HUMANS AND
ANIMALS
More and
more people in Western societies see breeding of animals only as a previous
stage to a big massacre. Relationship between rearing and feeding is not done
any more, but between rearing and death of the animal.
By
extension, meat consumption is criminalized, and the consumer feels guilty.
The breeder
is seen as a monster who is suspected of having fun driving his animals to the
slaughterhouse.
It's
sort of a drift of the Disney generation, which suffers deeply from what I call
the Bambi syndrome.
We feel
sorry and we cry over the fate of animals that die, whether it is the fault of
humans, or not.
It seems
very healthy to me, to wonder about our superpredator practices and our
excesses of consumers and of rich countries. It is becoming increasingly clear
that the richest societies consume too much meat, creating a potentially very
problematic ecological imbalance. Through our ancestral culture, consuming meat
is a symbol of wealth, so much so that when a poor society reaches a decent
standard of living, its first reflex is to eat meat frequently. In the same
way, in a poor society, the consumption of meat is reserved for celebrations or
to honor a guest.
But it seems
to me also very abusive (and even totally decadent) to put on the same plane
rhinoceros hunting, the breeding of chickens in battery, bullfighting, the
moderate consumption of meat, the production of honey, the use of draft horses
in biodynamics or the slaughter of baby seals.
The
human being is physiologically omnivorous and the consumption of meat provides
him with a number of essential nutrients that can't be found in plants. All
attempts to substitute these elements by non-vegetable sources have been
failures, and even dietary supplements based on synthetic nutrients don't have
the same level of assimilation.
But
this is where we are. Veganism is receiving ever greater reception and its
abuses, close to terrorism, are viewed with a certain benevolence by
governments of all sides. Our politicians have become pure bureaucrats, much
more attentive to opinion polls than to scientific results, and to the actual
results of the decisions they make (we communicate a lot about the decisions
made, we explain at length what we expect, and collateral catastrophes they
provoke are left to the following ones).
Science
becomes embarrassing when it does not go in the direction of politically
correct thinking. This is the case for meat consumption, as for neonicotinoids,
glyphosate or GMOs.
We are in
the midst of media, social and political decadence. Populism has the power, but
not the usual, the vociferous, the one we see coming. This one is devious and
discreet, no inflammatory speeches, no obvious scapegoats. Everything is in the
manipulation of information, speech is first given to antiscience, to fear.
This is the
end of the scientific empire.
This
decadence and rejection of science is very evident in most European governments
and in the United States government, for example.
In
early June, the French newspaper L'Express published an article that challenged
me about the new French law on agriculture and food, in the form of an
interview. I don't repeat the first question that concerns the law itself, and
only interested the French. Those who want to read this part can click on the
direct link to the original article.
However,
most of the article deals with the relationship of humans with animals, and
seems to me quite fundamental.
This is an
interview with Jocelyne Porcher, a breeder, sociologist and researcher, with a
peculiar personal and professional background.
Original
article:
"Food Law:" No progress
for animals "
By Michel Feltin-Palas, published
on June 02, 2018
"How does a Parisian secretary find
herself one day raising chickens, sheep and goats in the Toulouse region?
Initially, Jocelyne Porcher is a neo-rural like any other, one of these young
women eager to leave the capital, its stress and pollution, to get closer to
nature. She takes the leap in the 1980s. Here she is in a village in the South
West [of France], in contact with peasants respectful of their land. She is
happy.
In 1990, it's the shock. She has
just returned to agricultural studies and finds herself in an industrial pig
farm in Brittany. Another world: "I raised animals because I loved their
company, I was looking after their well-being, I was taking care of them, I was
thinking about them day and night, I had a real conversation with them. In Brittany,
they were perceived as mere objects, resources intended to produce animal
matter, they were beaten, mutilated, insulted, with only one purpose: money.
"
From this double experience, she
draws a conviction: the traditional and capitalist breeding are two universes
that everything opposes, in their practices as in their values. And she refuses
that the first, where the man lives in symbiosis with his animals, be swept
away by the excesses of the second. She then goes into research, specializes in
the affective relations between men and animals, passes a thesis, is hired at
the National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRA), publishes books (1). A
path that allows her today to denounce both the excesses of agribusiness and
the ultras of the animal cause. Interview. "
[…]
"The government is putting
forward the doubling of penalties for the offense of animal abuse and the
animal welfare training in agricultural high schools. Is that not going in the
right direction?
