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Posted by Paul P:
The Maltese attitude to animals is typical of a post-domestic society – a society that has lost contact with animals and does not see animals mating, being born and dying.
Cats and dogs are no longer treated as animals. They are part of the family. This is anthropomorphism – giving human attributes to animals. Cats and dogs are given names and are allowed to sleep in our beds. We spend a lot of money on their food (which looks like ours), on ‘doctors’ and medicines.
Killing a dog or cat has become murder.
Animals are killed in an abattoir not only because of health and hygiene but because we want the killing of animals to be carried out where we cannot see it.
Vegetarians oppose the killing of animals while non-vegetarians do not want to think about the origin of the meat they are eating. We do not even want to see the cows, chickens, rabbits and pigs on our plates.
The meat we buy does not look at all like an animal. Those parts (skin, head and feet) that would remind us that the meat we are buying was once a living thing are removed and in many cases it is so processed that it does not look like meat at all. The heads, tails and trotters that you will see in many proper butchers shops all over Europe are no longer seen hanging down over butchers’ counters in Malta.
Many children eat burgers and nuggets without being aware that there is meat inside.
I remember animal carcasses hanging on the façades of butcher shops and at the meat stalls at the Valletta market. Back then nobody batted an eyelid or complained.
This ‘nonsense’ will not stop because most urban people cannot or do not want to keep farm animals in their midst. They no longer get their Sunday lunch from a cage in their backgarden or on their roof, or from the yard as they used to do before Malta changed from a domestic to a post-domestic society.
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Excellent post and lots of food for thought.
How tedious Times of Malta is becoming in delaying (or rather more denying) uploading of comments written in good English which make sense and which try to explain what a “chattel” is as compared to a “wife” or “partner”.
People just don’t care – sadly and yes they compare them to humans to the extent that the names they give them, the clothes, they sew / buy for them, and the food they feed them are good for human beings.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140218/opinion/Is-this-scaremongering-.507284
Once I read the meaning of civilisation – when somebody else does the “dirty work” for you.
How about the following for a top comment:
“Min ma jiggilidx il-korruzzjoni huwa korrott.”
It was the favourite line of Dr. Joseph Muscat, the prime minister of Malta, before the last general elections. He was actually quoting from a previous prime minister who had fought corruption, but Dr. Muscat did not even acknowledge that.
“Dwar il-korruzzjoni, huwa tenna li min ma jiġġilidx il-korruzjoni, huwa korrott – Dik hija l-linja li jrid jimxi biha l-Partit Laburista. “Irridu nagħmlu dak kollu possibbli biex ma nħallux il-korruzzjoni taqbad l-għeruq tagħha,” żied jgħid.
Quddiem dan kollu, il-Mexxej Laburista qal li jemmen li se jkollna poplu iżjed onest, fejn min m’għandux x’jaħbi, mhux se jiddejjaq li jkollu ċ-‘checks and balances’ fuqu u juri li huwa lest li jinfetaħ għall-iskrutinju.”
http://www.inewsmalta.com/mart/20130128-favur-min-hu-bie-el-favur-il-olqien-tax-xog-ol-muscat
Dr. Muscat has no option but to let the police investigate and prosecute the “1,000” “energy beneficiaries” who benefited from reduced electricity bills before the last general elections by paying a bribe of, on average, Eur 1,500, in order to make savings of, on average, Eur 30,000 each.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140218/local/tampered-meters-waiver-questioned.507333
If prime minister Joseph Muscat does not fight corruption, then he will be corrupt. His own words.
Here is a top comment of the day, by Dr. Owen Bonnici, the Parliamentary Secretary for Justice, if you please:
“However, the police remained free to institute criminal proceedings, if they wished.”
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140218/local/tampering.507342
Dr. Bonnici, the prime minister is obliged to send the case to the police, together with the details of the corrupt individuals, companies, and so forth.
