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Animal Rights and You
If you want to keep your pets, read this!
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Home | Quotes from AR leaders | AR Language
The animal rights cult and animal welfare fundies
have terms frequently used in their propaganda to slag people who own animals or
use animal products.
Some of these terms have managed to make their way into
the general human population, showing people to be either misinformed or unaware
they have bought into some aspect of the animal rights agenda to some
degree.
The following are animal rights/welfare terms that
have managed to be picked up and believed by the general public thanks to shoddy
media publicity that touts animal rights dogma as fact, and the sentimental
tendency for pet lovers to anthropomorphize.
'adopt' - Acquiring animals from another person,
breeder, pet store, or pound. Animals are bought, sold, given away, and
acquired. Human children are adopted.
'Child' 'furkid' 'furchild' or any reference to an
animal as a 'child' 'son' or 'daughter' of the 'guardian' - This is extremely
common among pet lovers, but it's a push to give animals equal status to humans,
big part of the AR agenda.
'parent/mommy/ daddy/guardian/ care-taker/ steward of
animals' - (the animal owner) This is exactly the same as calling oneself the
animal's guardian but many people think it's cute, failing to realize it is AR
to view animals as your children.
"What we must do is start viewing every
cow, pig, chicken, monkey, rabbit, mouse, and pigeon as our family members."
Gary Yourofsky, Humane Education Director, PETA, The Toledo Blade, June 24,
2001
'Foster' - Taking in an animal,again using a word
meant to apply to children - fostering is for kids.
'companion animal' - (pet) "I don't use the word 'pet.' I think its speciest language. I prefer 'companion animal.' For one
thing, we would no longer allow breeding. People could not create different
breeds. There would be no pet shops. If people had companion animals in their
homes, those animals would have to be refugees from the animal shelters and the
streets. You would have a protective relationship with them just as you would
with an orphaned child. But as the surplus of cats and dogs (artificially
engineered by centuries of forced breeding) declined, eventually companion
animals would be phased out, and we would return to a more symbiotic
relationship enjoyment at a distance." - Ingrid Newkirk, PETA vice-president,
quoted in The Harper's Forum Book, Jack Hitt, ed., 1989, p.223.
"In a
perfect world, animals would be free to live their lives to the fullest: raising
their young, enjoying their native environments, and following their natural
instincts. However, domesticated dogs and cats cannot survive 'free' in our
concrete jungles, so we must take as good care of them as possible. People with
the time, money, love, and patience to make a lifetime commitment to an animal
can make an enormous difference by adopting from shelters or rescuing animals
from a perilous life on the street. But it is also important to stop
manufacturing 'pet', thereby perpetuating a class of animals forced to rely on
humans to survive." - PETA pamphlet, Companion Animals: Pets or Prisoners?
'Forever home' - A rescuer's way of '"screening"
people from owning animals. If you can't absolutely guarantee that you and your
home will be here or that you won't become sick or otherwise unable to care for
the animal for the rest of its life, you're not a 'forever home' and not good
enough to own a pet. The truth is nobody can or should be expected to make such
guarantees, life happens and sometimes things change and are beyond our
control.
'owned by' or 'slave to' (as opposed to "I own")
- Many people think this is cute again, but animal rights dictates that we don't
own anything, we are intruders trespassing on land the animals
own.
'Responsible' - This word is often used in
conjunction with "pet owner" "breeder" "farming" in exactly the same way other
disclaimer words are meant to point out an abaration. What talking about
"responsible" pet owners does is accusing most ownership of irresponsibility by
default while claiming a select few are the "responsible" ones. It also gives
the AR fundamentalists any excuse to call anyone "irresponsible" for any and all
subjective opinions held against you.
'Ethical' and 'Reputable' are used in conjunction
with 'breeder' in exactly the same way. Oddly enough, 'reputable' is even used
by "rescuers" to judge one another as well.
'Rescue' - (acquiring animals to either keep or
place into new homes) This term is particularly nasty toward any previous owner
because every time you claim to have 'rescued' an animal, it is insulting the
previous owner. For it to be a true rescue there has to be some serious and
immediate danger involved that the animal is being saved from. I.E. A kitten up
a tree or puppy down a deep hole. Most pets aren't in danger except for
sicknesses and accidents, and that should be no reflection on the owner. Too
many people buy animals from others who for whatever reason can't keep them any
more, then turn around and claim to have 'rescued' the animals.
'Refuge' - (placement home) Like the word "rescue"
"refuge" slanders the previous owner as something the animal needed to seek
"refuge" from.
'screening' - Animal welfarists who have animals to
'adopt out' screen by asking millions of questions that, if not answered exactly
to their satisfaction, they brand you as a terrible person and do their best to
barr you from ever getting a pet, all based on their erroneous beliefs that
everybody is more likely to neglect or abuse rather than take care of and love
their pets. It's their way of 'saving' the animal from going to the new owner
who didn't measure up to the demands of the pound or rescue that has the
animals. Some animal welfarists even go as far as to demand you will your
animals to someone else upon your death, and if you don't do this, you're not
fit to own a pet.
'backyard breeder', 'Collector', 'hoarder', 'puppy mill', 'Roadside Zoo' - All these terms are meant to paint any individual
who is a victim of an animal rights smear or misguided, naive person's zeal to
be an animal hero, in the worst light possible. If you have too many cats for
your neighbor's liking, they can call you a 'hoarder'. If you breed your dog even
once, you could be smeared as a 'backyard breeder'. If you are an animal
breeder, they call you a 'mill'. Even people who don't otherwise buy into the
animal rights agenda, jump at any and all chances to call the next animal owner
one of these intentionally derogatory AR-invented terms. Everybody loves to tell
and believe animal abuse stories, true or not. Some people gossip and hurl these
terms around in order to try stomping out their competition. 'I'm selling this
animal. Whatever you do, don't go and buy from Breeder b. He's a mill.' Others
do it to make themselves feel taller than the next person. 'I love my animals.
