Friends of Animals Legal Director Contributes Panel Talk at the 2007 Biocultures Grad Student Conference in Chicago
At the November 2007 Biocultures Conference, held at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Lee Hall presented a panel talk called “The Human/Animal Boundary: A Call for Open Borders.”
Lee discussed the claims of some cognitive researchers that domestication makes animals smarter than their free-living ancestors. Lee next described how scientists apply biotechnology, on the other hand, to dull animals’ thinking abilities, and then covered cloning and gene experiments by scientists — sometimes in collaboration with breeders. Lee also addressed the current losses to the world’s animal communities — losses brought about by the human drive for safety (which has ejected many large carnivores from the world) and global warming (strongly connected with our diets).
After presenting factual information, Lee called on the conference-goers to question the moral border we’ve constructed between ourselves and other conscious beings, while at the same time being mindful of other animals’ interests in living on their terms and not the terms human beings impose on them.
The general idea and mission of “biocultures” is to have the arts and sciences share their work and to generate change.
Plenary talks were presented by Nicole Anderson of Australia’s Macquarie University; Lennard J. Davis, who teaches in both the Medical School and the English Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and is one of the authors of the Biocultures Manifesto; and Judith Halberstam, Professor of English and Director of The Center for Feminist Research at the University of Southern California.
Professor Halberstam noted the tendency of animated films featuring animal characters (bees, for example) to replicate human cultural ideas about family life and gender that bear little resemblance to the real lives of other animals, and also addressed the way the control over some regions’ agriculture by wealthier regions connects with imagery of domination and submission. “The Silence of the Bees” nature show, Halberstam explained, brought up all sorts of possible explanations about why colonies of bees are disappearing in various parts of the world — could it be global warming? the use of fields to produce just one kind of crop for agribusiness? and so forth — yet ended up, as many of these shows do, treating the bees’ disappearance as some kind of mystery. Halberstam aptly observed that communicators would be better advised to be thinking about solutions, rather than just posing questions.
Priscilla Feral and Lee Hall also visited the Chicago Diner, near the Belmont train station, and we’ll soon be offering a review of this restaurant, which includes a definition of “vegan” on every menu.
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On November 19, 2007, Curtis E. Hinkle wrote:
A Call for Open Borders is a very powerful symbol of humanity’s need to open itself to the natural world we are an integral part of. Our need to impose artificial boundaries among living beings often with incredible violence not only is a threat to other living beings but to our own survival.
Respect for life and diversity is essential to self respect and self preservation.
Thanks Lee for your work and your kindness and respect for our wonderful world and its inhabitants.
On November 21, 2007, Emmanuel Victoria wrote:
Hey guys, i respect your stand point and i want 2 be part of the team. i myself just became a vegan and would like some help preparing food. i live in new york so if u guys want 2 email the location 2 the next meeting i would appreciate thank you
On November 27, 2007, Dustin wrote:
Emmanuel:
We have some recipes on this site, as well as a cookbook, Dining With Friends. You can also do a Google search on vegan cooking; there are countless blogs, YouTube videos and sites dedicated exlusively to vegan cooking.
Congratulations on becoming vegan.
Dustin
Friends of Animals
On November 29, 2007, Mike wrote:
I’m assuming that FOA would contest the notion of domestication making animals smarter. This is certainly contrary to my observations. I’d be curious to know what criteria helped establish such a conclusion. Do you know if the report that concluded this, is published anywhere? Does the FOA have any published studies disputing the claim that domestication makes animals smarter?
On November 29, 2007, Lee Hall of Friends of Animals wrote:
Some cognitive ethologists may believe that mental ability improves with domestication, Mike; but yes, as you would, we would question that.
For one thing, we’d question it because turning wolves into dogs has been done through neoteny — the retention of juvenile characteristics in an adult being. Normally, for example, only wolf pups yap and bark. But dogs will do this all their lives.
In a Christian Science Monitor (26 Oct. 2005 edition) article ”Why Your Dog is Smarter Than a Wolf”, Hungarian ethologist Vilmos Csányi suggests dogs make better cognitive study subjects than primates, that their abilities come out in their relationships with humans, and that (contrary to studies of wolves and dogs in the early 1980s) domestication hasn’t dulled dogs’ intelligence. By the way, Csányi, retired head of the ethology department at Budapest’s Eötvös Loránd University, concurs with the finding that wolves are the ancestors of all modern dogs. See generally Ch. 3, Vilmos Csányi, If Dogs Could Talk: Exploring the Canine Mind (North Point Press; Jan. 2005).
The ethology students raise both young dogs and wolves as pets. In one experiment, wolves pulled a rope until exhausted to get meat, but dogs tried to get the tethered meat a couple of times, then “turned to their masters for assistance or cues.” To Csányi, this shows dogs have acquired an innate ability to take cues from humans. Wolves lack this “skill” even when raised from birth to learn it. Here, an incident of domestication — a deliberately developed biological and mental dependency — is called a skill.
In contrast, British bioethics professor Ben Mepham predicts that biotechnology could produce “animal vegetables” — industrial animals who are both “highly prolific and oblivious to their physical and mental status”. [Sean Poulter, “Cloning Opens Door to ‘Farmyard Freaks’” — Daily Mail (11 Jan. 2007), quoting Ben Mepham of Nottingham University.]
One thing the two above experts seem to share is the idea that mental life should or will be tailored for the convenience of the human beings who can use both groups of animals. Notably, Csányi’s researchers are quoted as saying dogs could be even better research specimens than primates.
Here’s a question, then: Is the advocacy community, through its focus on reduced suffering rather than autonomy, complicit? When an interviewer asked Animal Liberation author Peter Singer for an opinion on engineering chickens without brains, Singer said, “It would be an ethical improvement on the present system, because it would eliminate the suffering that these birds are feeling. That’s the huge plus to me.” [Oliver Broudy, Interview: “The Practical Ethicist” — Salon.com (8 May 2006).]
On November 30, 2007, Mike wrote:
Wow! I have to assume Singer’s remark came from a place of exasperated resignation, or he was joking or quoted out of context. If not, he sounds like one confused dude. I don’t personally think the advocacy community is being complicit at all; big changes occur slowly in small bits. If reducing animal (human and non) suffering is a start, than it may be complicit in the short term as a necessary step towards long-term wellness for all life.
To be fair, though I don’t believe that domesticating animals makes them any smarter (which is the comment that drew my interest to this discussion), I think it provides them an environment where their likelihood of survival is more assured then in the wild. In contrast, it blows me away, the number of people I know whose pets have terminal human illnesses; diabetes, cancer, arthritis, etc.. I just about wept the first time I knew of someone having to give their pet an insulin injection. I was overwrought with such emotion knowing that the pet acquired this quality of life having had no say in it’s diet, environment and now the treatment of its condition. I’d love to know if horses, dogs, cats and other domesticated animals could speak, if they would ask to be left the heck alone, stating a preference for a natural life cycle; shorter or not.
Peace & Love
On December 2, 2007, Lee Hall of Friends of Animals wrote:
Mike, regarding Peter Singer’s comment, you can judge for yourself:
http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/interviews-debates/20060508.htm
Singer’s apparently answering the questions in earnest.