When people are treated monstrously, we say they are “treated like animals.” This is because we treat animals monstrously. We mistreat and abuse them on farms, transport them in cramped and stressful conditions, torture them in laboratories, hunt them for sport, and use them for our entertainment in circuses and zoos. You know that, I know that, everyone knows that. And yet, the horror continues, and it continues on a scale that is truly mind-boggling.
As Joe the politician prepares to be inaugurated as the next President of the United States, another Joe has also been making international headlines. Joe the pigeon was found in a backyard in the Australian city of Melbourne last December. He was carrying a leg band that seemed to suggest that he had been in the US state of Oregon two months earlier, raising questions about how he made it across the Pacific – no small feat!
The story made it onto local news and Australian authorities took notice. They declared Joe a “biosecurity risk” and decided that he must be killed in order to protect local birds from possible infection. A spokesperson for the Australian government did not actually use the word “killed,” but instead said that Joe must be “destroyed,” as if Joe was a car, a stone, or some other inanimate object.
Continue reading “What we can learn from almost murdering Joe the pigeon”
Africa and her animals
Philosophical and Practical Perspectives
Edited by Rainer Ebert & Anteneh Roba, and published by the University of South Africa (UNISA) Press
With a foreword by J. M. Coetzee,
the 2003 Nobel Laureate in Literature
ISBN 978-1-86888-900-6
xxi + 358 pages
Rainer Ebert 