Hunting and morality

Hunting and education

Mark A. Sammut writes a long letter "in response" to my letter in The Times of January 16 (a longer version was published in this blog under the heading "More on that hunting questionnaire and the eradication of a neanderthal mentality"). I put "in response" in quotes only because I believe that Mr Sammut did not address any of the points I raised in my letter.

Mr Sammut writes: "Kenneth Cassar's It's Right To Teach That Hunting Is Wrong (January 16) cannot be accepted as stated at face value.

The question concerning the practice of hunting in Malta has, most unfortunately, become an undeniably loaded one".

I agree with Mr Sammut that it is unfortunate that the question of hunting in Malta has become a loaded one, but I do so for an entirely different reason. The reason that the issue has become so loaded is only because most people see the hunting issue in a utilitarian manner that excludes individual non-human animals as worthy of individual consideration. The questions most people seem to ask is: "Can hunting in Malta be sustainable?" and "Does hunting benefit or harm humans or the environment?". From a moral standpoint, it would be sufficient for a person who regards sentient non-human animals as individuals who can suffer and have an experiential welfare, to simply ask the following question: "Does hunting harm the shot birds?". The simple answer to that question is "yes". The question only becomes "loaded" if one makes the speciesist assumption that non-human life matters less than human life, or does not matter at all.

Mr Sammut then says: "To invade state and Church schools for the direct purpose of enlisting their manifest assistance to bolster the anti-hunting lobby surely runs against the correct interpretation of the curriculum as agreed upon by the Education Division and Education Minister Louis Galea".

My immediate reply would be that perhaps "invade" is too strong a word for Mr Sammut to use in this context. It's not as if "animal advocates" are sending hundreds of "recruits" to ensure that "their ideas" are taught at schools!

And to link this with the second part of Mr Sammut's above statement, what actually happens in schools is this: The government appointed Animal Awareness committee, which actually has an Animal Awareness Education Programme, appoints individual teachers to act as their Animal Awareness teacher in each school. It is these teachers who actually invite representatives of "animal organizations" to give talks, and organize activities together with "animal organizations" for their pupils to participate in. Browsing the Animal Awareness Education Programme website will give an idea on what the programmes and aims of the Animal Awareness section within the Education Division are.

Of course, I must make clear that I do not believe that the programme of the Education Division goes far enough. For instance, it does not question the property status of non-human animals. That said, for someone to claim that what the teachers are teaching about hunting goes over and above what the Ministry of Education allows or intends, is to distort the facts, to put it mildly.

As clearly stated in the Animal Awareness Education Programme, under the heading "A nation of animal lovers", teachers are instructed to "Ask the pupils to think about cruelty to animals. What types of things do they think are cruel? Pupils often focus on deliberate cruelty – hitting and beating. Once they have been given a range of examples, ask them to think about the difference between; neglect – failing to look after an animal properly, deliberate cruelty – intending to do something that hurts the animal. Do the pupils think one type of cruelty is worse than the other? Ask the pupils to think from an animal’s point of view. Both neglect and deliberate animal cruelty make animals suffer".

Mr Sammut goes on to say: "To seek unquestioning patronage from members of the teaching profession entails also the indirect selective assistance of the Malta Union of Teachers".

I disagree. To seek "unquestioning patronage" from the appointed animal awareness teachers (who are selected by the Education Division's Animal Awareness committee) does not require any selective assistance or approval from the Malta Union of Teachers. This is because, first of all, the teachers selected to act as Animal Awareness teachers willingly accept that post. Most probably they even volunteer. And secondly, what they teach accords with what is instructed in the Animal Awareness programme.

Mr Sammut says: "For surely here we are up against a baleful select manner of interpreting the meaning of ethics when and where violence is intrinsically involved".

Violence is violence, and there is no select way of interpreting the meaning of violence.

Mr Sammut then says: "Much ado is made of Maltese hunters, their ways and interests, their failings, true or perceived. It is not my intention to break a lance in their favour but the whole hullabaloo deserves a more rational approach. Instead of crying for hell's fire to fall upon their heads, why don't we seek and have more factual information?"

