October 26, 2016
The Humane Economy
And Building Momentum for Animal Protection
Wayne Pacelle
President, and CEO, Humane Society of the United States
The Humane Economy
And Building Momentum for Animal Protection
Wayne Pacelle
President, and CEO, Humane Society of the United States
Scott McVay, Introducer and Wayne Pacelle, Speaker
Minutes of the Seventh Meeting of the 75th Year
On Oct. 26, 2016, President Jock McFarland gaveled open the seventh meeting of the 75th year of the Old Guard of Princeton at 10:15 am. Sixty-eight members were present.
Four guests were welcomed. Al Kaemmerlen introduced his wife, Mea. Scott McVay introduced Sheila Geisler, Patrick McDonald, author of the cartoon “Mutts,” who will be speaking at a December meeting, and his wife, Karen. The minutes of the prior meeting were read with wit and verve by John Kelsey.
McVay introduced the speaker, Wayne Pacelle, president and chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States and the author of “The Humane Economy,” which received an 11-page commentary in The New York Review of Books last May by Peter Singer, a philosophy professor at Princeton and the author of “Animal Liberation,” a transformational 1975 book that was a compendium of how we cause suffering in animals through factory farming, research, entertainment and hunting. The lead blurb for Wayne’s book is by Jane Goodall.
Mr. Pacelle spoke with a PowerPoint of 48 slides on “The Humane Economy,” noting trends in providing dogs for prisons, to the military serving overseas, the 171 million dogs and cats in homes in this country and the $60 billion industry they generate. Animals are used in rituals of atonement. We are a social species – the worst punishment we can inflict among ourselves is solitary confinement. Part of the human story from the beginning is that we are hard-wired to appreciate beauty whether it is in the wonders of nature -- shown in three million visitors annually to Yellowstone to see the bears -- or the devotion to a dog or a cat, a tonic to our soul.
Our national park system contains half of the two billion acres controlled by government and this year is marking its centennial anniversary. Frederick Law Olmsted created a vast Central Park in our most populous city, New York, which offers refuge to workers at day’s end as well as over 500 species of birds. We crave to see and be with animals in nature. Among recent books was “Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?” by Frans de Waal. With our unwitting battering of this planet and the destruction of habitat and species, we have become de facto responsible for all other forms of life. The suffering is a result of our behavior with some nine million creatures raised in tight confinement for our consumption each year. We must strive to be merciful and decent in our treatment.
We used to be the lead whaling country in the world. Today under United States and Australian leadership we are still striving to curb the reckless unchecked slaughter, mainly by Japan. The returns from whale watching have topped those from whale killing for decades. But our technology has a life of its own, and the Japanese argue for “scientific whaling” or the slaughter of porpoises as a “cultural” phenomenon. Elephants are “worth” 76 times more alive than dead.
PetSmart and Petco have stopped being puppy mills and are now adoption centers for abandoned dogs and cats in addition to selling pet food and supplies. Encouragingly, the number of euthanized pets is down to 2.5 million annually from 15 million.
After 145 years, The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus will no longer use elephants in its acts. Trainers have used the bell hook to cause fear and terror in elephants, and the public will no longer abide such cruelty. Cirque du Soleil is a compelling circus with acrobats, not animals.
SeaWorld has agreed not to breed Orca the Killer whale, so called, in captivity. (As William Schevill put it, the tanks are so small it is as if they were in a telephone booth getting all wrong numbers.)
The cosmetics industry has used the Draize test on rabbits to try out often toxic ingredients for cosmetics, thereby hurting and often blinding the animals. That will now cease since 30 companies have agreed this week in Taiwan to have only “cruelty-free cosmetics.”
People everywhere have had it with trophy hunting. Cecil, the alpha lion in all Africa, was shot by that Minnesota dentist. (Hella and I followed him for three days in Zimbabwe. What an unspeakable tragedy.) Thirty airlines have now agreed not to fly trophy animals. Botswana has more elephants than any other country and will now focus only on true ecotourism.
The widespread strategy of raising roosting hens puts each one in the space of two-thirds of a piece of typewriter paper. At one of the larger facilities in north central Iowa, there are 10 million laying hens – across a building the size of a football field, with eight layers of hens on top of each other.
Hogs are jammed in crates where they cannot turn for three years. They need to be crate-free and live and nest to exhibit natural behaviors.
McDonald’s uses two billion eggs a year. Mr. Pacelle approached Carl Icahn, a Princeton alumnus, Class of 1957, and asked if he would put him in touch with the chief executive. He did, and two weeks later McDonald’s said it would move to cage-free hens in the future.
Twenty-four other stores and chains have now made similar commitments. Only Publix was an outlier, and it has now come aboard after a video showed people jammed in an elevator that crashed. We each consume 260 eggs a year, and it is reassuring that in the near future the hens will not be abused by being trapped in so tiny a living space.
