I have discussed here and in my book, A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy, the ambition of animal rights activists to gain “standing” for animals to sue in their own names–which would, of course, actually be animal rights activists doing the litigating in pursuit of their own agendas. But it never occurred to me that great harm could also be done to non animal using industries from such a course. According to an article in the ABA Journal, that is precisely what many in the movement appear to want.
The article references the BP oil spill catastrophe, which will rightly cost the company tens of billions in damages. But imagine if, in addition to paying for harm caused to humans and the costs of environmental remediation, animal rights activists could also require the company to pay for the harm to individual animals: It would not only drive the company potentially out of business, but would make it almost impossible for many non animal industries to operate because the potential liability costs would be impossible to measure. From the article “Their Day in Court:”
Despite the massive potential for death and damage to wildlife, animal welfare lawyers say current laws limit the legal options available to those who are seeking to protect wildlife. “The oil leak represents an example where tremendous pain and death are brought to individual animals,” says David S. Favre, a professor at the Michigan State University College of Law in East Lansing who is active in the animal law field. “The law presently has no easy way to deal with these individual deaths, so we can only look to environmental law for remedies.” It’s something they’d like to change.
That would result in an economic catastrophe and also clog the courts to the choking point, since backed by the hundreds of millions in the coffers of organizations such as HSUS and PETA, animal rights activists would sue, and sue, and sue. But it wouldn’t just be ideologues. Lawyers–and I am one, I know how we think–would quickly jump on board: There would be money in them thar hills to be mined from very deep pockets.
The article also treats the terrorist group the Animal Liberation Front as a mere advocacy group:
Philosophical arguments over the treatment animals have been waged since ancient times, but current advocacy efforts are a product of the activist movements that grew during the second half of the 20th century. Groups like the Animal Liberation Front and PETA, for instance, were founded in the 1970s and early 1980s. These groups have pushed their agendas largely through a combination of public relations campaigns and legal initiatives.
Bombings, arson, death threats–just advocates. Jeez. But I digress: here’s the rub:
Some animal protection activists are pushing for laws that would extend rights and protections to animals that have been, up to now, reserved for humans. “Animals are closer to us than an inanimate object that we use as a tool for everyday living,” says Adam P. Karp, an attorney in Bellingham, Wash., who devotes his practice to cases involving animals. “The law should recognize animals as legal persons with the same access to justice.”
And that would destroy our economy and profoundly undermine human exceptionalism. Animal welfare laws are important. Animal rights is profoundly anti human, both in its creating a moral equivalence between us and animals, and in the utterly devastating threat it poses to human thriving.
August 31st, 2010 | 12:49 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Vince Humphreys, J. Robert Howell and Francis W. Szarejko, Wesley J. Smith. Wesley J. Smith said: Animal Rights Lawyers Present Potential Threat to Non Animal Industries Too » Secondhand Smoke | A First Things Blog http://t.co/ixD2Hb7 [...]
August 31st, 2010 | 1:29 pm
None of the Animal Rights agenda is about giving animals a chance to speak out but it is about legalize charlatans getting to play god in deciding how to attack folks in the human sector of life. What are the odds that those same lawyers will file law suits against folks producing vegan crops that are enveloped in a 40 billion dollar pesticide industry which kills hundreds of billions of sentient beings in the most heinous ways known to mankind?? I doubt most folks look at a rat as less intelligent than most of the planet’s animals. Yet the vegans depend on coumarin to protect their rice & other grain crops and thus they remain silent about those cruel deaths.Coumarin type poison can take upwards of 50 hours to slowly and unmercifully bleed out the pigeon or rat that eats that poison.
August 31st, 2010 | 3:30 pm
The biggest threat man poses to animals is loss of habitat. Under a system where animals have the same fundamental rights as humans, you could not build a house, a road, anything that displaced an animal from its habitat. Matter of fact, there’s a lot of stuff that’d have to be taken down.
August 31st, 2010 | 4:14 pm
You might say that this world could sort of be going to “The Dog”!
I hear ya! That would be good news for you hey Victor!
What do you mean by that Wesley?
Well you were born in the year of the dog were you not? :)
Peace
August 31st, 2010 | 5:51 pm
The part of this that is most worrying to me is that the author assures us that attorneys would be glad to jump on this bandwagon – and I don’t doubt the truth of that comment.
One reason it is so hard to fight these AR conceived laws, animal ‘raids’, and the general progress of the AR agenda is that they have bigger lawyers than we do – because the AR organizations don’t challenge the big guys with the money, they go after individuals who don’t have the resources even to fight for their animals. If you don’t believe that, ask yourself why they aren’t taking on Tyson? Or Foster Farms? Or Smithfield? Or any of the other meat producers they find so deplorable.
