Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way We Treat Animals

By Karen Dawn

The animal rights movement has reached a tipping point. No longer a fringe extremist cause, it has become a social concern that leading members of society endorse and young people embrace. From Michael Vick's dog fighting scandal to CNN’s airing of the eye-opening film Blackfish, animal rights issues have hit the headlines—and are being championed by students and senators, pop stars and producers, and actors and activists.

Don't you want to be part of the conversation? In Thanking the Monkey, Karen Dawn covers pets, fur, fashion, food, animal testing, activism, and more. But as the title playfully suggests, this isn't like any previous animal rights book. Thanking the Monkey is light on lectures meant to make you feel guilty if you're not yet a leather-eschewing vegan. It lets you have fun as you learn why so many of your favorite actors and musicians won't eat or wear animals. And you'll laugh over scores of cartoons by Dan Piraro'sBizzaro and other animal-friendly comics.

This fun primer for a smart and socially committed generation delivers some serious surprises in the form of facts and figures about the treatment of animals. Yes, it will shock you with tales of primates still used in animal testing on nicotine or killed for oven cleaner. But it will also let you lighten up and laugh a little as we work out how to do a better job of thanking the monkey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9780062045942

Book preview

Dedication

In loving memory of David Bale, Gretchen Wyler, Uncle Harry, and James

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments for the E-Edition

Acknowledgments

Foreword to the E-Edition

one

Welcome to the World of Animal Rights

Animal Rights vs. Human Rights

Animal What?

The Anti-Welfare Warriors

Spotlight on Speciesism

On Equating Life

Mirror, Mirror

Are There Limits?

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

two

Slaves to Love

Pets

Canine Americans?

Should We Have Pets at All?

Breedism

Paritney’s Pet Store Adventures

Copycat Killings

Expensive Mutts

Ritzy Rescues

Paula and the Pit Bullies

Cut Off His Balls?

Doggie Prozac?

Females First

To Kill or Not to Kill?

The Bound Leading the Blind

Making Your Dog a Swan

Kitty Mob Makeovers

The Dog-Eat-Dog World of Dog Food

Robin Redbreast in a Cage Puts All Heaven in a Rage

Confining Nemo

Jurassic Bowl

Our Interspecies Families

Best Friends Need Shelter, Too

three

All the World’s a Cage

Animal Entertainment

A Bloody History Continues

The ABCDs of Animal Entertainment

Acquisition

Brutality

Confinement

Disposal

Behind the Big Top

An Elephant Never Forgets a Bullhook

Chains, Trains, and Automobiles

Zoos—It’s No Jungle in There

The Elephant in the Room

Spare the Rod and Spoil the Star

Thai Torture

Out with the Old

Canned Hunting

Wanted—Dead or Alive

Curiosity Killed the Chimp

Please Don’t Eat the Animals

Urban Elephant

Marine Parks

Shame Shame Shamu

Lessons from the Cove

Lolita—Slave to Entertainment

Hollywood Stories

Tarzan and Jane Goodall

It’s Hard Out Here for a Chimp

Oliver’s Travels

My Dead Flicka

Flipper’s Suicide

Cowboys and Injuries—The Rodeo

Shocking Abuse

Bloodless Bullfights?

Just Kidding Fishing

Running for Their Lives—The Racing Industries

Derby Winner Dinner

Dead Dog Walking

The Great Turtle Race

A Better Tomorrowland

four

Fashion Victims

Animal Clothing

Fur—You Have to Be Pretty Cold

Going Clubbing

How Much Is That Dead Doggie in the Window?

Faux Faux

Do Nice Girls Fake It?

Leather—A Fatal Fetish

Not So Warm and Fuzzy Wool

A Pound of Flesh

Sheep Shipping

Down—No Comforter for the Animals

Silkworm Union?

Toward Fashion with Compassion

five

Deconstructing Dinner

At the Slaughterhouse

Dying Piece by Piece

Fowl Outs

Pilgrim’s Shame

Butterball Bullies

Raeford Rocky Rehearsals

Kosher Kindness?

