Sanctuary Movements, part 7

The Farm Animal Conundrum

We know that other species will not tolerate such behavior, not for a moment. Countless observations indicate that many animals, plants and insects will go to any length to protect one another. One pellucid example comes from the literature of the military. A gorgeous Labrador named Gunner used as a bomb-sniffer by the U.S. military in Afghanistan at Camp Leatherneck, “refused to associate with the Marines after seeing one serviceman shoot a feral Afghan dog.”²³

In a country that gave us Shakespeare and his eternal love of nature, how is it that today the English can vilify foxes and Muntjac deer, “Britain’s smallest deer species, cast, rightly, as a villain for its destruction of woodland floors.”²⁴ It might have easily pointed the finger at “American grey squirrels and Caribbean ring necked parrots,” two exotics that seem to have awakened some concerns at the 11-hectare Perivale Wood Forest Reserve in London, one of England’s oldest sanctuaries dominated by old oak, native grasses and a diminutive wetland.²⁵

The magazine just cited, Country Life is, indeed, a point in case with respect to contradictions. Among the most elegant and celebratory of publications anywhere in the world, a long-standing pillar of sensitivities to nature and the love and importance of rural life, it also offers a confounding study in the variety of perspectives that make any single vision or orientation with respect to biodiversity, human freedom, food, gardens and home-life, impossible to articulate. Nothing wrong with that, obviously. But what is fascinating is the magazine’s remarkable balancing act between those who would hunt and those who would not; those who would argue in favor of a “cathartic” milking process with respect to “house cow practicalities”²⁶ and those who see the exploitation of any animals for food a guaranteed disaster, both ethically and ecologically. In fact, the key editorial page of Country Life’s January 13, 2010 issue “Farming can’t just be left to old men” examines the agricultural requirements of a world in which the Earth might require as much as a 50% increase in food during the coming two decades to keep up with expanding human populations and what this might mean “if the public turns against methane-producing livestock as an inefficient form of protein conversion”. Notwithstanding the editorialist’s notion that as a species our “success” now threatens our “survival” we are “programmed to be optimistic.” Yet, in examining the case of New Zealand the writer, citing Dr Andrew West, CEO of AgResearch in New Zealand, states that while “traditionally reliant on sheep and dairy” New Zealand “will change dramatically, as forests are planted on hill country and crops are grown on flat land; but, at the most this will produce only enough food for 17 million people — negligible in relation to global requirements. Mass extinctions are inevitable.”²⁷

Part 6: Tigers: Wildlife Threatened
Part 8: Farms vs. Animal Rights

23. See “Even His Red Squeak Toy Can’t Get First Sgt. Gunner, USMC, to Fight,” by Michael M. Phillips, The Wall Street Journal, March 4, 2010, pp.A1 and A14.
24. See Country Life, “Muntjac menace” by SG, February 3, 2010, p.38.
25. See “Ancient Haven,” by Charles Hurford, Forest & Bird, Issue 335, February 2010, pp.38-39.
26. See Country Life, “When the cows come home,” by Susannah Glynn, February 17, 2010, pp.54-58
27. See Country Life, January 13, 2010, p.27.