He can put all the details in a file with a cover note saying:
“Min ma jiggilidx il-korruzzjoni hu korrott.”
I agree with Baxxter. Where does Dr. Giovanni Bonello stand about this? He is advising the Labour government on Justice, while the Minister is making justice an option.
I was a lonely voice on this website to tell Dr. Bonello not to accept the appointment with the Labour government. Look what we have now. A Parliamentary Secretary for Justice saying that the police are free to institute criminal proceedings if they wished in a case of mega-corruption.
Where is the exit?
The last one out of this place, you may leave the lights on. The meter has been tampered with…and Joseph Muscat will not be taking criminal action…
Giovanni Bonello is a very decent individual and jurist. I think he reckons he had be a force for good, working from within.
The thing with political appointments is that you cannot work from within, because you are effectively boxed in by your remit. Giovanni Bonello advises the Maltese government on legal and constitutional reform. That is his remit.
So if he sees that an injustice is being done, in terms of existing laws, as with Joseph Muscat’s blanket amnesty for those thieves who stole electricity from Enemalta (yes, a spade is a spade), there is pretty much nothing that he can do. Because that’s outside his remit.
I think he could have been a greater force for good outside government, unfettered by corporate loyalty and terms of reference.
I have no doubt about Judge Bonello’s decency, his capacity as a jurist and his intellectual clarity in general.
In my humble opinion, in his position today as a retired Judge of the ECHR, Dr. Bonello should (I wish I could avoid using that word, but I must) have avoided being given any remit by a government. He is an authority by himself. He can be a Senator, but not a soldier.
Am I being provocative enough, Baxxter?
He’s on your rolodex. Give him a tinkle.
I do not agree at all with this opinion. Ever since I was a little child, I use to cringe in my bed and bury my head in the pillow not to hear the squeaking shrill of the poor rabbit that used to be killed to be prepared for our Sunday meal.
I was convinced there must be another type of more lenient food. I am a person that forever resented the means of killing any other form of life to get the enjoyment of food.
You probably mean animal life. All food comes from life, in one form or another. We have yet to synthesise macronutrients.
No, Baxxter, I do NOT mean simplistically animal life (and by the way, humans, according to Darwin and humanists are another form of animal life that is why cannibals exist). What I mean is any life that has the ability to feel – animals, just like humans, feel pain and this is a known fact but vegetation does not. I still have to hear a cabbage squeak and shrill just like animals (including humans) do.
[Daphne – Where does that leave comatose human beings? It is not the ability to feel pain that differentiates animals from plants.]
Well then I would ask you where you draw the line. Chickens? Salmon? Lobster? Prawns? Oysters?
I’m not trying to be flippant here. Just pointing out that the value of the life of an organism of any species, and the moral argument against killing it, is hard to justify on the grounds of sentience.
In the end, it comes down to some very subjective value judgements – and there’s nothing wrong with that. I wouldn’t kill my Fido, but I’m quite happy to kill cockroaches or flies, for purposes other than food, or to eat a bit of cow that’s been killed by someone else.
I’m happy to eat a bit of anonymous rabbit in a restaurant, but I wouldn’t kill my own Snowy. They’re all sentient organisms, but I attach a different value to each, in a completely arbitrary and subjective manner. And that’s completely natural.
Ditto for human beings. I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m not one to hold back, or I wouldn’t be writing here, so here it is. The value of human life is not universal or absolute, but subjective. I value the life of my relatives and friends above that of people at the Antipodes whom I’ve never met.
If I were on the Titanic and there was room in the lifeboat for one, I would save my Ritienne and leave DiCaprio to his own devices. Millions of human beings died today, through old age, disease, war, accidents, murder, abortion and natural disasters. I shall not mourn them. But if Ritienne died, it would be a tragedy.
Many people will vehemently deny this, claiming that they hold all human life dear in equal measure. Catholics are the most vociferous, but they are joined by all sorts, from Buddhists to secular atheists to Bob Geldof and Bono. I find it ever so slightly hypocritical.
