Animal rights and human wrongs: ignorance to animal welfare

I’m currently reading an old book by Konrad Lorenz, one of the founders of the science of animal behaviour but I’m struggling with it. I’m not struggling with the content so much as I’m struggling to respect this great thinker due to what I suppose you could call ‘cultural differences’ or perhaps ‘ethical differences.’ You see, Lorenz kept a whole menagerie of animals in his house from song birds to lemurs and nowadays we would condemn such practise but in the 50’s issues of animal welfare were very much only beginning to be considered. In one chapter on pets he describes which birds are best bought from dealers or taken form nests to be kept as ‘interesting pets’. My edition of this book, printed in the 70s however, does contain a warning of the legality of the trade of some of the species he mentions. So it’s not all bad. At least in England anyway, we have same laws to protect our wildlife from the pet trade, however inadequate they maybe, it’s a start.

The sad thing is, 55 years after this book was written we still have a trade in exotic pets. Even Lorenz comments that with higher species the trade is ‘ethically dubious’ and since then the UK has introduced the Dangerous Wild Animals Act (1976). But since the introduction of the internet the trade has found new ways of doing business. Whilst browsing the other day I came across sites offering an array of animals for sale from sugar gliders to zebras, without so much as a disclaimer of the legality of the trade in certain species. Even the more well know sites such as eBay and youtube seem to have a rather laissez-faire attitude towards animal welfare laws with pelts and skins from cites listed species being advertised for sale on eBay and videos of pet tigers being taken for walks on youtube.

I wish I could end this rant on a lighter, positive note but I can’t. Even so called scientists aren’t doing us any favours. Recently a new pet cat called the ashera went on sale. The cat is a hybrid of the domestic cat and the serval. This dog sized cat is a beauty but how could any self respecting scientist believe it’s a good use of time and equipment to create a designer pet at the expense of genetic diversity of a rare cat? If only the time and research had been put into the conservation of this species instead of creating the feline equivalent of a prada bag.

Offsetting your guilty shopping

There are times when charity shops and ethical shopping don’t measure up and you end up in a chain store when you didn’t want to be. Things like pyjamas and underwear you just can’t get elsewhere (there are some ethical retailers such as Green Knickers but they tend to be a bit pricey). So every now and then these unethical purchases have to be made. (I’m sure there are hard core environmentalists who would argue that you can live without these things but personally, I’d rather not!). Anyway, I got thinking about these unavoidable purchases. If you can offset the guilt and carbon from flying, perhaps you can offset your unethical spendings with charity donations? For example, buying something that isn’t fair trade could be offset with donations to charities that promote fair trade and fight child labour. It’s just a case of working out how much. I spent £11 on new pyjamas yesterday, which if I was offsetting my carbon emissions from a flight would mean about a 20p donation which I think is far too little. I think between £5 and £11 is fairer, so I’ll find a charity online and make that donation today. I feel so much better now; I suppose that’s the major selling factor for these offsetting schemes!

The curse of the carrier bag

Everyone knows that plastic carrier bags litter our streets, get stuck in trees and can kill sea birds that mistake them for jelly fish. Even advertisers have picked up on this with car adverts promising that their car saves plastic bags (seems odd when you phrase it like that), Sainsbury’s keeps giving away their ‘bag for life’ bags and many supermarkets offer free ‘bag for life’ bags if you bring in some carrier bags to be recycled. But the problem runs much deeper; you see just recycling these bags isn’t enough. We need to stop making them, we need to stop giving them away to people in shops and we need to stop using them. I recently read an article in favour of the plastic bag. One of the arguments was that paper and canvas bags are useless when it rains or your food leaks but Oxfam have some great new bags made from recycled plastic. And the best thing about proper bags is that they don’t rip and they don’t hurt your hand when you’re carrying something heavy. As a commuter on the train I find canvas bags so much better than carrier bags. For a start you can fit so much more in them, put them on your shoulder and they don’t make your veg sweat either.

Plus, the best thing about canvas, recycled and jute bags is that you can buy them from charities which means that you will be helping the environment and your money will be going to a good cause too. Unfortunately, there is one thing which prevents a huge number of people from taking their own bags to the shops – apathy. For some people, using a little bit of forethought and actually remembering to take a bag or two with them is just too much like hard work. And the shops don’t help matters either: you actually have to stop the shop assistants from putting your stuff into a plastic bag. Even in shops like superdrug that are supposed to ask every customer if they want a bag, more often that not they just put your shopping into a bag. My favourites are these jute bags from the Wildlife Trusts and the RSPB.Of course, I rarely go into shops anymore and when I do I proudly say I don’t need a bag, I have one already.