Highway to Hell

Poultry in Motion

Long Day’s Journey into Night

Talk About a Downer

Factory Farming

Life in a Coffin—The Sow Gestation Crate

Communal Crates

Chickens Can’t Stand in Standing Room Only

A Hard Act to Swallow—Foie Gras

Thanking the Turkey Who Changed Thanksgiving

This Steer’s Life

Kill a Horse to Eat a Cow

A Mane Course

Eating Nemo—Fish

Fish School

Gregarious Groupers

Long Deaths on Long Lines

Gruesome Gill Nets

Trawling and Trash Animals

Dolphin Discards

Feedlots of the Sea

Fishy Business Practices

A Shark’s Tale

Why Vegan—No Eggs or Dairy?

California’s Unhappy Cows

Babes in the Wood Crates

Got Milk? You’ve Got Problems

Egg-regious Cruelty

Chicken Run Lessons

Zombie Chickens

Scrambled Egg Layers

Label Laws and Label Lies

Wholesome Organics?

Organic Dairy (Factory) Farms

Welfare Wiggle Room

The Chicken and the Egg Labels

Cage-Free Eggs—Not All They’re Cracked Up to Be

Scamming Caring Consumers

Bee Vomit

Happy Hunting

In Vitro Meat—The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread?

Human Health

Ronald McDonald Strikes Again

There’s Shit in the Meat

Dangerous Liaisons

Fuzzy Recall

Everything Old Is New Again

Method in the Mad Cow Madness

Added Dangers

Finger-Lickin’ Bad for You

Skinny Chick?

More to Make You Chicken Out

Mercury Rising in the Ocean

Other Funky Fish Facts

Not Milk

Chew the Right Thing

Taking Care with Vegan Fare

Veggie Power

Vegan Health

Why Hurt Anybody If You Don’t Have To?

six

Animals Anonymous

Animal Testing

Torture Is Legal

Do Animal Tests Save Human Lives?

Should We Refuse Animal-Tested Medicine?

Spare Parts—Xenotransplantation

Bitter Medicine

Testing Painkillers Painlessly?

What We Already Know Hurts Them

Necessary Evils?

Maternal Deprivation Madness

Baboons on Ecstasy

He’s Just Not That into Ewe

Femme Fatalities

Really Painful Periods

. . . And Difficult Pregnancies

Foods That Fatten Drug Company Wallets

Killing Animals to Kill People

Weapons of Dog Destruction

Taser Tales

Pigs of War

Innocent Until Proven Animal

Looks That Kill

Blinding Beauty

Skin Deep

Botoxic

Who Would You Kill for Brighter Whites?

Are Rats and Mice Animals?

Like a Used Tissue

Depressing Depression Studies

Is It Ever Right to Experiment on Animals?

Let’s Look at Aziz

Facing Felix

Fox and Felix

Voluntary Guinea Pigs

Thanking the Monkey

The Unnatural History of Chimpanzees

The Chimp Act

Are Some Animals More Equal Than Others?

So Where Do We Go from Here?

The Seduction of Reduction

The Gentle Touch of Refinement

Ultimately—Replacement

seven

The Greenies

The Earth Is Common Ground

Fighting Factory-Farm Filth

Pig Shit Lagoons and Rivers

Dairy Farm Delights

What If the Shit Don’t Stink?

A Gory Gorey Truth

Little Piggies—Eating Everybody Else’s Food

War on the Whales

Deadly Decibels

Anti-Whaler Wars

Green Meanies

Death by Do-gooders

Hunting—The Great Divide

Audubowhunt Society?

The Ghost of Mr. Muir

National Wilddeath Federation

Bloodbath in the Nursery

Killing to Be Kind?

The Right to Arm Bears?

Bambi’s Revenge

The Removal of the Fittest

Nature Conservancy Annihilations

Drive-by Population Control?

Natural Allies

eight

Compassion in Action

The Best Government Money Can Buy

Horsing Around with the Law

Legislators Bringing Home the Bacon

Power to the Poopers

Ballot Boxes

Living with Electile Dysfunction

See Ya Later Animal Hater

Crossing the Line to Save Lives

Letters to the Legislature

If You Can’t Beat ’Em, Join ’Em

On Hating Heifer

Media Matters

Media Circus

Slaughterhouse Five TV

The Power of One

Animal Love Letters

DawnWatch

From Armchairs to Sidewalks

Running of the Nudes

Freedom Fighters

From the Front Line to the Front Page

Outsourcing Tech Support and Torture Support

Militant Mishaps

Grave Consequences

SHAC Backlash

A SHAC Retraction?