The most (ethically) significant difference between animals and plants is that the former have an experiential welfare, which means that they can be harmed. The latter, having no brain, do not.
Yes it is. Absolute.
So the difference isn’t really between animals and plants, Liberal, but between mammals and birds and everything else. Do oysters have a brain? I eat them raw, washed down with Veuve Clicquot. Harry, being of the transatlantic persuasion, prefers Rockefeller.
What an interesting discussion.
My take on it, to take up the thread from another post, is that ultimately “value” is a human concept and it is humans who put value on anything, be it an inanimate object, and animate object or a concept in general, such as love, justice of indeed human life itself, and the truth is that very often people put value on things that don’t seem to merit it and omit to value others that would be far more useful.
It is true that the chain of life is what it is. The big fish eats the little fish. There’s no way around that. Even if we manage to synthesize macro-nutrients, I doubt very much that most people will be happy to have a bowl of artificial protein-goo for dinner.
But, and this is a big but, that basic fact does not justify the stance that since animals are animals they might as well be killed willy-nilly for no reason at all. We can still put value on life – any life that can be spared, should be.
In the case of comatose humans, that kind of situation is never an easy one to assess and in fact often gives rise to controversy. Just look at the Terri Schiavo case.
My personal opinion? If the person inside is irretrievably gone, then I do not think it makes sense to accord the empty shell any kind of human rights, beyond the usual forms of respect paid to a corpse.
On another note, I must admit I did not understand the comment regarding cannibalism as it relates to Darwin and humanists. I think of myself as a humanist and the fact that Man is an animal is not in question, be it in scientific, philosophical or medical circles.
Darwin’s great achievement, besides positing a simple mechanism for the emergence of the incredible diversity of lifeforms that does not require any kind of guiding principle or intelligent design, also made clear the link between man and nature – a link which Christianity, with its philosophy of man’s special creation in God’s image tended to frown down upon.
This had huge implications not only in understanding better man’s place in the world, but also contributed to the philosophical underpinning for the abolishment of slavery for example. Darwin had shown that the various races of men were essentially close brothers, and that the white anglo-saxon protestant was after all not the pinnacle of creation as he had previously liked to believe.
In my view, the ripples caused by this new Darwinian consciousness – the knowledge that everything alive is essentially our relative – have still not finished spreading and will still be the underpinning to more change in the way humans locate themselves and other living beings in the grand scheme of things.
Hopefully Darwinism can be an impetus, not to start treating other humans like animals, but to start according animals some of the respect they merit purely for what they are – our cousins.
Baxxter, you haven’t lived until you have consumed a couple dozen Gulf Coast oysters.
“So the difference isn’t really between animals and plants, Liberal, but between mammals and birds and everything else”.
Not really. Experiential welfare is not limited to mammals and birds.
“Do oysters have a brain? I eat them raw, washed down with Veuve Clicquot. Harry, being of the transatlantic persuasion, prefers Rockefeller”.
Good question. I think that they probably do not, but they do have some system for stimulus response. Remember that evolutionary change is incremental, in the sense that change happens in small doses over a long time-span. So sentience and consciousness (and brains and nervous systems) had to develop in small steps through mutations that were adaptive to a favourable environment.
However, evolution does not happen throughout all species in equal doses (otherwise there would be no different species at all), and some species thrived without the “need” to develop a brain. Other species developed kinds of brains capable of mental experience to different degrees.
So where does one draw the line on the question of having an experiential welfare? Clearly humans do have it. Clearly grass doesn’t. Then you get millions of species having it in different doses. There probably isn’t a point along the line where experiential welfare stops or starts, but we have to draw the line somewhere (for practical reasons), just like there isn’t a precise second when a person becomes an adult, so we set an age ourselves after considering the probabilities regarding when adulthood is reached.
So do clams have an experiential welfare? Again, most probably not (in which case I would group them with plants). But most other animal species clearly do.