So I’m hoping that this suit won’t actually materialize. BP can field at least as good a legal team as HSUS can, and though they are immoral and unethical, HSUS management is not stupid.
However – if they go forward with this, all we can hope for is that the judge who hears the case will throw it out of his court. If he doesn’t, we can only believe that the judge, too, is a mere charlatan.
August 31st, 2010 | 7:45 pm
Frankly, I’m so tired of this selfishness. We’re destroying animals, and their homes, but Wesley, and others are whinning about the suppoed loss of “human exceptionalism”.
Yes, humans are exceptional. We’re exceptionally selfish, immoral and whiny, and while I’m at at, tiresome.
August 31st, 2010 | 9:16 pm
Bret: “We’re exceptionally selfish, immoral and whiny, and while I’m at at, tiresome.”
Well illustrated, Bret.
And where were you able to find a place to live where no non-human animals were displaced?
And if a bear chases you out of her den, do you think she feels guilty about it?
August 31st, 2010 | 9:35 pm
Bret Lythgoe
August 31st, 2010 | 7:45 pm
Frankly, I’m so tired of this selfishness. We’re destroying animals, and their homes, but Wesley, and others are whinning about the suppoed loss of “human exceptionalism”.
Yes, humans are exceptional. We’re exceptionally selfish, immoral and whiny, and while I’m at at, tiresome.
Thanks for reenforcing my point when I stated this Brett.
“None of the Animal Rights agenda is about giving animals a chance to speak out but it is about legalize charlatans getting to play god in deciding how to attack folks in the human sector of life. What are the odds that those same lawyers will file law suits against folks producing vegan crops that are enveloped in a 40 billion dollar pesticide industry which kills hundreds of billions of sentient beings in the most heinous ways known to mankind?? I doubt most folks look at a rat as less intelligent than most of the planet’s animals. Yet the vegans depend on coumarin to protect their rice & other grain crops and thus they remain silent about those cruel deaths.Coumarin type poison can take upwards of 50 hours to slowly and unmercifully bleed out the pigeon or rat that eats that poison.”
You have exemplified how self indulgently wrapped up in the belief that you are so much more morally superior to the rest of humanity. You can not bear to admitt that we as human animals are not morally bound to be removing ourselves from the food chain. In fact nature requires we maintain our position or our bodies wouldn’t be able to process meat.
August 31st, 2010 | 10:05 pm
Padraig: Obviously, we humans must share the world with other humans. You’re engaging in the straw man fallacy, to assume that, to be for animal habitats, one must be against humans living anywhere! who could possibly believe that! Obviously, humans must use our intelligence to enable us, and other animals to co-exist peacefully.
Donnie: I don’t consider myself morally superior at all. But I must follow my conscience.
August 31st, 2010 | 10:10 pm
Sorry, i meant to say that we humans must share the world with other animals. And to argue that we humans have a right to destroy other animals habitats, because we’re “exceptional”, is merely a manifestation, of the view that “might makes right”. But to exploit others, merely because they’re weaker, and we want what they have, is cowardly, and indecent.
September 1st, 2010 | 4:34 am
“Bombings, arson, death threats–just advocates. Jeez.”
You know, Wesley, you could be talking about the loony-tunes fringe of the so-called “right-to-life” crowd.
September 1st, 2010 | 6:08 am
This article is obnoxious. We can / should realize that we must share the world and not continue to destroy it and it’s inhabitants; all inhabitants. The harm and outright brutality that we have collectively enforced on God’s creatures, His world and all in it is out of control. Frankly, we need to be more generous with compassion.
September 1st, 2010 | 7:35 am
And after those comments you claim you do not think of yourself as morally superior????
Nature does not worry about the amorality of killing or escaping death today because it will eventually be fed by death. It is very hard for some folks to accept that God or evolution is best served by having the strong over power the weak or the intelligent leader of a pack learning how to maintain the pack by coordinating a deadly cruel but necessary attack upon larger and more powerful animals than themselves. Cowardice has no more to do with humans feeding themselves a humanely killed rabbit than it does in spreading coumarin and inhumanely killing rats,mice or pigeons. Animal rights is exposed as a complete charade when those factors effecting vegans is exposed.
September 1st, 2010 | 8:46 am
Bret: “But to exploit others, merely because they’re weaker, and we want what they have, is cowardly, and indecent.”
Yeah, I’ll bear that in mind the next time I see a human ride a horse, kill a shark, trap a tiger, or chase a puma away from their cattle. Those poor weak animals.
September 1st, 2010 | 9:05 am
I’m addressing Donnie’s concern about the animals harmed in fields during harvest. These deaths are unfortunate but the truth is, we could cause less harm by eating these (or others) directly – Rather than fattening animals with them. As I understand at least 75% of corn and soy are feed to “livestock”. We could avoid a lot of needless suffering if they were fed to humans instead.