The Psychology of Persuasion

Personal Change

Flexitarian or Very Vegan?

Talk the Walk

recommended resource groups

Farm Sanctuary

Other Animal Sanctuaries I Love

Mercy for Animals

Compassion Over Killing

PETA and PETA2

In Defense of Animals

The Humane Society of the United States

Health

Environment

Outside of the USA

International

For Your Body and Soul

And Finally, MEDIA!

notes

index

About the Author

Praise

Copyright

About the Publisher

Acknowledgments for the E-Edition

While the original acknowledgments section still holds, I had so much help around the book’s release and with the e-edition that I must add the following:

The book now has almost sixty Bizarro cartoons and I cannot imagine it without the levity they provide. I thank Dan Piraro for his warm support. While I have chosen Dan’s animal rights cartoons, Bizarro daily cartoons, syndicated in hundreds of newspapers, cover the ironies of life in general, with animal rights messages just coming up now and then. So, if you ask your local paper to carry Bizarro, you aren’t asking for an animal rights cartoon, but you can be sure you’ll see animal rights messages from time to time. Sounds like a good idea doesn’t it?

Patrick McDonnell and Karen O’Connel have been similarly generous with the tender Mutts strip, as have Berk Breathed and Jody Boyman with Berk’s little bits of brilliance. And the work of the talented artist Anthony Freda is back for you to enjoy.

Doug Hall from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has again been generous with his super clever cartoons. Nobody does more important work than PCRM and it is an honor to associate with them in any way.

Thanks to John Harrison, Matt Hobbs, Randall Michelson, Tim Schwartz, Matt Hobbs, Diane Cohen, Brian Wendel, Denise Herrick Borchert, Matt Boyle, and Kris Krug for the donation of new celebrity photos to accompany quotes.

I must thank Sharon Gannon and David Life from Jivamukti Yoga for their beautiful support, including a book launch party, and for all they do for the animals. Sharon’s discussion of the yogic tenet of Asteya, non-stealing, in her beautiful book Yoga and Vegetarianism has strongly shaped my thinking and renewed my commitments to leave milk and honey for the cows and the bees.

I thank my friends at Earth Island, Kevin Connelly and Ric O’Barry, for having inspired me, and activists Joel Kanoff and Gary Smith for having challenged me—another form of inspiration. The Humane Society’s Paul Shapiro jumped in as answer man for this updated edition when I had questions on farm animal issues. I received some extra notes from Mike Markarian on legislative updates. Alex Thornton, Teresa Marshall and Delcianna Winders at PETA helped with current elephant captivity information.

I have relied, surely too much, on Kevin Morrison, a talented editor and helpful friend, for my video needs and send him my greatest thanks.

Thanks to Erica Meier, who heads up the fantastic group Compassion Over Killing, and to my friends at Farm Sanctuary, Gene Baur and Samantha Ragsdale, for their sweet acknowledgment and immense support in the realm of publicity. I thank Chris Locke, who is personally responsible for the Access Hollywood coverage of the Thanking the Monkey book launch events. And I thank Susan Weingartner, the ultimate connector, for helping to snag that delicious endorsement from Anthony Kiedis.

I live in Los Angeles, celebrity central, and previously gave a general thank-you for photos and endorsements to avoid naming all of the wonderful animal-friendly actors and musicians who helped bring this book to fruition. But I must drop four names in particular: Heather Mills’s support has been extraordinary; Emily Deschanel has gone way out of her way to help; Rory Friedman’s generous spirit is a blessing to the world; and Bruce Greenwood, my wonderful friend, I don’t know if this edition would ever have come to fruition without you constantly bugging me about it. I thank you all with all my heart!

I would like to acknowledge my new agent at Vigliano Associates, Matthew Carlini, who has been wonderfully supportive and helpful during this e-process.

Finally, I renew my thanks to all those named in the original acknowledgments section of this book, whose support helped get this project off the ground.

Acknowledgments

I thank Gloria Steinem, Peter Singer, and John Coetzee for their loving guidance, support, and incomparable example.

