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Taser: Do the right thing

 

By Laura Yanne

 

As the death toll rises following the use of Taser stun-guns and law enforcement officials around the country debate whether or not to risk using the weapons, there are calls for more safety studies. But this is only one of Taser International’s problems. The company is also being investigated for stock manipulation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and for violations of the Animal Welfare Act by the U.S. Department of Agriculture following the revelation that top Taser company officials illegally shocked live pigs in a home garage. 

In addition, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has disclosed that paid consultants in a supposedly “independent” federally-funded study were also paid by Taser: One is still on their payroll (but ousted from the experiment), another frequently and publicly vouches for Taser’s safety and another was a paid witness for the defense in a Taser wrongful death suit.

In the midst of all this controversy, it’s time for Taser to do the right thing: The company should step aside and allow unbiased researchers to study human data in clinical and field studies. Tasers are already in widespread use and a sensible protocol of follow-up medical assessment for Taser victims would yield relevant information, along with the medical histories and autopsy reports of the more than 100 people in North America who have died after being shot with Tasers.

 Instead, Taser seems bent on moving ahead with its animal study, a half-million dollar, tax-payer-funded experiment led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s John Webster, whose own mantra echoes the company stance that Tasers do not kill. Webster plans to mimic a fleeing, adrenalized human by dosing some of 36 anesthetized pigs with cocaine and then shocking the animals with electricity to determine the cardiac safety margins of the device. The animals will then be killed.

Webster has constructed his experiment around the premise that Tasers do not kill, and his hypothesis is predicated on previous experiments conducted by Taser on animals. Clearly, Webster’s objectivity is questionable. If Webster is allowed to go forward, the truth may be the casualty, particularly as many law enforcement agencies and the military are keen to use Tasers. They have found a perfect partner in John Webster, who appears bent on ensuring that yet another experiment validates Taser International’s safety claims.

Pigs, dogs, and other animals have already been subjected to Taser experiments to determine whether or not the weapon could induce ventricular fibrillation and to measure skeletal contractions. In one Taser experiment, the Air Force shocked fully conscious pigs until they “vocalized loudly”—research doublespeak for “screamed”—and jumped fences in a frantic, futile effort to escape. Despite years of such tests on animals, people aren’t safer.

Reverting to animal tests is crude, pointless and inhumane. No amount of shocking live animals will improve Taser safety. Unbiased scientific studies of humans will provide relevant data. This will lead to sensible training programs and policies for the use of Tasers, which in turn will save lives.

Laura Yanne is Special Assistant to Research, Investigations & Rescues for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; PETA.org.

 

Rome re-establishes itself as a leading civilization

 

By Ingrid Newkirk

 

While some residents of the last hurricanes were abandoning their dogs and cats as if they were candy wrappers and some rescuers were threatening to leave even sick and old people behind unless they disentangled themselves from their beloved dogs, legislators in Rome, Italy, were deliberating a bill, which has just passed, that affords proper respect even to small pet fish. 

 

Now, if you live in Italy, you may face a hefty fine if you keep a goldfish in a small bowl, fail to provide the dog with a decent walk three times a day, use an electric shock collar or declaw a cat.

 

Why are we such laggards in the U.S.? Americans have access to the same scientific data as the Italians, so we certainly should be aware of studies showing that fish have long term memories, communicate underwater to each other and have chums and enemies, as well as likes and dislikes. Common sense tells us that it can’t be easy for a dog to be left alone, crossing his legs, for 12 hours a day. Our own veterinarians should be warning us that electric shock collars hurt and that declawing involves cutting off the phalanges, the muscle and flesh, at the joint on each "finger," not just the nail. 

 

Italians are now expected to understand these facts and follow the law. Offenders face fines of between 50-500 Euros, which is enough to make most people pay attention, even if they would have ignored the fish circling the bowl and the dog scratching the door.

 

The Times of London quotes Monica Cirinna, the city councilor responsible for animal welfare, as saying: "The civilization of a city can be measured by the way it looks after its pets. It is good to do whatever we can for our pets, who fill our existence with their attention in exchange for a little love."

 

Before Italy began debating the rights of animals, Germany changed its constitution to recognize other species. In 2002, the German Parliament amended the constitutional clause obliging the state to respect and protect the dignity of humans to include animals.

 

Yet in the U.S., it’s often a monumental battle to pass far less advanced laws, such as banning or restricting the chaining of dogs and mandatory spay/neuter ordinances to reduce the euthanasia rate. The only law protecting animals in laboratories, the Animal Welfare Act, specifically excludes mice, the most commonly used species for experimentation. The Act excludes farmed animals entirely.

 

Attorneys who have sought the right to sue on behalf of abused animals have seen their cases dismissed time after time for decades. In the eyes of the American legal system, animals are property and their value is based solely on monetary worth. Legally, a monkey in a laboratory has no intrinsic value as a living being. Her worth is determined entirely on what her captors can do to her and what that might tell them. A pharmaceutical company may shove a tube up her nose, pump chemicals into her stomach every day for eight weeks and then kill and dissect her. If they do, the monkey is “valuable” in the eyes of the company and the law.

