Animal Rights https://www.thesunmagazine.org/rss en-us Pain Breaking a leg, giving birth, suffering for beauty

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27324 Wed, 31 May 2023 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27324-pain Sunbeams

Eating puts us in touch with all that we share with the other animals, and all that sets us apart.

Michael Pollan

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22660 Sat, 30 Apr 2022 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22660-sunbeams The Carnivore’s Dilemma We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that because we went to Whole Foods and bought the organic product, we’re not participating in suffering and death.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24766 Sat, 30 Apr 2022 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24766-the-carnivore-s-dilemma Summer Jobs Waiting tables, dyeing textiles, separating goats in heat

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23647 Thu, 22 Jul 2021 04:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23647-summer-jobs Morally Indefensible It is often said of laying hens, veal calves, and dogs kept in cages for experimental purposes that this does not cause them to suffer, since they have never known other conditions. . . . This is a fallacy.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27694 Thu, 17 Dec 2020 17:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27694-morally-indefensible July 2020 Featuring Michael Pollan, Craig Childs, John Elder, and more.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21622 Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21622-july-2020 What Will <em>You</em> Save Today? “What are you going to do with it?” Nan whispers. “Do with what?” asks the boy who stole the vial. “I saw you,” Nan says. “I’m going to swallow it,” he says. His eyes are wide and a little disturbing. “Why?” Nan asks. “I want a horse inside of me,” he says.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25264 Fri, 01 Feb 2019 00:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25264-what-will-em-you-em-save-today Sunbeams

What do you see when you look at an animal? A kindred spirit, a creature much like you; but possibly, the very next moment, a beast, a stranger, just an animal. Animals are like those pictures that we see as one thing and then another; the duck that suddenly becomes a rabbit; the wineglass that’s also an old woman in profile. Now the pig is a fellow creature, like Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web. Now he’s pork.

Jean Kazez

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23522 Mon, 01 Aug 2016 23:18:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23522-sunbeams Signs Of Intelligent Life And each year we kill for food billions of animals we raise as prisoners and whose lives are often more terrible than their deaths. Even if we do continue eating animals, we could do much better by them and raise them more humanely. The way people treat animals affects the way they treat people: if you brutalize animals, you are probably hardhearted toward humans, too.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24619 Mon, 01 Aug 2016 11:38:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24619-signs-of-intelligent-life Sunbeams

The two biggest sellers in any bookstore are the cookbooks and the diet books. The cookbooks tell you how to prepare the food, and the diet books tell you how not to eat any of it.

Andy Rooney

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26424 Tue, 17 Nov 2015 16:48:34 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26424-sunbeams Sunbeams

If an animal does something, we call it instinct; if we do the same thing for the same reason, we call it intelligence.

Will Cuppy

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22655 Sun, 01 Sep 2013 16:48:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22655-sunbeams My Life In Vegetables I became a vegetarian in September 1971 after meeting a man wearing a white robe during orientation week at Cornell University. I saw this saintlike figure reposing on a hill, staring at a tree. Curious, I approached; he told me his name was Peter and begged me to sit. Soon he was explaining the Essene Gospel of Peace.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21356 Sun, 01 Sep 2013 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21356-my-life-in-vegetables <em>excerpted from</em><br />The Cat Inside I question the underlying assumption that one does a cat a favor by killing him . . . oh, sorry . . . I mean “putting him to sleep.” Turn to backward countries that don’t have Humane Societies for a simple alternative. In Tangier stray cats fend for themselves.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23305 Sun, 01 Sep 2013 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23305-em-excerpted-from-em-br-the-cat-inside Inhumane The real roadblock to widespread implementation of No Kill is shelter directors who have dug in their heels and who are legitimized and defended by the ASPCA and HSUS. There’s a shelter in Davidson County, North Carolina, with a 96 percent rate of killing cats. On top of that, it puts animals of different species into the gas chamber together. Despite this, the HSUS gave it an award in 2012, calling it a “Shelter We Love.”

