Category: Animal Rights

Proactive Animal Charities Under Attack.

Why do we lash out at those trying to help animals?

Battery farm battery chickens, cruelty to chickens, hens
Pro-active charities like PETA and the RSPCA concentrate on major cruelty and animal suffering issues.

Proactive animal charities which concentrate on abject cruelty issues are increasingly coming under attack by organisations and groups who wish to maintain the status quo in regard to using and abusing animals. The charities that are targeted tend to be those and whose aims and actions become a nuisance and interfere with people’s pastimes, sports and hobbies.

Proactive charities spend large sums politicking, prosecuting cruelty, crusading, campaigning and educating and on some occasions taking direct action. By doing this they bizarrely attract  excessive criticism and condemnation. Detractors criticise them for spending too much money on these activities rather than rescuing individual dogs and cats even though they often manage to achieve long-term improvements which benefit large numbers of animals.

Rescue dog, rescue kennel
There must be more to animal welfare than rehoming animals or is there?

Those on the front line of these attacks are the UK’s RSPCA and most other SPCA’s around the world and organisations such as Humane Societies of the United States (HSUS) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). All of these come under fire from those factions who feel their livelihoods and pastimes are under threat by all their campaigning. It is rare to ever hear a bad word said about charities such as the Dogs Trust, PDSA or Blue Cross because we seem to have a confused concept of what animal welfare entails and where money is better spent.

Should it be spent prosecuting animal cruelty and tackling such issues as hunting, the fur trade, intensive farming methods and  curtailing unnecessary vivisection  or spent subsidising irresponsible pet owners and providing expensive state of the art facilities to house homeless animals.

Anything goes in making them the bad guys.

The RSPCA is continually lambasted for a perceived over-stepping of their remit of “preventing cruelty by all lawful means, promoting kindness and alleviating the suffering of all animals” with biased investigative documentaries, spurious news reports  and hate websites. Hate websites exist for most SPCA’s around the world containing some extreme content and profane remarks. Go onto any search engine and type “hate RSPCA” and you will discover pages of sites decrying them for something or other mostly by misinformed people, but even the legal profession is not averse to stoking up the paranoia.

Some UK lawyers appear on a crusade to curtail animal cruelty prosecutions in the UK.  Some lawyers advertise themselves as specialist defence lawyers against the RSPCA and arguably publish a lot of misinformation to muddy the waters. At least one firm posts quite extreme and lurid viewpoints about the charity on their website. One goes as far as to show an RSPCA sign dripping with blood stating the charity has ‘increasingly taken over the investigation and prosecution’ of animal cruelty in the UK and accuses their inspectors of being “sheep in wolves clothing“ by dressing in police style uniforms to dupe the public.

Website sign, RSPCA, blood
Some sections of the legal profession are obviously not fans of the R.S.P.C.A – from a law firms’ website.

They also cite the RSPCA of slaughtering 1000 healthy dogs and cats annually and state that ‘there are few prosecutions that cause more anxiety and trauma than RSPCA prosecutions’. 

RSPCA hate website
Hate websites can be quite explicit

Critics of Humane Societies of the United States (HSUS) have set up a watchdog site called ‘Humane Watch’ specifically to censure them on the basis that they spend most of their money campaigning ‘on the hill’ (US Congress) at the expense of local animal shelters, killing hundreds of animals unnecessarily and of misleading the public and donors into thinking they are a welfare organisation. Most of their rhetoric is unbelievably spurious and ridiculous but unfortunately many people fall for it. How animal lovers can be against organisations whose wish is to cut the number of animals kept in cages by stopping them from becoming unwanted, abandoned, cruelly treated or sick in the first place is difficult to understand.

HSUS recently fell foul of the powerful US gun lobby: the National Shooting, Sports, and Fishing organisation (NSSF) for trying to get the US Government to ban hunting on one-fifth of the total land area of the USA, which drew the perplexing response from the NSSF that they would expose HSUS as ‘the anti-hunting, radical animal rights organisation it is’.

Better to give money to “woolly charities?”

Using the term “animal rights” is a clever tool because it gives the impression that an organisation is in some way anti-society or violent and conjures up  pictures of hooded people turning up in the middle of the night with bombs and making abusive telephone calls and death threats. By accusing them of being “animal rightist” they hope to persuade donors not to fund them, and they actively promote giving money to what some have described as ‘woolly’ charities which are  viewed less threatening to their interests and who avoid any confrontation by solely finding homes for “fluffy animals“.

