Charles Danten, DVM, MA
Note: I argue in this article that pets like sex, drugs, and rock & roll were massively popularized starting in the sixties mostly for ideological and financial reasons. But I am not totally against pets and I am not a “pet liberationist;” it would, of course, be absurd to set pets free on principle as very few pets would be able to survive on their own; also, this would cause insurmountable environmental problems for our own species; this is not what I am advocating. I am concerned about how pets—and just about anything we can put our hands on in our consumer society— are used as baby substitutes, to make money, or for ideological reasons. By pointing out the many discrepancies between our alleged love of animals and reality, I am trying to improve the fate of our animal friends by changing the way we interact with them. This is what applied ethics is all about: Art of contributing to the common good by bridging the gap between reality and appearances. Through a clear understanding of the most deceptive lies, about animals and their benefits, people are subjected to on a daily basis in media, schools, and films, I believe an individual is strengthened internally and better equipped morally and intellectually to do the right thing.
***
During the Renaissance, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, humankind underwent a “mutation of sensitivities.” This would eventually lead, in the 19th century, to an important change in the animal condition. A passion for animals, which had previously been limited for the most part to the lords, would be propagated throughout the rising classes of the bourgeoisie, making its way into the hearts of average people.1
This change in the animal condition corresponded to mankind’s efforts to civilize and moralize the general population, a slow process of taming our impulses.2 Before this crucial step in our spiritual and moral evolution, manifest violence was widespread throughout all social strata, both towards humans and animals. Slavery was considered natural and legitimate; animals, the poor, the insane, blacks, women, and children were generally treated as chattel or cannon fodder. Men all carried knives in their belts and did not hesitate to draw them at the slightest dispute. “Fear reigned everywhere; one had to be on guard all the time,” writes the magisterial, historian, and sociologist Norbert Elias.3 Food animals were butchered in the middle of the street in horrible conditions. Pitting dogs against bulls or bears was a fairly common pastime for both rich and poor. It was not rare to see an annoyed coachman beat his exhausted horse to death when it refused to advance.4 It was thus necessary to find ways to heal the evil that was threatening order and eating away at society’s very base.
Pets as Saviours
For the Christian Church of that period, to love animals as did the saints St. Francis of Assisi and St. Cuthbert was a way “to establish the pure reign of charity among men,” notes French sociologist Éric Baratay. The idea was to eradicate “the taste for blood and cruelty, to improve Man for his brothers and thus to protect humanity itself.”5
Because mistreatment of animals became a sign of poor character and was then considered a bad example for children, it was believed that the opposite — affectionate contact with pets — would help mankind free itself from its archaic cruelty and insensitivity. According to this evolutionary strategy, loving animals means loving human beings, and not loving animals is almost proof of inhumanity. It was Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason who said, “Everything of cruelty to animals is a violation of moral duty.”6
It has long since been forgotten, but humane societies like the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), which came about in the 19th century in most Western countries, were originally founded mostly to put an end to violence towards people—the link between cruelty to animals and cruelty to humans being long established.7
Even the famous French “Gramont” law from 1850, which condemned public mistreatment of domestic animals, had among its aims, an anthropocentric one: to improve mankind.8 This law had equivalents in all Western countries. For example, in 1820, abuse of livestock and “blood sports” were prohibited in several American states. An 1866 New York law, which later became a model for all anti-cruelty laws in America, made it a misdemeanor to maliciously hurt or kill any domestic animal.9
The universal idea that affection for animals makes us more human takes on various forms across different cultures, but it is recognizably part of the founding credos of numerous societies. It has become popular wisdom, and we shouldn’t underestimate its power over us.10
Pets as Drugs
Our appreciation of animals is not based solely on the notion that they make us better human beings; it is also that they add a little spice to our often sad and fastidious lives. We interpret this as a contribution to our physical and mental health, believing that they heal us from various threats to our well-being—inactivity, violence, anxiety, stress, solitude, boredom, depression, cancer, and mental illness, to name but a few.
This symbiotic concept, which suggests that people’s physical, moral, and psychological ills may be cured by the reassuring presence of animals, has become known as “zootherapy” or “animal-assisted-therapy” as it is now called, a term “that can refer to institutionalized therapy sessions led by health professionals or another such intermediary as well as simply having an animal at home. The word ‘zootherapy’ is thus a generic term designating the positive impact of animals on people,”11 and to give you the full story, I will add the impact of people on animals, since it is generally agreed that this form of affection is as good for them as it is for us.
