Transcriber: Reiko Bovee Reviewer: Denise RQ
This is Sarah.
Twenty-nine years ago,
I volunteered for a researcher who is teaching her a symbolic language.
I read about Sarah in my college psychology textbook.
She was famous because of her extraordinary capacity
to learn our language and communicate with us.
I thought it would be really interesting to work with chimpanzees
in such language studies.
When I arrived, the trainer introduced me
to the four 3-year-old chimpanzees with whom I'd be working.
When it was time to meet Sarah, she prepared me by saying
that Sarah sometimes became quite agitated when she met new people.
Sure enough, we walked into the hallway by her cage,
and she immediately began screaming and literally jumping off the walls.
Then the trainer explained to me
that Sarah was no longer willing to participate in her language studies,
and that a few years earlier,
she had behaved in an aggressive way toward one of her trainers.
So, now all of her interactions with people, animals, other chimpanzees
had to be through the bars of her cage.
And finally she told me not to get too close to Sarah's cage,
let Sarah grab my arm and yank it out of its socket.
Sarah, the famous and brilliant chimpanzee who'd been taken from her home in Africa,
and who had been moved from lab to lab, who had managed to learn our language,
was now living her life essentially in isolation.
The next week when I went to visit Sarah,
she came right up to where I was standing and stared right into my eyes.
And not knowing if she would understand me but wanting to do something for her,
I said, "Turn around, and I'll scratch your back."
And sure enough, Sarah turned around,
she pressed her back against the bars of her cage,
and she sank down to sit on the floor.
I walked over, and I scratched her back through the bars.
Sarah was eventually moved to another lab; and then another, and then another,
until I'm happy to say she finally found refuge there, a chimp haven,
where she now lives with a troupe of other chimpanzees,
and where she will be able to remain for the remainder of her life.
We, humans, are one animal species among so many millions of others.
We share this extraordinary planet with more animals than we can even name.
Some we experiment on, some we eat, some we wear, some we use to entertain us,
some we kill for sport, some we love, some we vilify.
We're particularly fond of dogs.
This is a picture of two of my family's three rescue dogs, Ruby and Elsie.
If you share your home with a dog,
you know that like Sarah, dogs are quite good at understanding us.
In fact, they can learn to understand dozens of our words easily
and they're even more adapted to understanding our nonverbal cues.
They may be able to understand our language far better
than we'll ever understand their native forms of communication.
There's no doubt that dogs experience a range of emotions similar to people.
They experience joy, love, jealousy,
betrayal, fear, devotion, and so much more.
And because we love dogs so much,
and we recognize their capacity to feel pain and suffer,
we have some laws to protect them; at least the ones that we call pets
as opposed to the ones we experiment on in laboratories.
For example, if you were to go home, and you were to take a burning hot iron
and press into the flesh of your dog to leave a permanent mark
and anybody reported you,
you would be arrested and tried with criminal cruelty.
But it's perfectly legal to do that to other animals
who feel just as much as dogs,
and we even have a name for it - branding.
It's done routinely to cows without any painkillers or anesthesia.
It would also be illegal
if you were to take your dog and put her into a cage so small
that she was never able to turn around for the duration of her life.
But it's perfectly legal to do it to other animals able to feel
just as much as dogs,
like mother pigs who are forced to bear litter after litter of piglets
most of whom will be slaughtered for food by the time they're six months old
while their mothers are impregnated
and forced to live in such filth, squalor, and confinement
that it's almost unbearable.
They breathe in the fumes of their own waste
which they can never escape
and which causes many of them to suffer from lung disease and pneumonia.
Over 100 million pigs are slaughtered for food every year
just in the United States.
The vast majority of the pork, ham, and bacon that we eat
comes from facilities like this.
It wasn't until I was an adult
that I realized cows don't spontaneously produce milk for people.
This should not have been an epiphany.
Like us, cows are mammals.
Like us, they produce milk to feed their young.
But in the dairy industry,
we take their babies away from them on their first day of life,
so that we can take the milk that's meant for them for ourselves.
We force these cows to produce about 10 times the amount of milk
that they would normally produce to feed their own young,
which causes about half of the cows in the United States
to wind up getting mastitis, a painful udder infection.
Over and over, they'd bear cubs so that we can take their milk
until they can no longer produce milk; and then we turn them into hamburgers.
Many people share their homes
with parakeets, parrots, cockatiels, and finches.
and it would be illegal
to take any of those birds and put them into a cage so small
that they could never stretch a wing.
It would be also illegal to slice off half of their beaks with a hot blade
without any painkillers or anesthesia.