John Kelsey asked Mr. Pacelle: “Are you a vegetarian?” “Yes, a vegan for 32 years.”
Respectfully submitted,
Scott McVay
Four guests were welcomed. Al Kaemmerlen introduced his wife, Mea. Scott McVay introduced Sheila Geisler, Patrick McDonald, author of the cartoon “Mutts,” who will be speaking at a December meeting, and his wife, Karen. The minutes of the prior meeting were read with wit and verve by John Kelsey.
McVay introduced the speaker, Wayne Pacelle, president and chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States and the author of “The Humane Economy,” which received an 11-page commentary in The New York Review of Books last May by Peter Singer, a philosophy professor at Princeton and the author of “Animal Liberation,” a transformational 1975 book that was a compendium of how we cause suffering in animals through factory farming, research, entertainment and hunting. The lead blurb for Wayne’s book is by Jane Goodall.
Mr. Pacelle spoke with a PowerPoint of 48 slides on “The Humane Economy,” noting trends in providing dogs for prisons, to the military serving overseas, the 171 million dogs and cats in homes in this country and the $60 billion industry they generate. Animals are used in rituals of atonement. We are a social species – the worst punishment we can inflict among ourselves is solitary confinement. Part of the human story from the beginning is that we are hard-wired to appreciate beauty whether it is in the wonders of nature -- shown in three million visitors annually to Yellowstone to see the bears -- or the devotion to a dog or a cat, a tonic to our soul.
Our national park system contains half of the two billion acres controlled by government and this year is marking its centennial anniversary. Frederick Law Olmsted created a vast Central Park in our most populous city, New York, which offers refuge to workers at day’s end as well as over 500 species of birds. We crave to see and be with animals in nature. Among recent books was “Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?” by Frans de Waal. With our unwitting battering of this planet and the destruction of habitat and species, we have become de facto responsible for all other forms of life. The suffering is a result of our behavior with some nine million creatures raised in tight confinement for our consumption each year. We must strive to be merciful and decent in our treatment.
We used to be the lead whaling country in the world. Today under United States and Australian leadership we are still striving to curb the reckless unchecked slaughter, mainly by Japan. The returns from whale watching have topped those from whale killing for decades. But our technology has a life of its own, and the Japanese argue for “scientific whaling” or the slaughter of porpoises as a “cultural” phenomenon. Elephants are “worth” 76 times more alive than dead.
PetSmart and Petco have stopped being puppy mills and are now adoption centers for abandoned dogs and cats in addition to selling pet food and supplies. Encouragingly, the number of euthanized pets is down to 2.5 million annually from 15 million.
After 145 years, The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus will no longer use elephants in its acts. Trainers have used the bell hook to cause fear and terror in elephants, and the public will no longer abide such cruelty. Cirque du Soleil is a compelling circus with acrobats, not animals.
SeaWorld has agreed not to breed Orca the Killer whale, so called, in captivity. (As William Schevill put it, the tanks are so small it is as if they were in a telephone booth getting all wrong numbers.)
The cosmetics industry has used the Draize test on rabbits to try out often toxic ingredients for cosmetics, thereby hurting and often blinding the animals. That will now cease since 30 companies have agreed this week in Taiwan to have only “cruelty-free cosmetics.”
People everywhere have had it with trophy hunting. Cecil, the alpha lion in all Africa, was shot by that Minnesota dentist. (Hella and I followed him for three days in Zimbabwe. What an unspeakable tragedy.) Thirty airlines have now agreed not to fly trophy animals. Botswana has more elephants than any other country and will now focus only on true ecotourism.
The widespread strategy of raising roosting hens puts each one in the space of two-thirds of a piece of typewriter paper. At one of the larger facilities in north central Iowa, there are 10 million laying hens – across a building the size of a football field, with eight layers of hens on top of each other.
Hogs are jammed in crates where they cannot turn for three years. They need to be crate-free and live and nest to exhibit natural behaviors.
McDonald’s uses two billion eggs a year. Mr. Pacelle approached Carl Icahn, a Princeton alumnus, Class of 1957, and asked if he would put him in touch with the chief executive. He did, and two weeks later McDonald’s said it would move to cage-free hens in the future.
Twenty-four other stores and chains have now made similar commitments. Only Publix was an outlier, and it has now come aboard after a video showed people jammed in an elevator that crashed. We each consume 260 eggs a year, and it is reassuring that in the near future the hens will not be abused by being trapped in so tiny a living space.
John Kelsey asked Mr. Pacelle: “Are you a vegetarian?” “Yes, a vegan for 32 years.”
Respectfully submitted,
Scott McVay