The Bond Read online

  The Bond

  Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them

  Wayne Pacelle

  Contents

  Preface

  Introduction: Sanctuary

  Part I: A Special Bond

  One: The Ties that Bond

  The Biochemistry of the Bond

  Pet Keeping Through the Ages

  Domesticated Animals: “Bonded to the House”

  Animal Sacrifice: “The Perfect Gift”

  Animal Welfare and the “Great Republic of the Future”

  Self-Evident Truths

  Two: The Mismeasure of Animals

  Thinking and Feeling: Shared Capacities

  Denying Animal Intelligence

  Signs of Change

  Lifesaving Dolphins and Dogs, Altruistic Elephants, and Other Remarkable Animals

  The Emotional Lives of Animals

  Part II: The Betrayal of the Bond

  Three: A Message from Hallmark: Exposing Factory Farming

  The Slaughterhouse Next Door: Inside a California Meat Plant

  The Hypocrisy of “Happy Cows”

  Endless Denials: The Challenge of Reform

  “The New Agriculture”: The Ways of Industrial Farming

  “Meat Science”: Turkeys Who Can’t Walk, Pigs Who Can’t Move, and Other Victims of Agribusiness

  Stirring the Silent Majority

  Four: A Culture of Cruelty: Animal Fighting in America

  Bad Newz on Moonlight Road: Dogfighting Comes Out of the Shadows

  Michael Vick and the Contradiction of Cruelty

  Blood Sport Through the Ages

  “The Feathered Warrior”

  “I Won’t Disappoint You”

  Five: For the Love of Pets

  Katrina and the Human-Animal Bond

  The Animals in Our Lives

  In the Name of Mercy: Animal Shelters and the Problem of Euthanasia

  Factory Farms for Dogs: The Tragedy of Puppy Mills

  The AKC and “the Maintenance of Purity”

  Nothing Fancy: The Costs of Reckless Breeding

  Six: The Cull of the Wild

  Unfaithful Stewards: Betraying Yellowstone’s Bison

  Killing and Longing: The Lessons of TR

  The Era of Rational Slaughter

  “Let’s Kill Them All”: The Attack on Alaska’s Wolves

  “Garbaging for Bears”: Commercial Hunting and Contemptible Conduct

  The Face of Innocence and the Shame of Canada

  Part III: Building a Humane World

  Seven: Cruelty and Its Defenders

  The Moral Scale and Humane Living

  Rhetorical Camouflage: Debating Opponents of Animal Protection

  Collateral Damage and the NRA

  “The Agro-Industrial Complex”: Harvesting Subsidies

  “The Rising Plague” and the Veterinary Oath

  Eight: The Humane Economy

  “Creative Destruction” and Living Capital

  Wild Neighbors

  Chemistry and Compassion

  Twenty-First-Century Science

  Innovation and the Spark of Life

  Appendix: Fifty Ways to Help Animals

  Notes

  Searchable Terms

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PREFACE

  WE ALL HAVE OUR own ideas about how to make the world a better place—and that’s a good thing. Some are called to serve the poor, bringing food, shelter, medicine, and opportunity where the need is greatest. There are men and women devoted especially to the welfare of children, protecting them from violence and exploitation and finding homes for the orphans. Many dedicate themselves to preventing or curing disease, while others labor to protect the environment from pollution or careless development. And by the millions, men and women in America and beyond have set their hearts and minds to the work of preventing cruelty and alleviating the suffering of animals.

  There’s an endless division of labor in the good works of society. And though day to day all such worthy causes compete for our attention and support, in the end each are a part of the same fundamental enterprise of humanity. Imagine if we all focused on just one social concern, or even a handful of them. Where would that leave the other vital causes and needs that didn’t make the cut? In a free and philanthropic society, it is for each of us to act and to give as our conscience asks, and in that pluralism of concerns, everybody is covered. In the famous phrase of Edmund Burke, each good cause and group is one more “little platoon” deployed in the work of building and defending a civil society.

  My own little platoon is the Humane Society of the United States. And though I am a friend to many other causes, the cause of helping animals has always had a particular hold on me. I’ve always felt a bond with animals, and I have come to realize that so do people everywhere. At the same time, in more than twenty years of immersion in animal welfare, I’ve also seen incredible cruelty done to animals and heard ever more elaborate arguments offered to justify those abuses. This book is my attempt to confront these contradictions, to disentangle our sometimes conflicted attitudes toward animals, and to suggest a path forward in our own lives and in the life of our country. We all know that cruelty is wrong, but applying this principle in a consistent way can be awfully difficult when so many people and industries misuse animals so routinely and so blithely and often cannot even imagine doing things a different way. In each case, there is a different and better course, and our best guide is the bond with animals—that first impulse to do the decent thing for a fellow creature.

