

Animal Person

APRIL 6, 2010

Riddle me this: Why would any human animal use as a default position that nonhuman animals do not have personalities as rich, distinct, obnoxious, obsequious and varied as human animals? Have they not ever observed nonhuman animals? We're all animals, aren't we? We're sentient. Or "even" obnoxious?

Animal 100

Animal Pigs Human Animals Humane 100

Critter News

JUNE 9, 2009

Actually, I didn't quit neuroscience as a result of the experiences described, but I did quit working with animals. By the end of my time as researcher, I was performing behavioral experiments on humans. But that's neither here nor there -- I'm very supportive of animal research in principle. It's the last line that grabs me.

Animal Research 100

Animal Research Research Humane Treatment Medical Research 100

Animal Person

NOVEMBER 21, 2010

It has entertaining stories, includes animals people care about because they like them (and also addresses that concept), and it describes how the numbers of various species decreased to the point of being classified as "endangered" or worse. if we believe it's our right to do what we want with the lives of other animals. . . .

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Polar Bears California Condor Bald Eagle Lions 100