Statements made by critics that money is better used directly on ‘animal welfare’ by harmless rescue centres and not to pro-active animal charities highlights our increasing misconception that welfare is  just about rescuing and finding homes for unwanted animals. Most of the rhetoric is aimed at making out that the aims of animal rights are far less meaningful than those of animal welfare.

The self-proclaimed world’s largest animal rights organisation  PETA is probably the most maligned organisation on the planet and attracts criticism from all quarters including vegans and animal lovers. They are accused of hating animals and “furthering their own political interests“. A lot of this revolves around the impression that they want to ban pet owning, destroy most companion animals and stop us from having any fun with them, which is mostly taken somewhat out of context. Most of the good work they do on other issues is mostly overlooked such is our fixation with companion animals.

It is evident that as a society we are extremely split and misinformed when it involves the “rescuing” and “saving” of animals and we have great difficulty deciding how best to accomplish the best for all animals. It is unfortunate that we feel we have to lash out at those who do so much work to help them which only aids those that want to continue abusing animals.

Endurance racing causes more deaths than the Grand National

Why do horse lovers put their horses through such endangerment?

If you have watched the above video you might begin to understand where I am coming from with this article and why I cannot understand why horse lovers are willing to put them through such endangerment for their own thrills.

In the UK, races like the Golden Button Challenge, are becoming increasingly popular judging by the number of videos taken and posted on YouTube, which involve horses falling, refusing to jump and being put through some punishing riding and less than desirable treatment. I find watching these distressing but obviously equine enthusiasts believe differently . I am of the opinion that horses are not natural jumpers or designed to be pushed to the limit by being ridden at speed over long distances and expected to traverse high jumps, rough ground and wide ditches. The jury is still out on this point but there is some evidence to substantiate it.

Endurance racing gets little attention

We are at that time of the year again when many people become extremely excited about watching a large field of horses stampeding over high fences supposedly to test their stamina and speed while risking death and injury from falls and collisions. Although anti-racing campaigners concentrate on deaths caused at iconic races such as the Grand National, endurance racing  receives little attention by the media and campaigners and yet cause far more deaths and abuse.

Endurance racing is a niche equine extreme sport which has spread across the world over the last few decades and provides thrills for the riders but hell for the horses. There are international and national events held all over the world, but the sport is most popular in the Arab States whose horses dominate, but countries like the USA, France, Australia and  South Africa  also take part. Because of the huge financial benefits and the competitive nature of the sport there are deaths, injuries, doping scandals and serious welfare issues surrounding it.

The races involve long-distance riding of 100 kilometres or more across often desolate areas like deserts with extreme temperatures. They are conducted against the clock just like long distance cycling races with convoys of team vehicles speeding alongside. Bottles of water are thrown to the riders to both drink and douse the horses. It is all about testing the horses’ endurance and speed and the riders theoretically must manage the stamina and fitness of their horses by the “effective use of pace, thorough knowledge of their horses’ capabilities and ability to cross all kinds of terrain“. The fact that the races have a “vet-gate” every 40 kms so that their fitness to continue can be checked is an indication of how the horses can suffer.

Win at all costs mentality.

The above video gives some idea of what the horses experience. Apart from tough training techniques being used, which often cause fractured leg bones, injuries are often not given enough time to heal between races there by debilitating the horses. The use of prohibited substances is allegedly rife and in the past nine participants, including well-known showjumpers, dressage riders and trainers were implicated in it and suspended for administering them. Some riders are accused of a ‘win at all costs’ methodology, riding horses at over 40 kph over rough terrain.

The sport is administered by an organisation called the ‘FEI’ who insist the horses’ welfare is at the heart of it, which is of course a nonsense, as there is no necessity for the sport to exist or to put the horses through such hardship. Their Code of Conduct for the welfare of the horse and “Clean Sports campaign 2010” states that:

“the entire equine community – athletes, veterinarians, grooms, managers, coaches, owners and officials help combat doping and the inappropriate use of medications through better education and increased vigilance”.

The sport is littered with injuries and deaths including six horses dying within 22 days in 2017, some from ‘catastrophic injuries,’ during races at the Dubai International Endurance City (DIEC) built and operated by Sheikh Mohammed specifically to host these races. Two horses were euthanised at a 90 km endurance ride in Fontainbleau, France in October 2016 and a rider-less horse escaping onto an auto route suffered fatal injuries.

Most horse lovers and owners will no doubt disagree with my comments, but there is something very wrong with what they are put through to accommodate this ‘sport’  and it may be time to have an inquiry into these activities.