Child psychiatrist Boris Levinson, who is considered the modern-day father of this concept, summarized the importance that animals could have in people’s lives in several beacon articles published in the sixties and seventies.12
An emotional relationship with an animal is in itself considered a physiological intervention comparable to the administration of a drug. Since the publication of Boris Levinson’s theories, this line of thinking has become so mainstream that zootherapy is now a modern institution, with many such interventions being carried out as official treatments. They are “administered” by individuals and by organizations, all of whom aggressively promote the perceived benefits of companion animals.
University of Concordia psychology professor Theresa Bianco, for example, cannot say enough good things about the benefits of pets:
There is a substantial body of research showing that people of all ages derive a multitude of psychosocial and health benefits from their involvement with pets. […] Moreover, these benefits are not limited to pet ownership, but also extend to therapeutic interventions involving a variety of animal species. In some instances, the mere presence of the animal is sufficient to reduce anxiety.13
American veterinarian Marty Becker summed up the vital role animals play in people’s lives at a symposium on animal wellness:
Most important, veterinary medicine is embracing the bond as a vital force for not just happy, healthy pets… but happy, healthy people as well.14
The present height of the pet phenomenon is thus closely linked to the perceived benefits of animals on people, and of people on animals. Allow me to emphasize the word “perceived,” because while public and manifest mistreatment of animals was indeed prohibited starting in the 19th century, the use of animals for recreative, therapeutic, and spiritual purposes has untold consequences, not only on animals and nature but also on humanity.
Effects on Humans
It is now widely believed that pets make us more human, enhance our health, sense of psychological well-being, and longevity. But while some researchers have reported that positive short-term effects of the placebo type accrue from interacting with animals, in 30% of the population, others have found in convincing large-scale quantitative studies that the health and happiness of pet owners are no better, and in some cases worse, than that of non–pet owners. As stated in 2011 by scientist Harold Herzog: “The existence of a generalized ‘pet effect’ on human mental and physical health is at present not a fact but an unsubstantiated hypothesis.”15
The theorists and most outspoken proponents of this field of study belong mostly to the field of psychology. This raises a serious credibility issue since in general, research in this field does not follow the scientific method. In other words, psychology is not a bunk science, but as you go down the hierarchy of science, positive results are more and more common because the criteria are less stringent. 16, 17, 18, 19 According to Jacques Forget, vice-dean of research in social sciences at the University of Quebec in Montreal,
a psychology which purports to be scientific should follow the scientific method. However, in many cases, it prefers to rely strictly on authority. [...] In addition, in the field of professional psychology, descriptive research (hypothesis-generating studies) is the preferred type of research […] yet, and in spite of its relevance, it can never replace quantitative research [hypothesis-testing studies] based on evidence and on numerous experimental studies.20
If there are problems in the field of human psychology, it is far worse in the field of the human-animal bond. Why? Because research in this field is financed almost exclusively by the powerful pet industry, and with good reasons: pets make up the eighth largest retail industry in the US, bigger than toys, hardware, and jewelry, valued at 261 billion dollars in 2023 and growing.21 According to French ethnologist Jean-Pierre Digard:
Big Pharma and pet food companies finance the bulk of the research in this field. Top priority is given to the studies on: 1) pet food (this can lead to greater product diversification and more profits); 2) the human-pet bond; 3) the human health benefits of animals (on which depends the popularity of pets); 4) animal well-being which has a positive effect on image and profits.22
Of course, the financial domination of the pet industry would not be a problem if the science it produced wasn’t so bad. In a landmark article published in 1984 in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, American scientists Alan M. Beck and Aaron Honori Katcher warned of the poor quality of research being conducted in animal-assisted therapy.23 They debunked the claimed benefits of pets so thoroughly that it is a wonder that the pet industry bothers to continue “research” in this field with such unrelenting intensity and with the same flaws reported 40 years ago.
However, despite evidence to the contrary, the perceived therapeutic benefits of the human-animal relationship, for both humans and animals, continue to be taken for granted, with a surprising and curious absence of skepticism.
EFFECTS ON ANIMALS
It is widely believed that animals benefit as much as pet owners do from the human-pet bond. Yet nothing is further from the truth. An examination of the conditions in which companion animals live reveals numerous contradictions not only in the discourse of the general public, but also in that of animal protectors and many humanist philosophers and social agents, all of whom are convinced that they are doing the right thing in this respect.