Warm thanks to reporter Jane Velez Mitchell, and to Jinky’s mom, Carole Davis—both superb activists and extraordinarily generous friends.

Guru Singh kept me focused on my mission, Brenda Shoss intermittently but effectively encouraged me to write a book (When’s yours, Brenda?), and my glorious friend Nancy Hall offered unflagging love and encouragement.

I thank my brilliantly gifted friends, the artist Anthony Freda and cartoonist Dan Piraro, for their enthusiastic support and fabulous work. Also the remarkable artist Sue Coe, PCRM’s Doug Hall, Linda Frost, and Dave Farley made particularly generous art contributions. And Noah Lewis’s Vegetus Web site helped me collect cartoons.

Matthew Scully, Dan Matthews, Adam Weisman, Rick Bogle, Peter Muller, and Stewart David have challenged and influenced my thinking. Rolf Wicklund has been enormously helpful with Web sites and promotion, and producer Joshua Katcher has infused the atmosphere around this project with his cool warmth.

If you find yourself laughing while reading this book it will often be thanks to suggestions from the brilliant comedian Ritch Shydner. I also thank Allan Havey for some great lines and ideas.

At PETA, the amazing Ingrid Newkirk offered warm support. Alka Chandna and Shalin Gala, Debbie Leahy and RaeLeann Smith, John Machuzak and Lisa Lange, and Jessica Sandler were all fantastic. Bruce Friedrich, your loyal and constant friendship and beautiful example over the years has meant more to me than you will ever know.

HSUS’s Wayne Pacelle’s friendship, encouragement and belief in my work helped keep me in the movement in my early years; he taught me much. Beverly Kaskey and Leigh O’Brien have been terrific.

At Farm Sanctuary, the lovely Samantha Ragsdale has been fantastically supportive, and Chloe-Jo has been, of course, fabulous.

Thanks to my Farmed Animal Answer Woman, Mary Finelli, and Dr. Ray Greek, for their thoughtful comments on chapters 5 and 6 respectively, to Susan Clay and Lew Regenstein for constant encouragement, and to Paul Shapiro, Jack Norris, Dan Kinburn, Chris Anderlik, Peter Muller, David Cantor, and Joe Miele for generously responding to requests for information.

Janice Blue got me into radio; none of the radio quotes would exist without her.

My thanks to my Peet’s buddies Steve Godchaux, Bill Birrel, and Doug Green for brainstorming with me. (Bill, All the World’s a Cage is my favorite chapter title.) I especially thank Pam and Chrissie Rikkers for going out of their way to help.

At HarperCollins my thoughtful editor, Katherine Nintzel, has shown true commitment to this book and sometimes saintly patience. Carrie Kania, David Roth-Ey, Calvert Morgan, Kolt Beringer, and Heather Drucker have been a wonderful team. And I thank my agent, Kirsten Neuhaus, for her keeping us on course.

If I have pointed to your work for the animals on these pages, or you have endorsed this book, or enthusiastically agreed to have your photograph included, please consider yourself wholeheartedly thanked.

Years ago I sang in the choir before Marianne Williamson’s lectures at Town Hall. Those lectures brought me to a Course in Miracles, and have recharged my spirit when it ran low. I hope Marianne is happy to know she has a significant hand in any good that comes from my work.

One year, watching the Oscars and Grammies, I noted that at the Grammies everybody thanked God, while at the Oscars nobody did. No surprise that I am a musician, for I could not imagine sending in this book without giving thanks to God, as I understand him or her or it: the absolutely loving, forgiving, and ultimately all-powerful force with which, or whom, each of us can choose to align.

And finally, I thank Jim Holcomb—God only knows where I’d be without him.

Foreword to the E-Edition of Thanking the Monkey

How right it feels to be working on a foreword for the e-edition of Thanking the Monkey. The advent of electronic books is a great boon for the environment, and therefore one for the animals.

