This is a response to the recently posted classic column from 5 Feb, 1993, “How much do the animals used for fur coats suffer?”
A few years ago, when I lived in rural New Mexico, I had a friend who trapped to supplement his income. I never went with him to tend his trap lines, but his descriptions of the animals certainly lends credence to the theory that some, if not most, suffer.
He used leg traps, and they are what you’d think: powerful and painful. He often found animals alive, and carried a pistol to kill them if they were. The traps are strong enough to break bones, and commonly do. His traps were set during the winter, not the summer, and he checked his traps weekly, not daily, since it took a day to showshoe through the forest and check the entire line. Many of the animals were dead when he found them. In most cases, he didn’t know the exact cause of death (Yeah, yeah, I know: they died because they had a clamp chopping their leg in two. But they probably didn’t die from that - they probably died from bleeding, freezing, starvation, thirst, or something else). It seems safe to say that death in a trap is particularly unpleasant. He didn’t poison his bait, so they didn’t die from poison.
I suspect that he wasn’t too different from most trappers. He needed the income, and trapping was a way to make some money.
I learned about all this one day during the fall when I mentioned that I had seen a family of foxes in a canyon near my house. He asked where, and during the ensuing conversation I realized that he would probably visit that canyon the following winter.
{{I learned about all this one day during the fall when I mentioned that I had seen a family of foxes in a canyon near my house. He asked where, and during the ensuing conversation I realized that he would probably visit that canyon the following winter. }}
Really, nothing personal intended, but … you idiot!
Before you go calling me an idiot, read what I wrote (and what you copied). The conversation ensued. It’s a small word, contained in most dictionaries.
Of course, that presupposes that there IS a god, doesn’t it?
And even for those of us who do believe in God, it is still a valid question to ask whether “dominion” gives us free rein to impose painful death or squalid living conditions on animals.
“Why so glibly assume that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly conceivable He may have finished it then turned it over to lesser gods to operate.” ~H.L. Menken~
(Cecil…?)
On the line about man having “dominion over animals” occurs in Genesis 1:26. A few lines further, Genesis 1:29, says that people may eat “allherbage yielding seed that is on the surface of the earth, and every tree that has seed-yielding fruit.” So “dominion” does not include the power to kill animals for food. The ability to kill animals for food is not given until after Noah (Gen 9:3) and then is carefully restricted (not to eat blood.)
Further, the Bible is full of comments (laws, to Jews) about kindness to animals. These include, off the top of my head,
Not to muzzle an animal that is being used to grind grain, since it would be cruel to have all that food around it and not let it eat
Not to kill an infant animal within sight of its mother
Quoting the Bible in a single-line context is usually quite distorting of what the text actually says.