But it's perfectly legal to do this to other birds;
it's done routinely to 9 billion with a beak,
chickens and turkeys every year just in the United States.
Chickens and turkeys live and die under such brutal and horrific conditions
that it's almost unimaginable.
The ones who enjoy the worst conditions are the hens
who we use to lay the eggs that we eat.
I've taken a couple of groups of high school students
to visit one of the largest egg producers on the East Coast,
and this is what we saw.
There were half a million birds crammed into stacked cages
as far as the eye could see.
These poor birds were stuffed nine into this cage
unable to move or escape the pecking of the stronger hens;
that's why half of their beaks were cut off to prevent them
from pecking each other to death under these conditions.
As you can see, they look awful.
Their combs are pale and flopped over their heads,
their feathers are missing, many had gaping wounds.
And all of them, like the pigs were breathing
in the fumes of their accumulated wastes;
giant piles of which collected underneath their cages
and wouldn't be cleaned out even once during their year of life.
Only when they were so depleted and couldn't lay eggs any more
and were sent off to slaughter, was this facility cleaned out
in preparation for another half million birds.
Most of the eggs that we buy in supermarkets, and restaurants,
and in prepared and packaged food comes from caged hens.
But how would we know this?
Unless somebody tells us, we would never know.
Advertising won't tell us.
Egg cartons won't tell us.
This egg carton which describes these eggs as fabulously farm fresh
came from the facility I just showed you.
The egg industry and spokespeople for PR firms won't tell us either.
Trent Loos, one such spokesperson, had this to say
in the magazine "Feedstuffs,"
"A hen in a cage is actually not much different
from a traveler in a hotel with room service."
So, here again is a picture I took of hens in a typical industry cage.
And here's a picture of some travelers in a hotel with room service.
You decide if there's a difference.
Most of us don't seek out this knowledge.
Many of us would prefer not to know how animals were treated
because then we'd be faced with a moral quandary that arises
if we allow our desires to eclipse our values.
Because in terms of their ability to suffer and feel pain,
there's no essential difference
between a dog or a parrot and a cow, a pig or a chicken.
The difference lies in our perception of them.
Some we call pets, others we call dinner.
When I was in high school, I had a friend who happened to be a sheep.
I visited him regularly,
and every time I arrived, he would come running up to me
and he'd lift up his head so I could scratch his chin.
I loved that sheep.
I also loved lamb chops.
In fact, lamb chops were my favorite food.
So I tired really hard not to make the connection
between the sheep I loved and the lamb chops I desired.
Back then I also happened to be a big fan of the television series "Star Trek."
I was introduced, in one episode, to the concept of vegetarianism
by Mr. Spock, who as a Vulcan, thought it was illogical
to cause suffering and death to sentient animals
for no other reason than to please one's taste buds.
So is the logical Mr. Spock who made me consider
my choices in relationship to animals
and ask myself how I could do much less harm.
That's a question that I think we all ought to ask ourselves:
how can we do the most good and the least harm
to people, animals, and the environment through all of our choices
from what we eat to what we wear, to how we entertain ourselves,
to the products we buy?
Every time we spend a dollar, we're casting a vote that says,
"Good job, do it again."
When we buy the products of animal cruelty and suffering
whether in the form of food or by attending a marine park
where whales and dolphins have been captured and imprisoned to perform for us
or by purchasing a personal care item that's been tested on animals,
we unwittingly encourage more of the same.
But when instead, we choose foods, forms of entertainment, and products
that do less harm and suffering and more good,
we help bring about a more humane world.
It's up to each of us to be willing to open our eyes and hearts
and examine the effects of our choices so we can live according to our values.
It's up to each of us to ask ourselves
whether a momentary pleasure is worth the price of another's suffering or life.
So the next time that you see an animal whom you know and love
whether a dog - like our dog Herschel here -
or a cat, or a bird,
look into that animal's eyes, really look.
Allow yourself to experience the mystery of that love and connection
that could otherwise seem like a chasm that separates species.
Note the ways in which you're like.
Notice your capacity to communicate with one another.
Then ask yourself how you would feel if someone harmed that animal
for food, for entertainment, for a fur coat,
or to test a new shampoo.
If you wouldn't want those things done to an animal whom you love,
then the next question to ponder is
whether you might want to divest yourself in whatever ways are possible
from cruelty towards and suffering of other animals
able to feel just as much as your dog or cat.
In so doing, you will live your life in such a way
that you extend your compassion and your kindness as far as possible,
which is a wonderful thing.
Thank you so much.
(Applause)