Killer Whale Fin (Photo credit: Ndecam)

A U.S. judge has been asked to rule on whether animals should be protected from slavery in the same way as human beings. This case is being heard in San Diego and has been brought by PETA, who named five orcas as plaintiffs in the case. The US District Judge Jeffrey Miller called the hearing.

 The orcas reside in San Diego and Orlando, and are forced to live in tanks.  PETA lawyer Jeffrey Kerr says ‘This case is on the next frontier of civil rights’, despite the fact that these orcas are not expected to respect the civil rights of their audience.  Theodore Shaw, Sea World’s lawyer, says the lawsuit is a waste of the courts time and money. He added that a court does not have the authority to answer the ethical question of whether animals should be treated as humans.

The Judge has now heard the evidence from both sides, before deciding to take the case under advisement and to issue his ruling at a later date.  The implications of a ruling in favour of PETA could be significant, allowing animals to be plaintiffs in a law suit. It would also raise questions concerning how scientific data is gathered, and in the use of animals in the military.

Defence lawyers say the issue at the heart of this case is not whether the animals have been abused. The case aims to give animals the same rights as humans, so keep them captive would clearly be wrong if PETA was to win the case. PETA say any ruling would only apply to the entertainment industry, but the ruling could have repercussions in many subsequent animal rights cases.

Some people were once considered property, and animals also should be thought of as humans and have their rights protected in the same way. This is an interesting ethical question; these animals did not choose the life they lead. But at what point do equal rights become impractical? Will a decision ultimately lead to the life of animal being equal to that of a human? The judge in this case has not set a date when he will announce a verdict.

20 vegetarians can live off of the same land as one meat eater.

Many people are trying to go green to save the earth but “Meat’s not green”

Because of the demand for meat is so high animals are no longer killed humanly.

Animals have bad living conditions when raised and sold for food.

Meat is high in saturated fat making a meat eater more likely to get diabetes and heart disease.

Animal farms cause a lot of unnecessary pollution.

The price of meat continues to increase so the more you cut out of your diet the cheaper your grocery list will be.

Despite what people say there are many more ways to get natural protein that don’t include eating meat.

You are much more likely to get an illness from your food if you eat meat because animals carry disease.

Vegetarians and vegans get sick less often of meat eaters.

You will be saving lives everyday.

All of the above are food reasons to become a vegetarian. They are also good reasons to become vegan but here are a few more reasons directed more toward being vegan.

Most of the food a vegan eats is fresh food so you know exactly what you are eating.

You are taking foods from an animals that they had to work very hard to create so they would be able to get benefit from it, not you.

You’re stealing milk from a baby cow (which contains puss)

No one can argue that in its defense for animals, the organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) knows few bounds, and that includes pornography.

In a mind-bending move, the organization has announced that it will create a pornographic web site.  The website, says the organization, will help it raise awareness.  Clearly, that’s not the only thing that will start to rise once gents and ladies get an eye full of what will be on PETA’s triple X website.

New .xxx Domain Available

The new website will be launched in December of 2011.  That’s when the Internet domain .xxx will be available for commercial use.  PETA says their new .xxx site will be a useful way of addressing a hot topic and their animal rights message at the same time.

While critics suggest the new PETA triple X website is just another marketing method by which PETA can advance their views, others say the new site could be useful.  However, there are several people who think the new campaign joins other crude and tasteless PETA efforts – such as their “Save the Whales. Lose Blubber. Go Vegetarian campaign – that ultimately does the organization little good.

Animal Mistreatment Videos

So, what will be on the new site?  PETA says they will have actual pornography, but it will be interspersed with videos of animals being mistreated and links to websites featuring vegetarian and vegan messages and products.

PETA says it hopes to gain a “whole new audience of people” by launching their porn site.  No doubt about that, but will all those new people have much of an interest in anything but the human animals that will be romping around in the all together?  I guess we’ll have to check it out – all in the name of science and research, of course.

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The porn site will have sexually explicit content which includes animal abuse. Lindsay Rajt says the sexy videos will give way to the sinister world of animal cruelty.

