"In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave" by Peter Singer

The Independent (London), on Sunday October 16, has a review of the new book edited by Peter Singer, "In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave." ("In Defense of Animals" was first published in 1985, with a largely different set of contributors.) The Independent piece reads less like a book review than like the reviewer's own strong stand for animal rights. I will paste it below.

The book is now available in both the UK and the US. The official US launch is on Friday evening, October 21, in New York City. Peter Singer will be speaking. I sent an announcement to my New York list and am happy to forward the information to others who do not live in New York but might wish to attend the launch.

There are links to more information about "In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave" and an Amazon link for its purchase on the DawnWatch Recommended Books page at: http://www.DawnWatch.com/recommended_reading.htm

Here is the Independent Review:

Independent on Sunday (London)
October 16, 2005, Sunday
First Edition; FEATURES; Pg. 24

BOOKS: SUNDAY LUNCH WON'T BE THE SAME;
IN DEFENCE OF ANIMALS -- ED PETER SINGER BLACKWELL £9.99 POUNDS

SCARLETT THOMAS

A pig, a dog and a three-year-old child have roughly the same level of intelligence. Each of these creatures has been scientifically proven to experience pleasure and pain. None of these creatures can possibly have a responsibility to society (although I believe pigs and dogs have rescued far more people than three-year-old children have). Which of them has 'rights'?

The child has rights, because it is human. Conventionally, the other two creatures do not have any rights. Dogs are protected in the laws of some countries: in the UK you can't barbecue Labradors, for example, or boil them to death. But you can do what you want with pigs. You can 'as agribusiness does' lock a pregnant sow into a stall barely bigger than her own body, chained by the throat or around her middle, prevent her from exercising, turning around, cleaning herself, foraging or exploring. Pigs like to dig in soil. But in the hell of modern farming there is usually no soil. There is simply concrete, or awkward metal bars.

Paul McCartney once said that if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian. This book continues Peter Singer's important, urgent project of turning these walls, one by one, to glass. The essays alert us to the holocaust that continues in farms and laboratories; a holocaust that most people ignore "not because they are bad people, but, perhaps, because the horror of what we do to animals is too big to contemplate."

It's easy to believe that only a few particularly sadistic farmers commit the atrocities, and that your pork chop was never part of a sentient being that came into the world wanting to play, roll in the mud and feel the sun on its back, but whose miserable life actually contained torture and pain and ended with screams (if you think that the profit-driven executioners within agribusiness actually care about properly stunning animals then you really do need to read this book). It's easy to believe, because the alternative 'believing the truth " can drive you mad. Or it can drive you to take brave, peaceful and considered action, as all the contributors to this book did.

People who suggest that animals enjoy pleasure and do not enjoy pain (as I just did) are often accused of sentimentality: indulging in false or superficial emotion. This is not sentimentality; it is scientific fact. Sentimentality is reading your child cute 'farmyard' stories and buying him or her adorable 'cuddly' versions of the animals that are painfully killed to make the burgers or sausages you had for supper. Sentimentality is what is driving a culture in which sweets in the shape of animals contain the ground up bits of those animals, and in which it is possible to go to McDonald's and eat a 'Happy' meal after watching a film like Madagascar, or Babe, or Chicken Run. Sentimentality says that what goes on in the countryside is traditional and wholesome and we should look the other way because we don't understand the mysterious ways of country folk. Sentimentality prevents ordinary, decent people from properly educating themselves about what goes into the Sunday lunch th at they don't want to give up " because Sunday lunch is a lovely, traditional thing that Grandma really enjoys and it's those terrible animals rights people who try to spoil it with stories of animals being skinned alive and drowning in their own faeces.

Slaves were called 'animals'. Hitler called Jews animals. In fact, once you've decided something is an 'animal', you can do what you want with it " until enough people say it's wrong. The wonderful essays in this book remind us that any form of humanism must respect all sentient beings, and that a culture that can create workers who can bear listening to the screams of the 'animals' they kill (and who have been so dehumanised by the experience that they are willing, in some cases, even to sexually abuse the dead or dying animals) and that can also create people who are prepared to look the other way and enjoy the spoils of the whole endeavour "is a culture that is not only cruel and deluded, but well primed for the next human holocaust.
(END OF INDEPENDENT PIECE)

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The review presents an opportunity for supportive letters to the editor dealing with any aspect of animal protection. The Independent takes letters at letters [at] independent.co.uk and advises, "If you wish to submit a letter for publication in the newspaper, it must include the sender's name, postal address, and daytime telephone number."


(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. If you forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts, please do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)