The animals in the Netherlands

Approximately 2 million animals are slaughtered in the Netherlands without stunning each year. This number is composed mainly of poultry, but also of large numbers of sheep and cattle. Although Dutch and European laws generally prohibit slaughter without stunning, exception is granted to ritual slaughter, practiced by parts of the Jewish and Muslim communities. In 2008, the Royal Dutch Veterinary Society published a report proving that this practice causes the animals to experience much stress and unacceptable suffering (video produced by the Party for the Animals, contains shocking footage).
This month, the Tweede Kamer (the Dutch Lower House of Parliament) completed a first reading of a bill to prohibit ritual slaughter, i.e. to make the existing ban on slaughter without prior stunning absolute. The bill was introduced by the Dutch Party for the Animals (PvdD), which holds two seats in the House. Although the proposal is likely to be adopted, it has received plenty of media attention. The discussion has been focused on the clash of fundamental rights and values.
For animals have not been accorded explicit rights in the Dutch constitution. However, there are national and supranational laws in place that protect animal welfare and prohibit cruelty towards animals. On the other hand, freedom of religion is embedded in the constitution as a fundamental right of all inhabitants. The question that is currently before Parliament is whether the goal of preventing animal cruelty trumps a religious practice that, according to believers, is a fundamental part of their religion. According to recently shifted public opinion, the balance tips to the side of the animals. Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Iceland, Switzerland have already banned ritual laughter and legislative action is under way in Spain and Belgium.
There are voices that see the ban as an undue burden on minority communities who merely want to practice their ancient religious customs. And although the PvdD’s proposal is guided by an honest concern for animals, some commentators fear that the bill will contribute to a wider populist political climate where there is more and more talk of ‘defending’ Dutch values and mistrust towards this diverse society’s minority groups.

Feral Cats In National Feral Cat Day

Kathleen Stachowski Other Nations
October 16th is National Feral Cat Day. That’s just under a month out, but forewarned is forearmed, and if feral cats aren’t on your radar now, perhaps they will be.
Feral cats (also called community cats) weren’t on my radar until my cousin Beth, a feral cat activist in Indiana, e-mailed to ask that I contact federal officials (via an action alert from Best Friends) about the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s role in undermining community trap-neuter-return–or release–(TNR) programs.
Yes, this is the same agency that claims the Northern Rockies wolverine warrants Endangered Species Act listing but is “precluded” (along with over 20 other warranted-but-precluded species and 250-some additional “candidate species” in need of protection) because the agency lacks resources and can’t make it a priority. Can’t list a rare carnivore who continues to be trapped in Montana–but can go after community TNR programs? This required investigation. I learned something about feral cats along the way.
I tend to think of feral cats as city cats, or maybe unsocialized barn-dwellers. Here in rural Montana, feral cats are otherwise known as mountain lions (ha ha). Wild domestic cats are rare to nonexistent, likely because they’re considered lunch by the predators in the ‘hood. But in other places, feral cats are the predators, and there’s the rub. More on that later.

Larkspur
My own two feline shelter stories, Larkspur and Juniper, never leave the house. Larkspur was on her way to feralhood when some kind soul caught her in a carport in Missoula and took her to the humane shelter as a wary, frightened sub-adult. Even after 8-1/2 years in our safe, loving home, she still panics and flees when we stride into the room too quickly. But she’s a purring love-sponge other times; imagining her as one of the wild legions helps put a face to the problem–helps me see that these aren’t just so many ferals, but individuals whose predicament we created and who deserve our assistance and compassion.
But compassion is not on the agenda when FWS teams up with The Wildlife Society (TWS), an international scientific and educational nonprofit (mission statement here), for the latter’s annual conference in November in Hawaii. A Fish & Wildlife Service-organized workshop description reads, in part,
“Feral and unrestrained domestic cats kill and estimated 1.4 million birds a day, every day—and at least as many small mammals and herps. This direct mortality is similar in scale to mortality caused by building collisions and far exceeds that caused by collisions with wind or communications towers, oil spills, or other sources on which conservation agencies invest time and money. Municipalities across the U.S. are being pressured by cat advocacy groups to adopt Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR) programs in which voluntary caretakers feed cats 24/7 at feral/stray cat colonies, establishing populations of subsidized invasive predators that continue to depredate wildlife. ~Informing Local Scale Feral Cat Trap-Neuter-Release Decisions (scroll down at workshop list)
It’s important (and fair) to note that TWS is not a conservative politics/property rights group disguising as conservationists. They embrace global warming science, the Endangered Species Act, conservation of old growth forests, voluntary restraint in human population growth, and wolf restoration (“Restoring populations…to suitable habitats represents an opportunity to partially reverse a long history of persecution by humans”). They are scientists dedicated to the conservation of native wildlife populations (see all of their position statements here).
But along with scholars and scientists, it’s also fair to note that their governing council includes personnel from state fish and game agencies (including Wyoming, home of the Northern Rockies’ most onerous wolf hunt proposal). Their definition of wildlife management includes goals that run the gamut from enhancement of endangered species to sustainable harvest of game species to elimination of destructive introduced species. They are all about management. Influencing state and local animal welfare legislation is also on their agenda.
Just one revealing example: While calling for ”individual animals (to be) treated ethically and humanely,” TWS supports fur trapping for fun and profit, recognizing “…the economic and recreational benefits of trapping.” In their smarmy treatment of animal rights, TWS cites the Public Trust Doctrine, ”…based on the premise that wild animals are a public resource to be held in trust by the government for the benefit of all citizens. Animal rights advocates philosophically oppose this concept of wildlife as property…”
Wildlife as human property. Property, we know, must be defended from threats. Feral cats are exotic (non-native), invasive threats, according to TWS: ”As a domesticated animal, cats have no native range and, therefore, are a non-native species in natural systems worldwide. In addition, native prey species often have no evolved defenses against this exotic predator, making the domestic cat a potential threat wherever it is introduced.” Into this hostile milieu a discussion of feral cat control will take place.
Forewarned is forearmed. If thwarting community TNR programs and replacing them eradication is the goal, TNR supporters had better be on top of that game. (It’s likely that feral cat advocates already know this–it’s the rest of us who might need educating.) A purely emotional response (save the wild kitties!) won’t cut it when bird mortality, avian extinctions, and disease transmission are laid at the paws of feral cats and presented as scientific fact by a federal, taxpayer-funded agency.
Enter Vox Felina
According to its website, Vox Felina provides “…critical analysis of claims made in the name of science by those opposed to feral/free-roaming cats and trap-neuter-return (TNR).”