PETA is known for its campaigns against animal cruelty, but little did any one imagine that the organization would go so racy in its campaign.

“You will be able to find the site at peta.xxx and it will be “a pornography site that draws attention to the plight of animals,” Rajt said.

PETA is widely known for its “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” ad campaigns with celebrities like Eva Mendes and Khloe Kardashian showing off their skin and bones in support of animals.

The porn site has yet to be launched and the .xxx domain is not yet secured.

I have been a vegetarian for nearly fifteen years. At first, I thought you were pretty cool, PETA. I had some of your stickers on my laptop. I thought you were so smart and clever and that it was great to get the message out. Vegetarianism is the way to go. But you just don’t get it, PETA.

Your protests get more attention from horny men than anything else. This is probably intentional, too. Men tend to be far less sympathetic to the vegetarian perspective than women. But you aren’t convincing men to become vegetarians by parading naked women around times square with butcher markings on their butts. Instead, you’re just making them hungry! I can’t imagine that your protests have actually convinced very many people to switch to vegetarianism. They are just too insane to convert any rational person.

What convinces most of us to become vegetarians in the first place is compassion. Whether you are compassionate for the environment, your own body, or the lives of all animals, you become a vegetarian out of compassion. But what you do, PETA, is present absolutely twisted, insane concepts to the world. And then you expect them to become vegetarian/vegan.

Look, I get it. I understand what you’re saying when you have people lay naked, soaked in red paint and wrapped in saran wrap. I immediately recognize the relationship to the super market. But do you think my grandmother is going to feel more sympathetic towards a cow she never met because your naked babes are laying there like that? You’re more likely to get the attention of confused fourteen year old boys than anything else. And believe me – peer pressure will keep most of them from ever becoming vegetarians.

And do you really think that when you are the public’s predomninant perception of what vegetarians are like that they would want to join your ranks? You’re constantly going beyond the acceptable boundaries to make a point and get in the news. But all you are doing is polarizing vegetarians even further.

Sure, you might convince some angsty teenagers to become vegetarians with your outlandish stunts. But I doubt that many of them really get it. They’re just doing it because it’s cool and counterculture. Just like Elvis. For them, it will only be a fad. You’re not really spreading the compassion part.

PETA: If you want to convince more people to stop eating meat, stop it with the outlandish stunts involving naked, barely legal girls. While I love the hot action, I can’t believe that it’s actually effective in bringing more people to vegetarianism. Instead, show others what the meat industry does to our animals, our lands, and our bodies. If people get to see the real, brutal truth, that will convince them.

Stop turning tricks. Start turning stomachs. Then you’ll get some results.

“If you donate to the aid of cows being tortured and being confined into smaller living quarters with poor conditions, then you will yourself get better quality meat for your table. By supporting the rights of animals, you can potentially make the food you eat far better than it is. Besides, would you want to be imprisoned in horrible conditions your whole life before being eaten?”

However, with that logic, the other side of the token could be used.

“There is no need to help these cows. All you’ll do is decrease the amount of meat we can produce annually, causing humanity to either lose space for farmland or to starve itself to death as meat prices rise. By not supporting organizations for animal rights, you could potentially help save the world from starvation.”

Now that both arguments have been seen, you can hopefully see that both arguments rely heavily on logic. You should also be able to see that logic you can use logic to provide a counterargument for logic. The only thing that really matters now is public opinion.

Well, enough with the introductions, logic is pointless because of the fact (you can’t really say this is an opinion, as I have just provided evidence) that one could argue one point with logic but could find retaliation with logic of the same potency.

Basically, logic is like a pendulum, when one thing is said about something, you’ll have to expect that the argument will come back to hit you in the face. However, the thing about pendulums is that, eventually, they’ll slow down. Much like this, with an argument based on logic, each time the same piece of logic is used, the argument will weaken, usually due to repetition.

