The growing consensus around shelter gas chambers stands in stark contrast to other, murkier debates around animal rights and treatment. And advocates say greater attention is needed to reconsider mankind's relationship with the furry, the finny and the feathered, from beloved family pets to the realms of laboratory research and commercial farming.
WES LONG: In August, after much public prodding, Lindon’s North Utah Valley Animal Shelter announced that it would discontinue the practice of gas-chamber euthanasia. The shift in policy leaves only three animal sheltering facilities in the United States that continue to officially use gas chambers, and while two of them are located in Wyoming, the third is Spanish Fork’s South Utah Valley Animal Shelter.
“We’re on the precipice of eradicating this practice once and for all,” said Jeremy Beckham, director of the Utah Animal Rights Coalition “We’re so close.” From his vantage point, Beckham has observed that the general public’s attitude is overwhelmingly opposed to animal gas chambers. But he also lamented the confusion of opinion and practice when it comes to animal treatment generally.
There is no “clear ethical principle” that guides public thinking, he said. And while shelters perform a wonderful, necessary service, Beckham stressed that they are prone to being “blamed for problems that began long before the animals showed up at their door.”
Stretched for space and resources, shelters are often forced to make difficult and wrenching decisions regarding the animals in their care, especially as many have already experienced domestic violence and neglect prior to their arrival. Shelters typically do not have massive budgets supporting their operations, and in the case of smaller counties, facilities may still resort to using makeshift, unofficial gas chambers or even a gun out of public view. This is not necessarily because the employees hate their animals, advocates say, but because that is all they can think of doing in such dire conditions.
While Beckham and others say ending the practice of gas-chamber euthanasia will be a positive accomplishment, it also invites reflection on where the state and nation’s relationship with animals presently stands. Utah code forbids cruelty to animals, but provides numerous exceptions for zoos, hunters, rodeos and farms if the conduct falls within “accepted” practices. And violation of the law as such—when successfully prosecuted—usually results in forfeiture of the injured animal, if possible, and paying a fine.
The growing consensus around shelter gas chambers stands in stark contrast to other, murkier debates around animal rights and treatment. And advocates say greater attention is needed to reconsider mankind’s relationship with the furry, the finny and the feathered, from beloved family pets to the realms of laboratory research and commercial farming…
So where does the animal-human relationship go from here? As much as it offers to human lives, science cannot definitively answer what dwells within the minds and hearts of the animals of this planet. Human beings must have personal experience and interaction with animals to truly get a glimmer of what these beautiful and mysterious creatures possess. Proponents of enhanced animal-rights protections say humans will have to bring their whole selves into the picture, but that will not happen in systems that neglect or abuse animals or drive them to extinction.
Rather than enjoying a shared ethical vision and transcendent moral concern, as the academic Theodore Roszak wrote in Where the Wasteland Ends, “we have settled for the artificial environment … and now use that environment as the procrustean bed to whose size all values and sensibilities must be tailored.” A growing chorus of advocates and researchers argue it need not be this way for either humans or their fellow creatures, and that there is no shortage of springs from which to draw to develop new—or old?—traditions and ethics…
Consider the words of Luther Standing Bear, a chief of the Oglala Lakota: “The Lakota could despise no creature, for all were of one blood, made by the same hand, and filled with the essence of the Great Mystery.” Other bodies of thought and feeling bear similarly powerful observations. The highest virtue in Buddhism is compassion, which one can show to all sentient beings by avoiding any possible cause of suffering and death. And Rabbi Moses ben Jacob Cordovero, a 16th-century Jewish mystic, wrote that the essence of wisdom is “to extend acts of love toward everything, including plants and animals”. SOURCE…
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