After reading the first eight chapters of Environment and Society I feel that it is difficult to pick just one chapter and further discuss the way I feel about it. The information presented in all the chapters was very intriguing and presented in an easy to understand way, and to me I felt that any one aspect the authors talked about could be applied directly to my life or at least applied to the way I feel about a particular subject or issue. The one chapter that I felt I related to more than the others or at least the one that fired me up the most was the one on Environmental Ethics in particular the discussion on “animal liberation”.
First off let me give you my opinion on animal rights. Without going into a huge debate on what animal rights are I should make it known that I think the concept loses focus of how humans should be responsible for their relationships with animals. A better way to and a more logical approach to problems with the way we view animals is thinking of it as animal respect rather than rights. Animals deserve respect from humans, and if all humans respected animals for the things they give us then maybe animal rights activists wouldn’t be around. Animal rights came into being because of some person or group of people mistreating animals in settings like factory farms or an individual hunting species to extinction, or someone running a puppy mill in their backyard. A lot of the time on small aspect of something doing the wrong thing makes the whole look bad.
factory pig farming
Using the example of Factory Farms in the book, the authors point out how this type of system to raise animals is bad and I think if anyone went to a factory farm and saw how the animals lived they would agree that it is not good for the animals. Does this mean that all pigs that are raised by people have bad lives? Or that keeping animals is in fact bad? I live on a small family farm and we have at the moment 4 pigs and they are very content they have plenty of room to run around and they have good lives, and when they are old enough to be bred they will be bred and also when they are ready to be taken to market they will be taken to market and killed and we will eat them. Another thing is the particular breed of pig that we have, Tamworth’s, were at one point close to being endangered, in fact a recent article I read said that only about 2000 animals exist today with only about 300 breeding females registered. In this without the care of this breed by humans in particular people more concerned about the preservation of a heritage breed species would be gone today. Furthermore We also have draft horses that we use to work with, they haul their own manure and do other things like plow and rake hay. some people would say that’s animal cruelty to make an animal work. Well first off it’s a lot better for the environment to use animal power, they don’t consume petroleum-based products and the emissions they release are far more natural than the emissions from a tractor or car, and the way we look at it at my house is they are earning their keep by working. and all the horses we have seem content in life they get as much hay and grass as they can eat and get groomed and have a roof over their heads, which I would think is a lot nicer than scrounging around in in nature to fend on their own. They are also a breed that was on the brink of extinction at one point in history and again without the interference by humans Shire draft horses would be lost.
Two species of farm animals that were close to being endangered the Shire horse and Tamworth pig
Hunting is also something that gets a bad rap and a lot of the time is considered ethically “wrong”. I hunt when I have a chance and my family has been hunting for generations. Hunting to me is enjoyable and the harvesting of animals is an important aspect of maintaining a balance of animals in the wild. Hunters as a group actually in my opinion do more to preserve and conserve nature more than a lot of organizations that are very voiced about conservation. Just think about it is a hunter going to support legislation that would promote the damming of a river for hydroelectricity, if that dam is going to destroy prime hunting lands, or if it means that fish species in the area are going to be affected. They are going to grab their guns and march to Washington DC to stop the dam from being built. Another thing is that hunters are in some cases important for keeping certain species under control. In Ohio there has been problems with the deer population and if it wasn’t for the hunting season for deer there would be a real problem. Some areas have started to experience problems with deer getting diseases because there are too many. The rise in deer population is due to deer not having any real predators, although Ohio has seen an increase in coyotes, but for Ohio the only main predator for deer is humans. Coyotes as just mentioned are becoming a problem in the state as well, they not only cause problems in the wild with decimation of other animals but they cause problems in the city, and Delaware is no exception, with many a cat lost to the very adaptable coyote, which an article I read somewhere stated that “once they become established its impossible to get rid of them”. The thing is that fur prices are extremely low and the incentive to trap them or kill them and other fur bearers is almost pointless, so fur bearers in general are on the rise and especially by me there is an overpopulation of not only coyotes but also raccoons. it seems like everyday another raccoon is dead on the road, and recently I have been seeing raccoons that are sickly.
I guess the point of all this discussion is that humans and animals have a relationship and that humans use animals and actually preserve animal species and prevent the destruction of habitats through practices such as hunting and raising animals for food. It all boils down to how each of these things is carried out and that as humans we respect animals. Things like hunting actually preserve nature and keep places and things from being exploited, For instance Teddy Roosevelt was a very avid hunter and killed many animals, but his love for hunting and the outdoors led to him instituting the national parks in this country and other environmentally conscious acts of legislation. Furthermore small farms produce food from animals in ways that are good for the animal and are far from the terrible conditions factory farms use to produce animal products. All in all I feel that animals are to be used in the same way any other resource should be used and that is using it with out exploiting it or its surroundings.