The one reason logic is still heavily used in arguments is that most people are not very capable of countering logic with logic, as the average human intelligence is declining (in fact, I believe I myself have lost 30 IQ listening to crude humor), so is the capabilities of the human mind to comprehend certain things, logic being one of these things. With that, it gives people a false sense of security that their argument is flawless (provided it is a persuasive piece of literature that is based on Logos, rather than any other style of rhetoric).

Well, time for our brief summarization, logic is pointless.

At Toronto’s Fashion Week PETA supporters came out to protest the continued wearing  of animal fur and skin. On Tuesday afternoon, PETA supporters hoisted their “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” banner.

Outside  the Prince’s Gate close to Toronto’s Fashion week location, a small group of protesters gathered to make a statement about the wearing of animal skins, leather and fur displayed by Canadian fashion designers.

Aside from the fully clothed protesters, with signs like “Animals are not ours to wear” and “Trapped by Greed” there were the a few daring,  full breasted beauties who decided to bare it all, well almost.

The sexy  protestors stripped down to their panties standing behind a banner that said “Bare Skin—Don’t Wear Skin.” Their exposed voluptuous breasts were barely covered by the tips of their hands.

These naked protesters almost seemed like paid models.  Peta runs a risk with these sorts of displays.  Who or what got more attention, the campaign against wearing animal fur or the naked beauties braving the Toronto chill?

Nowadays, there are non-animal teaching methods that can be used instead of doing these cruel animal experiments, such as videos, fliers, computerized graphics that can mimic the real thing. Science is to studied to find out the cause and later used to help people, but how is it helpful when people have to kill animals? Besides, animals are different from humans, the things that may harm harm animals may not harm humans and vice versa. That is why we have Sim people, those mimic real human and we can experiment on them without harming any living things!

So what do you readers think? I would say killing animals for experiments is just plain wrong and unreasonable! I myself am a nursing student and we use videos and plastic models to learn anatomy and physiology, and I think they work great! It’s just disgusting and cruel to kill live animals just so the students can get a better view of the organs?! We used preserved body organs but that’s totally different because the person is already deceased as opposed to living animals!

Both images appeal to a non-vegetarian audience and try to influence their food choice. Figure 1 appeals to the general audience inside of this category, while Figure 2 appears to focus more on a specific, Christian audience. Most viewers, including non-Christians, would understand the reference to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in Figure 2, however it is likely that only a Christian viewer would feel a strong connection based on this imagery.

In order for an animal to be effective in an advertisement, some sort of a connection has to be established between the viewer and the subject. In these two images, that connection is made through the angle of vision. In both figures the subjects are placed in the middle of the image. This puts the emphasis on them rather than on anything in the background. Camera angle is another similarity. The chicken and the cows are both viewed at a level angle, which shows equality (Ramage, Bean, & Johnson, 2009). The difference lies in why each image is set up this way.

            In Figure 1, the cows are placed level with the viewer to appeal to ethos, or credibility of the image. They are standing on their hind legs, which is a trait generally only found in primates with a certain level of intelligence. This immediately gives the cows more credibility as they are posed in a way typical of humans. The central cow is looking directly at the viewer, and his counterparts are also looking in the same general direction, which implies power (Ramage). This connection is needed because the subjects are making a personal request from the viewers. The appeal to pathos in this ad comes when the viewer sees the cows as not addressing a large group of people, but them personally, as in, “You, eat more chicken” (Hirschberg, 1999). This has the effect of making the viewer feel like it is their choice whether the cows live or die.

            In Figure 2, however, the chicken’s level angle of vision is designed to make its appeal to emotion. The viewer is supposed to see that just because the subject is not human, it is still a sentient being and deserves humane treatment. The light in the upper corner symbolizes God looking down on the chicken, meaning that it is a child of God too.