  I’ve learned that in the animal-welfare movement no creature is quite forgotten, and there is no animal whose troubles do not matter to someone. Name any species and it has its defenders. It’s not just the “charismatic” species, defended by such groups as the Mountain Lion Foundation, the Snow Leopard Trust, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, the Gorilla Foundation, or Save the Elephants. Countless other groups have been formed to help farm animals, animals in laboratories, overworked animals like donkeys and camels, stray animals and feral cats, and other injured and needy creatures both domesticated and wild.

  Some people are passionate about animals that most of us have never even heard of. After I completed the manuscript for this book, I came across a story by Kate Murphy in the New York Times about purple martins, the largest of North American swallows. Their numbers dropped in the twentieth century because of habitat changes and the introduction of exotic species. Today, all over America, you’ll find nest boxes just for these birds, built by people who appreciate the martins for their beauty and want them to survive. Various blogs and YouTube videos are devoted to the birds, and there is even a Purple Martin Conservation Association, along with the Purple Martin Society of North America and the Purple Martin Preservation Alliance. Some might consider this preoccupation with a single species to be a little much, but I for one am glad for it. I love the idea that some people feel so connected to these creatures and are looking out for them.

  I thought I’d heard about every category of animal rehabilitation until I read not long ago about the South Bay Wildlife Rehab, a group whose work includes saving injured and orphaned hummingbirds. Abby Sewell of the Los Angeles Times describes the work:

  “Only a crazy person would do this,” said Terry Masear, 50, who has had as many as 60 hummingbirds at a time flitting around in the cages on her back patio in West Hollywood….

  During the summer, she takes a three-month hiatus from her job teaching English to foreign professionals at UCLA. Far from being a break, her summers with the hummingbirds entail 15-to 17-hour days of nonstop work…. From 5 a.m. to nightfall, every half h
our, pre-fledgling hummingbirds must be fed with a syringe full of a special formula made in Germany. Masear guides a tube down the throats of the little birds, not much larger than bumblebees. Between feedings, she changes feeders for the older birds, cleans cages and monitors the birds’ social interactions.

  “You can’t go out to dinner, you can’t go out of town. You don’t have a life,” Masear said….

  When they are ready to live in the wild, Masear opens the aviary door and watches the tiny birds spiral hundreds of feet into the air and disappear among the clouds. Even after seeing it hundreds of times, that moment still makes the long hours of drudgery worthwhile, she said: “When you release them, that’s pure joy.”

  We’re told that not a sparrow falls without his Maker knowing, and millions of animal rescuers and rehabilitators like Terry Masear are paying close attention as well.

  Of course, the flip side of all this benevolence is that such groups and their labors are needed in the first place. There is so much animal cruelty, homelessness, and suffering, and so much of it is a consequence of human action. In a rational world, the kinder people wouldn’t be so busy dealing with the wreckage left by the cruel and careless.

  As harsh as nature is for animals, cruelty comes only from human hands. We are the creature of conscience, aware of the wrongs we do and fully capable of making things right. Our best instincts will always tend in that direction, because a bond with animals is built into every one of us. That bond of kinship and fellow-feeling has been with us through the entire arc of human experience—from our first barefoot steps on the planet through the era of the domestication of animals and into the modern age. For all that sets humanity apart, animals remain “our companions in Creation,” to borrow a phrase from Pope Benedict XVI, bound up with us in the story of life on earth. Every act of callousness toward an animal is a betrayal of that bond. In every act of kindness, we keep faith with the bond. And broadly speaking, the whole mission of the animal-welfare cause is to repair the bond—for their sake and for our own.

  In our day, there are stresses and fractures of the human-animal bond, and some forces at work would sever it once and for all. They pull us in the wrong direction and away from the decent and honorable code that makes us care for creatures who are entirely at our mercy. Especially within the last two hundred years, we’ve come to apply an industrial mind-set to the use of animals, too often viewing them as if they were nothing but articles of commerce and the raw material of science, agriculture, and wildlife management. Here, as in other pursuits, human ingenuity has a way of outrunning human conscience, and some things we do only because we can—forgetting to ask whether we should.

  Some object to the abuse of animals because they know that the habits of cruelty and selfishness easily carry over into how we treat one another. Yet in the end, the case for animals stands on its own merits. It needs no other concerns or connections to give it importance. Compassion for animals is a universal value, more so today than ever. Animals matter for their own sake, in their own right, and the wrongs in question are wrongs done to them.

