Forget the Warm Tinglies for Washington's Pandas

[Guest guest]

>If You Ask Me

>Forget the Warm Tinglies for Washington's Pandas

> _____About the Pandas_____

>

>

>By Colman McCarthy

>Special to The Washington Post

>Monday, January 22, 2001; Page C04

>

>Not everyone is in a state of civic euphoria over the presence of Tian

>Tian and Mei Xiang at the National Zoo's new panda preserve. While it's

>true that the ponds, cooling grottoes, sand wallows and other luxuries

>amount to a Club Med for animals, it's factual also that the two pandas

>-- born as captives, they'll die as captives -- are no more than

>prisoners.

>

>Cute, yes. Gamboling, yes. Novel, yes. But free from human control,

>profiteering and exploitation as nature intended them to be? No.

>

>

>The near-unanimous gushing from the media over the magnetism of the giant

>pandas -- " Washington's new power couple, " " so cuddly, so like us " --

>brings into focus the prevailing double standard that's in play when

>humans arbitrarily divide animals into categories. Some are adorable and

>wanted, others are expendable and unwanted.

>

>

>Keiko the orca whale of " Free Willy " renown is in the first group, along

>with Babe the pig, Canadian seal pups, bald eagles -- Bill Clinton

>displayed one on the South Lawn in July 1999 -- and now Tian Tian and Mei

>Xiang. But every day that the pandas are adulated and celebrated, more

>than 12 million factory-farmed cows, hogs, chickens, turkeys and other

>animals are having their bodies sliced, packaged and shipped. These are

>the expendable and unwanted, even though their instinctual drives to live

>free and unharmed exactly match the pandas'.

>

>

>Among those not experiencing the warm tinglies that appear to have

>overtaken much of Washington is Paul Shapiro. A peace studies major at

>George Washington University, he is the director of Compassion Over

>Killing, a nonprofit that works to end human-caused suffering among all

>species. Shapiro argues that if " the National Zoo were interested in

>helping animals, it wouldn't imprison them merely for tourists to gawk

>at. Rather, it would spend its resources on saving remaining natural

>habitat. "

>

>

>Shapiro has written that zoos attempt " to teach us and our children that

>it is acceptable to keep animals in captivity, leading lives of boredom

>in settings that bear almost no relation to their natural homes. The

>purposeless existence that goes along with captivity often cause the

>animals to engage in abnormal and self-destructive behavior known as

>'zoochosis.' "

>

>

>The philosophical difference between the thinking of dissenters like

>Shapiro and the keepers of the giant pandas is the one between animal

>rights and animal welfare. Animal welfarists believe in being kind to

>creatures whenever possible, but exceptions occur -- such as human

>desires for food, clothing, research. Animal rightsers say no to

>selectivity. Animals have rights, because they have interests that come

>before supplying benefits to humans.

>

>

>In " Animals, Property and the Law " (Temple University Press), Gary

>Francione, a law professor at Rutgers University, argues that regulatory

>laws for animal welfare do little or nothing to protect the interests of

>animals: " Animal welfare is the view that it is morally acceptable, at

>least under some circumstances, to kill animals or subject them to

>suffering as long as precautions are taken to ensure that the animal is

>treated as 'humanely' as possible. An animal welfare position generally

>holds that there is no animal interest that cannot be overridden if the

>consequences of the overriding are sufficiently 'beneficial' to human

>beings. "

>

>

>Benefits aplenty are resulting from the pandas' presence in Washington:

>tourists' money to the zoo, $10 million in rent-a-panda cash to China and

>bursts of bustle from researchers catching Tian Tian and Mei Xiang's

>every move and twitch through 20 cameras. But what benefits, aside from

>munching on high-fiber biscuits, will the two imprisoned pandas -- pieces

>of property -- enjoy?

>

>

>They'll be treated well, of course, but Thomas Jefferson and other

>aristocratic slavemasters said the same about the blacks they owned.

>Alice Walker wrote: " The animals of the world exist for their own

>reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were

>made for whites, or women created for men. "

>

>

>China receives another benefit -- a public relations boost, a projection

>of a humane image that it cares deeply about protecting the endangered

>giant panda bears. But what about the less adorable and less wanted but

>also endangered Asiatic black bears in China?

>

>

>According to the International Fund for Animal Welfare, a Yarmouth Port,

>Mass., group, more than 7,600 endangered animals of this species --

>called moon bears from the golden crescent in the fur on their chests --

>are caged on Chinese bile farms. Bile is extracted when " crude catheters

>are implanted in the (bears') stomachs to drain the bile from their gall

>bladders. The bile is sold for traditional Chinese medicine, " at the same

>time that herbal alternatives to bear bile exist. Some reforms have

>occurred, and bears released, owing to an exposure campaign waged in 1995

>by the fund (www.ifaw.org). But for the moon bears still held on large

>numbers of bile farms, their treatment is about as bleak as that which

>China inflicts on its political prisoners.

>

>

>Outside the zoo and all other places where animals share the Earth with

>humans, why not respect the rights of bald eagles and cows, dolphin and

>tuna, Babe and all pigs, household pets and wild deer, Keiko and all the

>Willies of the sea?

>

>

>Colman McCarthy directs the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington, D.C.

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>© 2001 The Washington Post Company

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