How much of an animal rights organization’s budget should go on saving dogs and cats during a crisis when this money could have been spent on education, teaching children and adults how to treat animals in the first place. The catch, in my opinion, is that sometimes, help must come immediately. For example: the attacks on the south of Israel from Gaza has made many leave their homes and forsake their animals, just like in the north during the summer 2006 war and during the ‘disengagement’. These cats and dogs are often left to starve or die of thirst. Some are strays who feed on leftovers and when the shops, factories and houses are deserted, no food is left for them to feed on. Should we then come in and feed these animals? And what of the ones who are here in Tel Aviv or in the other parts of the country who are in dire need of help? And if we consider the numbers, should we spend thousands on saving hundreds or should we spend the same amount on saving millions in the food industry, by explaining to people how animals are treated in the industrial farms?
How can we find better use for the money which is donated to animal organizations?
The problem is, that many organizations receive donations because they save dogs and cats, and not because they save chickens. In this way, organizations that wished to deal with the fundamental problem of how people perceive animals, must take on other projects in order to get the money in. And as they grow, they forget their initial plan, or choose to concentrate on other matters, knowing that most people prefer Fredi-A, the puppy than Fredi-B, the lamb who was just taken from his mother, to be slaughtered. Since most people can be good to some animals, as long as it doesn’t interfere ideologically with what’s on their plate. With one hand they will sign a check for Fredi-A, while with the other they will eat their goat cheese pizza (‘organic pizza made with milk from free ranged goats’), with milk taken from Fredi-B’s mother, who got impregnated only in order to lactate for people.
And that is the fundamental problem we should work on - People who choose not to think of how a dog and a pig have the same awareness, and feel fear and pain and love. That in order to produce food (“but I can’t go vegan, I just loooooove cheese!”) we deprive them of their most basic rights.
