Beasts of the air, land and water have served humans as prey, commodity, cheap labor and close companions. We may now be redefining all of those relationships in more compassionate ways.
Overlooked on November 4 in the excitement around the American presidential election was a vote in California to dramatically expand legal protections for farm animals. The referendum, approved by nearly two-thirds of voters, requires that by 2015 all farms in the state provide room for their livestock to stand up, lie down, turn around and fully extend their limbs. Those restrictions would ban the veal crates used to hold calves and pigs, and the small cages in which hens are crammed together.
Corporate farms fiercely resisted the measure, but Wayne Pacelle, the president of the Humane Society of the United States, said he hoped its passage would inspire future cooperation. “Producers don’t want to spend this kind of money fighting us every time we come into a state,” he told Maggie Jones of The New York Times Magazine. “Wouldn’t they rather negotiate and spend that money re-engineering their facilities and getting that much ahead of the game?”
In Europe, where such practices are already mostly banned, the move toward fuller animal protections is under way. The Spanish Parliament last summer passed a bill recognizing limited legal rights for the great apes - humans’ closest biological relatives.
But granting rights to animals could have unexpected consequences, as India can attest. The Hindu reverence of cows protects them from slaughter, but not from traffic. For the past six years, under court order, New Delhi has had to pay urban wranglers to clear steers off its crowded streets. The city’s 165 “cow catchers” rope them for transport to official sanctuaries. It is dangerous work.
“The key is, once you have the horn in your hand, try hard not to let go,” one cow catcher, Brajveer Singh, told Jeremy Kahn of The Times.
India’s cows have nothing on the domestic pets of the United States, which have long enjoyed the comforts of modern life. The hotel and real estate mogul Leona Helmsley famously left $12 million to her dog when she died . But even less affluent owners are making extra efforts . As Bonnie Rothman Morris reported in The Times, some equip their automobiles with specially designed seatbelts and safety harnesses. It is important, however, to allow for the specifics of each breed. “Wiener dogs should not be in a harness,” Christina Selter, an animal-safety advocate, said of dachshunds. “If he falls off the seat, it will snap his back.”
Of course, some things in humananimal relations are timeless - like the allure of puppies. President-elect Barack Obama scored a public-relations triumph in his Election Day speech by promising his daughters a new dog for their move to the White House. The prospective pup was the subject of intense interest at his first post-election news conference, and Mr. Obama responded in kind, wryly calling it “a pressing issue on the Obama household.”
But if animals tell us anything about their masters, America’s pending dogowner- in-chief might do well to ponder the companion of a global leader he will be dealing with soon. For a recent birthday, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia received a tiger cub.