ANIMALS (LOST) IN TRANSLATION
Animal Rights vs Animal Abuse

by Dr. Coral Hull

"When I got home, I couldn't believe that I had done it. It was very exciting. I was scared that I'd miss it, because it takes some skill."

-- Temple Grandin (on killing her first cow at a slaughterhouse)

In the same way that the word ‘God' has been reinterpreted and misused by the church over the centuries, so have the words ‘animal welfare' been reinterpreted and misused by the animal abusers in order to cover their abuse and make their actions more acceptable to the public. We need to redefine the words ‘animal welfare', or drop them from our vocabulary altogether. Animals are kindly treated or cruelly treated. There is no kind way to cruelly treat an animal.

Dr. Coral Hull

Hypothetical

We are a multi-million dollar organisation promoting children's rights. We have created a Progress Award that was recently given to a well known pedophile, because he has manufactured a drug that allows adults to sexually abuse children while they are unconscious. Since human society has set a standard where the continuing physical and emotional abuse of its own offspring seems to be the given situation, we feel that we need to do something in the interim, at least in order to make sexual abuse for children as painless as possible. Therefore we are granting this award to a gifted pedophile, who derives an income by watching the behaviour of children and learning about them, in order to design a special drug that renders the child unconscious for a period of time. This truly innovative improvement means that the child will now feel no fear during sex with an adult and also that there will be no ramifications when the child grows to maturity, since all memory of the abuse will be erased. This famous pedophile works for child pornography rings and has gained a prestigious paid position at a university in order to lecture on the behaviour of children and how to effectively sexually abuse them without pain or fear for the child. This also means that more children can now be sexually abused than before, since the pedophile's new drug has made child sexual abuse easier to achieve. Surely this is about the welfare of the child, since it's the child we are thinking about? Isn't it?

This is a hypothetical that draws to your attention the bizarre logic that is used by animal abusers who claim to have the best interests of animals at heart. My question is would the pedophile then be given a ‘Progress Award' from the largest society for children's rights in the United States of America? Somehow and for obvious reasons, I think not. Yet this is precisely what occurs in the mixed-up animal rights movement when Ingrid Newkirk who runs PETA, described as “the largest animal rights organisation in the world” gives Temple Grandin who designs slaughterhouses, a special award for her part in the meat industry's murder of millions of animals. Confused? … So is the animal rights movement.

The PETA Meat Awards 

" Temple Grandin has done more to reduce suffering in the world than any other person who has ever lived."

-- Ingrid Newkirk

On April 14th, 2003 Edition of the New Yorker Michael Specter writes the following in his article on PETA; “… Peta, which once picketed Burger King, has actually given the company a pop-up ad on its Web site. Grandin has designed what most people regard as the best slaughterhouses in the world - Ingrid Newkirk once told me, " Temple Grandin has done more to reduce suffering in the world than any other person who has ever lived." It was a remarkable comment. Grandin designs death camps for cattle. Lately Newkirk seems to understand, and even welcome, compromise.”

Lately? Or has Ingrid Newkirk always been one to compromise when it comes to cruelty towards animals? History and human nature teaches us that “compromise” most often occurs when power and the love of money corrupts an individual or a group of individuals that make up an organisation. Likewise, it occurs when there was no pure intention from the individual or the organisation to begin with. While we can compromise over who gets the apples and who gets the oranges at the end of year Christmas picnic, there is simply no compromise when it comes the life and suffering of another sentient being. When we think of that terrified cow and her calf standing with bloodied legs on a slaughterhouse ramp designed by Grandin and endorsed by Newkirk, I see one human being promoting and supporting the cruel actions of another human being. In Temple Grandin 's various aids to more bloodshed, I see inhumanity at its most despicable and in Newkirk's endorsement of it, while calling herself an animal rights advocate, I see dishonesty.

In January 2006 Temple Grandin is given her own special ‘progress award' for her part in making the mass murder of animals more efficient in the USA; “ Norfolk, Va. — As winners are announced in PETA's second annual "Proggy" (short for progress) Awards, two of the four recipients singled out for special recognition may raise some eyebrows. One is Dr. Temple Grandin, a consultant with the meat industry on the design of slaughterhouses. So why is PETA singing their praises? Because Proggys are presented to people and companies that exemplify animal-friendly progress : … Dr. Temple Grandin (described as visionary of the year by Ingrid Newkirk) is an Associate Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University who works with the livestock industry on slaughterhouse design. Dr. Grandin's innovative improvements to animal-handling systems have helped to make animals' final hours less frightening and painful.”

