Animal Rights v. Animal Welfare (Part 2 of 3)

Jamie Oliver, aka “The Naked Chef,” sits at the center of the Welfare/Rights debate. In December of 2007, on his television show, “Jamie’s Fowl Dinners,” Oliver gassed several baby chickens in front of a live studio audience. According to a video blog on Oliver’s website, he designed this demonstration to reveal the harsh realities of commercial egg farming in which supporting a male chicken population makes no economic sense.

So what did representatives from PETA and the American Dog Owners Association have to say about Oliver’s actions?

Animal Rights

Jessica Lange, Senior Vice President of Communications for PETA, said, “We’re absolutely in support of Oliver. If you are going to support something like eating meat, racing horses, or breeding animals, you should stand there and watch, you should know exactly the cost of your activities. People are just way too distanced from how their purchasing decisions effect animals.” She quotes Paul McCartney to explain further: “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we’d all be vegetarians.”

And in fact, it seems Oliver’s stunt had almost that effect; in the days following the episode’s broadcast, supermarkets across the UK sold out of free range and organic eggs. The glass walls of Jamie Oliver’s TV slaughterhouse might not have made the UK vegetarian overnight, but they appeared to take it a step in that direction.

Animal Welfare

Maureen Hill-Hauck, Vice President Program Director for the ADOA called the episode “disgusting,” and said she would never again support Oliver’s show. Quite a few Animal Welfare groups, in fact, decried Oliver’s episode as “animal snuff.” In response to the show’s effect on the organic egg market, Hill-Hauck said, “We don’t need to have it exhibited on live television.”

Bottom-line: Rights groups like PETA are against killing animals, but pro-transparency, and even in favor of “extreme” demonstrations to hold people accountable for their purchasing decisions. Welfare Groups, though they might endorse humane killing for food, stand against indiscriminate killing of animals in any form, even as a demonstration.

SURPLUS PETS

Rights groups like PETA believe euthanasia in animal shelters is a necessary measure to curb the “overpopulation epidemic.” Welfare groups like the ADOA think that euthanasia is an unnecessary, extreme and immoral measure to solve a problem they believe has been misdiagnosed.

Animal Welfare

ADOA’s Hill-Hauck, rejects the PETA philosophy, saying, “I don’t subscribe to the overpopulation theory. The biggest mistake is not the problem of overpopulation but availability, of marketing. There is a home for every dog, if we can make the dogs visible.”

Many Welfare groups like the ADOA support a “no-kill” philosophy as outlined by Nathan Winograd, director of the No Kill Advocacy Center. In a Newsweek article (April 28, 2008), Bonney Brown, executive director of the Nevada Humane Society said that when her shelters first went “no-kill,” they managed to find homes for 90% of the animals they took in.

Animal Rights

Lange says that the “no-kill” ideal put forth by the ADOA and other Welfare groups is “naïve beyond belief.” She continues, “We aren’t willing to push animals into homes that aren’t good enough. Putting a dog on a chain for 17 years, for example, is no life at all.” “No-kill” shelters, says Lang, will not admit “unadoptable” pets, often leaving those “unadoptable” animals to “a fate worse than death.” PETA therefore supports “open admission” shelters, which will take all animals, including the ill and violent, acknowledging that they must eventually euthanize some of those animals to make room for others.

Instead of “no-kill,” Lange and PETA advocate “no-birth,” supporting mandatory spay and neutering programs. Given the “reality of overpopulation,” Lange says, “We have to get at the root of the problem.” The problem, for PETA, is the irresponsible breeding and purchasing of pets.

Bottom Line: Since the ADOA doesn’t believe overpopulation is a problem, their membership believes in neither euthenasia nor mandatory spay and neutering laws, arguing that such legislation infringes upon the rights of the owners and the welfare of the animals themselves. PETA, on the other hand, thinks the laws are necessary to prevent suffering due to overpopulation.

This article is part of a three-part series written by PhilanthroMedia's Chad Callaghan. Tomorrow Chad looks at the implications for donors.

Susan Herr