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25827 Sun, 01 Sep 2013 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25827-inhumane <em>excerpted from</em><br />The Slaughterer Yoineh Meir no longer slept at night. If he dozed off, he was immediately beset by nightmares. Cows assumed human shape, with beards and side locks, and skullcaps over their horns. Yoineh Meir would be slaughtering a calf, but it would turn into a girl.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21375 Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21375-em-excerpted-from-em-br-the-slaughterer The Camel I grew up in a village in southern Lebanon a few years after World War II, the “Big War,” as we called it. In that place nothing came between us and the world we lived in, and in that world there was always blood, lots of it. We slaughtered the animals we ate.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24093 Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24093-the-camel Sowing Dissent A farm should be aesthetically, aromatically, and sensuously appealing. It should be a place that is attractive, not repugnant, to the senses. This is food production. A farm shouldn’t be producing ugly things. It should be producing beautiful things. We’re going to eat them.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24151 Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24151-sowing-dissent Pirate With A Cause A few minutes later the harpoon flew over our bow and just missed our boat. It rammed into the back of one of the female whales in the pod in front of us. She screamed, and it sounded like a woman screaming. It was really quite shocking. Then she rolled over on her side in a fountain of blood, dying.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27533 Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27533-pirate-with-a-cause The Greater Good There are gradations of certainty about animal suffering. It’s very clear that chimps feel pain, and equally clear that plants don’t. We can say with reasonable confidence that all vertebrates suffer, because they respond to stimuli in the same way that humans do when we are in pain. With invertebrates, it’s harder to know, although certainly they can be intelligent. Octopuses, for example, have shown remarkable abilities to solve novel problems. So I assume they are conscious and therefore can suffer.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27249 Sun, 01 May 2011 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27249-the-greater-good The Good Hunter My point is that, in our culture, in order to even entertain the idea of an ethical predator, the observer must approach the subject with an open mind. Ethical hunting is predicated on dignity and respect: Dignity in our private thoughts and public words as well as in our actions afield when, as hunter Aldo Leopold pointed out, nobody is watching us. And respect, not only for the animals we hunt, their habitats, and the greater natural world, but also for ourselves as hunters and human animals. Carry those two blessed burdens in your heart, and you will do no moral wrong as a predator.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22829 Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22829-the-good-hunter Push Here For Tears I’m sitting in a darkened movie theater, watching as Helen Mirren, portraying England’s monarch in The Queen, happens upon the stag the royal family has been hunting. The animal’s so magnificent he brings a lump to my throat. Not a shot has been fired, and already I’m a mess, my tear ducts revving up at the mere suggestion this creature might get hurt.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21364 Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21364-push-here-for-tears Sunbeams

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

Albert Schweitzer

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22260 Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:48:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22260-sunbeams Thought To Exist In The Wild The bear takes seven steps, her claws clicking on concrete. She dips her head, turns, and walks toward the front of the cage. Another dip, another turn, another three steps. When she gets back to where she started, she begins all over. This is what’s left of her life.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23867 Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23867-thought-to-exist-in-the-wild Lost In The Supermarket Families used to control what their members ate and pass along learned wisdom in the form of a food culture. Now that’s gone. Most people don’t eat as families. We eat individually, going one-on-one with the food supply, which is how the food industry likes it.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27722 Mon, 01 May 2006 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27722-lost-in-the-supermarket Seventy-Two Labors Even though the butcher section was in the back, I could smell animal flesh when I came through the doors, the faint stench that leaked through the plastic wrap and rose above the ammonia smell of the floors.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21426 Mon, 01 May 2006 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21426-seventy-two-labors Faced With Terrorists, Who Wouldn’t Want To Harness All Of Nature? http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23128 Sun, 01 Feb 2004 00:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23128-faced-with-terrorists-who-wouldn-t-want-to-harness-all-of-nature Sunbeams

I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls, and they say, “Because it’s such a beautiful animal.” There you go. Well, I think my mother’s attractive, but I have photographs of her.

Ellen DeGeneres

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21979 Sun, 01 Apr 2001 00:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21979-sunbeams The Dog Next Door http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28190 Sun, 01 Aug 1999 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28190-the-dog-next-door Dry Roots The wheat is starting to turn, flashes of deep gold streaking through all that tall, waving green. Before we moved to Colorado, I used to think wheat grew golden yellow, like in all the photos I’d seen. I suspect most city folk think that. They don’t realize that wheat grows up green and living and then dies, and that’s when it becomes useful.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27736 Tue, 01 Jun 1999 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27736-dry-roots Nature Of The Beast We call some animals pets and other animals dinner because our culture says that some animals are part of our circle of compassion and others are not. To some extent, an animal that is destined for human consumption is exempt from the laws restricting cruelty to animals. In other words, you can do anything you want to an animal as long as you’re going to eat it. There are Filipino communities in the United States whose members carry on their cultural tradition of eating dogs, and many people who don’t think twice about the treatment of veal calves find it very objectionable to see a dog treated that way.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26752 Thu, 01 Oct 1998 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26752-nature-of-the-beast