sports hunting vs dogfighting, and xy vs yz…

To someone born and bred in Africa, the themes of sport hunting, dogfighting, bullfighting, and breeding animals for food in horrible conditions, etc, ultimately sound strange. A critique would certainly mention the situation of apes being caught and penned up in Yaounde, Cameroon, in very atrocious circumstances before being sold or quartered for food, or about the rampant decimation of the tropical forests, the dispossession of the Barka, and the threat of ape extinction. In the latter case, however, one sees the ape hunters as largely motivated firstly by survival given they have little economic options left, and secondly that the sources of beef which come to the Congo Basin from the Sahelian areas are too distant and complicated by the politics of transportation. There is a difference between subsistence and willful emasculation of animals and wildlife, which if condoned in the developed parts of the world, would likely be spread to others. My interest in hunting and the safari wildlife culture however draws me as a whole to human-animal relations across the north-south divide given the interrelatedness of global cultures and our relations to animals and wildlife. Michael Vicks arrest has raised many prominent questions about human-animal relations in the US, questions which not only singled the treatment of dogs, but animals and humans involved in different arenas of the commercial-entertainment field as well as human consumption. In a sense, it seemed like we are back in the Roman times, with the difference that our humanistic awareness enables us to debate and bring these practices in the open and to somewhat modify perceptions as well as bear on donors and policy to initiate change. The brief comments of readers after the article (in their original sources) make interesting reading. Only they invite further and in-depth exploration of the issues at stake.

August 29, 2007, 4:45 pm
Dog Fighting vs. Deer Hunting: Is One Worse

THE INFORMED READER BLOG (THE WALL STREET JOURNAL)
A survey of insights from media around the world.

Which is worse from an animal-rights activist’s perspective, sport hunting or dog fighting? New York Knicks guard Stephon Marbury raised the question when he defended Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, who Monday pleaded guilty to a federal dog-fighting charge, by implying that dog fighting wasn’t any worse than, say, shooting deer.

But the analogy between hunting and organized dog fighting doesn’t hold, Princeton University bioethicist Peter Singer tells the online edition of the generally liberal New Republic. Hunting is actually kinder, because the goal is “to kill the animal with as little pain as possible,” whereas underperforming dogs at Mr. Vick’s fights suffered painful deaths by hanging or drowning. “Drowning is obviously a much more distressing death than being shot with a bullet through the brain,” says Mr. Singer, whose 1975 book, “Animal Liberation,” is considered a key text of the animal-rights movement.

But Mr. Singer ranks neither sport hunting nor dog fighting as the worst instance of animal cruelty in the U.S. For him, the larger problem is the production of meat for human consumption. “I think pigs … suffer a lot more cruelty than dogs do because there are so many of them in factory farms in appalling conditions.”

Robin Moroney

cf: for more on the controversy, read readers responses after article… they range from boxing through bullfighting to the ways animals are bred for slaughter and human consumption in the US.

- Still you will find both emotional and some sensible responses on Matt Zeitlin’s blog, July 20, 2007 entry.