An interview with an animal rights activist by the name of Laura Ireland Moore at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon: founder and executive director of The National Center for Animal Law there.
Question: While hunting may seem cruel in America, because it’s not necessary for most people’s survival, what happens in a culture where people must hunt to survive? Do animals still have the same rights?
Answer: Animals are not on this planet for us to use. There needs to be respect for the fact that they are individual living beings. If people can live without using animals, they should do that.Question: What about the Inuit in Canada, who help support themselves by hunting?
Answer: I’m not an expert on the Inuit. But if they can mine and sell gas, diamonds, gold and heavy metals, they can certainly ship in some tofu. If everyone had as much respect for animals and the sacrifice they make for humans as [they do] for native cultures, this world would be a much better place.
(Italics mine)
The ‘tofu’ remark ranks right up there with Marie Antoinette’s infamous “Let them eat cake” line.
Does arrogance go hand-in-hand with the belief that your cause is pure?
January 10, 2008 at 3:08 am |
I thought that story was very good. The Inuit are beside the point. Look at the average American. We’re murdering animals for food when we clearly don’t need to. A vegetarian or vegan diet is much healthier for us. The consumption of meat is killing Americans (through heart attacks, diabetes, cancer). Yet the powerful meat industry continues to perpetuate myths to keep Americans coming back for more.
January 10, 2008 at 3:18 pm |
If you are a proponent of vegetarianism or veganism, please, engage people by setting you life as an example for others and speaking intelligently. If you really cared about spreading your message to the North, please come and open a vegan restaurant here in Iqaluit and I will gladly support it with my patronage. However, please do not dismiss Inuit because the logical inconvenience they pose to your cause.
January 10, 2008 at 4:41 pm |
This is a classic case of cultural prejudice, the placing of ones values upon another group of people.
The survival of Inuit has historically found itself in the use of seals, whales, polar bears. The issue is the influence of European economy that changed the life style of a people. Large scale whaling from the USA and Europe nearly drove the whale to near extinction in the 19th century. Now, with the usual piety of the west, we dare to make comment upon a group of people whose culture is imbedded in a hunter gatherer tradition.
I am also surprised on the comments about Inuit economic survival in the world of gold, diamonds and oil. The terrible impact of the West’s economy on Africa and the quest for diamonds and gold drips with the blood of many poor Africans used and usurped for the sake of a diamond ring. We should all know how risky the world of oil and the lives that have been lost in that endevour.
A last point, on the dietary issues for Americans, it is not the meat that is killing them, rather the sugar and processed food that is doing a fine job of creating a predominantly obese North America!!!
My suggestion is that Miss Moore needs to look at the world a little less myopically, get of your moral high horse, come north and see what other people do, watch the news a bit more and don’t humanize animals!