Initial Developments

It's fatal to show too much emotion when talking about an ethical issue unless there is an almost complete cultural consensus that it is worth being emotional about. People who care about animal rights risk being thought of as hysterics or sentimentalists if they show that they care.

A pretty pithy way of discussing the current situation in the world of animal experimentation is to simply define a few initials. Here are some topical ones:

• AMS - the Academy of Medical Sciences,  which has just released a report on ...
• ACHM - Animals Containing Human Materials. These do what they say on the tin: we've all seen those mice with ears on their backs, but that was just a grafting of human tissue. Today's experimentation tends to involve more complex transgenic procedures, blurring the distinction between humans and animals at a genetic level. Not, of course, that lab rats and 'knockout mice' are all quasimodo - in many cases it is impossible to find effective cures for human diseases using research based on artificial versions induced in other species.
• HM - I found out about this one recently. GM animals means genetically modified; HM animals are the 'Harmful Mutant' category, who have had heritable defects hardwired into their genetic makeup. HM excludes those animals who have been altered to exhibit non-heritable defects. Basically these animals are designed and created specifically to be unwell, sometimes in unpredictable/accidental ways if they are engineered to have too many defects.

I'm not a bitch - I have no objection to finding a cure for cancer. But looking at these initials reminds me that I'm deeply uncomfortable with the sweeping argument that the end justifies the means.

A lot of people are able to accept that. Fortunately, science is taking us to a point where we can have our cake and not torture  it, through the development of absolute (non-animal) and relative (using only animal tissue and cells) replacements. Unfortunately, as this excellent article points out, ethically undernourished reports by institutions like the AMS are serving to delay the development of these replacements, which they officially support.

The Talking Animal

I've been reading a bit about Nim Chimpsky, the chimpanzee whose life is now the subject of a documentary, Project Nim, by the film-maker James Marsh. As a bit of a spoiler, the animal was taken from his mother in infancy by a psychologist, Herbert Terrace, who wanted to teach him sign language, and was initially raised pretty much as a human. When this went wrong, he was caged up in a research centre, and finally in a zoo, where he died prematurely from a heart attack, possibly caused by all the joints he used to smoke with his 'parents'.

His name is, obviously, a pun on Noam Chomsky, the linguist. Now, if I don't love a terrible pun then I don't love anything (I have long dreamed of having two  dogs called Philip Ruff and Virginia Woof) but this smart-alecy naming of 'Chimpsky' signals the misguided nature of the whole experiment. 'Nim Chimpsky' is a bastardisation of a man's name, and there is no way that a talking ape, in little trousers and all, was ever going to be anything but a grotesque parody of a human.

That is not because chimps are  grotesque. The problem lies in the anthropocentric outlook that led to this animal being seen as an unevolved human, rather than a fully evolved ape. Some animals can communicate with humans but, as Terrace was forced to conclude, not in terms of human conversation; they communicate according to their own needs.  It seems to me that a lot of cruelty is rooted in a divided view of animals, either as completely other - they are not people, so we can do what we like with them - or as inferior versions of ourselves that we can narcissistically relate to but do not have to respect because they are incomplete.

I find it particularly chilling that after his unnatural early life in the bosom (sometimes literally) of a human family, the animal was transferred to a research facility, where he was caged among other apes (having been totally separated from his own species since he was born) who were destined to be sold to a research lab for Aids and hepatitus vaccine experiments.

This development shows a more extreme form of the exploitation that arises from finding the links between humans and other large mammals. They can be interesting to us both egotistically and scientifically, though their usefulness as the subjects of experiments is limited by the same fact that made this experimentation acceptable: they aren't human. We are well aware of the similarities and differences between humans and animals. It is taking a long time to reach the conclusion that neither similarity nor difference justifies a sense of ownership, and that animals are neither hilarious hairy little men, nor material for experiments.

Big Top Society

Just a  few words about the recent agreement by MPs to introduce a ban on wild animals in circuses.

It's an excellent motion: it isn't binding, it isn't an 'immediate possibility' (in the words of Ministers who tried to scupper it, despite its being backed by parliamentary and public opinion) and it isn't going to happen until after the outcome of a legal challenge to a similar ban in Austria has been decided.

The official reason for the government holding back on the ban, preferring to mumble about the possibility of reinforcing existing laws, is that a ban might infringe the rights of circus owners under European Law, though as Allegra Stratton points out, the European Commission does allow individual members to make exceptions on animal welfare grounds.

Mary Creagh, Shadow Environment Secretary, described the government's handling of the motion as 'confused.' This presumably refers to the botched three-line whip that the Conservatives put out against voting in favour of the ban, and to their policy of acknowledging the obligation laid on them to take action while persisting in their obvious unwillingness to do so. It could be said that their sympathies lie with entrepreneurial circus-owners (and the performing animal company in Cameron's constituency) but it seems to me this is typical of the way the Tories tread water over animal welfare issues, in a way that ultimately does no good to man or beast.

Take their handling of the impending badger cull, which Caroline Spelman is 'strongly minded' to back. If the current government had shown more strength of mind they might be offering to deliver on the previous government's promise of an oral vaccine for badgers by 2015. This solution would be more reliably effective than the hugely expensive culls (likely to cost in the region of £92 million), which carry with them the risk if not likelihood of perturbation (whereby TB escalates in  areas surrounding the culling hotspots). The government seems to have put the kibosh on vaccination, and is apparently committed to frustrating progress in animal welfare whenever it can.

The Conservatives' behaviour over the circus issue seems particularly characteristic because the preservation of old-style circuses fits in with the Enid Blytonesque aesthetic of Cameron's fantastical Big Society, where we all head down to the Big Top for some big laughs. Never mind a bit of entrenched cruelty or injustice, it's all in good fun.

Notably the embarrassingly chippy Tory MP Mark Pritchard - a self-described 'little council-house lad' and leader of the Parliamentary campaign for the ban - does not have a place in this vision.

Notes on a Pledge

Yesterday Lynne Featherstone reaffirmed the  reaffirmation she made on the 29th March 2011 of the government's pledge to ban the use of animal testing in the making of household products. VP awaits concrete action, but is not holding her breath.

 The initial pledge, made in the coalition's 2010 programme for government was taken from the Lib Dem Manifesto, and is the only one of three pledges therein to have made its way into the coalition programme. Given the general reluctance of the Conservatives to engage in animal welfare (compared to the other main parties, Tory MPs have shown the least support for animal protection EDMs), it seems unrealistic to expect any quick movement on the testing ban, although it is an obvious and uncontroversial move. I suspect many people  would be surprised that a practice that has been banned in the production of cosmetics is still officially acceptable in the production of washing-up liquid.

It turns out there are ethical products that can be identified by a 'leaping bunny' logo. Ever  heard of it? Thought not. The brands associated with the BUAV 'Cleaning up Cruelty' campeign (2008) can be found on their website, but not in any supermarket I have ever been to. Admittedly this is because I have only ever been to Tesco (the Co-operative and Marks and Spencer are predictably virtuous) but then, I am a  woman of the people.

And there is a benighted minority who don't go to expensive supermarkets, or moniter ill-publicised Home Office statements. Animal rights, as an ethical issue, is less prevalent  than it seems, and vivisection more so. The recherche nature of the brands that have voluntarily opted out of the use of animal testing, or ingredients whose production involves it, reflects the problem with consumer-led morality: going about your business without unknowingly propogating cruelty and exploitation involves more money and research than most can spare. Especially over  such an unglamorous issue as household cleaning.