{"id":3209,"date":"2012-04-17T09:20:15","date_gmt":"2012-04-17T16:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=3209"},"modified":"2012-04-18T10:42:12","modified_gmt":"2012-04-18T17:42:12","slug":"opinion-legal-system-needs-to-punish-animal-abusers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2012\/04\/17\/opinion-legal-system-needs-to-punish-animal-abusers\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Legal system needs to punish animal abusers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our legal system is pathetic.<\/p>\n

In 2009, two island men, David Whiffin and Clayton Cunningham, starved an old horse named Jalupae nearly to death on Whiffin\u2019s farm in Saanichton. Then the horse was strung up by a rope to an excavator and hung.<\/p>\n

But a judge has recently found that the hanging was humane and Whiffin got only a $7,500 fine for cruelty to the horse by not feeding it properly (Whiffin also can\u2019t own animals for five years).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time the law and the courts changed to recognize animals not as property, but as intrinsically valuable living beings.<\/p>\n

Laws and judicial decisions don’t change on their own, though: they\u2019re reflections of how society feels about particular issues. This is what makes this case so difficult. Plenty of people think that what was done to Jalupae was horrendous and that Whiffin and Cunningham should get jail time as if Jalupae had been a human.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Jalupae before his death (photo by Shannon Whitaker).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But what makes it difficult is that people often support this same kind of abuse and violence, directly or indirectly, by eating meat, drinking milk, buying from unethical breeders, wearing feathers and leather, and the many other ways that non-human animals are systemically exploited, oppressed, and enslaved to produce for our convenience and vanity.<\/p>\n

How does the court overcome this hypocrisy without making criminals of the majority of society? It doesn’t. It\u2019s apathetic to the deaths of billions of non-human animals every year.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, many people would argue that because Jalupae was a horse it\u2019s a waste of time for the court system to deal with such cases. They forgo the hypocrisy for an attitude of pure anthropocentrism. Only humans should matter, in their viewpoint. Other animals are simply for our use; any idea that animals think for themselves, have emotions, relationships, or a society to call their own is simply absurd.<\/p>\n

Jalupae was a horse. No human will ever know what it is like to be horse. But by putting ourselves behind the eyes of another we can view the world from their perspective. It may not feel the same, but we are both made from flesh and bone, have a desire to express ourselves, and understand the difference between pleasure and pain. We need laws that reflect these truths, not the dated, self-interested, and anthropocentric ideals that have led to the legitimated suffering of billions of animals a year.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the coward that can\u2019t let others have their peace because they are too weak to share the plenty they have.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s time the laws punished cowardice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our legal system is pathetic. In 2009, two island men, David Whiffin and Clayton Cunningham, starved an old horse named Jalupae nearly to death on Whiffin\u2019s farm in Saanichton. Then the horse was strung up by a rope to an excavator and hung. But a judge has recently found that the hanging was humane and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive","category-views"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3209"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3222,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3209\/revisions\/3222"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}