Chickens Are Human Too - Or Almost

Letters to the editor

As published in the Financial Post, Monday, June 27, 2005

What Mr. Foster is doing writing about the philosophy of our relationship to animals in the financial section is quite puzzling. But maybe that in itself provides a clue to the amazing arrogance, and ignorance, with which he writes.

Foster claims "we can be pretty sure that it [a chicken] has no natural desires" and that animals "have no 'idea' what they are doing." But it's not his fault for having such a limited view on the world - he was invariably taught that all his life, like so many of us are.

The reason we are taught to think that animals are so beneath and separate from us is to strengthen the divide between humans and the rest of the world and all its inhabitants. That divide serves to keep the guilt at bay for the abhorrent way we treat other living beings every single day. The truth hurts.

Instead of pushing down our guilt, why not alleviate it by not eating animals, and by extending compassion and kindness to those with whom we share the Earth? Everyone, human and animal alike, deserves that much, regardless if we understand each other.

Marianne Verigin, president, Society for Animal Freedom and Equality (SAFE), Burnaby, B.C.