Animal Rights and Vermin

[philosoraptor42]

This is an image I saw about 7 or 8 years ago. It's against the use of fur in the fashion industry and I fully support the intended sentiment. What confused me at the time, however, was the decision to use a fox as the animal when it is vermin. Of course, actually thinking about it, the fox is a great choice. It would be highly hypocritical to get hold of the carcass of an animal that wasn't vermin for a poster promoting animal rights.

In much more recent news A.A. Gill has apparently made a blunder in admitting that he once shot a baboon on safari "to get a sense of what it might be like to kill someone". This is a quite horrible reason to kill an animal and animal rights protestors are right to suggest that if you want to know what its like to shoot a human being, shooting your own leg might be a better choice. After all, unless A.A. Gill wants to feel like a sociopath killing an animal for absolutely no reason would be a rather daft way to go about it. Soldiers in an army do not kill innocent bystanders for no reason unless they are aiming for a court marshal.

However, what is not mentioned until the very end of the article is that the baboon A.A. Gill shot, far from being endangered, is actually local vermin in the area:

Baboons are seen as a threat by some people in Tanzania because they raid crops, and farmers who need to control their populations can apply for licences to kill them in some areas. They have been classed as vermin in the country and often live on the edges of farming areas.

Now I'd say that if an animal is vermin, killing that animal can not so easily be condemned as immoral. Would there really be the same outcry about cockroaches, rats or wasps?

The other week I was in a Lush store and the man at the till asked me whether I'd sign a petition. This isn't unusual for Lush. In the past they've campaigned against legislation concerning animal testing. (Oddly the legislation was insisting that they use animal testing for their cosmetic products.) The gentleman at the counter showed me a spherical bubble bath with a paw print on it they were selling as part of promoting their latest campaign. He then explained to me that fox hunting is still going on and he wanted me to sign a petition against illegal fox hunting. When I expressed uncertainty he gave me the hard sell, asking whether he could clear up any misgivings I felt. (To his credit, he apologised for having made me feel uncomfortable - so I don't mean this as a criticism of Lush or their staff.)

Fortunately for me, the promotional bubble bath was had a minty smell that I wasn't terribly impressed with otherwise I might have been quite conflicted on whether to buy it. I didn't really have time for a long debate on fox hunting at the time, otherwise I might well have been happy to start the discussion with him. For starters, I didn't see any reason to sign a petition to ask for something illegal to be prosecuted. I don't see why I should need to sign something like that. It seemed quite clear to me that the petition would be used to change and strengthen the law against fox hunting, not to request that people breaking the law be prosecuted. All this being said, I wasn't sure I agreed with the change in the law in the first place.

Now we all knew that fox hunting was still going on because even as the new law went through both fox hunters and fox hunting protesters alike were claiming it to be a victory. The problem is that foxhunters under the new law are allowed to use dogs to flush out prey towards guns. If the dogs rip the fox apart instead, who gets prosecuted? Do the dogs get put down, like they might be if they attacked a human being? Do the owners get a fine for not training their dogs properly? Certainly it doesn't look like the presence of fox hunters using dogs in a hunt can really lead to a prosecution under this law.

In any case, I'm not too concerned about this. Foxes are local vermin and hunting with dogs is the easiest way to cull their numbers. If we want to talk animal cruelty, attacks by foxes on farm animals can actually be quite horrific. There's a reason why foxes are hunted. I'm not keen on animal cruelty or killing animals for the fun of killing. I am, however, strongly in favour of killing vermin.

I once asked a staunch defender of animal rights what they would do if there was a wasp nest next to their porch. They claimed that they would try to leave it alone, in spite of the personal risk. To be quite honest, I don't believe them. Even animal rights activists share the need to cull pests and vermin. Whether baboons are actually vermin should have played a much bigger part in the article about A.A. Gill because in the end it seems to me that it's constitutes the deciding factor as to whether his actions were right or wrong.