Girlie
July 25th, 2006, 12:59 PM
From: RPA4all@aol.com
Sent: Monday, July 24, 2006 4:26 PM
Subject: University "Animal Science" Op-Ed Plus
[Please cross-post widely.]
Dear Members & Friends of Responsible Policies for Animals,
Below is a very brief op-ed article -- just published July 20th in Kaleo O Hawai'i (Voice of Hawai'i), the University of Hawai'i at Manao newspaper -- about the need to eliminate the teaching of “animal science” at our land-grant universities.
Please take a moment to read the article and e-mail the paper a brief letter at editorials@kaleo.org. Thank them for publishing the article, and explain why you agree "animal science" must go: humane treatment of animals, better human health and lower medical & insurance costs, getting a grip on pollution, resource waste, and global warming linked to the flesh, milk & egg industries -- whatever you can afford in your busy schedule. You may be more effective by being much briefer than the word limit given below from the paper's guidelines.
"All letters must be accompanied by the author's true name, e-mail address and daytime telephone number. Letters should address a single subject and should be no longer than 500 words. Letters of any length are subject to trimming and editing."
Thanks and congratulations to Tim Hopkins and Gloria Feldscher, whose letters were published in the University of Minnesota Daily in response to the recent RPA anti-"animal science" op-ed in that paper! Thanks to Cathy Goeggel of Animal Rights Hawai'i for co-authoring the U. Hawai'i op-ed!
Best wishes,
David Cantor
Executive Director
Responsible Policies for Animals
_____________________________________
http://www.kaleo.org/vnews/display.v/ART/2006/07/20/44bee68507568
Kaleo O Hawai’i (Voice of Hawai’i / University of Hawai’i at Manao)
No More Animal Science
Community Perspective
by David Cantor and Cathy Goeggel
July 20, 2006
The University of Hawai‘i should end its service to the flesh, milk and egg industries in the form of “animal science.” Animal science fails the most basic test: If this were proposed today, would we approve and fund it?
Animals’ sentience – their ability to experience pain and pleasure – entitles them to equal consideration of equal interests. They have a moral right, which we should make a legal right, not to be means to human ends. The basic argument for animal rights has been dismissed without consideration, screened out of schools and mass media and subjected to erudite-but-invalid nay-saying. But its never having been refuted should guide our educational institutions.
We do not dress, build, raise children or amuse ourselves as at the start of animal “domestication” 10,000 years ago. Why should we still hack up animals, control their reproduction and otherwise abuse them? It didn’t start for humane or nutritional reasons: Humane values as understood today and the empirical study of nutrition did not exist. And we are natural herbivores, not omnivores as many believe. Skeptical? “The Comparative Anatomy of Eating” by Milton R. Mills, M.D., is a quick read – just google it.
Thus, teaching people to breed, raise and slaughter animals miseducates, undermining the University of Hawai'i’s job.
In addition, animal science favors flesh, milk, egg and feed-crop industry profits over human needs. Scientists have long warned against fats in flesh and milk. Now animal protein, too, is implicated.
What a shame for everyone to keep paying exorbitant medical and insurance costs due to chronic illness linked to animal science and for the government to administer slaughter, animal-factory waste and other industry atrocities.
Nor are animal science students likely to learn that breeding and raising billions of animals and using them for food contributes significantly to global warming by dramatically increasing the abundance of methane and CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere. The people of Hawai‘i should be alarmed: Rising waters due to ice-sheet melting poses a particular threat to island residents.
And it would not exactly benefit animal science professionals to teach the highly relevant facts that growing feed crops wastes topsoil, fresh water and oil, making scarcities more likely; that cattle grazing turns fertile land to desert; that topsoil loss was a major factor in past civilizations’ declines; and that disputes over resources wasted by raising animals for food are producing violent conflict.
Mathematics, literature, philosophy, history and other traditional academic subjects do not come with problems so dire and so easily preventable as those linked to animal science.
Animal science is not the way forward for the human food supply or the University of Hawai‘i in the 21st century.
About the Writers
David Cantor directs Responsible Policies for Animals (RPA / www.RPAforAll.org), an educational nonprofit organization headquartered in Glenside, Pennsylvania. RPA’s 10,000 Years Is Enough campaign aims to end the teaching of “animal science.”
Cathy Goeggel directs Animal Rights Hawai‘i, headquartered in Honolulu. An animal advocate for the past 31 years, she has led campaigns against cruel snaring of animals, a taxpayer-funded slaughterhouse, pig gestation crates, chicken battery cages and other cruelty in the Islands.