In the time since the print edition of this book came out, one of the most significant events affecting animals was an environmental disaster. In 2010, BP dumped so much oil into the Gulf of Mexico that they could have renamed it the Gulf Station of Mexico and sold seawater for four bucks a gallon. It is now estimated that the millions of animals who perished there included thousands of dolphins.¹ Meanwhile animal rights activists decry the slaughter of dolphins in Japan but, as a group, have remained silent as BP has resumed drilling in the Gulf. We protest direct cruelty to animals but sometimes ignore the destruction of habitat, which destroys the animals that live in it. I write those words with appreciation to you, the reader, for having chosen the environmentally friendly e-edition of this book.

Those poor dolphins in Japan received some fantastic press in 2010 when The Cove won the Oscar for Best Documentary. That film focuses on the work of Ric O’Barry, who you will read about in the Entertainment chapter, All the World’s a Cage. He fights the cruelty of marine mammal captivity—the horror of the captures and the sadness of lives spent in tanks.

Right on cue in the middle of that Oscar season, an Orca at SeaWorld, named Tilikum, protested his plight by killing his trainer. SeaWorld tried to present the event as some kind of freak accident, but it soon leaked out that Tilly had killed twice before—just never in front of an audience that precluded a pretty cover-up. I refer to him as Tilly as he was affectionately called by his lovely trainer, Dawn Brancheau. Clearly the affection was not mutual. The affection of a jailor for a prisoner cannot be mutual. With much sadness, I share my sense that Dawn, who meant no cruelty, understands that now.

Kidnapped at age two from his family in the waters off Iceland, Tilly spent a quarter of a century doing tricks at marine parks. Even in this third and very public attempt to submit his resignation, he failed. After some months in solitary confinement, SeaWorld put him back on show. As I write this foreword, I learn that while he is no longer allowed within killing distance of trainers he recently tried a more classic strike—he refused to perform. The audiences left in disgust. Where killing people failed to get him that coveted pink slip perhaps boring them will do the trick. But no, Tilly has sired thirteen orcas for SeaWorld; each brings in about a million dollars per year, so he is surely deemed too lucrative to deserve freedom.

When Thanking the Monkey was first released, a glowing Washington Post review noted that I criticized Jack Hanna for supporting dove hunting and glossing over problems with horse racing, and it teased, "Jack Hanna, for crying out loud. The woman’s got some nerve. Tilikum, with more nerve than I, helped me make my case. In the aftermath of his attack, we saw a debate on CNN in which Ric O’Barry talked about dolphin abusement parks, and Jane Velez Mitchell told us that Tilly had spent his life in the human equivalent of a bathtub, which surely got him a little irritated. She suggested we follow the money and revealed that SeaWorld had recently been bought for $2.7 billion. Jack Hanna was part of that debate, representing not the animals, but SeaWorld, which enjoys exclusive national sponsorship of his television show."² Hanna sits on the SeaWorld & Busch Gardens Conservation Fund board of directors. Even Larry King, famous for his softball style of interviewing, noted the likelihood that Hanna’s opinion may be shaped by financial interests.³

Perhaps Tilikum’s sad tale (and I am most certainly including in that sadness the loss of three human lives) will have a happy ending. Perhaps Jack Hanna’s will too—he might decide to join Ric O’Barry’s marine mammal rescue efforts! While I am mostly joking, I am also thinking of that beautiful line from A Course in Miracles: The holiest place on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love. Who knows?

A different whale story is more certainly coming to a happy end. The United Nations International Court of Justice has finally ruled that Japanese whaling in Antarctica is not for scientific purposes and is therefore illegal. Sea Shepherd has been telling the world that for decades. I hope you will enjoy reading the section on their war against the whalers knowing that they, and the whales, have won.

Another happy-ending story, that of two captive elephants named Shirley and Jenny, has a new life in this e-book. At the Los Angeles Thanking the Monkey book launch party, CSI’s Jorja Fox read us the Urban Elephant tale and I get to share that reading with you, via a YouTube link, in chapter 3. Being able to link many of you straight to videos is one of my e-edition pleasures.

Less pleasurable, but of vital importance, are links to new undercover dairy cow videos. You’ll hear cows bellow in agony as their tails are chopped and horns are burned off without anesthetic. That is standard industry practice, even on organic farms. Another dairy farm video shows workers stamping on calves’ heads and stabbing udders with pitchforks.