Why? Few people make the connection between pets and cruelty because in our culture, cruelty and the will for power are generally dissociated from the world of affection and pleasure.24, 25 In his book, Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets, Professor Yi-Fu Tuan of Yale University shows how affection, a latent form of domination, is used as an instrument of power:
Love is not what makes the world go around. […] There remains affection. However, affection is not the opposite of dominance: rather it is dominance’s anodyne – it is dominance with a human face. Dominance may be cruel and exploitative, with no hint of affection in it. What it produces is the victim. On the other hand, dominance may be combined with affection, and what it produces is the pet. […] Affection mitigates domination, making it softer and more acceptable, but affection itself is possible only in relationships of inequality. It is the warm and superior feeling one has towards things that one can care for and patronize. The word care so exudes humaneness that we tend to forget its almost inevitable tainting by patronage and condescension.26
Let’s take a brief look on the actual effects on pets:
Legal and Illegal Wildlife Trafficking
According to a U.S. Embassy telegram published by Wikileaks in 2005, the global wildlife trade, whose main markets are the oriental medical industry, the garment industry and the pet industry in the U.S. and Europe, is worth “$10 to $20 billion a year, third only to arms and drugs.” For the sake of a song and a bit of exoticism, the world’s habitats and natural incubators are plundered. For disadvantaged countries, this trade is a major source of foreign currency. Wild animal import-export traders and wholesalers pay bush hunters and fishermen derisory sums to hunt down and capture the future “children” that they transport to export centers. Yet, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 50% to 90% of exotic animals, depending on the species and its market value, die between capture and sale to the consumer. Only 2% to 16% of survivors reach the age of 2 years.
Breeding
When breeds become fashionable, they are intensively bred, which quickly leads to their deterioration. There are over 300 incurable and debilitating genetic diseases in companion animals, mainly caused by inbreeding and consumerism. In Europe, where pets are sold by the kilo, there are thousands of concentration type farms, mainly in Holland and Belgium, and a growing number in Poland and other former Eastern Bloc countries. Here, as elsewhere, in the United States and even in Canada, many farms of all species are run under the table in extremely unsanitary conditions.
Anatomical Monsters
Animals are afflicted with carefully planned anatomical features that make their lives a nightmare. One case in a hundred: The English bulldog is so handicapped by his anatomy that he can barely breathe. It tolerates exercise and heat very poorly, and is notorious for running out of oxygen when it gets excited, to the point of suffocating to death. This dog is so poorly built that it is incapable of mating naturally. He has to be inseminated. The babies' heads are so large that the mother has to be delivered by Caesarean section. When walking, the bulldog resembles a giant crab suffering from chronic ankylosis. Its life expectancy is five to eight years, whereas a normal dog can live for an average of fifteen or even twenty years.
Psychological Conditions of Captivity
When a pet is adopted within its imprint period, the attachment it felt to its mother is quickly transferred to the new owner, who steps in to meet the pet’s physical and emotional demands. Herein lies the reason pets become so instantly bonded to us. The process may seem harmless on the surface, even natural, but keep in mind that the normal progression of things would have the young animal soon beginning to detach from its parent. Whereas the animal’s mother would discourage continued dependence, the surrogate mother, the new owner, encourages it. In this way, the case of usurped identity is never followed by detachment. Quite the contrary: The whole dynamic of interactions between people and their pets relies on the maintenance of the bond. Because of this, pets remain infantile, never reaching any level of autonomy or emotional maturity.
The maintenance of this infantile attachment feeds a permanent state of anxiety. This can translate clinically to various psychological troubles and psychosomatic diseases, such as chronic itching, diarrhea, chronic vomiting, colitis, and bladder infections. Psychological problems such as phobias, self-mutilation and separation anxiety are widespread and as common as problems related to dominance, fear and ambivalence. These animals are often severely punished or abandoned by their owners, who fail to read the meaning of these neuroses and confuse them with a defect in the animal itself. Curative treatments are doomed to failure, since these illnesses stem from the very concept of affection slavery and the unnatural dependency bond imposed by the owner on the animal.