Sent: Monday, July 24, 2006 4:26 PM
Subject: University "Animal Science" Op-Ed Plus
[Please cross-post widely.]
Dear Members & Friends of Responsible Policies for Animals,
Below is a very brief op-ed article -- just published July 20th in Kaleo O Hawai'i (Voice of Hawai'i), the University of Hawai'i at Manao newspaper -- about the need to eliminate the teaching of “animal science” at our land-grant universities.
Please take a moment to read the article and e-mail the paper a brief letter at editorials@kaleo.org. Thank them for publishing the article, and explain why you agree "animal science" must go: humane treatment of animals, better human health and lower medical & insurance costs, getting a grip on pollution, resource waste, and global warming linked to the flesh, milk & egg industries -- whatever you can afford in your busy schedule. You may be more effective by being much briefer than the word limit given below from the paper's guidelines.
"All letters must be accompanied by the author's true name, e-mail address and daytime telephone number. Letters should address a single subject and should be no longer than 500 words. Letters of any length are subject to trimming and editing."
Thanks and congratulations to Tim Hopkins and Gloria Feldscher, whose letters were published in the University of Minnesota Daily in response to the recent RPA anti-"animal science" op-ed in that paper! Thanks to Cathy Goeggel of Animal Rights Hawai'i for co-authoring the U. Hawai'i op-ed!
Best wishes,
David Cantor
Executive Director
Responsible Policies for Animals
_____________________________________
http://www.kaleo.org/vnews/display.v/ART/2006/07/20/44bee68507568
Kaleo O Hawai’i (Voice of Hawai’i / University of Hawai’i at Manao)
No More Animal Science
Community Perspective
by David Cantor and Cathy Goeggel
July 20, 2006
The University of Hawai‘i should end its service to the flesh, milk and egg industries in the form of “animal science.” Animal science fails the most basic test: If this were proposed today, would we approve and fund it?
Animals’ sentience – their ability to experience pain and pleasure – entitles them to equal consideration of equal interests. They have a moral right, which we should make a legal right, not to be means to human ends. The basic argument for animal rights has been dismissed without consideration, screened out of schools and mass media and subjected to erudite-but-invalid nay-saying. But its never having been refuted should guide our educational institutions.
We do not dress, build, raise children or amuse ourselves as at the start of animal “domestication” 10,000 years ago. Why should we still hack up animals, control their reproduction and otherwise abuse them? It didn’t start for humane or nutritional reasons: Humane values as understood today and the empirical study of nutrition did not exist. And we are natural herbivores, not omnivores as many believe. Skeptical? “The Comparative Anatomy of Eating” by Milton R. Mills, M.D., is a quick read – just google it.
Thus, teaching people to breed, raise and slaughter animals miseducates, undermining the University of Hawai'i’s job.
In addition, animal science favors flesh, milk, egg and feed-crop industry profits over human needs. Scientists have long warned against fats in flesh and milk. Now animal protein, too, is implicated.
What a shame for everyone to keep paying exorbitant medical and insurance costs due to chronic illness linked to animal science and for the government to administer slaughter, animal-factory waste and other industry atrocities.
Nor are animal science students likely to learn that breeding and raising billions of animals and using them for food contributes significantly to global warming by dramatically increasing the abundance of methane and CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere. The people of Hawai‘i should be alarmed: Rising waters due to ice-sheet melting poses a particular threat to island residents.
And it would not exactly benefit animal science professionals to teach the highly relevant facts that growing feed crops wastes topsoil, fresh water and oil, making scarcities more likely; that cattle grazing turns fertile land to desert; that topsoil loss was a major factor in past civilizations’ declines; and that disputes over resources wasted by raising animals for food are producing violent conflict.
Mathematics, literature, philosophy, history and other traditional academic subjects do not come with problems so dire and so easily preventable as those linked to animal science.
Animal science is not the way forward for the human food supply or the University of Hawai‘i in the 21st century.
About the Writers
David Cantor directs Responsible Policies for Animals (RPA / www.RPAforAll.org), an educational nonprofit organization headquartered in Glenside, Pennsylvania. RPA’s 10,000 Years Is Enough campaign aims to end the teaching of “animal science.”
Cathy Goeggel directs Animal Rights Hawai‘i, headquartered in Honolulu. An animal advocate for the past 31 years, she has led campaigns against cruel snaring of animals, a taxpayer-funded slaughterhouse, pig gestation crates, chicken battery cages and other cruelty in the Islands.