Isn't is reassuring for us to know, that murderers can understand exactly how their victims might be feeling while being tortured and murdered? Wouldn't it be lovely, not to mention convenient, if we could murder others without them knowing about it, or better still without others knowing about it? This is usually how the mind of a serial killer works when s/he wants to commit a crime while avoiding punishment. Although s/he would know better than to say a victim is not afraid and suffering. But for this journalist … the Newkirk and Grandin team appear to represent some utopian ideal of mass murder, where if murder is to remain inevitable in the psyche's of some people in this society, then we might at least make sure that it is a ‘really nice' experience for them, or more to the point, for millions of them.

A More Efficient Way of Committing Mass Murder

Proper livestock handling is extremely important to meat packers for obvious ethical reasons. Once livestock arrive at packing plants, proper handling procedures are not only important for the animal's well-being, but can also mean the difference between profits and losses due to meat quality or worker safety. …Healthy animals, properly handled, keep the meat industry running safely, efficiently and profitably. – Temple Grandin

This quote is an example of the confused logic of the dishonest animal abusers who call themselves “welfarists”. People like Temple Grandin seem to be lying when they use the words ‘ethics' and ‘animal welfare'. Firstly, it is not in the best interests of the animal (ie; welfare or well being) to help to make an industry that tortures and murders animals more efficient and secondly, it is not ethical to do so. In this instance it appears that Grandin has mistaken the welfare of the animal abusers (more efficient killing means better profits) for the welfare of the animals themselves!

So in this case, any insistence upon ‘animal rights' would certainly not be taking the welfare of the meat industry into consideration, since if animals had rights, then profits would be non-existent, Grandin would be out of a job and the meat industry would no longer be “running safely, efficiently and profitably”. Wouldn't this therefore suggest that Grandin, alongside all the other self-proclaimed ‘welfarists', are more concerned with keeping the animal killing industry operational rather than stopping it? It is worth keeping in mind, that in a civilised society where animals were afforded rights, the kind of statements made by Grandin, Newkirk, Singer, Mason and others, would be considered not only illegal, but warranting some form of ongoing psychological rehabilitation. So that rather than running multi-million dollar organisations and being afforded a prestigious positions in universities, such people would be placed in vegan rehabilitation centres, until they were able to understand that animal abuse is not animal welfare or animal rights. Nor is it an acceptable part of living in a civilised society. Furthermore, they may each learn, that assisting in the mass murder of sentient beings, by making the murderers' operations more efficient, is not only inhumane, it is inhuman .

The Confused Logic Behind The Idea of Humane Murder 

“I feel very strongly that we've got to treat the cattle right. We've got to give them a good life, and when they go on in to be slaughtered, they shouldn't even know what happened. That's what I'm working for.” -- Temple Grandin

The person who promotes the idea of making murder “more humane” is either psychopathic or very confused and I believe that we may have to set up a special centre where we can incarcerate these pretenders, before their twisted values and double standards cause anymore suffering to animals than they already have. As punishment for their ongoing crimes against non-humans, they are to be feed a healthy vegan diet for the terms of their natural lives. Furthermore Temple Grandin is to be placed in a special padded cell where she is never allowed to feel the excitement of another cow being murdered by her own designs again. Ethics alone should be punishment enough for Grandin & Co.

The misuse of the word “welfare” simply displays the difference between an honest animal abuser and a dishonest animal abuser. The honest animal abuser will say, “I axe that lamb to death because I enjoy the taste of its flesh.” Whereas the dishonest animal abuser will say, “If we are to axe that lamb to death, then it is very important to ‘the lamb' that we do it as lovingly and as tenderly as possible and perhaps even while the lamb is looking the other way would be a good idea. You see, we are only considering the feelings and well being of the lamb. So if the murder is committed, then as least it can be committed in the nicest possible way.” Both mindsets are misguided. The more articulate the psychopath is, the more convincing the lie will be. Try using that kind of reasoning in a court of law as a defense for the murder of a child, (who unlike animals, at least have some limited rights in this society at present) and you would very likely end up behind bars. This would occur because the court recognises the legal rights of the child.

But when you do such a thing to animals and while animals are not afforded legal rights, then you get commended by PETA. It is no wonder that when animal rights advocates, attempt to apply this logic to the movement, they become confused, outraged and disillusioned. When we see someone who says they run the largest animal rights organisation in the world, praising someone who assists the largest animal abusers in the world, it makes no rational or logical sense.

Imagine a serial killer talking ethics in a courtroom by saying that he raped and killed his victims while they were unconscious, since he didn't want to upset them during the killing process. To a serial killer this is ethical. To us it is a warped sense of justification for murder. Sure, the female victims might not have felt themselves being raped and might not have known when their throats were slit, or when they were disemboweled, but does this make it right or justifiable? No, it is still homocide. This is exactly the same confused logic that Grandin and Newkirk apply to animals.

