Beauty and animal crueltyI know this is not specifically a question related to art, but I'm sure it is one that we are all familiar with.
I reject animal cruelty and I do my best to avoid products tested on animals. I was reading through several websites recently, trying to find 'ethical' alternatives to common products, and all I discovered was confusion, anger and misinformation. I never realised how much of a spectrum of different positions there are on what I thought was a fairly simple thing. Having read through all the mire of data on the subject, I've come to the conclusion that setting oneself the goal of TOTALLY ethical shopping is destined to failure.
Modern life and commerce are suffused with so much complexity and connectedness that it is impossible to say that any specific product is 'cruelty free'. It all boils down to how you define an ethical product, and what you consider 'taints' a product as associated with animal testing. If company 'A' manufactures a product and as part of its safety approval, they perform or sanction the performing of animal testing, then it is clear that product is associated with animal testing. Let us now consider company 'B' who produce some products tested on animals and some that are not. Are the products not tested on animals sufficiently 'tainted' by the other activity of that same company as to invalidate claims that a specific product is 'not tested on animals'. Can a potentially 'ethical' product be unethical just because it is produced by an unethical company?
Do you believe that the reason for boycotting a product is to encourage a company to change it's practices, or is it a simple personal choice and has nothing to do with changing the world?
Almost all of the basic ingredients for health and beauty products have at some time in the past undergone animal testing, either individually or as part of a finished product.
Let us imagine for a moment that we are setting up a hypothetical company with the goal to manufacture ethical products. We use a specific ingredient as a component in one of our products. We know that the manufacturer of that raw material we buy does not carry out animal testing. We subsequently discover after years of trading that an unconnected and separate company using the same raw materials has recently tested that chemical on animals. What kind of philosophical position does that now put us in? Can we no longer say that all our ingredients are'not tested on animals'? This is just one of hundreds of difficult potential scenarios that complicate this judgement. For instance, when L'Oreal took over Body Shop, did that invalidate the ethical stand that was previously maintained by Anita Roddick?
The fact is that I don't know what to do. The more I think this through the more confused I become. The only way to totally avoid anything tainted by animal testing is to take the 'Amish' philosophy and never to buy any finished products, but make all your own from scratch.
Where do you stand on this? Would you boycott an entire supermarket chain because they sell both ethical and unethical products, or would you shop there and just select the ethical alternatives? Would you stop using the Body Shop entirely just because they are now owned by L'Oreal?
As soon as you choose to go down this road, it brings up a bewildering catalogue of questions that all really come down to 'how far do you take it'?
Content
Devious Comments
I think that our small choices have the potential to change the world, but we have to start from the big things and move to the low-impact ones.
Let's see to it that vegetarianism is being spread. And let's rise awareness about animal rights.
If you know that a company is unethical - do boycott the product. But such actions have really little or no impact.
I think that treating your friends to some vegetarian cuisine has a bigger impact on the world if they start eating less meat and more greens.
--
"A gentleman is simply a patient wolf." Lana Turner
--
روزگار غریبي ست نازنين
Personally I feel there are bigger issues at hand: global warming, deforestation, depletion of ocean resources etc. These problems will kill us along with the lab rats over at L'Oreal one day...
I've butchered animals. Raised rabbits once, with a high school buddy, which we sold for consumption; have done in whole flocks of fowl of one kind and another, a few sheep and aided and abetted the slaughter of a sow. Tell ya what, though.. helping my brother-in-law fillet fish that were still gasping for a good lung full of water.. that was a tipping point for me.
Part and parcel to all that, I have watched just a ton of National Geographic in my near 59 years and anyone who thinks that an animal meeting its demise in the wild is afforded something akin to dignity, better wake up and smell the coffee. Hell, even the hunters die ignominious deaths for the most part, ending up down someone's gullet just as surely as they had partaken of the life blood of other creatures.
It's a brutal world, man. I hate that people can and do treat animals cruelly, especially when it appears to be so needless at times. I hate that we treat each other in kind, as often as not. But, the realist in me, the pragmatist says this is the hand we were dealt. We can wish for better; we can certainly work towards that goal.. but the reality is that our best efforts will most likely end up doing little more than scraping the surface.
Would that it were otherwise. My only real suggestion would be to try and avoid anything that your conscience has trouble living with. Other than that, there is little else to be done.
So spake the man in the balcony.
--
She's terse; I can be terse. Once, in flight school, I was laconic.
I worked on a mixed livestock and arable farm when I was a teenager, so I know the best and the worst aspects of animal welfare in a farming environment. I was a country boy and I know Tennyson's "nature red in tooth and claw". Yes, nature is cruel and unforgiving. Predation is a natural part of that. The difference is that we are sentient and we have the intelligence to choose. The lion does not choose to eat the wildebeest, it is in it's nature to do that and it has no choice. We do have a choice and we can live a healthy and full life with or without meat.
I am vegetarian but not for reasons of sentimentality. I don't think raising animals for food is morally wrong in itself, but I know from experience that it is impossible to do it on a commercial basis without some degree of cruelty. I also know that over-fishing is disrupting the ecology of our oceans. I know that raising animals is a terribly energy-inefficient way of producing edible protein, and bovine flatulence is a far more significant contributor to greenhouse gases then car exhausts.
I'm often criticised on the basis that we should first solve man's inhumanity to man. My observation is that we could do worse than measure a nation's morality by its treatment of animals.
I'm realistic enough to know that whatever choices I make, it is a drop in the ocean on a global scale, but I need to be comfortable with myself, and to do that I need to feel that I'm never actively or passively encouraging cruelty or exploitation of any living creature.
Despite all that, the reason that I brought up the whole thing about butchering animals is pretty much in concert with what you say here. If done properly, the animal can be raised in a safe, clean environment and brought to its ultimate demise in a way that is, for lack of a better term, humane. Thus, the whole stripping the skin from fish who are still conscious was, to me, unacceptable - over the line, as it were.
I feel just exactly how you do when it comes to the whole testing of animals as well. One would think there must be a better way...
Anyway.. yeah. What I said at the end still applies. You have to do what your heart and conscience is comfortable with. Whether or not it ultimately has any effect on the World at large is, in the end, meaningless. It's your Karma, man.
--
She's terse; I can be terse. Once, in flight school, I was laconic.
Previous PageNext Page