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Animals in Society : Facts and Perspectives on Our Treatment of Animals
Animals in Facts and Perspectives on Our Treatment of Animals [Paperback] [Jan 01, 1991] Weil, Zoe �
- GenresNonfiction
Paperback
Published January 1, 1709
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About the author
Zoe Weil
12Ìýbooks63ÌýfollowersZoe Weil is the co-founder and president of the Institute for Humane Education (IHE), where she created the first graduate programs (M.Ed., M.A., Ed.D., Graduate Certificate) in comprehensive Humane Education linking human rights, environmental sustainability, and animal protection, offered online through an affiliation with Antioch University.
Zoe is a frequent keynote speaker and has given six TEDx talks including her acclaimed TEDx, The World Becomes What You Teach. She is the author of seven books including "The Solutionary Way: Transform Your Life, Your Community and the World for the Better;" #1 Amazon best seller in the Philosophy and Social Aspects of Education, "The World Becomes What We Teach: Educating a Generation of Solutionaries;" Nautilus silver medal winner "Most Good, Least Harm;" Moonbeam gold medal winner "Claude and Medea;" and "Above All, Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times."
Zoe is the 2023 recipient of the Spirit of America award and was named one of Maine Magazine’s 50 independent leaders transforming their communities and the state. She is the recipient of the Unity College Women in Environmental Leadership award, a subject of the Americans Who Tell the Truth portrait series, and was inducted into the Animal Rights hall of fame.
Zoe holds master’s degrees from Harvard Divinity School and the University of Pennsylvania and was awarded an honorary doctorate from Valparaiso University.
Zoe is a frequent keynote speaker and has given six TEDx talks including her acclaimed TEDx, The World Becomes What You Teach. She is the author of seven books including "The Solutionary Way: Transform Your Life, Your Community and the World for the Better;" #1 Amazon best seller in the Philosophy and Social Aspects of Education, "The World Becomes What We Teach: Educating a Generation of Solutionaries;" Nautilus silver medal winner "Most Good, Least Harm;" Moonbeam gold medal winner "Claude and Medea;" and "Above All, Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times."
Zoe is the 2023 recipient of the Spirit of America award and was named one of Maine Magazine’s 50 independent leaders transforming their communities and the state. She is the recipient of the Unity College Women in Environmental Leadership award, a subject of the Americans Who Tell the Truth portrait series, and was inducted into the Animal Rights hall of fame.
Zoe holds master’s degrees from Harvard Divinity School and the University of Pennsylvania and was awarded an honorary doctorate from Valparaiso University.
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October 30, 2012
Animals in Society offers a concise and informational depiction of the animal advocacy movement of twenty years ago. Designed as a primer for high school- aged students, it’s doubtful many of today’s teens will give it much of a second glance, unless they’re already strongly interested in animal rights issues. The layout of the book is very dated looking and illustrated with black and white stock photos. The book’s jacket design makes it appear even older than it is—the blurry photograph and rounded typeface make it appear more 1970s-era than 1990s.
Weil is first and foremost a humane educator, so she begins her book with a challenge to students to think about their own values regarding animal life, and how these beliefs may have developed. She uses the classic “some we eat/some we love� question:
Hindus revere cows, so cows in India are protected from slaughter and consumption. Americans are especially fond of their pets, so dogs and cats are protected from slaughter and human consumption.
Interestingly, at the same time I was reading this book I was at work reviewing some essays written by schoolchildren participating in a writing contest. One little boy wrote a very detailed description of shooting and killing a deer for the first time. It struck me that if a child had written the same story about shooting a stray cat, lining up her “vitals� in his crosshairs, he would no doubt be in counseling, rather than in the running to win an award.
Those not reading this book in a historical context should know that not all of the facts and figures presented are accurate. For example, the author states that some shelters still use gassing and decompression chambers to destroy unwanted pets. While a few regions of the US still had (and have) shelters that use gassing, by 1985—long before this book was printed--decompression had been from use anywhere within the United States.
