There is so much wrong with this front page (Column One) L.A. times article that I don't know where to begin. I suppose I shall start by deconstructing the title, an obnoxious play on the false notion that animals are meaninglessly brutish. I can come only to this interpretation based on the fact that the story is about drive-by shootings of farmed animals.
Where in nature do animals kill each other out of boredom and pathological rage? I'm not saying it doesn't exist somewhere, but it would certainly be the exception that proves nonhumans are not the brutish beings in this equation. Rather, this article goes one step further in proving that there is more of a violent streak in humans than other animals, who generally only kill to eat.
And that leads me to the other problems I had with the article, wherein ranchers who kill animals that they purport to care about (and even name, for crying out loud) for food that no human needs for proper nutrition, have the gall to rant at these anonymous shooters for senselessly and cruelly killing their "livestock."
I have no problem admitting that killing animals in the sundry ways described in this article are more cruel than the allegedly "justifiable" killing of animals for food, which at the very least is demanded by the population at large (though that only makes this practice socially acceptable, not morally defensible). After all, there is a sense that these sick people (teens, the article suggests) intend for the animals to suffer, whereas the institutionalized slaughter of living beings at least makes a show of reducing the suffering involved in animal "husbandry." But taking the life of another being for any reason other than sheer necessity is cruel, and this article seems to miss that connection entirely.
There is a bit of irony operating here as well, as these supposedly caring ranchers--who spend so much time and money exempting their "property" from cruelty laws--find themselves lacking the cruelty legislation for "their" animals that protect dogs, cats and other animals labeled "companions" instead of "food.":
Although 43 states have passed felony animal cruelty laws, they rarely apply to livestock -- thanks in part to a strong cattleman's lobby -- as long as ranchers follow "accepted husbandry practices."Further highlighting this issue, the article suggests that more attention is paid to cruelty toward animal companions than to animals farmed for their flesh, but that is exactly how these ranchers want it. For, even though they seem to find within themselves the ability to grow attached to animals and send them off to slaughter, it's conceivable that, if the average person felt about cows, pigs and chickens the way they do about cats and dogs, the United States would become a vegan nation.
In California, state law provides some protection for large farm animals, but enforcement varies among counties. As a result, prosecutors in farm cases often settle for convictions on lesser vandalism charges.
I won't get into the usual warnings in the article that violence toward animals often leads to violence against humans, which has been much substantiated. The twist here is that the animals are much larger. But, morally speaking, there's no difference between torturing and killing a cat or a cow.
SOURCE: The Los Angeles Times: A beastly kind of cruelty
Labels: animal cruelty