The "whole hullabaloo" comes from a belief that non-humans do not morally matter. The only factual information we need is that birds are sentient animals, and hunting them is killing them without moral justification. A rational approach requires the recognition that birds are sentient animals who have an individual welfare that may fare better or worse for them, and that to shoot to kill them is to deny them any further life experience without any moral justification.

The only justification from the hunters' end is that hunters derive pleasure from shooting birds. That is no moral justification. To claim otherwise would be to claim that non-human animal life does not matter (to them), and this would require that one gives valid arguments to support the claim that human life matters (to humans) and non-human animal life does not matter (to non-human animals). All scientific evidence points to the contrary claim, that is, that life matters to all sentient animals.

Mr Sammut then says: "To have Malta's name blackened to such a dire degree by people living in European northern latitudes calls more for unbiased factual data resulting from properly conducted research rather than selective use of an act of violence enshrined in a perceived ethical context.

Indeed, let birds of song enrich the land with their warbles. Let the migratory birds follow their chosen paths; but why single out the comparatively small hunting group in Malta but turn more of a blind eye as to what happens from Sicily northward? That is not the end of it all".

Mr Sammut here lumps me together with those who argue for the "abolition" of hunting in terms of numbers killed, "sustainable" hunting, and illegal hunting activity in Malta. I am not such a person. To me (and all animal rights advocates), the numbers killed, whether they are killed legally or illegally, or where they are killed, does not matter. Every individual non-human animal has the right to life and liberty, whether the hunting victim is in Malta, Sicily or wherever. Of course, one is perfectly entitled to "think globally, act locally", which is what I usually do.

Mr Sammut concludes his letter by saying: "Toying with violence in the context of calling upon the sustenance of ethics should lead us to also consider that this perspective involves much, much more than migratory birds and hunting, and that means in Europe and beyond its limited confines.

The deaths of the unborn in their mother's womb, the wailing of dying non-combatants as a result of sophisticated modern weaponry, the bloated stomachs of people plagued by hunger, and man's perennial inhumanity to man on a global scale, all breathe violence regardless of all accepted norms of ethics. These aspects of contemporary "globalisation" also deserve the attention of school teachers and those responsible for drawing up the respective syllabi".

I am not toying with violence. Violence towards innocents is serious business. That said, I agree with Mr Sammut that we shoud consider "much more than migratory birds and hunting" and we should look "beyond (our) limited confines". That is why I believe that human rights are part and parcel of animal rights (humans are animals too), and I agree with Mr Sammut where he says that human rights issues "also deserve the attention of school teachers and those responsible for drawing up the respective syllabi". I couldn't agree more, which is not to say that this is not already being done. What I find particularly strange is for someone who claims there are far more important issues (like the unborn, war victims, poverty etc) than a "trivial" matter such as hunting, and then wastes a whole letter "rebutting" an anti-hunting letter instead of "enlightening us" on how to resolve the human tragedies he mentions.

"I'll kill those you care about, but please don't hate me for it"

Of course, someone like Sylvana Zarb Darmanin would say that Mr Sammut "hit the nail on the head" (I personally think he missed the nail entirely and made significant damage to the furniture, if not his own fingers) and "Nice to read common sense instead of hatred towards a section of the population!!".

What Ms Zarb Darmanin is saying here is akin to saying something like "I will kill those you care about, but please don't hate me for it".

What such people fail to grasp is the simple fact that campainging for the protection of innocents does not imply "hatred towards a section of the population". Am I asking for hunters to be shot? I don't think I am. All I am asking is for hunters to stop murdering birds. Also, would Ms Zarb Darmanin say that people campaigning against racism would be spreading hatred towards a section of the population? And just in case I need to spell it out, no, I am not equating racism to speciesism, even though they are very similar in that both stem from prejudice and the exclusion from moral concern of those outside one's group.

