For the Love of Animals book review..from SF chron

[Guest guest]

For the Love of Animals

The Rise of the Animal Protection Movement

By Kathryn Shevelow

Holt; 352 pages; $27.50

Animal-welfare advocates have a difficult time getting the public's attention.

The main reason is that, given the undeniable scale and nature of animal abuse

at the beginning of the 21st century - humans kill more than 50 billion farm

animals every year and experiment on millions more - attention would demand

action, including major lifestyle changes.

 

If that's too daunting for most Americans, many would nevertheless confess to a

vague awareness and occasional sense of guilt over the plight of animals. But

the guilt melts away in that luxurious space between the fork's tines and the

seared flesh of a well-cooked steak, and as for awareness, most Americans prefer

to limit theirs, hastily switching off the latest footage of animal abuse. This

uneasy indifference has turned animal protectionists into the equivalents of

weepy Save the Children mistresses, fighting in vain to be heard on an issue of

undeniable importance. Through some perversion of decorum, it is those who

address the problem - rather than those who turn away - who are thought to act

in poor taste.

 

Hence the rise of an organization like People for the Ethical Treatment of

Animals, whose shock tactics force us to confront animal suffering. While PETA

has doubtless produced a net gain for animals through investigations, legal

victories and shaming, its losses are real. The average news item quoting PETA's

president, Ingrid Newkirk, takes the form of " Just listen to PETA's latest

craziness, " and not " What horrible animal abuse PETA has uncovered! " To blame

this all on PETA would be unfair, for it is ignoble to use the organization's

antics as a cover for disregarding the mistreatment of animals who, after all,

can't choose their spokeswoman. Still, moderate organizations like the Humane

Society wish PETA would shut its enormous gob.

 

Infighting over radicalism in the animal-welfare movement isn't new. In the

1830s, the brand-new Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals splintered

under the leadership of Lewis Gompertz, a vegan in the days when mere

vegetarianism was considered outre. Gompertz aggressively investigated and

prosecuted those who beat their horses, baited bears with pit bulls, stoned

tethered chickens for sport or vivisected cats and dogs as a form of

quasi-scientific spectacle - all unexceptional behavior at the time. Several

SPCA leaders felt Gompertz went too far and left to pursue a less

confrontational approach.

 

Gompertz's prosecutions were made possible by what Kathryn Shevelow, a professor

at UC San Diego and the author of " For the Love of Animals: The Rise of the

Animal Protection Movement, " calls the world's first real anti-cruelty law:

Britain's Ill-Treatment of Cattle Act. The bill passed in 1822, through the

indefatigable efforts of a boisterous member of Parliament from Ireland, Richard

Martin, known to posterity as Humanity Dick. Shevelow's passionate and lively

book explores the cultural role of animals in 18th and early 19th century

England, chronicles Martin's odyssey to protect them and culminates in the

passage of the bill and the SPCA's founding. It is a fascinating story.

 

If the major obstacle to the humane treatment of animals today is willful

ignorance of animal suffering, in Martin's time it was the belief that cruelty

toward animals wasn't wrong. Martin's opponents also contended that the issue of

animal welfare was unequal to the dignity of Parliament; that animal

protectionists hypocritically targeted activities of the poor (bear baiting),

while ignoring those of the rich (fox hunting); and that protecting cattle was a

slippery slope. What would they want next? Protection for cats?

 

Martin and his allies, notably the anti-slavery crusader William Wilberforce,

responded that animal protection was an important reform issue; that they would

target the gentry's abuses, too; and that even cats deserved protection.

Martin's Law, as it was called, laid the foundation for the legal protections

for animals now in place.

 

But are those protections enough? Animal cruelty today may not be as overtly

barbaric as in the 18th century, but because of factory farming it is much more

widespread. This has been a rotten year for animals, from Chicago's repeal of a

2006 ban on foie gras, to the death of the racehorse Eight Belles, to the Humane

Society's video footage of California slaughterhouse abuses. Meanwhile, even

modest new anti-cruelty legislation stalls in the face of opposition from

agribusiness and the restaurant lobby. The Farm Animal Stewardship Purchasing

Act would require government suppliers to provide each animal " adequate space to

stand, lie down, move his or her head freely, turn around completely and fully

extend all limbs or wings without touching any part of an enclosure or another

animal. " These standards are apparently too generous; the bill has languished in

a congressional subcommittee for more than a year.

 

Shevelow's book shows how far we've come in terms of animal protection, and how

far we have to go. {sbox}

 

 

 

Michael O'Donnell is a lawyer and writer in Illinois. E-mail him at

books.

 

 

With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first

thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.