Secondly, your concern about poisons to protect crops? What about the millions of “predator” animals poisoned by cyanide all for the sake of “livestock” and ranchers? One may be called an unavoidable “necessity” to harvest plant food – The other is clearly frivolous destruction to life without justifiable defense. We simply do not “need” to kill this wildlife for a “food” that is easily replaced. I cannot live without plant food – Certainly we can all thrive without animal flesh.
September 1st, 2010 | 10:18 am
>>Bea Heliott said, Certainly we can all thrive without animal flesh.<<
I agree and if only our sins had not made pigs of themselves than maybe we would not be eating them now?
I'm I the only one who loves "Bacon"? :)
Peace
September 1st, 2010 | 10:25 am
Mr. Smith,
I highlighted your book in my Focus on Agriculture column, which the American Farm Bureau distributes every week to to the news media and to state Farm Bureaus. Many of the state Farm Bureaus publish the Focus column in their publications. Your book is also being promoted on the front of AFBF’s website this week.
Here’s a link to the column:
http://fb.org/index.php?fuseaction=newsroom.focusfocus&year=2010&file=fo0830.html
Here is our website
http://www.fb.org
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
September 1st, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Thank you very much, John Hart!
September 1st, 2010 | 10:57 am
HW: “You know, Wesley, you could be talking about the loony-tunes fringe of the so-called “right-to-life” crowd.”
HW, I have often noticed striking similarities between the rabid anti-abortion crowd and the rabid AR and eco-freak types. The most common themes seem to be arrogant self-righteousness and the demand that others follow their moral code. I have a twisted fantasy where we’d lock them all together inside the New Orleans SuperDome, wait 3 days, open the doors and see who comes out… ;)
I guess a fringe is a fringe, no matter what it’s a fringe of.
September 1st, 2010 | 11:39 am
Hello Bea. That 75% ratio is a falsehood put out by ARA propagandists. The World food statistics specifically challenge the lie offered by the ARA.
Here is the truth from Worldwatch which follows the commodities market in order to map out a program to keep humans fed.
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5539
People consume a little less than half (48 percent) of the world’s grain directly—as steamed rice, bread, tortillas, or millet cakes, for instance.8 Roughly one third (35 percent) becomes livestock feed.9 And a growing share, 17 percent, is used to make ethanol and other fuels.10
75% being used to feed animals is one long lie away from the truth that animals only get fed 35% of grains that could be human food. Also of note is the 17% used for biomass fuels which is catching up to the use of grains as direct food or as indirect food which provided weight increases for our animal livestock. One must remember that grains feed our ungulates which will also feed humanity a top grade food in the shape of meat. Another factor in corn or soy silage is that those feeds are not fit for human consumption s rough corn and the non digestible portions of soy & corn stalks are the source of most of that silage.
September 1st, 2010 | 11:53 am
Hello Bea. Again to point out some glaring failures in your attempt to minimize the importance of maintaining animals for human consumption & the fact that crop producers are even more guilty of knocking off sentient beings to service their hunger. Have you ever seen the system of producing grains or other plant-based fiber? It is a killing field whether you wish to acknowledge or not!! Since the deer is a sentient being when I shoot it as food, what makes it less sentient when it is shot to protect a grain crop? What difference is there in objection to killing the deer as food or in knocking it off with a grain harvester? It might be your wish to miss the validity of that point with your subjectivity as you denigrate the shooting as food while ignoring the same deer shot as a pest in a corn field or as road kill under a grain combine but that is failure of yours. In all honesty ,our total food production methodology is speciest but only meat eaters have the courage to not play the hypocrite in acknowledging that reality.
September 1st, 2010 | 11:59 am
This article is obnoxious. We can / should realize that we must share the world and not continue to destroy it and it’s inhabitants; all inhabitants. The harm and outright brutality that we have collectively enforced on God’s creatures, His world and all in it is out of control. Frankly, we need to be more generous with compassion.
Actually we need to be less the hypocrite and more the pragmatic realist who has figured out that God designed this planet as a web of life where death will feed new life in a continuous cycle. God designed the earth that way if you believe in him and it is unrealistic to pretend otherwise.
September 1st, 2010 | 12:03 pm
Once upon a time, there was a rich farmer who hired a LOT of workers to seed and water his crops and they would reap the result. One day he over heard some of the workers talking crap so he brought them a lot of animal manure to use in the garden and they were all happy.
I hear ya! Victor, I think you’re off topic again.