The farming industry has been appalled by the undercover video that has been emerging from its midst and has taken swift action to make sure that such henious acts of cruelty are never seen again. Unfortunately seen again are the operative words. Legislators beholden to agribusiness have been putting forward state bills that do nothing to prevent industry cruelty, but would make taking video of it illegal. As I write this new foreword, some states have already passed ag-gag laws and others are hearing them in their legislatures.

Yes, the farming industry is trying to make it illegal for you to see some of the videos included here. And I want you to enjoy this book, so I won’t tell you to watch every single horrifying one of them. In fact, I never tell people what to do, or what they should eat, and was plwased that a consistent review comment about this book is that it isn’t preachy. But as the subtitle suggests, I do ask people to think, so that they can make their over informed and well-considered choices. If you choose to consume meat and dairy products but you can’t bring yourself to even look at the cruelty you are inavertently supporting, then I will ask you gently, if it might be time to examine that disconnect. But hey, for starters, why not just make a commitment right now to switch those skim milk lattes to soy or almond milk and skip the gory daily videos with a clear conscience?

It’s so gratifying to see how those soy lattes and plant-based diets in general have moved into the mainstream in the last few years—and a diverse mainstream at that! Bill Clinton told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he lost 24 pounds right before Chelsea’s wedding, and did so by adopting an essentially plant-based diet. He cited the work of renowned doctors, such as Cleveland Clinic’s Caldwell Esselstyn and the China Study author T. Colin Campbell who have proven that such diets can reverse heart disease. That’s a feat never accomplished by medications, which can only alleviate symptoms or sometimes slow the progress of the disease. That work, which I discuss in chapter 5, has now been made available to hundreds of thousands of people via the delightful film Forks Over Knives, which the very mainstream film critic Roger Ebert described as a film that could save your life. How we wish that dear and dearly missed man could have seen it a decade ago.

Not long after Clinton’s CNN interview, Glenn Beck shocked his audience by announcing that he was dabbling in veganism. Top athletes such as star NFL player Arian Foster are switching to plant-based diets. So are environmentalists, including Al Gore. We even saw big poster on Sunset Boulevard that says, Love Animals Don’t Eat Them, with a photo of Mike Tyson letting us know that even he had gone vegan. We aren’t sure that Tyson is sticking with it; apparently he was disappointed to learn that the diet didn’t allow for even an occasional ear. Well that’s unless you count corn.

Be prepared for more corny jokes throughout this book as I attempt to bring at least a little levity to a serious subject. This e-version has been tweaked and updated throughout so that the information inside is still accurate, and we’ve added links to loads of videos, some of which will make you laugh and some of which will make you cry. Perhaps my favorite line from the original reviews of Thanking the Monkey came from Veg-News, which closed with "VN Associate Editor Elizabeth Castoria got in touch with both her manic and depressive sides while reading Thanking the Monkey." I hope this book will make you laugh hard but sometimes weep softly for what we have done. And I hope that you will emerge from these pages with some extra knowledge and more empathy for our fellow earthlings and an eagerness to help them.

chapter one

Welcome to the World of Animal Rights

Welcome to the world of animal rights. When I tell people I work full-time as an animal rights activist, many of them have questions. Am I vegan? If so, why—aren’t California’s Happy Cows really happy? Do activists who target medical research like mice more than men? And who belongs in the zoo—are the animals there good ambassadors for their species? After spending eight years fully immersed in animal rights issues monitoring the media for DawnWatch.com, I decided I was ready to tackle those questions and wanted to do so in as friendly and fun a manner as possible—and so we have this book. In it, I hope to help dispel the myth that animal rights activism is radical and unreasonable. In fact, as you read of the cruelty we offer animals as thanks for what we take from them you may see radical departures from your own standards of reasonable decency.

Animal Rights vs. Human Rights

Let’s start by addressing some common questions animal rights activists get asked.

Why worry about animal rights when there is so much human suffering in the world?

Animal rights activists are asked that constantly. And you wonder why we tend to be feisty! Why don’t people ask human rights activists how they can do their work when there is so much animal suffering in the world? Seriously, though, part of the answer is in the question. Even somebody who does nothing to end human hunger wouldn’t justify his apathy by telling relief workers that there are more important things to worry about. That’s because society as a whole acknowledges that human suffering matters. Animal suffering, however, is treated as trivial, even as billions of beings endure unimag-inable institutionalized cruelty. To those touched by the suffering of animals, the injustice of the suggestion that animals just don’t matter is a call to action.

