People Too Need Love

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has wisely abandoned the idea of saving $14 million a year by giving stray animals three days instead of six in public shelters before they are euthanized. But what a fuss! The size of the reaction to the dog-pound snafu invites thoughts about other social priorities.

We live in a time when some lucky dogs get their canines straightened by doggie orthodontists, but many children go without dental exams. People are only human, of course, and so it is forgivable to value one’s own pet (or “animal companion”) more than some anonymous stranger. But it remains unsettling to see people pay thousands of dollars for holistic veterinary treatments to ease the last months of a terminally ill pet while wallets snap shut for human hospices.

Then there’s the legislative time spent on foie gras. The author of a proposed ban on forced feeding of ducks agreed to amend his bill to allow 7 1/2 years before the ban would take effect. That would give the owner of the only California farm producing the fatty gourmet livers a chance to retool, a chance that duck farmer Guillermo Gonzalez welcomes. Animal rights activists, though, can’t stand the idea that ducks will undergo tube feeding for years more, prompting continued wrangling. The bill returns to the Assembly floor in August.

At another level altogether are the animal rights radicals who stole ducks from Gonzalez’s farm and vandalized his restaurant. Or the protesters who spray-painted the Monrovia home of Mitchell Lardner and terrorized his family. Lardner works for a company that might have ties to another company that allegedly conducts research on animals. Under this kind of definition, we’re practically all animal abusers.

Some of the blame for this kind of anti- humanism can be laid at the door of Edward Abbey, impish radical author of 1975’s “The Monkey Wrench Gang.” He might be called the father of the idea that humans, the despoilers of the planet, deserve no more sympathy than toads. Abbey begot the militant Earth First! movement and by extension the kind of activists who now harass Lardner’s family.

Gonzalez theorizes that urban dwellers have gotten so far from the farm that they anthropomorphize every cow. Maybe so, but that argument works both ways; the devourers of chicken nuggets might think twice if they saw the living -- and dying -- conditions of poultry. It’s admirable for people to fight inhumane treatment of animals. But the line must be drawn when they do it by being inhumane to humans.