Sorry! :)
Peace
September 1st, 2010 | 2:45 pm
As someone who attends legislative hearings on dogs at the state capital, I can confirm the power that attorneys have. Of particularly amusing interest is the fact that the Illinois President of the Humane Society of the United States, Jordan Matyas, has just got himself in the political hotseat for some unscrupulous ventures. Notice that the Chicago Sun Times articles makes no mention that he is any way affiliated with HSUS even though they willingly plastered his photo when he was campaigning against “puppy mills”.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/2655290,CST-EDT-edit31a.article?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+StatelineorgRss-Politics2+%28Stateline.org+RSS+-+Politics%29
September 1st, 2010 | 3:31 pm
Just to continue on John Galt’s theme, allowing people with no ownership interest to “represent” animals would swiftly become a lawyer enrichment scheme, much like class action suits have become.
I have been an unknowing “plaintiff” in several class action suits, mostly against Microsoft or Intel (I buy a lot of computer toys). In each case I was notified I would get compensation for my loss if I submitted significant documentation. In none of these cases did I ever receive anything of value. Meanwhile the attorneys collect very significant fees from the defendant.
I see the animal law scenario playing out the same way. Lawyer sues the DNR on behalf of slaughtered deer, lawyer wins case, lawyer gets big fees, taxpayers get screwed, deer get nada.
September 1st, 2010 | 8:15 pm
I find it amusing, that the same individuals who are always bragging about how “exceptional” we humans are, convientiently want to ignore it, when it come to our treatment of other animals.
We humans are exceptional, in how we can acknowledge the rights of other animals, but it will require courage, confidence, and sacrifice. But I believe we’re up to the challenge.
September 2nd, 2010 | 1:43 am
Padraig: Who, exactly, belong to the “rabid anti abortion” crowd, that you refer to? Could it possibly be thse who are feed up (like myself) with millions of unborn humans being killed every year? I thought that you were at least for humanity. I guess you only favor the post-birth variety.
You are right about one thing though (true, I never cease to be suprised); there IS a similarity between the right to life “crowd” and those for animal rights, despite their seemingly being on plar ends of the political spectrum: they both see injustice, and inhumane behavior, and have the courage to accept being called silly names, by people, like yourself, who really don’t understand their positions, and seemingly don’t care to learn.
September 2nd, 2010 | 1:55 am
Padraig, those on the prolife and animal rights sides are not “arrogant and self-rightous”. They simply see, that there’s no rational or moral basis for believing that animals or fetuses should be denied protection. This is called following the evidence, wherever it goes. You may want to try it sometime, instead of indulging in childish name calling.
September 2nd, 2010 | 11:04 am
Bret: “Padraig: Who, exactly, belong to the “rabid anti abortion” crowd, that you refer to? Could it possibly be thse who are feed up (like myself) with millions of unborn humans being killed every year?”
No, that would be the ones that set off bombs and fire sniper rifles at abortion providers, or who support them. Or the AR folks that set off fire bombs.
But thank you for again illustrating my point about AR types being arrogant, self-righteous, and I forgot to mention, egotistical. All part of the “I’m right because I say so and I’m smarter than you” syndrome.
September 3rd, 2010 | 1:57 am
Padraig: I was responding to your comments, in response to Histiry Writer’s comments. Nowhere, in those particular comments, did you qualify your statements, by pointing out that you were refering to the violent types. I’m glad that you clarified, who you think the “rabid” types, are. I certainly agree with you, that violence, in any form, is completely reprehensible.
My response, was perfectly appropriate, to your comments. If you qualified them, like you did now, I would not have responded, the way I did.
But, please remember, Padraig, if you choose to call names, or put down groups that I consider to be courageous, and important, I’ll defend them, appropriately.
Your last comment, is beneath you. I’ve never questioned your intelligence. i’ve made it very clear, that I believe that you’re very intelligent.
September 3rd, 2010 | 11:09 am
Bret, I’m still trying to figure out when I indulged in “childish name calling.” Was it when I referred to AR types as “arrogantly self-righteous”? Because I’ve been around a lot of smart kids, and they’ve called me and others a lot of names, but I don’t think “arrogantly self-righteous” was in their vocabulary.
September 4th, 2010 | 1:34 am
Padraig: calling people “arrogant, rabid, egotistical, self righteous”, certainly qualifies as childish name calling. Why? because you’re assuming to know what’s in the mind’s of others, such as myself. the last time I checked, I didn’t tell you what all my intentions, motives, reasons, etc., are. So how can you judge, appropriately, that I’m “self-righteous, arrogant, egotistical”? Usually, adults don’t name call (if they’re mature) if they don’t have all the facts. Children do, because they don’t know any better.
September 4th, 2010 | 2:14 am
read the article The Mob HSUS and The Black Egg under the articles tab at hsussucks.com then complete the equation
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