The question, moreover, is based on a faulty premise. It suggests that compassion is like a pie we must divide into parts, and that if we offer big pieces to some, others will get left with slivers. But compassion is not some sort of finite substance that might run out. It is more like a habit we get better at as we practice, and the animals are a good place to start exercising it—for their sake and for ours. George Angell, the founder of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, put it well when asked why he focused on kindness to animals when there is so much cruelty to people in the world. He said, I am working at the roots.¹

Before I extended my own efforts toward animals, I worked every Sunday, for six years, in a soup kitchen for New York’s homeless people. I worked alongside many fellow vegetarians. And when I saw the film Amazing Grace,² I was not surprised to learn that William Wilberforce, who led the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade, was also one of the founders of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. That’s because compassion and cruelty are not species-specific. Most of us have heard that serial killers usually start by killing animals. The same compulsion drives the killers’ behavior when they move on to humans; the urge to hurt just becomes so strong that it outweighs societal norms and fears of legal retribution. So it is with less active cruelty, with the closing of our hearts that has us sit by as others suffer. The compassion shutdown switch that allows us to chew pieces of veal while blocking out thoughts of baby calves alone in crates is the same switch that guides us to change TV channels away from news of children starving in Darfur. We don’t want the images to hamper the taste of the meat or our enjoyment of the wine we are drinking, a bottle of which costs more than it costs to feed a child in Darfur for a month. When we disengage that switch, when we get out of the habit of closing our hearts, the world will be better for the calves and the kids.

Animal What?

What exactly do you mean by animal rights?

Funny you should ask—I will surely be challenged to a duel or two over the heading of this chapter, for I use the term animal rights more loosely than some would like. I use it to refer to what is commonly known as the animal rights movement—those who devote themselves to advancing the interests of animals and who discourage the use of animals as objects of commerce. For some activists the term animal rights is literal; those activists seek legal rights for members of other species. Though they do not wish to earn nonhuman animals the right to vote—any more than they wish to see that right given to human children—they do wish to see animals granted the right, as it is put by the animal rights lawyer Steve Wise, to bodily liberty and bodily integrity.³ That means no cages, no knives, and no scalpels.

Political conservatives in our movement generally hold that animals don’t have rights at all, but that we have responsibilities toward them. One of the leading proponents of that view is Matthew Scully, who was a senior speechwriter for President George W. Bush. He argues that our basic responsibility to other animals is to treat them with mercy.⁴ Scully is now vegan, which means he believes his responsibility to animals includes abstaining from eating them or the products of their common abuse, while living in a society with so many other alternatives.⁵ If he were to persuade the world to follow his lead, would it matter, at least to the animals, whether or not he spoke about rights?

The Anti-Welfare Warriors

There are rifts in our movement over whether the fight for animal rights can also include efforts to improve animals’ welfare. Some animal rights activists feel that animal welfare laws ultimately work against the animals, weakening our case for animal liberation. Those activists might suggest, for example, that it is easier to persuade people to stop eating veal while calves are kept in crates and deprived of iron. They argue that welfare improvements just allow people to keep eating animals and alleviate the guilt that would eventually make people abstain.

Even if that were so, can you imagine Amnesty International campaigning against laws that forbid the torture of political prisoners because the prisoners shouldn’t be in jail at all, and because their case will be stronger if the torture continues?⁶ Assuming that animal rights activists would attempt to negotiate the release of any imprisoned colleagues, and would also request warm beds and nourishing vegan food for them, how can we refuse such consideration to the nonhumans we volunteer to represent? It has been argued, persuasively in my opinion, that such a stance reduces the animals to objects in service to abolitionist ideology.⁷

If we look at the history of social justice movements we see that improving conditions for the oppressed has not hampered the fight for liberation. While women as a group have yet to earn equal pay for equal work, surely nobody would suggest that granting women the right to vote obstructed the road to eventual societal equality. Laws forbidding the beating of slaves came before, not instead of, laws precluding slavery in the northern states, and were part of the movement that led to emancipation throughout the United States. That’s because, as Robert Cialdini explains, people tend to make consistent choices.⁸ The consistency theory is the basis for all foot-in-the-door sales techniques, and for animal enterprise’s slippery-slope arguments against granting any animal welfare reforms. When society supports welfare measures aimed at ending some of the most hideous industrial abuses of animals, it acknowledges that animals matter. Consistent with that position, those who have supported those changes are more likely than others to ponder their personal use of animal products.