So true, the Vucciria in Palermo remains true to that mental rythm, every aesthete worth their salt to visit.
The deeper one walks into the place, (it’s a narrow winding cobbled street leading up to the duomo) the more explicit the wares, right until the goats and lambs hang unskinned.
For those with a delicate palate, they can look the other way at the rows and rows of spices.
Guttuso captured the overwhelming smell of blood in what became his tabular claustrophobic imagery overtaking the senses.
http://www.restipica.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/vucciria21-620×450.jpg
The real thing remains more intense.
http://www.dissapore.com/wp-content/uploads/4131.jpg
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-02-18/news/hotel-industry-projects-stalled-as-2014-is-going-down-the-drain-for-eu-funds-3988586496/
“…There are no funds. There is nothing coming out in 2014 and everywhere is at a stall. They have to go fast. They have not yet structured the projects for which Malta has to apply for funding with the EU. Once you [the government] apply it takes at least six to eight months to get a reply from the EU,”
Wouldn’t be too sure this government’s actually trying. Not with what’s going on in the relevant department. People actually expecting the worst.
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-02-18/news/smart-meters-criminal-action-will-be-taken-against-consumers-who-dont-own-up-3992059906/
That’s one piloted investigation we’ll have. And even if it isn’t, the legitimate doubt remains. Maybe that’s why the courts exist, separate and independent of the executive.
‘…..Dr Bonnici and energy minister Konrad Mizzi said that Enemalta has a list of the consumers involved, but it would not be prudent to publish their names for the time being.
Neither of them have seen the list, they said.
Both Dr Bonnici and Dr Mizzi expressed their conviction that there is more to the scandal than meets the eye, and the big fish is yet to be caught.
Dr Bonnici called it “easy” to bring 1,000 small fish to justice, but it is catching the mastermind that is important.
The parliamentary secretary said that consumers coming forward will be made to pay for the stolen consumption, plus interest. He said that a vital part of the deal is that those coming forward give information on all those involved to the authorities…..’
Am I to expect someone mentioning some names, perhaps including mine, to prove some PN scandal? Who gets to decide who’s cleared and on what basis is the information considered useful?
Surely the Whistleblower Act, turned into a witchhunt should be the court’s remit. What it cannot be, is an extraordinary instrument in the hands of politicians.
The Ministers are going to need some master bait to catch those master minds which they call “the big fish.”
I cannot imagine how killing animals for food can be compared to killing animals for ‘pleasure’. By your way of reasoning hunting and trapping should be permitted all the year round. I cannot imagine how a normal human being can have the courage to kill his best friend.
[Daphne – Restrictions on hunting have absolutely nothing to do with cruelty/pleasure. They are imposed for entirely environmental reasons except for the ban on hunting on Sunday afternoons, which is to avoid causing a nuisance to families out for recreational purposes, and which is also nothing to do with cruelty.
Also, killing non-hunt animals for pleasure is called sadism. People with this pathology need psychiatric treatment and are very rare. Hunting is not in the same category, however much we may dislike it. I oppose hunting for purely environmental reasons and for the nuisance which hunters pose to others with their constant noise during the open season. My reasoning is consistent with my view that it is perfectly all right to kill chickens. Whether the bird in question is killed for food or not is irrelevant. Unlike most people, I hold no special prejudice against chickens and pigeons which prompts me to claim that it is perfectly all right to kill them while it is not all right to shoot other ordinary birds. Some chickens are extraordinarily lovely and I have always had a soft spot for pigeons. ]
In the post-Malta globali society we’ll be killing each other for food.
It’s true – I saw it in Mad Max. Like Ivan Fenech (who’s got his cultural references right. Bravo!).
[Daphne – Yes, that was another terrific piece of his today in Times of Malta.]
He really doesn’t hold back.
He’s a breath of fresh air, especially when compared to the stodgy writers who usually fill the pages of newspapers with laborious dull articles which go nowhere.