About the military working dogs used in the Vietnam War, the author writes:
Public outcry finally forced the Department of Defense to bring the [Vietnam War] dogs back to the US, but the initial plan to abandon the dogs in Vietnam spoke clearly about the worth of the animals.
A youngster might logically conclude from this that all dogs not killed in combat were brought home after the war. In reality, only a handful of the dogs used made it back to the US shore; the rest were either euthanized in Vietnam or with the South Vietnamese as surplus “equipment.�
It is interesting that Animals and Society shows that as early as 1991, the pit bull terrier breeding and ownership lobby’s arguments were beginning to make an impact on animal advocates� statements. The author writes of fighting dogs:
Dogs are not naturally vicious. Fear, intimidation, and physical punishment are part of the process of creating a vicious animal. Certain breeding practices help to increase those traits which will provide for a more aggressive fight. Pitbull terriers have been bred for centuries to be more aggressive towards other dogs than most breeds and to have larger, more powerful jaws. � Although pitbulls are not born vicious, they may be more readily trained for the fight than other dogs. A vicious pitbull is the work of a cruel “master,� not the work of nature.
It is truly impressive that an animal advocate can acknowledge that “pitbull terriers have been bred for centuries to be more aggressive towards other dogs than most breeds and to have larger, more powerful jaws� and turn around a few lines later and claim that “a vicious pitbull is the work of a cruel “master,� not the work of nature.� Pit bulls are indeed not creations of nature but rather of adherents to dogfighting and other cruel blood sports. The idea that one can love the fight out of a fighting breed is as wrongheaded as saying one can love the herding out of the border collie or the bay out of the beagle.
Is dog breeding PR the proper use of animal activists� time? As a recent put it:
Animal advocates who echo the anti-breeding ban rhetoric of pit bull breeders should ask themselves why any authentic animal advocate would want to preserve the legacy of people who, over thousands of years, deliberately bred dogs to kill each other and other animals in sadistic spectacles.
The short answer is that dogfighters and pit bull breeders have infiltrated, hijacked, and co-opted animal advocacy to the extent that much of the humane community has unwittingly come to amplify dogfighting lingo. � Dogfighters and pit bull breeders do not have to make such claims for themselves today, because the humane community does the job for them.
In step with movement priorities until up about ten years ago, factory farming isn’t addressed until chapter 8. At the time of this book’s writing, the author notes that 5 billion farmed animals were slaughtered each year for food. Today it is 9 billion. The sheer number of animals involved as well as the extreme deprivations they suffer has made me glad that our movement has gotten its priorities straight. I’m also glad that vegan dining options are much more appealing these days. Animals and Society contains a photograph of ancient vegetarian cookbooks which look as if they were stapled together by volunteers at a commune. Not too many modern teens are going to get on board with that.
It should also be noted that the author confuses the use of pig with that of and identifies a photo of a row of gestation crates as farrowing stalls.
The conclusion of the book contains several appendices, such as contact information for pro- and anti- animal protection organizations. Needless to say, some contact information is no longer correct, and website URLs of course are not present. In another piece, the author wisely talks about the dangers of giving pets away but buys into the “satanic panic� hype of the era by insisting that fraudulent responders to such ads are usually occultists looking for animal sacrifice victims. In reality, the occurrence of animal sacrifice cults, particularly ones who prey upon dogs and cats, is very low in the US. Individuals answering “free to a good home� ads for nefarious purposes are far more likely to be either individual sadists working alone, or dogfighters seeking “bait� animals.
Weil is first and foremost a humane educator, so she begins her book with a challenge to students to think about their own values regarding animal life, and how these beliefs may have developed. She uses the classic “some we eat/some we love� question:
Hindus revere cows, so cows in India are protected from slaughter and consumption. Americans are especially fond of their pets, so dogs and cats are protected from slaughter and human consumption.