 

If the monkey’s sinus is ruptured by misapplication of the tube and the monkey is left to suffer, untreated for days, until a lab technician gets authorization to destroy her, the monkey has no value. An undercover investigator on my staff documented this last year at a large pharmaceutical testing laboratory, yet People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals cannot legally sue on behalf of this monkey, who was, despite her treatment, a living, breathing, feeling, thinking being who never knew a moment’s joy in life, and died in great pain.

 

Surely a country as progressive as America can extend respect and some legal rights to animals. This concept is not about radical change. It’s about basic human decency.

 

Ingrid Newkirk is President of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; PETA.org) and author of “Making Kind Choices” St. Martin’s Griffin 2005)

 

Fur Is Still Dead
by Paula Moore

For the last 10 years, the fall fashion headlines have been telling me the same thing: Fur is back.

Again.

How many times can newspapers report the same “new” trend? Fur has already had more comebacks than John Travolta.

This time around, fur is “fun” (“Real Fur Is Fun Again” claims a recent Newsweek magazine article)—more fun than Vincent Vega’s hipster dance in Pulp Fiction. It comes in flirty colors, like berry-bright rabbit ponchos and baby blue bunny totes. Cute! It’s sheared and knitted and attached to denim and duffel bags, collars and cuffs. It’s fresh and sassy and nothing like granny’s frumpy mothball-scented mink.

In fact, today’s fur is so fun, it looks fake.

And maybe that’s the point.

Because despite all the hype by the fur industry, the vast majority of consumers still prefer fake fur over the “real thing.” No wonder. Most of us don’t need to be reminded that real fur is about as “fun” as having a steel-jaw trap clamped on your leg. Animals caught in the wild for their fur face days of agony in such traps, tearing flesh and breaking bones in a struggle to get free.

Rabbits raised to become someone’s berry-colored poncho live in barren, tiny, urine- and feces-encrusted cages. They are often killed by having their necks snapped or their skulls beaten.

When PETA recently went undercover on a fur farm in Michigan, our investigators documented chinchillas writhing in pain and panic after their necks were broken. Other chinchillas were electrocuted without prior stunning—meaning they suffered the agonizing pain of a full-blown heart attack, until their hearts finally stopped beating.

But that’s not stopping furriers, who hope their trendy designs—and cheap price tags—will lure in a new generation of customers. Wearing fur is rebellious, they claim. It’s decadent and defiant and lets the P.C. police know that nobody tells you what to do—or what to wear. “The younger person doesn’t want to be dictated to; they don’t want to be told what to do, whether it’s wearing fur or smoking or whatever,” a spokesperson for the British Fur Trade Association told The New York Times.

Except, young people aren’t buying it. They’ve seen the video footage, including PETA’s, of animals struggling in traps or being cruelly killed on fur farms. They know what happens before animals are turned into capelets and coats. When YM magazine polled its readers about the issues that concern them the most, animal rights was at the top of the list. In ElleGirl’s 12-country “Global Girl Cool Survey,” the magazine’s readers voted animal rights the #1 “coolest political cause.” These young girls wouldn’t dream of wearing real fur.

And they don’t need to. Hip designers such as Stella McCartney, who’s vegan, are proving that it’s easy to create a look that kills without killing animals. Faux fur—real faux fur, not real fur designed to look fake—is everywhere, from Banana Republic to Urban Outfitters, Guess to Gap.

Furriers can dye and shear fur all they want—it won’t hide the cruelty involved in their product. The neck breaking, gassing, poisoning, and anal electrocution remain the same, and consumers don’t want any part of it.

Paula Moore is a senior writer for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; FurIsDead.com.

Why I Shed My Skins
by Paula Moore

When people find out that I’m an animal rights activist and a vegan, their eyes invariably drop to the ground—not because of some lingering guilt over that last hamburger they ate, but because they want to check out my shoes. Then they look up and pose the inevitable question: “Are your shoes leather?” —certain that they’ve “caught me” being hypocritical. Obviously, you can’t have shoes without leather, right?

Wrong. I haven’t worn leather in years. I decided a long time ago that if I wasn’t going to eat anything with a face, I shouldn’t be wearing anything with a face either. These black boots I have on that look so much like the “real thing” are purely pleather—with a “p,” please.

Sometimes, a girl’s just gotta fake it.

Most young people today wouldn’t be caught dead in fur. They know that real fur—including those tiny bits of fluff on collars and cuffs—is about as fun as a steel-jaw trap clamped on your leg. Animal suffering is also the number one reason most people stop eating meat.

But a lot of fur foes and vegetarians don’t know—or never stopped to think—that animals suffer in the leather trade, too. It took me awhile to figure it out, but once I realized that leather is kind of like hairless fur, I knew I could never wear it again.

Most leather sold in the United States comes from cows, but it can also be made from horses, lambs, goats, pigs—even dogs and cats. In the Philippines and Korea, dog leather is routinely marked as “cow skin” for export purposes. When you wear leather, you can never really be sure whose skin you’re in.