            Color can say a lot about an image. The color schemes in the two figures couldn’t be any more different, yet they both work to reinforce why their respective animals should not be eaten. Figure 1 is almost completely white. According to Color Wheel Pro, a computer program that creates color schemes, white symbolizes innocence and goodness (QSX, 2008). The white background helps portray the cows as being pure, and as such, undeserving of being eaten. The ad is very non-aggressive, as the cows are simply protesting with words. While the white in Figure 1 promotes a more positive view of the ad, the black background in Figure 2 does the opposite. Black is used to show death and evil, and it brings out other colors, such as the red bruises on the chicken’s neck. When mixed with other powerful colors like red and orange, black creates an aggressive color scheme very fitting for the image of the mangled chicken.

            Both images contain text, and in both images it is not so much about what the text says but rather how it is displayed. The misspelled “EAT MOR CHIKIN” in Figure 1 appears to be hand drawn by the cows, giving them the appearance of being intelligent enough to write, but the messy scrawls and the spelling errors portray a sense of childlike helplessness. This plea only serves to give the viewer even more guilt for choosing to eat cows. The inferences of helplessness and of higher intelligence further the idea that, in this image at least, cows are not a good choice of animal to eat. The pseudo-biblical script written on the bloodstain in Figure 2 furthers the metaphor of the chicken to Jesus, adding to the guilt that the viewer takes in upon first looking at the image. The similarity of the wording to the descriptions in the Bible of Jesus’ death give the viewer the feeling that just as it was humanity’s fault that Jesus had to die, the death of this chicken is the responsibility of anyone who has eaten chicken.

            When Figure 1 is studied after having analyzed Figure 2, the viewer should realize that if the chicken’s life is just as valuable as a human’s in the eyes of God, then so are the lives of the cows. Our actions of butchering thousands of animals for meat would not be justified if their lives have equal value to ours. When we look at Figure 2 through the lens of Figure 1, we see that if it were not the chicken that is brutally killed, it would likely be the cows instead. After all, there has to be a reason why the cows are supporting eating more chicken.

We personify these animals in advertisements to the point of being or almost being equal to humans, but then we use them to advertise each other’s meat for us. When looked at in this light, is it any different than advertising eating another human being? It is important to be able to analyze media in this way because by looking at images collectively instead of one at a time, we can piece together stories about our society that may not be obvious otherwise. By doing these sorts of exercises and extrapolating the hidden narratives behind advertisements, we can then make inferences about the American culture. For instance, we often look down on societies that practice cannibalism, however when we look at the stories told in Figures 1 and 2, it is possible to find a hidden story that suggests that we eat animals that we hold in the same regard as humans, which is not really that far of a stretch from cannibalism. More importantly, being able to dissect the individual aspects of an advertisement allows the viewer to take a look at the logos, or logic behind the claims being made. By dissecting Figures 1 and 2, the viewer can read into the fact that the companies are guilt tripping them by personifying animals. When we find these stories we can eliminate the pressure to listen to the ad, allowing us to make more logical decisions and be better consumers.

Figure 1, Advertisement for Chick-Fil-A

Figure 2, Advertisement for PETA (2007)

References

Chick-Fil-A. Eat mor chikin [Advertisement]. Retrieved February 2, 2011 from http://www.mediabuyerplanner.com/entry/42100/eat-mor-chikin-cows-reach/

Hirschberg, S. (1999). The rhetoric of advertising. In S. Hirschberg & T. Hirschberg (Eds.) Reflections on Language (pp. 463-469). New York: Oxford University Press. (Reprinted from Essentials of Argument by S. Hirschberg, 1996, Allyn & Bacon) Retrieved from Ares database.

PETA (2007). Before dying, he was struck, humiliated, burned, mistreated and agonized during hours. [Advertisement]. Retrieved February 2, 2011 from http://www.bestadsontv.com/ad/4615/Peta-Cross

QSX Software Group. (2008). Color Wheel Pro: Color meaning. Retrieved from http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-meaning.html

Ramage, J.D., Bean, J.C., & Johnson, J. (2009). Analyzing images. Allyn & bacon guide to writing (pp. 285-310). Pearson Custom Publishing.

(1989). The media business; ads in which animals speak better than humans. Retrieved February 8, 2011 from http://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/17/business/the-media-business-ads-in-which-animals-speak-better-than-humans.html?src=pm