Interestingly, at the same time I was reading this book I was at work reviewing some essays written by schoolchildren participating in a writing contest. One little boy wrote a very detailed description of shooting and killing a deer for the first time. It struck me that if a child had written the same story about shooting a stray cat, lining up her “vitals� in his crosshairs, he would no doubt be in counseling, rather than in the running to win an award.
Those not reading this book in a historical context should know that not all of the facts and figures presented are accurate. For example, the author states that some shelters still use gassing and decompression chambers to destroy unwanted pets. While a few regions of the US still had (and have) shelters that use gassing, by 1985—long before this book was printed--decompression had been from use anywhere within the United States.
About the military working dogs used in the Vietnam War, the author writes:
Public outcry finally forced the Department of Defense to bring the [Vietnam War] dogs back to the US, but the initial plan to abandon the dogs in Vietnam spoke clearly about the worth of the animals.
A youngster might logically conclude from this that all dogs not killed in combat were brought home after the war. In reality, only a handful of the dogs used made it back to the US shore; the rest were either euthanized in Vietnam or with the South Vietnamese as surplus “equipment.�
It is interesting that Animals and Society shows that as early as 1991, the pit bull terrier breeding and ownership lobby’s arguments were beginning to make an impact on animal advocates� statements. The author writes of fighting dogs:
Dogs are not naturally vicious. Fear, intimidation, and physical punishment are part of the process of creating a vicious animal. Certain breeding practices help to increase those traits which will provide for a more aggressive fight. Pitbull terriers have been bred for centuries to be more aggressive towards other dogs than most breeds and to have larger, more powerful jaws. � Although pitbulls are not born vicious, they may be more readily trained for the fight than other dogs. A vicious pitbull is the work of a cruel “master,� not the work of nature.
It is truly impressive that an animal advocate can acknowledge that “pitbull terriers have been bred for centuries to be more aggressive towards other dogs than most breeds and to have larger, more powerful jaws� and turn around a few lines later and claim that “a vicious pitbull is the work of a cruel “master,� not the work of nature.� Pit bulls are indeed not creations of nature but rather of adherents to dogfighting and other cruel blood sports. The idea that one can love the fight out of a fighting breed is as wrongheaded as saying one can love the herding out of the border collie or the bay out of the beagle.
Is dog breeding PR the proper use of animal activists� time? As a recent put it:
Animal advocates who echo the anti-breeding ban rhetoric of pit bull breeders should ask themselves why any authentic animal advocate would want to preserve the legacy of people who, over thousands of years, deliberately bred dogs to kill each other and other animals in sadistic spectacles.
The short answer is that dogfighters and pit bull breeders have infiltrated, hijacked, and co-opted animal advocacy to the extent that much of the humane community has unwittingly come to amplify dogfighting lingo. � Dogfighters and pit bull breeders do not have to make such claims for themselves today, because the humane community does the job for them.
In step with movement priorities until up about ten years ago, factory farming isn’t addressed until chapter 8. At the time of this book’s writing, the author notes that 5 billion farmed animals were slaughtered each year for food. Today it is 9 billion. The sheer number of animals involved as well as the extreme deprivations they suffer has made me glad that our movement has gotten its priorities straight. I’m also glad that vegan dining options are much more appealing these days. Animals and Society contains a photograph of ancient vegetarian cookbooks which look as if they were stapled together by volunteers at a commune. Not too many modern teens are going to get on board with that.
It should also be noted that the author confuses the use of pig with that of and identifies a photo of a row of gestation crates as farrowing stalls.
The conclusion of the book contains several appendices, such as contact information for pro- and anti- animal protection organizations. Needless to say, some contact information is no longer correct, and website URLs of course are not present. In another piece, the author wisely talks about the dangers of giving pets away but buys into the “satanic panic� hype of the era by insisting that fraudulent responders to such ads are usually occultists looking for animal sacrifice victims. In reality, the occurrence of animal sacrifice cults, particularly ones who prey upon dogs and cats, is very low in the US. Individuals answering “free to a good home� ads for nefarious purposes are far more likely to be either individual sadists working alone, or dogfighters seeking “bait� animals.
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