Monday, September 18, 2006

Animal cruelty and good stewardship

Chicago mayor Richard Daley supports repealing the ban on Foie gras. Foie gras is a "delicacy" created by force-feeding fowl until their livers swell unnaturally large. He called it "the funniest law they ever passed".

As I have made clear over the years, I am no animal-rights activist. I think the campaign by animal-rights jihadists to abolish all biomedical research is terribly destructive and immoral. However, I do not believe in animal cruelty, and I support laws forbidding the practice.

There is no "need" for Foie gras in this or any other country. It is a luxury created through terrible pain and suffering inflicted on these poor birds. I think society benefits by making a moral statement that torturing God's creatures is wrong and will not be allowed. I vehemently disagree with Mayor Daley's statement that the law is "funny", because torturing animals is not funny.

I cannot help but wonder how many of these City Councilors would support a ban on the cruel and inhuman procedure of abortion. Why are we so moved at the suffering of animals and yet ignore the killing that goes on in our cities under the protection of law? Where are this society's priorities?

At the national level, the House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would effectively ban killing horses for human consumption. This raises another question: why is eating a horse any more or less moral than eating a cow or a deer? Why is a horse on a higher moral plane than the ground-up cow that you consume at McDonalds or the venison consumed by friends and family of deer hunters?

I would be very interested to hear the answer to this question.

As to the bill itself, I have a major problem with this being done by the federal government. This should be a state matter, and the federal government should stay out of it. If some states want to ban the practice of slaughtering horses for human consumption but others do not, they should all have the right to make that decision for themselves. In a nation of nearly 300 million people that stretches all the way across the continent, this is not something that 535 legislators in one city on the East Coast should be deciding.