The fact that the so-called animal rights movement would be debating, whether to conduct ‘humane' murder over the ‘not-so-humane' murder as an option for animals, means that there is no animal rights movement to speak off. Instead we are left only with the idea of whether animal rights is ‘extreme' or not, or whether it should exist in the first place.

Animals Lost In Translation: Understanding The Victim

“It all started out going to visit my aunt's ranch. I got very interested in the squeeze chute, which is a device used to restrain cattle for vaccinations. The livestock were calmed when they were gently squeezed. I saw how people with autism could benefit from a similar thing.” -- Temple Grandin

Many of society's most efficient predators understand things in order to destroy them. Knowledge is power and power without empathy is psychopathy. ‘I understand animals', does not equate to, ‘I have compassion for animals'. For instance, a serial killer like Ted Bundy understood that his female victims could be more easily lured to his van through their sympathetic feelings for him, if he had his arm in a sling. Temple Grandin knows how to lure animals to their deaths and has made a career out of teaching the mass murderers of animals how to do this effectively and efficiently in order to increase profits. I think it is a mistake to delve too deeply into Grandin's pretend consideration for animals. The fact that she is photographed kissing and hugging the cows she helps to kill, reminds me of the cliché politician who holds up a baby to appeal to family values. These phonies are a part of a society that is attempting to justify the brutal mass murder of others, through the deliberate, dishonest and public portrayal of kindness towards their victims.

Autism and Slaughterhouse Design

“I am more or less a human Google image search. … Think of it in terms of “What do I have on my hard drive?” I have quite a few jpegs of cattle in there, so they often come up.” -- Temple Grandin

Cows are more than mental images and the fact that Temple Grandin is an Autistic should not make us proud of her achievements. If Hitler was an Autistic, would we be anymore impressed by the design of showers that were really gas chambers? No we would not. Instead we would think, fancy that, even a human being with a neurological difference can hurt others. In her book, Animals In Translation Grandin compares the minds of Autistics to the minds of animals.

Perhaps it is only the law that prevents her from openly designing devices to kill Autistics as well as the animals she compares us to. Autistic or not, Grandin is little more than part of a complex killing machine. Despite PETA's praises, she is not working towards animal rights. She is employed by an industry that murders millions of animals in order to make their task more efficient and therefore more profitable. Temple Grandin does not represent all Autistics, either by the way her mind thinks, nor by her actions against animals. Just because she involves herself in these atrocities, doesn't mean that other Autistics are doing the same thing. The fact that Autistics may now be associated with slaughterhouse design and cruelty to animals, through the promotion of Temple Grandin , is merely unfortunate.

The Real Animal Rights Movement

“Never doubt that a small committed group of people can change the world, indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” -- Margaret Mead

I would like to make the point that it is not necessarily Temple 's fault that she was awarded by Newkirk's PETA for her part in animal abuse. Temple Grandin is simply another Autistic who forgot to press her ‘compassion button' and who for reasons unbeknown to a vegan Autistic such as myself, decided that it was easier and more profitable to assist in the murder animals, rather than in the protection of them. The real problem is with organisations such as PETA that promote what Grandin does as some kind of progress towards animal rights. Yet being disappointed in PETA is the same as being surprised that Burger King promotes veggie burgers. Really, it seems as if they could just as easily swap places. Both Burger King and PETA will do what they have to do, if it means gaining approval and support from a wider audience, thereby increasing the organisation's income. But it won't have anything to do with animal rights or welfare.

Therefore I think that it is time to let go of PETA and Newkirk's eternal quest for money and power, and continue to focus on the grass roots activists who work towards rights for all sentient beings. When we say that we are part of an animal rights movement, we are not saying that we are the perfect beings who cause no suffering and who can judge others on their imperfections. The world is full of suffering. However, if we are going to use the term Animal Rights, knowing lives are at stake, then we better make damn sure that we hold true to what this actually means and get on with the job. While this can be a challenge in a society so conditioned to cruelty on all levels, it is, nevertheless, necessary to not confuse ‘animal rights or welfare' with ‘animal abuse' if this movement is to exist at all, let alone continue. The animal rights movement is not an intellectual exercise. For those animals it is a matter of life and death.

Dr. Coral Hull
The Thylazine Foundation: Arts, Ethics & Literature

Coral Hull is a vegan, an animal rights advocate and an Autistic. She saves as many cows as she can from well-designed and efficiently operated slaughterhouses.