“Reports from the Slaughterhouse” in NY Review of Books + avian flu, RSPCA resignation + more 12/22/24
Date: December 22, 2024 |
The current edition of the renowned New York Review of Books has Professor Marth Nussbaum discussing slaughterhouses as she reviews three relevant books. The same publication covers the latest novel from Richard Powers, which has fish sentience as a theme. UK Media this weekend, including the Times, covers Chris Packham’s decision to leave the RSPCA over troubling video from some slaughterhouses that the organization had labeled humane. And the Los Angeles Times’ strong bird flu coverage has included a chilling op-ed that needs our voices. And Paul Watson is free!
Before I discuss those stories, let me thank all of you who have written to the Los Angeles Times about its superb coverage of the animal shelter crisis. This week Angeleno’s received an alert about a wonderful editorial from the paper titled, “Let’s Stop Killing Animals in Shelters and Get More Adopted,” and Saturday’s entire letters section , six letters long, was devoted to the issue, under the heading, “City of Suffering Shelter Animals.” If you hit a paywall at the LA Times link you can check them out on Yahoo. And if you want to see how they looked in print, I have them printed out on the DawnWatch X feed here and the DawnWatch Facebook page here just to inspire you.
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The New York Review of Books is one of the world’s most prestigious publications, in which renowned authors and thinkers review books by other renowned authors and thinkers. What a joy to see, on the contents page of the current issue, December 19:
Marha C. Nussbaum — “Reports from the Slaughterhouse. A century after Upton Sinclair exposed the inhumane and unhygienic conditions of Chicago’s stockyards, life for animals in America’s factory farms and slaughterhouses is still gruesome.”
The page lists the three books her essay discusses:
Fear Factories: Arguments About Innocent Creatures and Merciless People
by Matthew Scully
Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight
by Timothy Pachirat
Truth and Transparency: Undercover Investigations in the Twenty-First Century
by Alan K. Chen and Justin Marceau
If you don’t subscribe to the New York Review of Books you can nevertheless read the essay if you simply give them an email address for a free account.
It is well worth reading.
Nussbaum uses Upton Sinclair’s 1905 classic “The Jungle” as a spring-off board to the reviews of the modern books, quoting the following from it:
“It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was porkmaking by machinery, porkmaking by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests—and so perfectly within their rights!
“…Each one of these hogs was a separate creature…. And each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart’s desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity…. Relentless, remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were nothing to [the process]—it did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life.”
And then she comments:
“American readers, however, took away from Sinclair’s passionate plea only what suited their convenience. Focusing on the threats to human health and safety that The Jungle revealed, with its account of filthy conditions in the rat-infested factories, they clamored for new laws to protect themselves. The Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act were both passed immediately. But no laws came for the animals. The public prefers not to hear those inconvenient squeals.”
I hope some of you are inspired to send a letter in response – or at least jot off a quick note of thanks for the essay. I send thanks to Lew Regenstein for making sure we didn’t miss it.
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The same publication has a review of Richard Powers’ latest novel, Playground. I am a huge fan of his, with The Overstory, his 2019 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, being one of my favorite novels of all time, having dramatically changed my view of and relationship with trees. So it was heartening to see his latest novel, Playground, advertised as follows:
“The Cuttlefish’s Play
Richard Powers’s Playground does for oceans what his 2018 novel The Overstory did for trees: it implores us to open ourselves to the ingenuity of life beyond the human.”
That’s gotta be good news for fish.
Instead of reading Regina Marler’s review I went straight to my library page to put the audio version on hold (Audible has it too) but you might enjoy Marler’s take, which I’ll read after I’ve read the book.
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Page 2 of the Saturday, December 21, Times of London announced, “Packham quits the RSPCA over abattoir cruelty exposé.”
The story opens with:
“The RSPCA has been accused of a ‘failure of leadership’ as Chris Packham and Caroline Lucas resigned after an investigation revealed animal cruelty at the charity’s approved abattoirs.
“Packham and Lucas, the president and vice-president, expressed concerns over leaders’ response to videos from three slaughterhouses that are part of the RSPCA’s ethical labelling scheme which appeared to show workers mistreating sheep, pigs and cows.
“Lucas, the former leader of the Green Party, said that the scheme was at risk of ‘misleading the public and legitimising cruelty’.
