Animal rights and wrongs

I can still remember the day my then-3-year-old son, Lucas, hit one of his playmates. Instinctively I slapped him gently on his bottom and told him to stop.

The father of the other boy turned immediately to me and said, “Do you really think the best way to teach Lucas that it’s wrong to hit someone is for you to hit him?”

My friend was right. I never hit Lucas again.

That was 12 years ago. But I was reminded of the incident this month when I read about five recent vandalism attacks at local McDonald’s.

Although police have made no arrests, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) -- an underground group that is on the U.S. Department of Justice list of domestic terrorist organizations -- has claimed credit on its website for at least two of the attacks. Not that there was much doubt who was responsible. The vandals not only broke windows but spray-painted walls and windows with such messages as “ALF,” “McMurder Killers,” “Don’t feed your kids McKillers” and “We won’t sleep until the slaughter ends.”

These radical animal rights activists are so convinced of the righteousness of their cause that they vandalize restaurants, threaten chefs, farmers and scientists and steal live animals to achieve their aims.

Huh?

Just as I didn’t think I could teach my son not to hit others if I hit him, so I don’t think anyone can teach people to treat animals humanely if they behave inhumanely toward others.

“McDonald’s spends $2 billion a year on advertising ... we have to get our information out in other ways, and these attacks get a lot of press coverage,” says Dr. Jerry Vlasak, spokesman for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, a separate organization from the ALF, one that publicizes and supports but doesn’t participate in ALF activities.

Why target McDonald’s? “It’s using more animals than any other chain of restaurants in the world,” Vlasak says.

Their strategy, says one ALF-affiliated website, is to cause “financial loss to animal exploiters, usually through the damage and destruction of property.” That behavior is justified, they say, because they don’t physically harm human beings and because property, unlike an animal, feels no pain.

But the humans who own the property can certainly feel pain -- the pain of losing their livelihood and fearing for the safety of their families.

Just look at what animal rights radicals did last year in the Great Foie Gras Wars.

They spray-painted the home of a San Francisco chef known for his various foie gras preparations. They also splashed his car with acid, sealed his garage door with glue, painted “foie gras is animal torture” and “stop or be stopped” on the doors and windows at his partner’s home and went to the gourmet shop and restaurant that the two men planned to open and poured cement in the sinks, spray-painted the walls and flooded the shop (and two adjacent businesses) by turning all the water taps on.

Animal rights activists also “liberated” -- i.e., stole -- 15 ducks at Guillermo Gonzales’ Sonoma Foie Gras farm.

The anti-foie gras terrorists argue that force-feeding ducks to make their livers grow to eight or 10 times normal size amounts to torture.

With the help of such renowned scholars of veterinary science as Kim Basinger, Martin Sheen and Paul McCartney, these broccoli-crazed activists persuaded the California State Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenducker to enact a law last year outlawing the production of foie gras, beginning in 2012.

As a longtime supporter of such causes as the civil rights and women’s rights movements, I fully support the right of peaceful protest. And, yes, McDonald’s is a big, wealthy corporation, a symbol of America’s global cultural imperialism, a major contributor to the growing obesity of American children and a purveyor of truly terrible hamburgers.

But there’s a way to protest any or all of this. Don’t eat at McDonald’s. I don’t. Or, if you want, march, picket and write letters. Present your case forcefully -- but peacefully and responsibly.

Vandalism and violence are wrong, no matter how noble the cause -- whether it’s ending war or saving animals. Stealing, defacing property and posting people’s names, addresses and photos on websites alongside images of targets, bullet holes and rifle ammunition are just wrong.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the oldest and largest of the animal rights organizations, thinks it can best achieve its objectives without vandalism or violence.

“That isn’t a strategy we use,” says Lisa Lange, PETA’s vice president for communications, in the organization’s new L.A. office. “We do street theater, things that get a lot of public attention, like our campaign, ‘I’d rather go naked than wear fur’ and our graphic advertisements, like the one that showed a decapitated cow’s head and said, ‘You want fries with that?’ ”

PETA won’t “put ourselves in the position of condemning or condoning” the ALF, Lange says. “We can only answer for our own actions.... But I don’t lose any sleep if I hear of any animals liberated from cruel situations.”

I’ve heard all the arguments about the pain that animals allegedly endure to give me a good dinner. But I side with those who say that when properly done -- as it is at Sonoma Foie Gras, for example -- ducks do not appear to suffer pain in the two to four seconds that it takes to feed them the fresh corn or cornmeal required to enlarge their livers.

But I have to be honest. I love foie gras and I would continue to eat it even if the ducks did suffer.

Temple Grandin, in her book “Animals in Translation,” argues fairly persuasively that many animals do feel pain. That’s why she’s worked so diligently for the humane treatment of animals. She consults with McDonald’s and with Bob Langert, the company’s senior director of social responsibility. As a result, PETA’s Lange says McDonald’s is actually “leading the way” in reforming the practices of fast-food suppliers, in the treatment and the killing of its beef and poultry.

Ironically, the most recent vandalism by animal rights activists comes at a time when there is a greater effort than ever to treat animals humanely and to kill them as painlessly as possible. Organizations like PETA can rightfully claim some credit for this consciousness-raising. These changes have not come about because of violence and vandalism, though. Chefs, farmers and others are not acting out of fear but out of conviction, and I applaud them for that.

I, too, would prefer that animals used for food be cared for humanely and be killed painlessly, and I try to patronize restaurants whose chefs use only animal products from purveyors who follow those practices. But it isn’t always possible to know how animals are treated or killed. Moreover, I continue to believe that there’s a big difference between a pet (an animal that’s raised to be loved and cared for and that I would never want to see hurt) and livestock (raised to be killed and eaten).

So I’ll continue to eat animal and seafood products, no matter how they’re killed.

The last time I wrote this, I was buried under an avalanche of angry e-mail and received several phone calls that likened me to Hitler. I was appalled by that comparison. After all, not only am I Jewish but unlike Hitler, I’m not a vegetarian.

Still, I suspect I’ll have to endure more such abuse this week. Maybe I’ll save the e-mails and read them over lunch ... between bites of foie gras. Or a burger. But not at McDonald’s.

David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com.