But look at Owner C, she's a hoarder and abuser!' 'Look at me, I just RESCUED
1000 horribly abused and neglected animals from Person D.' 'A warning about
buyer E: she's got too many animals, she's a collector and can't possibly take
care of any more.' 'Don't sell to her!' You can even get slapped with the 'mill'
term if so much as one of your animals has an infirmity or a condition. A
'rescuer' could slander you as a bad breeder or owner if one of your cats has an
eye or ear infection. "Shut down H's operation, he's a roadside
zoo!"
'Spay/neuter/ fix' - Something strongly urged as part
of the AR agenda to end pet ownership. They push to get animals 'fixed' by
exaggerating and distorting tales about 'pet overpopulation' and tell lies about
health hazards of not 'fixing' your animal.
'innocent animals' - Highly emotional term used by
anybody including non-hard-core ARs stricken with pity. Animals don't come
'innocent' or 'guilty' these are human attributes.
'Shelter' - (pound) Shelters as in those for the
homeless and battered women are for people. The pound is for
animals.
'Rainbow Bridge' and 'Rainbow angel' - Animal has
died. Some of these people actually believe their animals are angels watching
out for them and they will one day meet across the "rainbow bridge" and let's
face it, they just can't deal with the fact that animals die.
'factory farm' - (a farm) And that could mean
anything from a small family farm to a commercial farm, if they want to smear
any farmer, they call it a factory farm.
'vivisection' and 'vivisector' - (surgery, surgeon,
animal research and researcher) Medical history throughout the ages is barbaric
but the animal researchers of today have means of making themselves as well as
their animals as comfortable as possible. Ancient surgeons didn't have these
means. Nor are they anything like the truly cruel quacks of the past such as
Mengel. But ARs want people to believe that if you work in animal research, you
are a sadist just like Joseph Mengel.
"Vivisection can even mean a spay or neuter. It
means surgery on a being...."
'specism' - (looking out for our own species)
Animal rights claim this is as bad as racism, but every animal species looks out
for its own species first, it is not racism, it's natural.
'canned hunt' - An animal rights myth about
shooting animals in cages and the like. If you own a vast amount of property and
you shoot a coyote to protect your livestock, you could be guilty of the 'canned
hunt'. Or killing your own excess animals could mean that as well. But the
animal rights radicals would have people believe that canned hunts as they
describe them with animals being put in cages and shot for entertainment is a
reality, and a common one.
The 'murder' of animals - 'murder' is a human
killing another human. Only people get murdered, animals get
killed.
'cannibalism' - When referring to humans eating
meat. This is one of the more laughable terms because it's only cannibalism if
you eat your own species. But to AR it's cannibalism if a human eats any animal
species. ARs do not call it cannibalism if an animal eats a human or some other
kind of animal. So, we're 'cannibals' for eating chicken but chickens aren't
'cannibals' when they eat grasshoppers.
'dead animals' or 'dead animal flesh' or 'carcass'
- (meat) This is designed to make meat eating sound inhumane and gross. Again,
it's natural behavior for omnivores, and humans are for the most part,
omnivores. There are those who choose to eat only plant matter, and that's their
choice, but they should mind what's on their own plate and let other people eat
what they like.
'jail' or 'prison' - A cage.
'concentration camp' - Any facility that houses
animals being targeted for a very bad smear campaign by animal rights
nuts.
'slavery' - This is a particularly malicious smear
against farmers, pet owners, working animal owners, and also a terrible insult
on any actual slaves and their human descendants today, just as is any reference
to concentration camps, and comparisons to the holocaust is very tastelessly
insulting on people who lived through and died in WWII and Hitler's
hell.
'those who can't speak for themselves' 'silent
victims' or 'innocent animals' - Terms used by animal rightists designed to vilify any human in any human/animal association, but especially where any
animal death is involved. They only care about human death if it can be used to
tout their agenda of stopping the ownership of animals.
'cruelty-free' - Much as the general public wants
to stop cruelty, most good people are definitely against real cruelty, beware of
anybody spouting how 'cruelty-free' they are, because it means they are animal
rights radicals. And ARs love to tell everyone, though they are very short on
actually demonstrating this, how 'compassionate' 'caring' 'cruelty-free' and
'anti-cruelty' they think they are. This is also a put-off as it assumes the
rest of us are not anti-cruelty.
The trick is to determine what is real cruelty. Animal Rights can call you cruel for many things, what you wear, what you eat,
what animals you keep and what environment you keep them in. So 'cruelty-free'
for them may mean the ending of pet ownership, meat eating, depending on which
branch of the AR agenda the particular person or outfit is talking
about.
Sincere anti-cruelty and compassionate people never
boast about how compassionate they think they are. Honestly caring and decent
people hold human rights as precious to them and to others, and only seek to
stop real cruelty where it exists. They do not go around trying to dictate how
others live and interact with animals based on the animal rights
agendas.
'You don't care about the animals!' - Typical AR
browbeating of someone who disagrees with them, proves them wrong, or even dares
to doubt any horrid tale of animal hell they tell.
'global warming' - Animal Rights/eco/environmental
climate myth designed to scare people and put the blame on humans as usual for
the terror of the greenhouse effect.
'greenhouse effect' 'greenhouse gases' - All part
of the global warming myth touted by animal rights and environmental
extremists. All too frequently believed by the general public, thanks to the
media eating right out of the hands of the radicals again.