That theory was beautifully exemplified in Elizabeth Devita-Raeburn’s forthright article An Ambivalent Vegetarian, in Self magazine.⁹ She made it clear that learning about slaughterhouse reforms did not ease her conscience when she craved meat. She wrote of those reforms: But the need for them made me feel even worse. Clearly these are not dumb, insensible creatures who are oblivious to whether they live or die. Quite the reverse.

DeVita-Raeburn’s reaction is common among consumers. A Kansas University study found that the increased media attention during animal welfare campaigns caused a reallocation of expenditures to nonmeat food rather than reallocating expenditures across competing meat products.¹⁰ FarmGateBlog.com, which bills itself as the place Where farm decision makers start their day, covered that story, reminding us that people in the food production industries (who have a strong record of knowing how to shape public behavior) do not swallow the argument that welfarism hampers abolitionism. Moreover, that coverage was consistent with an earlier editorial in Feedstuffs that warned readers that the food industry is losing the battle against animal activists. The piece listed numerous successful welfare campaigns and then proclaimed, It’s about raising animals for food and the activists’ agenda is to end that practice. It will take decades, but they are the ones who are winning—piece by piece by piece.¹¹

I have no desire to hide my agenda, and am happy to admit that I think humans are evolving toward vegetarianism. I form that hypothesis partly from noting the high proportion of vegetarians among history’s greatest thinkers—apparently significantly higher than the few percent estimated in the general population. Pythagoras, Plutarch, Da Vinci, Tolstoy, Twain, Bernard Shaw, Kafka, Einstein, and Gandhi come to

Reviews for Thanking the Monkey

[simora_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is an amazing book!! I actually wanted to read An Omnivore's Dilemma, but the book was unavailable at the library, and then I came across a member's recommendation- and what a read! The information provided is in a friendly format, easy to read, I finished it in 3 days! There is so much suffering out there for animals..the author's intention is to present the facts, and let you decide. Perhaps secretly her intention was also to make you think twice before you eat that steak..although I am not a true vegan, this book made me rethink my choices. This book should be read by everybody!!

[squeakychu · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I took this book out of the library just to thumb through it, but decided to read it because it quickly caught my attention. At first, seeing the large color photos and the cartoons, I thought of not taking this book seriously. The book however, is very serious. It's just that the photos and cartoons provide some comic relief to ease the burden of an otherwise extremely heavy read.This book deals with the real issue of animal rights. It turns out to be a must-read for everyone, even those poeple who do not consider themselves animal activitists, if only to learn the truth of how animals are treated in our society. It is from that point that we can each make our own decisions about how far we will go in allowing this, what we will choose to buy, and what we will choose to eat. The author's (and also my own) contention is that we should not remain ignorant nor close our eyes to the suffering that animals endure every day.The book is heavily annotated with quotes directing us to further reading and also with web sites on which to view videos. I chose not to view the videos as the some parts of this book's text were enough to make me cringe. I will definitely read more about this subject because I feel that I cannot be a part of the solution unless I more thoroughly understand the problem.I highly recommend this book to animal lovers everywhere as well as those who hope to make our world a kinder, gentler place for all living things. Karen Dawn supports a new, assertive kind of animal advocacy without the scare tactics used by fanatic animal activists. I feel this kind of advocacy will have a much better result in gaining positive public opinion.

[bengan_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a book that everybody should read. Karen Down discusses pets, furs and a lot of other topics. The cruelty with which we treat the animals is unbelievable. The 386 pages are too much to immediately comprehend so my recommendation is to read one chapter a day. But do read it! Even if this book does not turn you into a vegetarian, it will enlighten you and make you react on the way we treat animals.As a Swede, I do hope that animals are treated better in Sweden, but I am not sure about that.