The HumaneWatch Book Review: “Animal Rights: History and Scope”

The animal rights movement is decades old in the United States. But most people know next to nothing about its origins and recent history. That’s certainly true about HSUS. (How many of us were adults in the 1950s?

We’ve already brought to light certain key episodes from HSUS’s past. In the late 1980s, a massive financial scandal involving then-president John Hoyt and then-treasurer Paul Irwin created deep divisions in HSUS’s board. And early in HSUS’s history, it had a policy of sharing fundraising proceeds with hands-on pet shelters in many states. The shelters got the lion’s share—60 percent—of the money. Today their share of HSUS’s loot is typically about 1 percent.

If you’re looking for a good primer on HSUS and the other power-players in the animal rights movement, we recommend reading a volume called Animals Rights: History and Scope of a Radical Social Movement, by Dr. Harold D. Guither. (You can find limited excerpts in the Questia and Google Books archives.) At the time of his book’s publication, Guither was a Professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of Illinois.

“I don’t have a hands-on fondness for animals.”

Over the years, we've heard many people—including dog breeders, ranchers, dairymen, and the occasional veterinarian—claim that HSUS top dog Wayne Pacelle once denied he had any sort of "hands-on" fondness for animals. We've always filed this under the "rumor" category because we couldn't substantiate a quotation from Pacelle that came anywhere near that.

Until now.

For research geeks like us, the Amazon.com "Search Inside" feature is nothing short of a miracle. With just a few carefully chosen search terms, the elusive quote popped right out.

It turns out that in 1992, Pacelle spent some time hanging out with Ted Kerasote, a nature writer who made his name penning articles for Audubon, Outside, and Sports Afield magazines. Their discussions became a short episode in Kerasote's book Bloodties: Nature, Culture, and the Hunt.

Kerasote writes that the then-26-year-old Pacelle told him: "I don't have a hands-on fondness for animals. I did not grow up bonded to any particular nonhuman animal. I like them and I pet them and I'm kind to them, but there's no special bond between me and other animals."

We're reproducing a handful of pages from this book so you can see the quotations in their proper context. (Quotations? Plural? Yes. There's more.)

Rats, Pigs, and Dogs: Oh Boy!

When Wesley J. Smith first told us he was thinking of writing a book about the animal rights movement, our initial reaction was one of very cautious optimism. He already knew a great deal about animal-rights activists’ attacks on biomedical researchers (see the excellent sixth chapter of Wesley's 2002 Culture of Death for a primer that taught us a great deal). But we were concerned that the rest of the animal rights world (pets, food, fiber, entertainment, and such) might pose too broad a subject for any one writer to cover adequately.

Happily, our worries were misplaced. A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy is a winner. (We hope he doesn’t have to pay Ingrid Newkirk a royalty for that book title.) It's meticulously footnoted, full of thoughtfully told stories, and uncompromising in defense of the premise that the “boy” in its title is exceptional—that is, unlike those other three species in the ways that matter most. This book also makes a compelling case—the best we have read anywhere— for the idea that "animal rights" is a system of ideological belief as rigid (and vulnerable to unreasoning abuse) as any religion.

Since this blog is principly concerned with the Humane Society of the United States, we’ll share (with his permission) some of what Wesley writes about that organization; but know that A Rat Is a Pig is a near-encyclopedic examination of the 95 percent or so of the animal rights movement industry that Americans encounter on a regular basis. It’s a must-own volume for farmers, ranchers, dairymen, chefs, sportsmen, pet breeders, reptile hobbyists, biomedical researchers, college students, and well-meaning donors to all kinds of animal charities.