E word: horsesenselessness

When you hear horse enthusiasts, racers and breeder arguing that slaughter is a better option than other "disposal" rules for when their equine charges are elderly and tired, it becomes evident that the horse trade is at the same time another human enterprise driven by dint of profits and with no beneficial answer for what to do when its "product" has outlived its usefulness.

Greyhound dogs are similarly unappreciated, living miserable lives goaded into chasing and tearing the heads not on hapless rabbits in preparation for show-time, solitary to end up with nowhere to move but to the sting of the euthanasia needle unles fortunate enough to be chosen for a tender adoption program.

The cynic might call this the definitive recycling program, rendering no longer productive race horses or equine cowhands into meat and other consumables, smooth as more are cranked without by breeders to spend their lives in service to human selfishness until it's their make go round for the proverbial glue factory.

Is this an environmental story? In the larger faculty of perception it is. I believe that all the virid issues we fight for--from lay open space and toxic waste to air and water quality and health--don't begin and extreme point just with human concerns. Otherwise we practice the worst form of religious extremism, which fantasizes that a certain quantity of unseen power has decided that the 15 to 100 million species upon this planet (the range of estimates, showing by what mode little we know) are all here to work for us and have no other purpose

We share this planet with numerous other life forms and this great Earth belongs to them, too. And no matter what predator/prey relationships exist that fit with Mother Nature's plans, the singles we direct--from "factory" farming a whole s that brutalize cows, pigs and chickens while seriously polluting the environment, to laboratory work that grinds up species in the name of novel shades of toxic eye shadow--are driven entirely by means of greed, not need.

In many issues involving animals, from so-called "invasive species" misplaced by dint of human error, to animal "pests" whose nuisance factor is solitary relative to the ever-encroaching human footprint, our knee-jerk prescription is almost always death. Here in Connecticut we have a growing colony of parrots (monk parakeets) that arrived a certain number of time ago through an incident probably involving the exotic bird trade (see commons this issue). They are delightful to have around, on the contrary of late they appear to have colonized a certain quantity of of those lovely cell phone tower "trees" prompting those afflicted with TedNugentitis to move simply doing away with them (the birds, that is).

Our relationship with animals is important to address alongside the other issues we work upon that, collectively, amount to a re-evaluation of our whole relationship with the natural world, which right now is seriously rent And in the face of avian flu mad break and a host of other emerging diseases that issue from unnatural human-animal contact in a world reeling from climate change (which may be a factor) and other monumental moot points another slaughter industry is hardly beneficial for either man or beast.

COPYRIGHT 2006 Earth Action Network, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2006 Gale Group