In India, the source of much leather sold in the West, cattle are transported under bone-breaking conditions in overcrowded trucks or forced to march hundreds of miles to slaughter, without food or water. To keep the cows moving or force them back on their feet after they collapse from the heat, workers beat them and rub hot chili peppers into their eyes. Many animals’ hooves are bleeding and worn down to stumps by the time they reach the slaughterhouse—this from the country where cows are considered sacred.

Cows in the United States don’t fare much better. Before being turned into belts and bags, cattle suffer all the cruelties of factory farming—overcrowding, castration without painkillers, branding, inhumane treatment during transport—and the slaughterhouse. An exposé of one slaughterhouse in Seattle revealed that cows are routinely trampled and dragged, hung up on chains, and dismembered—all while fully conscious. Said one worker, “It’s ugly what they do.”

Whoever said fashion was pretty?

It’s ugly, but not all that unusual. Slaughterhouse employees routinely strangle, beat, scald, and skin fully conscious animals.

So what’s an animal-friendly fashionista to do? Go with the faux. These days, it’s as easy to score synthetic shoes, jackets, bags, and more—in hot brands like l.e.i., Paul Frank, Unlisted, Mudd, Skechers, and Rocket Dog—as it is to find “not dogs” and veggie burgers at the local supermarket. No matter what you’re into, I promise you can find an animal-friendly option, whether you want running shoes or a skin-hugging bodysuit, a biker jacket or bondage gear. Just remember to look for those four magic words: “All Man-Made Materials.”

Ready to shed your skins yet? You’ve heard it a hundred times before: Clothes make a statement. Wearing cruelty-free synthetics lets others know that animals shouldn’t be fashion victims just because you look good in Gucci. You’re not going to change the world by buying pleather pumps, but it’s a step in the right direction.

So, it’s my turn to ask: “Are your shoes leather?”

Paula Moore is a senior writer for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). For a free copy of PETA’s “Shopping Guide to Compassionate Clothing,” visit ShedYourSkin.com.

 

Are Animal Rights Activists Racist?

 

by Alka Chandna, Ph.D.

 

In the weeks since People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals launched its Animal Liberation Project display, in which pictures of once-exploited groups are juxtaposed with photos of animals who are abused today, we have been called “racist,” “insensitive,” and “extreme.” An NAACP representative accused us of “exploiting” African-Americans to make our point that animals suffer as people do.

Although the photos of poor immigrants, children used in forced labor, Native Americans, and African slaves are extremely upsetting, why is it so shocking to suggest that the mindset that condoned exploitation of people in the past is the same as the mindset that permits today’s abuse of animals in laboratories, in factory farms, and on fur farms? And why is it assumed that this display—and indeed the entire animal rights movement—was generated by insensitive white people? As a person of color, I am hurt and perplexed that my two decades of work in the animal rights movement, as well as the efforts of my many colleagues who are people of color, are discounted.

My family immigrated to Canada from India when I was 3. My teen years coincided with the height of “Paki-bashing” in Canada, and I spent most Saturday and Sunday mornings cleaning egg from our doors and windows or examining, with my very hurt parents, racist “jokes” that had been spray-painted onto our driveway.

During the mid-’80s, while enrolled in a graduate program at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, I helped organize protests calling on the university to divest from South Africa and other protests opposing the racist ideas being trumpeted by the eugenics theorist Jean-Philippe Rushton. During this time, I visited a slaughterhouse outside Toronto, and I recognized that the violence I witnessed there stemmed from the same oppressive mindset that permitted the vandalism at my parents’ house, allowed Rushton to espouse hateful ideas justifying racist policies, and gave whites in South Africa carte blanche to oppress blacks. It’s the mindset that discounts others’ interests and props up one’s own relatively minor interests over the interests of other beings.

For five years, I was a professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s, where I again became involved in animal and environmental activism. People who opposed these issues openly declared that these movements were brought in from “the mainland.” My friends from Newfoundland who were involved in these issues were treated either as invisible or as dupes of the “mainlanders.”

I wondered why the naysayers from Newfoundland would sell short their own brothers and sisters: Was it so difficult to imagine that Newfoundlanders might feel some compassion for animals? This myopic view that would dismiss the efforts of a group because its members were not “like us” is not limited to an isolated and financially stressed island in the North Atlantic.

Here in the United States, the NAACP and others are now painting animal rights activists as white racists in order to marginalize and dismiss us. I can’t help but think that this sort of “analysis” that persists in painting our movement with a broad brush is the same disparagement that people engage in when the truth makes them uncomfortable. Racists dismissed Martin Luther King as a womanizer. Colonists dismissed Gandhi as a short [deleted comma] brown man in a loincloth. Sexists dismiss feminists as ugly, angry women.

Yet many people of color work every day to change attitudes toward animals. My own beliefs, and those of many of my colleagues, sprang from an understanding of right versus wrong. It is not racism that inspires us, but justice. I ask other people of color who have had eggs thrown at their windows or experienced other forms of racism to stop condemning for a moment and to consider that what they are now saying about animals—that animals are lesser beings whose suffering can be dismissed—was once said about them and was used as an excuse to keep them in bondage.

Alka Chandna, Ph.D., is a research associate with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; PETA.org; info@peta.org .

 

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