“Packham, a naturalist and television presenter, said that its leadership had displayed ‘complete hypocrisy’ in failing to address the concerns.”
And we read:
“Animal Rising, a campaign group that advocates for the RSPCA to renounce meat production, said that the issue was the charity’s ‘dirty secret’.”
The story cries out for letters that support that advocacy and speak for animals, which should be sent to letters@thetimes.co.uk . Please include a full address and daytime telephone number for verification purposes.
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Thursday’s Los Angeles Times announced, on the front page, “Newsom sounds alarm against Bird Flu” as learned that Governor Newsom has declared a state of emergency. That urgency was reflected in an op-ed the paper ran on Friday, December 20, titled, “We can get ready for bird flu – or court disaster.” That piece, by Peter Chin-Hong, tells us:
“So it increasingly looks like the question is not whether H5N1 will cause a widespread outbreak in humans, but when. The consequences could be severe: As was the case during the early days of COVID, our immune system is not experienced with fighting this novel pathogen, and it increases the chance of more serious disease such as pneumonia and cardiac and brain complications for all ages. Although human cases in the U.S. have been relatively mild, about half of the people who have contracted H5N1 globally have died.”
If you hit a paywall at that LA Times link you can use this link from MSN to the same piece.
I can’t think of any issue that gives us a better opportunity to send letters to the editor that sing the praises of plant-based diets.
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The New York Times has released, online only for a now, a heartbreaking and important essay, by Parker Richards, titled, “A Picturesque New England Town’s Debt to the Right Whale.”
The town is Nantucket which has a long history of whaling. We read of the local Right Whales:
“This species of whale — first assaulted by whaling, now the collateral victim of shipping and fishing — could be functionally extinct within two decades.”
We are told of the extraordinary stress experienced by whales entangled in fishing line, with every whale in the area having gone through that at least once, sometimes managing to extricate themselves but with death being the all-to-frequent result. And we read:
“Treating nature as nothing more than a commodity — or as a regrettable speed bump on the way to material gain — is not only immoral, but also an attitude that fundamentally cheapens humanity. It is corrosive not just to the whales and the numerous other species and ecosystems similarly endangered and destroyed, but even to our own souls.
Even though the article, for which I can happily provide this gift link, is not yet in print, the online version has, at the bottom of it, the following reminder:
“The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com .
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That story about whaling gives us the perfect segue to the news that Paul Watson is free! And today’s, December 22, Japan Times story headline announces, “Freed activist Paul Watson vows to ‘end whaling worldwide”!
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Scranton’s Times Tribune has run a strong editorial (the paper’s opinion) today, December 22, celebrating a life-saving amendment signed into law:
“In November, an amendment to an important Pennsylvania law that protects survivors of abuse was extended to offer their pets the same rights. Act 146 of 2024 from H.B. 1210, essentially amends Pennsylvania’s Protection from Abuse Act and serves as a ‘protection from abuse’ or ‘restraining order’ for pets against the actions of those who abuse their owners.”
If you check it out, and if the topic grabs you, or if you are a Pennsylvanian, I urge you to jot off a quick note of thanks to the paper, giving animals a voice.
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The monkeys who escaped from the South Carolina breeding facility are still very much in the news, with the Guardian announcing, “US animal lab from which monkeys escaped accused of widespread abuse.”
You can check out that story and respond with a letter to the Guardian.
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I get to share two happy stories from the Los Angeles Times:
The first is about Northern California horse racing. We got great news earlier in the week with the announcement “On Monday, the board of the California Assn. of Racing Fairs voted unanimously, 6-0, to withdraw its application for a racing meeting from Dec. 25 to June 10 at Pleasanton Fairgrounds Racetrack.” I can also share a Yahoo Link for that one.
And I am sharing a sweet story, not yet in the print edition, “‘Gitmo’ in the Mojave: How the Marines are saving endangered desert tortoises,” which is well worth checking out.
And finally, those who loved the Wall Street Journal story I shared last week of Scrim, the New Orleans mutt who has been evading and escaping capture for months, might enjoy the discussion Mark Thompson and I had about the situation on his podcast. We began the segment with a chat about the misuse of the word euthanize when referring to healthy animals. Enjoy!
Yours and all animals’,
Karen Dawn of DawnWatch
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