Far from spreading hatred towards a section of the population, I am spreading respect towards every sentient being, which includes respect for each individual being's right to life.

Hunting and Christianity

Meanwhile, John Darmanin from the Vegetarian Society of Malta, writes a letter in The Times in reply to the one by the hunter federation's Lino Farrugia. Once again, Mr Darmanin (a Christian vegan) debunks "religious" pro-animal abuse arguments from a Christian ethical perspective.

Mr Darmanin writes:

"Lino Farrugia's vision of education and religion, (January 14) in which he says that conservation is synonymous with hunting and his summary conclusion that hunting is morally acceptable in modern religion deserves some comments.

Conservation, in its environmental aspect, is a very complex and broad science, which tries to protect and preserve the fine and delicate biodiversity of nature from the minutest microbe to the biggest animal; from the microscopic plant to the giant sequoias. It tries to maintain the labyrinth of interactions of life with the earth, oceans and atmosphere, that are impossible to reconstruct once destroyed. Conservation is mostly a consequence of realisation that we humans are so much an integral part of nature that whenever we harm the natural environment we will be harming ourselves.

Therefore conservation is a far cry from the simple selfish concern to limit hunting because otherwise there would be nothing left to hunt! I do not think that anyone would take Mr Farrugia's statement seriously. Redefining of the word conservation as a synonym of hunting would be sheer madness and perverse.

Mr. Farrugia readily quotes St Augustine, nearly as a supporter of hunting, but I would not believe that the quotation by St Augustine means a free license to wantonly kill any creature, even if unprotected by man-made laws. Hunters cannot adopt such statements so simply because they are music to their ears. Christianity has a direction that points only one way - towards love, kindness, compassion and humility. Killing innocent creatures inevitably points in the reverse direction. So it is not morally valid to conclude as the writer did; a middle position between St Augustine and St Francis. In this respect, it is the example of St Francis that points in the right direction.

Unfortunately no matter how carefully law abiding, no matter how conscientious a hunter may be, nothing can change the fact that hunting is a blood sport. It kills innocent creatures; it wounds helpless birds and animals. It is pleasure derived from inflicting pain when red-hot lead bludgeons into their fragile flesh. It is immensely cruel and cruelty is an evil.

The suffering of animals is not different from the suffering of humans. Animals are just as vulnerable and may be even more so because they do not have means to protect themselves from harsh natural or man-made environment conditions. In the words of Cardinal Henry Newman in a sermon delivered on Good Friday 1842 '... what should move our hearts and sicken us is that they have done no harm, they are innocent. Next they have no power whatever of resisting; it's the cowardice and tyranny of which they are victims which makes their suffering so especially touching... there is something so very dreadful, so satanic in tormenting those who have never harmed us and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power, who have weapons neither of offence nor defence that none but very hardened persons can endure the thought of it...'

Rev. Professor Dr Andrew Linzey, author of many books on animals and Christianity, derives more profound theological insight from Cardinal Newman's intelligent sermon, but the above should be more than enough proof that the way of Christianity is to protect animals from any form of cruelty. It leads to one inescapable conclusion; hurting animals for the sake of pleasure is immoral and those who teach schoolchildren against hunting are not extremists but they are teaching the right moral and the correct ethical values. St Francis loved all creatures because they originate from the same God.

He was not an extremist but his profound love of nature was a rare state of grace afforded by the Lord only to such mystic figures.

There is no middle way between virtues and vices and God forbid that school children be taught differently, it would be the antithesis of education".

Once again, I would only add, in the words of the Right Reverend Richard Holloway, retired Bishop of Edinburgh and Professor of Divinity (in his "Godless Morality" that "...the use of God in a moral debate is so problematic as to be almost worthless. We can debate with one another as to whether this or that alleged claim genuinely emanated from God, but who can honestly adjudicate in such an Olympian dispute? That is why it is better to leave God out of the moral debate and find good human reasons for supporting the system or approach we advocate, without having recourse to divinely clinching arguments".