One of the questions I am asked most frequently is, "How can you talk about animal rights when there are not even human rights in Romania?" It is true that human rights issues exist here in relation to certain discriminated against groups, such as Roma. My strong feeling is that those issues are being addressed in a practical sense by proper, well-organised and competent groups, such as Ovidiu Rom, which is working to reduce this discrimination until it is no more. Indeed, there are countless wrongs and injustices that occur in and beyond Romania, but what sets animals apart is the fact that they are utterly defenceless. They are incapable of organising themselves into a unified opposition and standing up to the outrage that is perpetrated on them.
We owe it to ourselves to do whatever we can for those who are less privileged and have less of a voice than us. Romanians are a charitable people but there is every good reason that the circle of compassion should extend to include non-human animals. Animal rights activists make the distinction between human and non-human animals because anyone who has ever attended a beginner''s class in elementary biology will tell you that we are animals too. We humans share certain common basic instincts with them, that include emotional interests such as a desire to love and be loved, certain familial interests such as a desire to reproduce and tend our young, and certain behavioural instincts such as a desire to avoid violence and pain. Somewhere in the evolutionary scale man''s superiority began to assert itself to the point we are at today.
The point we are at today defies belief, because if we extend the same circle of compassion to include non-human animals we should understand that they are not there purely for our use. They are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on or be entertained by, though unfortunately they have come to be thought of as such by the great majority of the human race. Being stronger and more intelligent than non-human animals brings with it certain privileges that manifest themselves in the lives we all lead today. But this superiority brings with it certain responsibilities too. Yes, we are free. We are also free to choose. As far as our attitudes to non-human animals are concerned, that freedom of choice can be couched in these terms: we are free to choose between continuing to harm non-human animals, and making the conscious, compassionate decision to stop harming them. Questions each one of us should ask ourselves include the following: Does being stronger, more intelligent and sophisticated than non-human animals give us the right to trap them and cage them, kill them and wear their skins? Have a look at the shoes that you are wearing - have you ever stopped to think that that strip of leather was once a living, breathing animal? Have you ever stopped to think whether that animal was properly unconscious when it was skinned? Unfortunately, there is a strong chance that it was fully conscious and therefore skinned alive, enduring unbearable, unimaginable pain. It might have been alive for as many as ten minutes after the skinning process, before being dumped and left to die.
Does being more powerful give us the right to hunt non-human animals, stare at them in zoos and be entertained by them in bullfights, circuses and rodeos? Chimpanzees do not want to wear stupid clothes and throw pies at each other to make us laugh, and bears do not want to ride bicycles in circuses for our enjoyment. Does our superiority give us the right to test cosmetics on rabbits in the name of beauty, or experiment on dogs, cats, mice, rats, rabbits and monkeys in the name of science? Last summer the distinguished Holocaust historian and academic Charles Patterson returned his PhD to his alma mater, Columbia University, in protest at the university''s long history of animal abuse and grotesque experiments carried out by scientists there. Said one post-doctoral veterinarian fellow, Catherine Dell''Orto: "What I saw at Columbia still gives me nightmares. I saw baboons whose left eyes had been cut out - so that major blood vessels could be clamped off through the empty eye sockets to induce strokes - who had collapsed in their cages, unable to lift their heads, eat, or drink. They were left to die without painkillers." Said Charles Patterson, "Dr Josef Mengele, who conducted experiments on Jews and Roma at Auschwitz, would have fit in quite nicely at Columbia." If this is permitted at one of the best universities in the United States, can you imagine what goes on at other laboratories elsewhere?
Similarly, does our strength and intelligence give us the right to pump animals full of chemicals, cram them into filthy overcrowded sheds, tear their young away from their mothers after they are barely born, slaughter them in horrendous, gut-wrenchingly painful ways and in so doing reduce their lifespan by as much as 99 per cent, cut them up and eat them? It is not surprising that the Nazis hatched their plans for mass extermination of Jewish people by studying American slaughterhouses in great detail.
Nor is it a coincidence that this article contains several references to the Holocaust, because there is truly another Holocaust going on in our midst. People who scoff at that need only to look at the food on their plate or in their sandwich, or check out the menu in the next restaurant they enter. Indeed, many Jewish survivors of the Holocaust say how they were struck by how few people helped Jews at that terrible time, and how people lived their lives as usual in Germany and Poland while the ashes spewing from the stacks of crematoriums where gassed Jews were being burnt snowed down on nearby cities. Every person who buys fur or leather clothing, every one of us who buys cosmetics or household detergents or toothpaste, soap, deodorant, shampoo and so on that is tested on animals, every person who eats meat or attends circuses is consciously or unconsciously perpetrating the plight of animals.
The irony is that the men who sell fur and leather, who sell household goods and cosmetics that are tested on animals, who run zoos and bullfights and who sell us meat are not bad men. They are businessmen. They are only responding to the demands of the market, and it is we, as consumers, who shape the market. If enough people demanded an alternative to fur, then clothes designers would produce it. Indeed some already are, such as Stella McCartney, daughter of Paul, but there needs to be more. Similarly, if enough people stayed away from circuses and bullfights there would be no circuses and bullfights. And as for animals as food, while it is too far fetched to hope that the world becomes vegetarian overnight, if enough people demanded that companies like KFC sold organically grown chickens then they would instruct their suppliers to do so.
So what, you may ask, is the answer? The answer is simple. In the words of President Ronald Reagan''s wife, Nancy Reagan, who campaigned against drug use amongst teenagers, Just Say No. Think before you make future purchases. Seek an alternative to fur or leather, for there is surely to be one. Do some research before you buy your next bottle of perfume and you will find that companies like Estee Lauder, the Body Shop, Revlon, Avon and Biersdorf have all decided not to use animals in the testing of their products. And the next time you go to buy meat, please give some consideration to what that slab of flesh once was and the miserable life it most probably led. We owe it to ourselves to be kinder to animals, to extend the circle of equal consideration to them. Thank you for reading this.
* Andrew Begg edits and publishes Vivid - see www.vivid.ro
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