Some animals are more equal than others

This article was first published in the National Times in July 2010

You could hear the indignation of dog owners reverberate around the country last week. How dare some researcher from the University of South Australia claim that domestic dogs were getter dumber! Not my little Fido, they declared in web comments everywhere, capital letters firmly on to indicate their displeasure. He has a basic understanding of trigonometry and has finished the entire Stieg Larsson trilogy!

Never mind that the research was pretty innocuous, merely suggesting that domesticated dogs had become so reliant on their human owners that they had lost some of the problem solving skills necessary to find food when compared to dingoes. What was interesting was how passionate people get about defending the intelligence of their beloved pets.

People, rightly, love their dogs. The relationship between owner and animal is one of reciprocal companionship, pleasure and love. Judging by the ridiculous clothing range at my local pet shop involving football team colours, bows and ruffles, people are clearly willing to go to great lengths to indulge their canine friends. Silly outfits aside, generally speaking we treat our dogs with kindness and a genuine concern for their quality of life.

But the line we draw between animals we call 'pets' and those that we call 'commodities' is an entirely illusory and disingenuous one. We cannot passionately defend the rights and intelligence of one while deliberately ignoring those same traits in another species just because it suits our plans for dinner.

Animal psychologists have often reported that the intelligence of domestic dogs is on par with a two-year-old child, that they are capable of understanding up to 250 words and gestures, and able to perform simple mathematical calculations. Pigs, according to research from Penn State University, are smarter than the average three-year-old child, capable of abstract representation and outsmarting even primates on video game tests involving joy sticks.

So why is it that we bristle with horror at the very thought of keeping our pet dog continually pregnant, confined inside a shed to an individual metal stall so tiny that even turning around is impossible, on a concrete floor with no straw or bedding whatsoever. And yet, the fact that the majority of sows in Australia are farmed in this way raises little more than a resigned sigh from most people. These animals, after all, are our bacon and ham – not our clever, cuddly, idiosyncratic dogs; never mind that they are equally, if not more, capable of feeling pain, stress and distress. The difference between our reaction to one species and another being forcibly confined to a continual life of cruelty can only be explained by a process Jonathan Safran Foer recently described as, “conscious forgetting”.

It is good news then that earlier this month Tasmania announced a phasing out of this cruel farming practice. We can only hope that the rest of the country will join Tasmania, along with countries like the UK, in banning such inhumane farming practices.

But no real improvements in animal welfare will be achieved until we reconsider our traditional notions that some animals are worthy of protection from pain and suffering, while others are not. We need to recognise the fictitious nature of the division we have created between animals as pets and animals as food. We need to reconnect the product we see our plates with the animal it came from.

Ghandi said that you can judge the greatness of a nation and its moral progress by the way that it treats its animals. In terms of our love for our dogs and other companion animals, it is clear that we could be judged very favourably indeed. However, when it comes to our treatment of 'food' animals, I don't think we are in line for a glowing report card at all. Surely it is time that we made the conscious effort each time we visit the supermarket or order dinner in a restaurant to think about what is more important – satisfying our palates, or satisfying our conscience?

Original text at: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/some-animals-really-are-more-equal-than-others-20100702-zto2.html