A REVIEW OF

Second Nature: The Animal Rights Controversy

by Alan Herscovici, CBC Enterprises, 1985

AND

Sea of Slaughter

by Farley Mowat, Seal Books, McClelland & Stewart, 1985

     In the last 10 years, a growing number of philosophers and political activists have begun to question the way Western society uses and abuses animals. They have argued that animals have rights too, and that lack of respect for animals is one symptom of our culture's alienation from the natural world. Canada, as one of the world's main fur-producing countries, has felt the impact of the animal rights movement more than most countries. But two recent books by Canadian authors come to opposite conclusions about the movement.
     Alan Herscovici, an Montreal-based freelance journalist, argues in a new book that the primary result of the animal rights movement will be the destruction of Indian and Inuit cultures. The campaign against the sale of seal skins has decimated the income of many Eastern Inuit communities. He argues that a widespread anti-fur movement could do the same to communities across the north, potentially forcing native peoples to leave their traditional homes. But, says Herscovici, since the land claims of these peoples are the primary barrier to the designs of multinational energy corporations, whose megaprojects wreak ecological havoc, the animal rights movement is unwittingly aiding in the destruction of one of the world's greatest wild animal habitats.
     Herscovici's book raises some difficult but important questions. But in his efforts to refute every tenet of the animal rights movement, Herscovici ends up defending mainstream Western civilization, while portraying animal rights advocates as the enemy of native cultures. In contrast to the animal rights philosophers, her argues that the Judaeo-Christian heritage has had a "softening" effect on our view of animals, a view that must sound strange to all the nature-worshipping peoples who have been brutally colonized by Christian Europe.
     Although Farley Mowat has written many books about the cultures and wildlife of Canada, he considers Sea of Slaughter his most important work. But when he tried to enter the U.S. on a promotional tour lasted April he was barred because of affiliations with "undesirable organizations." He attributes the rude welcome to "pressure on the government from anti-environmental groups."
     Sea of Slaughter describes the abundance of wildlife encountered by the first Europeans in the eastern approaches to North America, and how nearly every species has been decimated if not annihilated.
     The waters of Atlantic Canada supported fish in almost incredible numbers, but after centuries of overfishing, Mowat says, the fisheries industry started to blame other animals for the decline in stocks. This provided a convenient excuse for war on sea animals, although Mowat argues that their consumption of fish is negligible. For much of this century Canada's department of fisheries paid a substantial bounty to anyone killing certain species of seals, whether or not they had any use for the corpse. Today the killing of harp seals goes on even though the market for the furs has dried up.
     Major save-the-seals organizations, after their successful attempt to stop the sale of sealskins in Europe, promoted a boycott of Canadian fish products when the slaughter of seals continued. To Herscovici, this is evidence of unprincipled fanaticism – destroying the livelihood of honest fishermen in order to blackmail Canada. But in Mowat's account it is the fishing industry and the federal department of fisheries who are behind the war on seals, and so a boycott of Canadian fish products seems a very logical move by seal-hunt protesters. Although he stops short of proclaiming himself one of them, Mowat says that the dedication of the animal rights advocates offers the best hope that some species can avoid extinction.
     Mowat's mass of evidence makes it seem obvious that the blind destructiveness of Western society is the common enemy of native peoples and animal rights groups. Yet in the short term Herscovici's fears about the effects of fur boycotts on the native cultures may be valid. It is a tragic irony that native peoples are now so economically dependent on the wealthiest consumers in our society, but it is an irony that animal rights groups should not ignore.

Originally published in NOW (Toronto), August 29, 1985