Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard to Think Straight About Animals (P.S.)
Herzog is an anthrozoologist. That means he studies the interactions between people and animals, including the animal/human bond, how animals fit into human society, and how different cultures treat animals.
These topics elicit strong reactions from people. Warning: There are topics and photos in this post that some people may find disturbing.
Sites with online reviews of Herzog’s book are heavily populated by vegans ready to crucify him. Perhaps this very fact validates his subtitle: “Why It’s Hard To Think Straight About Animals”.
One could take exception to the “Why” in the subtitle. Herzog beautifully illustrates many areas where humanity’s thinking about animals does indeed display cognitive dissonance. But he never provides an answer as to why that happens, or indeed, gives any ethical guidance to those who hold animal welfare dear to their hearts yet still happily grill their factory farmed meat. He controversially asserts that veganism and even vegetarianism are both unhealthy (he links them to eating disorders) and unviable for the vast majority of people. So what are we to do?
You’ll have to figure it out for yourself dear reader, as this book contains no answers. The best he can do is to say that humans are nuts, and not just about animals:
“The bottom line is that there are many reasons why human-animal interactions are so often inconsistent and paradoxical. Thousands of studies have demonstrated that human thinking about nearly everything is surprisingly irrational.”
He goes on to tell us that ants make more rational decisions about where and how to build their homes than humans do.
Herzog does, however, write in a very entertaining and thought provoking manner about the dilemmas and paradoxes in the sphere of human/animal interactions.
The anecdote Herzog recounts at the beginning of the book is the perfect illustration of this.
Through a series of happenstances, Herzog come into possession of a small boa constrictor, which his son keeps a a pet. He gets a call from a colleague who is big into cat rescue. She heard a rumour that he and his son have been feeding kittens to the snake.
Herzog is horrified and immediately refutes the rumour. They would never feed kittens to the snake. They feed it live mice.
I’m betting you find that photo off-putting at best, and horrible at worst. Yet this is the reality of the snake’s life. If it is to live, it must consume meat. For that matter, it’s also the reality of the life of mice. Everything in the wild eats mice from wolves and foxes down to cats, owls and – oh yeah, snakes.
Do you feel it’s okay to give mice to the snake after you look at that photo? If so, why the mouse, but not a kitten? If it’s not okay to give either mice or kittens to the snake, how is the snake to live?
Why do we eat lambs, but not puppies? Why do the people who sign the petitions against the dog meat festivals in Asia have no qualms about eating chickens, pigs and cows that have been factory farmed in conditions of brutality amounting to life long torture?
These are the sorts of questions that Herzog is interested in.
Some equations seem to be true: slimy is bad; too many legs or not enough legs will freak us out. But while ‘cute’ and “furry” generally equal ‘good’, we still feed those furry cute little mice to our creepy legless pet snakes. We still eat the cute, soft-eyed calves and the frolicking lambs whose sweet pictures adorn our Easter cards.
Herzog points out that even within species that we eat, we act irrationally. We call cow meat ‘beef’ , pig meat ‘pork’, and baby cow meat ‘veal’, presumably to disguise from our conscious minds the reality of what we are eating.
But chickens and ducks are still chickens and ducks, and we when we eat the legs off baby sheep, we are brutally honest and acknowledge it as ‘leg of lamb’.
Herzog states that as people have moved from farms to cities, their emotional attachment to domestic pets has become stronger, while our relationship to the animals on our tables has become more remote.
He points out that in North American supermarkets, you seldom see the whole animal, or even any recognizable parts of the animal. Whole chickens used to take up a good part of the butcher’s case. Now, it is mostly boneless breasts and thighs.
When I first visited markets in France and in South America, I was put off by the display of sheeps’ heads, chickens with heads and feet still attached, and other rather gruesome displays that were unmistakably dead animals offered for our consumption. In fact the thought crossed my mind that it was enough to turn anyone into a vegetarian. Yet those animals almost certainly were raised and slaughtered more humanely than the ones in our supermarkets.
Herzog also explores cultural differences in how we view meat animals. When I sent photos back to Canada of a horse butcher’s shop I came across while living in France, most people who saw them were horrified at the mere thought of eating horsemeat.
Yet, those same people will happily devour a good T-bone steak. It’s okay from a cow, but not a horse.
Our selective blindness carries over into issues of animal cruelty in general.
Herzog dares to draw a link between the acts of animal cruelty we chose to be concerned about and social class. He choses cockfighting to frame his thesis.
