Now that PETA has been dealt with, veterinarians have settled down to practice in earnest for the the fish throwing contest to be held at this year’s AVMA convention in Seattle, WA.
And if they get tired of tossing fish, Plan B is to chase people around with a giant octopus corpse….fun!
AVMA CEO, (yeah, they are a corporation), Ron DeHaven, draws a (wide) line in the sand regarding the Seattle fish tossing controversy.
So this isn’t just about tossing around fish, is it? It’s about using animals in agriculture, entertainment, research and teaching, and how the AVMA thinks that vested interest veterinarians should be the ‘experts’ that will tell us what is cruel and what is not. Who better than someone getting paid by corporations that profit from using animals in those ways to tell us what animal suffering is, right?
This New York Times article gives an example of what research veterinarians feel is a ‘responsible’ use of companion animals.
They Eat What We Are
By FREDERICK KAUFMAN
Published: September 2, 2007‘I had been told that in the basement of the animal-science laboratory building at the University of Illinois, Dr. George Fahey kept a colony of strange-looking dogs. At Fahey’s orders, each of the dogs had undergone a surgical procedure to string a length of tubing from its intestinal tract to a clear plastic spout that stuck out its side. Fahey, a professor of animal and nutritional sciences, could open a spout by hand, fill a bag with whatever happened to ooze out and calculate how much the dog had digested before whatever it had not digested could move farther through its body. The plastic tubing was inserted in the ileum — the exact spot where food absorption ends and fermentation by the microflora and bacteria of the lower bowel begins. Given a large enough sample of any dog food, George Fahey could calculate how much vitamin or mineral or fat or sugar would enter a dog’s bloodstream and how much would be irretrievably lost. Fahey has spent his career investigating the metabolism of domestic animals, and his research has helped define the nature of pet food.
….
The dogs appeared content within their temperature-controlled environment, where the lights go on at 6 every morning and off at 8 every evening, where regulated supplies of air enter and exit the ventilation system, where they can play with their toys and listen to AM radio all day. Fahey said that the kennels exceeded federal guidelines for size and that the lab assistants took the dogs outside twice a week to exercise, romp and catch some rays. “If you had this much money spent on you, you’d be happy, too,” he said.“They’re spoiled brats,” the lab technician said.
Of course, the installation of plastic plumbing into a living hound did not seem much like spoiling. And in fact there was another way — a more precise way — to determine how much energy a dog or a cat had acquired from its food. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a research method called “total carcass analysis,” which, as the name implies, required the animal to be dead. “You need to have a darned good reason to do a terminal case,” Fahey said to me earlier. “It’s too expensive.” And it is not for the squeamish. “It’s a helluva job,” he said. “You have to grind, you have to sieve, you have to grind again. It’s a good technique, but it’s very labor-intensive.” I cringed.
Now Fahey pointed to the spout sticking out of Wiggles’s side. “There,” he said. “You see the cannula.”
The plugs did not seem to irritate the dogs. “If it is put in correctly, it becomes part of them,” he said. “It heals very nicely, and becomes a part of their anatomy.”….
Dr. DeHaven really should have let it go when he said that the fish toss wasn’t cruel since the fish being tossed about were already dead. I was buying it up through that point. (Though the wiggling tail in the second video makes you wonder even about that, doesn’t it? Must be just an illusion created by a skilled fish handler to entertain the crowd.)
We didn’t need to know that not all veterinarians are like the animal loving family veterinarian stereotype, but now we do know. Some vets might be gentle Dr. Dolittles, (bet a few are even vegetarians that cringe at the fish throwing adventure that awaits them in July), but other veterinarians must be as cold as those dead fish being tossed around, and very entranced by the even colder cash big businesses pay them to ‘responsibly’ use animals.
It will be interesting to see if rumors about plans for next year’s AVMA convention are true. A taxidermy order for 10,000 stuffed poodle dog ashtrays to be given out as convention souvenirs seems like it would be tough to fill. Ah, but they do have to do something with the corpses of all those dogs used in research…and since a prototype was accepted as an art entry in the MACO Fair of Contemporary Art this year at the Centro Banamex in Mexico City, then stuffed poodle dog ashtrays would be considered to be a classy and responsible use of animals by the AVMA.