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Last weekend, I took my two sons, 13 and 21, to see “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” which we thoroughly enjoyed on several levels. It’s a rousing slave revolt, an entertaining techno-thriller, a drama about a dysfunctional household (chimp included) dealing with disability and job-related stresses (in the conflicted genetic engineer played by James Franco). (Manohla Dargis liked it, too, as did my sons’ favorite critics, the team at Spill.com.
It’s also a film about the troubled relationship of Homo sapiens to its closest kin, the other species in our taxonomic family, the Hominidae. Abuses have occurred from the forests of the Congo basin and Borneo to the research centers of drug companies and universities.
In the realm of drugs and medicine, there’s certain research that can only be done on apes or other primates. Where does one draw the line, in terms of which research goals are lofty enough to justify killing or causing pain to animals. Are some animals too sentient for such uses?
These questions go well beyond our treatment of other hominids, of course, and arise in considering everything from factory farming to the global trade in endangered species to the routine use of countless other species in medical and other testing.
The film, not surprisingly, got a seal of approval from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which also gave an award to the director, Rupert Wyatt, for insisting that no real apes be used during filming (something possible thanks to the geniuses assembled by Peter Jackson in New Zealand.
I was heartened to see that the film did not completely tilt toward the predictable Hollywood approach to “Big Pharma” of an evil corporation plotting terrible things in the pursuit of money.
While the new “Apes” film has the greedy head of a biotech firm only concerned about profits and dismissively referring to the company’s research chimps as property, its human star, Franco, represents something of a middle path. He plays a researcher who is willing to use apes as test subjects for drugs aimed at improving the human condition (including that of his father, fading from Alzheimer’s) — but who had an ethics-based line he wouldn’t cross.
We all have benefited, knowingly or not, from all manner of research involving animals. (I’m sure the post-stroke levels of coumadin in my blood right now were worked out on other species first.)
These are tough issues. I think the film will help nudge people to consider the potential ethical failures that underlie their health care. Another helpful prod was an Op-Ed article today by Representative Roscoe G. Bartlett, a Republican of Maryland, who makes a powerful argument for ending all laboratory work with chimpanzees.
Yesterday, I was able to spend 45 minutes interviewing the film’s screenwriters, Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa, who conceived the story after collecting string on various instances in which a chimpanzees ended up beingraised in human households, almost always with bad outcomes. (Listen to more on “The Idea” by clicking that link in the audio box.)
Only after their research was well under way did Jaffa have a “classic lightbulb moment,” Silver recalls, where he realized they had the seed of a fresh approach to the seemingly dormant “Planet of the Apes” franchise.
They described the remarkably smooth effort to pitch their new take on the “Apes” saga to 20th Century Fox executives. (Click “The Pitch” in the audio box at left for more.)
But we mainly focused on issues related to research labs where the animals are housed and studied, some of which I reported on in the 1990s. (Click “The Issues” button in the audio box.)
I noted how, while watching the scenes in the film of chimps watching TV, I was reminded of my tour of a onetime New York University chimp center in Tuxedo, N.Y., where the televisions were showing “The Wizard of Oz.”
We explored how the fast-forward pace of scientific knowledge and technical skill is seemingly outpacing humans’ capacity to comprehend and honestly grapple with the ethical issues that arise.
In discussing the ethical issues, Silver said: “It’s easy to be shrill,” but added that they sought a more nuanced approach. “Would you test on a chimp to save someone you loved?” she asked, alluding to the quandary of the Franco character. “The deepest moral questions are the ones that force you to make difficult moral choices."