All species are vulnerable to becoming perpetually dependent as a result of this corruption of normal development. Gregarious animals like killer whales, dogs, and certain birds like those of the parrot family (budgies, cockatiels, and large parrots) are especially prone, but that is not to say cats, reptiles, and fish are immune. Any animal that spends time in our company, that shares our bed and our meals, that we constantly touch, reward, or talk to affectionately, is unconsciously conditioned to become an affection junky.
Surgical Mutilations
In the offices of veterinarians, shelters and breeders, animals are mutilated by having their tails cut off, ears clipped, claws, vocal cords, fangs and anal glands removed, or spayed or neutered. These operations, and all the care that goes with them - vaccination, stool analysis, etc. - represent an important part of a general veterinarian's income. Not to mention the fact that it's often thanks to these procedures that he or she gains new customers. Without these services, many people wouldn't have animals, because animals in their raw state are more difficult, if not impossible, to control.
Being above all a problem of consumerism, animal overpopulation has almost nothing to do with the lack of sterilization. In fact, sterilization is more a treatment for the fever than for the disease. This erroneous argument, commonly used by animal protectionists in particular, is a cultural justification mechanism whose function is to alleviate or soften any feelings of guilt that might reduce consumption. By doing his duty, by having his pet sterilized and adopting a “second-hand” animal from a “shelter,” in other words, by “recycling,” the consumer has the deceptive impression of having contributed to reducing the negative effects of consumerism. He can then indulge in his newly acquired pet, with his conscience at peace.
Vaccination
Hundreds of thousands of animals suffer serious, even fatal, side effects as a result of indiscriminate vaccination for financial and commercial reasons. Marketing standards for animal vaccines are much lower than for human vaccines. Most vaccines on the market are ineffective, useless, and sometimes very dangerous.
Pet owners are complacent about the notorious abuse of vaccination because they need to have their compassion validated through this highly valued medical act performed by themselves or preferably, for those who can afford it, by a professional that personifies a love of animals. What pet owners are really after when they bring their companion to the vet for a needless vaccination, health exam, or expensive brand of pet food is a certificate, a receipt, any kind of concrete proof that states: “Although I exploit animals in every way imaginable, I really do love them, see, my vet says so.” The high financial value assigned to these goods and services is meant to further increase their perceived value and therefore their moral impact. Clients who have unlimited financial resources can have their animals treated to death if they desire to do so, paradoxically, for moral reasons.
Veterinary Medicine
Animal health care itself is a subtle form of animal abuse. It is a case of wishful thinking to imagine that a pet can understand and appreciate whatever good intentions are behind veterinary medical care. It is simply beyond their cognitive possibilities. An animal is no more conscious of being “repaired” than a car, with one major difference: animals are perfectly conscious of the pain that’s inflicted on them for reasons beyond their comprehension. From their point of view, a veterinary hospital is indistinguishable from a pound. We cause their diseases in myriad ways, on the one hand, then play dumb and profit from them on the other. This schizophrenic absurdity suggests that our concern for pet health has much more to do with trying to meet our own needs than with anything else.
Junk Food
The very nature of the food we feed our pets is also at the root of many health problems. Yet, despite the facts, the industry refuses to make the link between the many diseases that afflict captive animals and the very poor diet they receive. Natural or fresh food is rarely used as a control in disease studies, and that's easy to understand, because, as Australian veterinarian Tom Lonsdale points out, “the difference in health would be immediately noticeable.” It has been proven that a natural diet, adapted to the feeding habits of each species (carnivores, herbivores, frugivores, etc.) is much healthier than any industrial kibble. However, driven by legitimate commercial and financial interests, the industry would have us believe otherwise. As a result, consumers may even think they're showing their pets a great deal of consideration by feeding them this pittance, which the art of marketing leads them to perceive as even better food than their own. The high price he pays for this food, and the fact that certain exclusive brands are distributed by veterinarians, reinforces this feeling of kindness, which in turn encourages animal consumption. To promote consumerism, it is essential to neutralize the public’s guilty conscience by making it believe that everything is for the best in the best of worlds. Veterinarians play a very important role in maintaining this illusion by endorsing certain “superior quality” brands.
Sexual Exploitation
The sexual exploitation of animals, a subject no longer taboo in our ultra-liberal society, is widespread in all walks of life. The immorality of turning an animal into a pet opens the door to every conceivable abuse.