In general, people think that those who breed roosters for fighting, and then force them into the cockfighting ring to be maimed or killed are semi-literate rednecks who slaver over the cruel spectacle because they are more brutish and unenlightened than the rest of us. The poor cocks, we think, are abused from birth and then sent to a horrible death.
Herzog’s experience is that cockfighters are devoted to their roosters and raise them in circumstances of almost chicken luxury for the first two years of their lives. Then indeed, they go into the ring.
But Herzog contends that the cruelty of the ring, while certainly not humane, is no worse, and in fact quite arguable much better than the circumstances under which factory farmed chickens live and die.
He points out that cockfights last anywhere from a few minutes to an hour and that each cock has a 50/50 chance of surviving the fight. Meanwhile millions of chickens are raised in absolutely horrific conditions that they have no chance of surviving. They never see the sky or feel grass. Their legs are in constant pain because of their grotesquely large, genetically engineered breasts. They are rounded up by “chicken catchers” in a brutal manner and sent to a horrible death.
We and our Facebook friends will shake our heads in genuine disgust and join in condemning a cockfighting ring that has been reported in the news cycle. And yes, we will do the same when confronted with a news story about conditions in factory farms, like the one in the link above.
So what quirk in our psyches allow us to we go to the supermarket, blithely buy those chicken breasts and eat them, shielding our minds from the reality that the chickens have suffered every bit as much (or more in Herzog’s estimation) than the chickens forced into cockfighting. why is cockfighting outlawed but factory farming tolerated? Is it purely a matter of economic class?
Cockfights and bull baiting, the pastimes of the poor, were outlawed long before fox hunting, the pastime of the aristocracy.
Herzog’s sympathy for cockfighters has roused the ire of animal rights activists. But if one is brutally honest with one’s self, unless you are a dedicated vegan or vegetarian, it is difficult to argue against the logic of his case.
Among his most controversial propositions is his casting of doubt on the received wisdom that children who abuse animals are more likely to become violent criminals.
Herzog cites a study involving university students. A disturbingly high percentage of men (66%) and women (40%) admitted to having abused animals when they were children. The author of the study concluded that “for many children, animal cruelty is a normal part of growing up… It is like forbidden fruit, like swearing or smoking cigarettes.”
The types of cruelty these students admitted to were not extreme forms, and some could be explained by their own extreme youth when they did it.
“But the fact remains that childhood animal abuse is more common than is generally recognized.”
Herzog concludes that it is not the abuse of animals per se that is a good indicator of later criminal behaviour, but whether or not the perpetrator of the animal abuse felt remorse after the fact.
He also argues that there are significant differences in how men and women treat animals. Men do not come out well.
Up to 85% of membership in the ASPCA and Humane Society of the United States is female. Among dog rescuers, women outnumber men 11 to 1.
If you omit animal hoarding incidents from the definition of animal abuse, men are responsible for over 90% of seriously nasty animal abuses.
On a (somewhat) lighter noter, Herzog looks at our interest in purebred dogs.
He has fun with breed standards. Why, he ponders, is a one inch white spot on a Yorkie acceptable, while a two inch white spot is not?
Somebody grab a measuring tape!
He also shares that his “…favourite rule dictates that a Clumber Spaniel have a ‘pensive expression’.”
Herzog points out that purebred dogs are becoming significantly less popular. In the U.S., registrations have plummeted 50% from their all time highs in the mid-1990s.
Herzog postulates that this relates to the decline in the health of purebred dogs; in its way, an animal rights issue. Some of the research he presents is fascinating.
Some 20,000 American Kennel Club registered Portuguese Water Dogs trace their ancestry to only 31 dogs.
Springer Spaniels are notorious biters. Amazingly, “…researchers at Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania have linked the occurrence of aggression in this breed to one kennel and more specifically, to a single dog.”
This book is a fascinating read – not because it provides any answers to the issues of what we put on our table and how it gets there, the use of animals for research and the love and money we lavish on those privileged few breeds we keep as pets – but because the questions are so thought provoking and disturbing, and usually posed in a neutral way. Herzog is not out to shame us for eating meat. He is not out to start a revolution against factory farms or animals used for research.
Herzog admits that he himself is conflicted. He mentions how extremely difficult it is to live as a vegan, or even vegetarian, given the structures of our society. We are all of us enmeshed in an industrialized system that makes it very difficult to live without the exploitation of animals in some way.
Perhaps the best we can do is try to be humble in our judgements of others, and for ourselves, to keep urging that the animals we use are used only when some real benefit is derived from their exploitation, and demand that they be at least treated as humanely as possible.