Any piece of legislation obviously
includes some positive measures, but it's still a drop in an ocean of violence.
For my part, there is only one article that I really approve: it's the
authorization to experiment with mobile slaughter, an idea that I have been
defending for a long time with my association “When the slaughterhouse comes to
the farm”.
What would be the advantages of
such a solution?
Today, animals are pushed into a
truck that takes them to an unknown place to be massively killed by men they
have never seen. Slaughter on the farm avoids these drifts. This is a progress
for breeders, who can watch over their animals from birth to death; a progress
for the consumer who is guaranteed perfect traceability, and a progress for
livestock, which avoids all stress and suffering.
Any suffering, really?
Yes, as the animals are stunned and
unconscious at the moment they are bled. There is neither physical suffering
nor mental suffering.
Curiously, you are very critical of
the L 214 association [a french animalist association that militates for the
prohibition of any type of animal exploitation, and against the consumption of
meat], which also contributes to denouncing the slaughter conditions of
industrial slaughter.
We differ on the purpose of the
action. L 214 is abolitionist: it advocates for a farming without livestock and
a rupture of domestication links. For my part, I consider that domestication is
not only necessary for man, but that farm animals and those of company also
have an interest.
What do you mean?
It's very simple to understand: in
nature, many animals would have a very short life expectancy if they were not
defended by humans. A sheep or a goat isolated in a mountain automatically
becomes a prey! And the life of a mouflon in a territory where wolves roam is
dominated by anxiety. That is why in the Neolithic period, about 10 000 years
ago, domestication relations were created, with the agreement of the concerned
species. The man and the goat, the man and the cow, the man and the pig, formed
an alliance and understood that they had a mutual interest in living together,
through a system of gifts and counter-gifts.
Is not this a vision a little
idyllic? When the man takes the wool, the milk and the meat of a sheep, what
does it bring him in return?
Food and protection. But we must go
further. This relationship is not limited to issues of interest: it goes well
beyond. In reality, man has always needed the company of animals. It was true
at the time of the Neolithic and it has not changed. This is why today's
breeders are often urban young people who choose this job. And as many French
people own cats and dogs.
There is still a big difference
between farm animals and pets: you kill cows and pigs, not your cat or dog!
Why would they do it? They have no
reason to do so because they make a living differently. But put yourself in the
shoes of a shepherd who spends all his days caring for a herd of cows. He must
from time to time sell the milk or meat of his animals to earn income.
You present the situation as an
"alliance" between man and animals. But animals are forced to work
for us.
But work is not necessarily
alienation. It has long been known how central it is in human existence. I
showed with my team that it can be the same for animals too.
Really?
Observe a guide dog or a sheepdog:
don't you see how happy he is to work? The same goes for a horse or a cow: all
these animals invest themselves in the work that is asked of them, try to
understand the requirements of their master and, when they succeed, get a real
satisfaction.
The "antispecies", who
refute the superiority of man over animals, believe that our duty is to change
our diet and to free animals.
They are wrong! Go see the ewes who
live surrounded by wolves in the Alps and ask if they want to be
"liberated". Those who hold this speech often live in the city and
have an idealized and disconnected image of nature. In fact, they seek to free
themselves from the moral weight and guilt they feel in seeing the human race
raise and kill animals. It is better to try to understand what connects us to
animals, to improve their conditions of life and death, than to get rid of the
problem, especially as we would only create another, even more serious.
Which?
If humanity stops raising domestic
animals, we won't stop eating meat. So, we will go to meat in vitro, produced
from cells. While dogs and cats, which we are supposedly shamefully
appropriate, will have to be "released" and replaced by robots. Don't
be fooled - this is tantamount to a historic change in the anthropological
paradigm. After living with domestic animals for 10,000 years, man should break
with them to build a humanity based on artificial intelligence and food
biotechnology. It's undoubtedly exciting from an intellectual point of view,
but, from my point of view, it's a frightening prospect for our human becoming,
or rather inhuman. "
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