No Animal Holocaust

Reprinted with the author's permission.

by Teresa Austringer

No, absolutely not.

Let's examine the meaning of the word holocaust. A holocaust is described in the dictionary as a great disaster, resulting in mass death, often in fire. To be more true to the ordinary usage of the word, the holocaust is a reference to the mass extermination of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and others during World War II.

Animal rights proponents, from Isaac Singer's famous quote about the animal's eternal Treblinka, to the ill conceived and abandoned ad campaign by PETA, like to use the word holocaust and even the images and descriptions of the Holocaust to make people feel guilty about consuming meat. As a means of inducing shame it may be effective. Unfortunately the usage in propaganda is also painful and demeaning to those who have suffered, who are descended from, or share characteristics with those who were harmed or killed in the actual Holocaust. Indeed, the comparison is a slap in the face of humanity as a whole. It is akin to the common axiom in any argument where anyone who disagrees with someone tends to get called a Nazi. It's a good sign that an argument has reached the stone wall beyond where reason no longer applies.

But why, besides the fact that comparing chickens to people tends not to elevate the chicken's rights, but reduces the person's, is it inaccurate? Simple. If six billion broiler chickens are killed every year, as Ingrid Newkirk claims, there is still no shortage of broiler chickens. The Nazis did not call the Holocaust a holocaust, they called it the 'Final Solution'. The disenfranchisement of Jews, followed by the removal from German society, led to the final solution of mass extermination. The purpose was to eliminate an entire race from the human species.

There is no conspiracy to eliminate broiler chickens. Animals that are raised for food are sheltered, fed, bred, and given medical care. The reproductive and evolutionary strategies of their forebears were to be food for predators, so they are living a far more comfortable life with more assured reproductive success than they would in the wild.

There is no hatred involved in people's use of animals. We don't wish them ill, or despise them for being what they are. We don't blame them for our problems.

Other comparisons could be used, such as the number of people killed in war, or car crashes, or who die of lung cancer from smoking. Those images do not produce the same horror or sense of guilt, and so are not used-but they have the same level of accuracy as saying that there is a "holocaust for animals".

If everyone became vegetarian, as animal rights activists wish, and there were no need for food animals, there would be no place for them in the world. Domesticated animals are not suited for survival in the wild. They could not be kept in zoos or on farms, since those are 'prisons' as well, and not permitted under an animal rights philosophy. Pasture would have to be given over to more massive plant production for people.

There would be no beef cattle grazing on the hills, no dairy cows or goats, no chickens and turkeys scratching in the front yard, no pigs, or domesticated ducks, geese, or rabbits. It might be hard to believe that a fanatical movement that is ostensibly for the rights of animals could lead to their demise. However, consider the problems that those animals cause their would be rescuers now, and the hypocritical and shortsighted solutions that they've come up with. It's easier to deal with animal's rights in theory than in practice.

Animals have been released inappropriately into the wild by animal liberationists, resulting in their violent deaths and the deaths of other animals.

"Mink release"

"Rescued" animals are euthanized by would be rescuers who have no plan or desire to care for them. From Debra J. Saunders at SFGate:

"This is not the first report that PETA killed animals it claimed to protect. In 1991, PETA killed 18 rabbits and 14 roosters it had previously "rescued" from a research facility. "We just don't have the money" to care for them, then PETA-Chairman Alex Pacheco told the Washington Times. The PETA animal shelter had run out of room."

SFgate article

Perfectly adoptable animals are picked up and euthanized under false pretenses:

Peta Kills Animals

There is no animal holocaust. But the inevitable result of the animal rights mission is that there will be. The removal of animals from human society will result in a final solution of extinction for many species.