October 6, 2005--Chicken Little
I know in advance that I’ll be getting into trouble for this one. But since the blogosphere is supposed to be a free space where people such as me, with big mouths, are encouraged to express ourselves, here goes nothing. I blog below about chickens.
The NY Times had an interesting piece recently (see “Original Article” below) about their eggs and more widely about chickens themselves. Here I already have a problem—by referring to chickens as “themselves.” Unlike all other languages, when speaking about chickens and other animals, the pronouns we use are the same ones we employ for humans. My male cat is “he” and my female sheep (hold off with the snarky comments please) is “she.” Neither are “it.” Ditto for chickens—“themselves” is what we use.
That helps explain why we have organizations such as Compassionate Action for Animals; the better-known PETA; and in regard to chickens, Compassion Over Killing (more about them in a moment). Then one of our oldest animal rights organizations (note the application of rights to animals) is called the Humane Society of the United States. Not to be overly pedantic, the etymology of humane indicates that it came into the language in 1450 as a variant of human and was used interchangeably with it until the early 18th century. How it got to be applied to animals is an interesting question.
I am not arguing that we should be cruel to animals, rather to suggest that maybe we need a bit of a midcourse correction in the way we view human-animal interactions. We devote so much energy and passion to animal causes that we run the risk of diverting too much attention from other forms of abuse and killing. Wouldn’t it be spectacular, and even effective, if the PETA people would turn some of their considerable creativity and resources to alleviating cruelty toward people?
The good folks at Compassion Over Killing successfully got the United Egg Producers, which represents the interests of the $5.3 billion a year egg industry, to change the way they label eggs from “Animal Care Certified” to “United Egg Producers Certified.” To eliminate the implication that the hens were being well cared for, just that the egg producers were certifying . . . something. What that something is was not resolved. The COK group are actually more interested in ending the practice of having egg layers confined for life to “battery cages” (they are grim Abu Ghraib kinds of contraptions), contending they should be allowed to roam free. The egg producers counter—-to do so would boost the price of a dozen eggs to at least $3.00 a dozen, about three times the current average price (not in my supermarket).
COK says, “Pretty much from birth to death, egg-laying hens, as well as chickens raised for slaughter, have virtually no legal protection.” To be fair, the Compassion Over Killing organization is as much about promoting being vegan as being compassionate over killing.
I can see the validity to all sides with this one; but one thing I am really sure about is that the sky is really falling over Iraq and other places and wish we could get back to talking about that.
The NY Times had an interesting piece recently (see “Original Article” below) about their eggs and more widely about chickens themselves. Here I already have a problem—by referring to chickens as “themselves.” Unlike all other languages, when speaking about chickens and other animals, the pronouns we use are the same ones we employ for humans. My male cat is “he” and my female sheep (hold off with the snarky comments please) is “she.” Neither are “it.” Ditto for chickens—“themselves” is what we use.
That helps explain why we have organizations such as Compassionate Action for Animals; the better-known PETA; and in regard to chickens, Compassion Over Killing (more about them in a moment). Then one of our oldest animal rights organizations (note the application of rights to animals) is called the Humane Society of the United States. Not to be overly pedantic, the etymology of humane indicates that it came into the language in 1450 as a variant of human and was used interchangeably with it until the early 18th century. How it got to be applied to animals is an interesting question.
I am not arguing that we should be cruel to animals, rather to suggest that maybe we need a bit of a midcourse correction in the way we view human-animal interactions. We devote so much energy and passion to animal causes that we run the risk of diverting too much attention from other forms of abuse and killing. Wouldn’t it be spectacular, and even effective, if the PETA people would turn some of their considerable creativity and resources to alleviating cruelty toward people?
The good folks at Compassion Over Killing successfully got the United Egg Producers, which represents the interests of the $5.3 billion a year egg industry, to change the way they label eggs from “Animal Care Certified” to “United Egg Producers Certified.” To eliminate the implication that the hens were being well cared for, just that the egg producers were certifying . . . something. What that something is was not resolved. The COK group are actually more interested in ending the practice of having egg layers confined for life to “battery cages” (they are grim Abu Ghraib kinds of contraptions), contending they should be allowed to roam free. The egg producers counter—-to do so would boost the price of a dozen eggs to at least $3.00 a dozen, about three times the current average price (not in my supermarket).
COK says, “Pretty much from birth to death, egg-laying hens, as well as chickens raised for slaughter, have virtually no legal protection.” To be fair, the Compassion Over Killing organization is as much about promoting being vegan as being compassionate over killing.
I can see the validity to all sides with this one; but one thing I am really sure about is that the sky is really falling over Iraq and other places and wish we could get back to talking about that.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
11:37 AM
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