18
Jun
MEP Shuns Compassion for Animals
- posted at 5:23 PM
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- Comments (4)
Every now and then, I get emails through that make me laugh so much my sides hurt. I won’t go into too much detail, the email discussion between Ingrid and MEP Roger Helmer speaks for itself. If you want to know what the devil they’re on about, check back on this entry I posted late last month about the push for the UK to adopt higher animal welfare laws like the Swiss.
18 June 2008
Dear Roger,
Thank you for your abominably rude and ignorant letter: It is worthy of being framed!
I took a chance on including you in the letter to Members of Parliament in which I suggested that Britain - universally known as a “nation of animal lovers” - not take a back seat to Switzerland and other countries with progressive animal protection legislation. Specifically, these countries have legislation that recognises that many cruelty-to-animals cases would never occur if people who want to take a dog or cat into their homes were required to pass a basic animal care test.
I knew a few things about you - including that you are a global-warming denier and an award-winning environmental disaster (Friends of the Earth, was it?); that you had mocked homosexuals’ “sensitivity”; and that you are otherwise hopelessly out of touch - but I thought there might be a tiny chance you could understand that cruelty to animals is something that needs to be prevented.
I also thought perhaps you realised that many young people today do not know anything about the needs of cats and dogs and how to care for these animals. They haven’t a clue that dogs can’t perspire (as people do) and leave them tied in the heat or locked in a car in summer; haven’t a clue about the nutritional needs of dog and cats are and starve them; and often haven’t a clue that dogs and cats have emotions, feelings and needs and treat them as if they are stuffed toys or punching bags. However, it turns out it is you who hasn’t a clue.
I don’t mean to be harsh, but don’t you think it might be time for you to see that you are a dinosaur in a changing world? If your name lives on, it might be because your letter is one that children in future generations will see used in textbooks to illustrate how entrenched and unenlightened even well-placed people were in 2008. Even slave runners changed their opinions. If you don’t change your opinion on issues like protecting the environment and animals, that will be a shame.
Very truly yours,
Ingrid E Newkirk
Founder
—
Dear Ingrid,Thank you for your letter of June 10th, regarding what you quaintly describe as “companion animals”. I take it you mean pets.
You are asking that all dog owners should be required to take a training course and an exam. I thought at first this must be some kind of spoof, but I see that it is not April 1st.
I spend most of my time trying to reduce pointless and unnecessary regulation in the EU, and to resist the tide of the Nanny State. I am certainly not about to support a measure like this.
Its main effect would be to greatly increase the number of abandoned animals, and animals kept in refuges because no homes could be found. Why don’t you have the honesty to admit that this has nothing to do with animal welfare, and everything to do with your real agenda — the criminalisation of pet ownership?
Best regards.
ROGER HELMER
tit for tat!!