  Each of the chapters that follow expresses this truth in a different way. Chapter 1 reflects on the human-animal bond, its origins and its varying expressions across time. We are learning so much today about how animals think and feel, and chapter 2 examines that evidence along with the long history of denials among generations of scientists. In chapters 3 through 6, we’ll survey some of the more systematic wrongs inflicted on animals—factory farming, animal fighting, and the abuse of pets and wildlife—and we’ll see how some of these evils are being confronted and overcome through the power of democracy and the rule of law. From there, we’ll venture into the world of the industries and interest groups that seek to hide or explain away the abuse of animals, and we’ll listen carefully to their arguments and excuses. Finally, chapter 8 offers the best counterargument of all, by showing the great and growing possibilities of a humane economy—the new industries and practices that can thrive as we cast off old and cruel ways.

  Over the years, I have rejoiced in the gains for animal welfare, and I’ve seen my share of setbacks, which you’ll read about here too. But the trajectory of progress is unmistakable and undeniable: by ever-larger majorities, the conscience of America is asserting itself. Animal protection has always been a noble cause. Now it’s a winning cause too.

  Today, more than ever, we hold all the cards in our relationship with animals. They have no say in their own fate, and it’s up to us to speak and act on their behalf. International assemblies convene to decide which species will be protected and which will not—quarreling over terms and clauses that can either spare animals by the tens of thousands or destroy them on a similar scale. Humans control the births and deaths of billions of domesticated animals, and often the number of days or hours they are permitted to live. We even shape their very natures and temperament through selective breeding, genetic engineering, and now cloning—taking godlike powers upon ourselves, often with complete disregard for the original designs of God and nature.

  When it comes to people and animals, power is asymmetrical, and all the advantages belong to us. Whether it’s a subarctic nursery of newborn seals before the hunters come, or a herd of elephants about to be “culled,” or dogs and cats at the end of their allotted time at a shelter and deemed too costly to keep alive, always their fate depends on our forbearance and our compassion. And one of the themes of human experience, since we first entered the picture ages ago, has been the expansion of that power and the moral test of how we use it—whether cruelly or kindly, selfishly or justly, pridefully or humbly. There have always been people and groups, in every time and place, who seek to dismiss and belittle the cause of protecting animals, as if the other creatures of the earth were just an obstacle to human progress that needs to be cleared away, subdued, or even wiped out as we decide. And there have always been those others who raised a clear voice in defense of animals, unafraid to question old assumptions, unworthy traditions, and practices and industries that can no longer hold up to reason or conscience.

  Millions are carrying on in that same spirit of challenging, questioning, and calling cruelty by its name. The battle is unfolding on many fronts, as described in the pages to follow. In the end, whenever we humans find it in ourselves to help powerless and vulnerable creatures, we are both affirming their goodness and showing our own. In that way, their cause is also the cause of humanity, and this book is your invitation to join it.

  INTRODUCTION

  Sanctuary

  THE EAST TEXAS SUMMER sun was bearing down as I rumbled across the cattle guards at the front gate of America’s largest animal sanctuary, the thirteen-hundred-acre Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch. After a few familiar turns, I passed the chimp house and came to a stop at the elephant enclosure. That’s where I knew I’d find Babe enjoying the shade of her barn or ambling about her spacious yard.

  I was in luck. It was feeding time and she was inside. Arturo, Babe’s caretaker and best friend, was serving the meal—no small task with a hungry, seventy-six-hundred-pound vegetarian. I was doubly lucky because Arturo let me get in on the act. He handed me a bundle of bananas, maybe fifteen in all—bigger than any bunch at a supermarket. Babe gave them a sniff with her trunk, then politely grabbed the entire clump, and guided it into her mouth. A few chomps later, and all those bananas were gone, peels and all.

  Next on the menu was a watermelon. After Arturo handed me one of medium size, I grabbed the rounded ends and held it out in front of me with arms extended, as Babe’s nimble and powerful trunk—a natural wonder with forty thousand muscles—looped around it with impressive precision. Even though the fruit was big enough to feed a dozen people at a picnic, Babe wedged the whole thing into her mouth. She moved it around to position it just right, and there was a pop. You could hear the crunching for another thirty seconds, as the juice dribbled onto the ground, her eyes rolled back in her head, and an unmistakable smile swept across her
face. It wasn’t long before she was ready for more, which she indicated by sniffing me up and down, frisking me for another stash of fruit.

  Babe allowed me a few pats on that amazing trunk—something I didn’t take for granted considering what she had been through. During the 1980s, the South African government killed and removed entire herds of elephants—their idea of population control and the protection of habitat. It’s euphemistically called “culling,” and the practice is widely reviled because of the traumatic emotional effects it has on these highly intelligent animals. Babe’s entire family was killed in a culling program just after she was born in 1984 in Kruger National Park. They spared her and a couple of other babies because they could be sold off for profit to animal dealers and used in circuses.