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Chapter 1.3 Animal Holocaust
Humanity has the attitude and practical capacity to destroy animals on a vast scale. It makes some people stop to consider their role in the Animal Holocaust and act against it. “Their suffering is intense, widespread, expanding, systematic and socially sanctioned. And the victims are unable to organize in defence of their own interests." Henry Spira (1)What is the Animal Holocaust? The Animal Holocaust is the mass destruction of animals by humanity and is a direct comparison with Nazi mass murder, particularly of Jews. The animals most often referred to in the Animal Holocaust are domesticated animals that people raise for food. More generally victims include any animals that humans control, methodically abuse, or destroy, such as wild-living animals, fur-farmed animals and laboratory animals. The Animal Holocaust resembles the Nazi perpetrated Holocaust in the use of business-like mass slaughter, enabled by animal transports (trains), factory farms (concentration camps) and slaughterhouses (death camps). Other pertinent comparisons of animals victims with the human Holocaust victims are experimenting on animal inmates and turning them into commodities, such as soap, glue and skin goods. And there is the same contempt for the victims' humane treatment and indifference for their rights. People today generally do not think of animals as beings who are mutilated, tortured or slain; animals are merely 'animals', there to satisfy human needs. The animal-human holocaust comparison is treated by some writers (2)(3).
Incredible Killing Humanity has killed literally trillions of animals since the Second World War (see the section on statistics for more). We are killing animals at an accelerating rate as our population increases and the mechanisation of the Animal Holocaust gathers pace. The philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889 - 1976), once a member of the Nazi party, said: "Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps..." (6) The Holocaust and the Animal Holocaust are equally real and abhorrent. But comparing them - and thereby upsetting some people - is often a futile waste. We must remember the Holocaust, but we can understand the Animal Holocaust without reference to anything else because it is an evil in its own right.
References (1) Spira, Henry (1985): Fighting to Win. In Peter Singer (ed): In Defense of Animals. Basil Blackwell: New York. 194-208. (2) Patterson, Charles (2002): Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust. Lantern Books: New York. (3) Davis, Karen (2005): The Holocaust & the Henmaid's Tale: a case for comparing atrocities. Lantern Books: New York. (4) Live Swine Selected Countries Summary. Production (Pig Crop). In Livestock and Poultry: World Markets and Trade. United States Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service, Office of Global Analysis. Circular Series DL&P; 2-07 November 2007. www.fas.usda.gov. (5) Livestock and Poultry: World Markets and Trade. United States Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service, Office of Global Analysis. Circular Series DL&P; 2-07 November 2007. www.fas.usda.gov. (6) Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. Heidegger, Art and Politics. 1990:34. (This quote is sometimes mis-attributed to Heidegger's 1954 essay The Question Concerning Technology.) ›› To Entries & Home |
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