Recycling
Millions of animals are destroyed every year in pounds euphemistically called “shelters.” Others, who will never be adopted because of irreparable physical or psychological defects, spend their lives locked up in “no-kill” shelters at the total mercy of good Samaritans, who do nothing but please themselves by insisting on keeping these animals alive, out of principle, or for commercial and image reasons, with no regard for the animal’s best interests, sometimes for years on end, in miserable conditions from the animal’s point of view.
Consumerism
Constant promotion in the media, in the movies, etc., has a powerful impact on demand, just like the promotion of transgenderism has a strong impact on kids who are made to believe from a very young age that they can choose their sex. This has nothing to do with free choice. It’s more about the “fabrication of consent” as Noam Chomsky would say.
Only the rich had pets before liberalism and inclusive capitalism came into vogue. The trend has grown starting early 18th century but it literally exploded since the seventies when the pet industry, sniffing a golden opportunity to improve business, started using the pseudo-scientific observations of psychiatrist Boris Levinson, the instigator of pet therapy mentioned above, to stimulate the demand for pets and the sale of goods and services. They groomed the population into believing that pets were a solution to all their problems, “a solution that would have to be invented if it did not already exist,” insisted, Michel Pépin, the president at the time, of the Association of Quebec veterinarians. People were basically tricked into believing that pets could advantageously replace children and healthy relationships with their own kind. This marketing campaign was a huge success. Today, one out of two households have one or more animals and America and most Western countries have gone pet crazy.
Academia, pet psychologists, Animal Assisted Therapy “researchers;” animal protection activists such as PETA and a myriad of others; humane societies, pounds, and shelters; animal rights’ lawyers and jurists; animal media, film, and book industry; steel industries that produce cans for pet food, agribusiness and fisheries who find in this outlet opportunities for their byproducts, rendering plants that provide corpses, in certain states where it’s legal, for the pet food industry; makers of pet paraphernalia (collars, harnesses, brushes, toys, cages, coats, shoes, etc.), trainers, breeders, dealers, smugglers, poachers, groomers, dog walkers, five-star hotels and restaurants for pets, homeopaths, fortune tellers, cemeteries, distributors, drivers, supermarkets, super pet shops and dog shops whose sole purpose is to sell animals and animal products like one would sell furniture, jumped on the bandwagon behind pet food manufacturers, Big Pharma, veterinarians, and zootherapy promoters, the big winners of this economic bonanza.27
Conclusion
We're not totally against pets provided they can live freely within their human pack and as close as possible to their natural instincts. Keeping a pet locked up alone all day while Master lives his life outside is tantamount to slavery. If you live in the city and need a pet to fill the void, why not get yourself a pet robot? The Japanese, for example, have conclusively demonstrated that the same results can be achieved with pet robots purposely built for that reason.28
Pets are not specifically promoted to lower birth rates, but they are certainly used in that matter. It’s more like an indirect result of the atomization of society and all the various anti-natality programs which have been put in place. It is not for nothing that “Fur Babies” is such a common expression. Pets are indeed used as baby substitutes. If women cannot give birth, they will often seek a substitute to channel their maternal instincts. As the saying goes: “Nature is a lot stronger than the police.”
Couples who have a good relationship should consider having babies as soon as possible, as “fur babies” can contribute — along with feminism, the destruction of the family, the hatred of men, the denigration of housewives, incentives for women to divorce, contraception, abortion on demand, “no child” scheme to prevent alleged climate catastrophe, and the aggressive promotion of various sexual dysfunctions — to the lowering of the birth rate and, ultimately, to depopulation.
“Pet parenting” is indeed a human universal that transcends cultures and races, just like homosexuality, pedophilia, zoophilia, murder, theft, rape, and war, but the exaltation or promotion of these trends for recreational, financial, or ideological reasons is not in the long run a good group evolutionary survival strategy.
In the final analysis, the benefits of our interaction with animals are not what they are said to be by the social agents, who aggressively promote pets. The loyalty, attachment, and love that animals show us do not have the nobility that we attribute to them out of ignorance. Finally, our relationship with pets has not helped mankind improve; in fact, quite the opposite is true as the reality behind appearances, the Big Picture, is much more negative than what we are made to believe.
References
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Katherine C. Grier, Pets in America. A History, Harcourt, 2006.
Norbert Elias, La civilisation des mœurs, Calmann-Lévy, 1973.
Kathleen Kete, “Animal protection in Nineteenth-Century France,” The Beast in the Boudoir. Pet keeping in Nineteenth-Century Paris, University of California Press, 1994.
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