Last week was an unhappy one for the zealots of the animal liberation movement. Within two days their credibility was seriously undermined in three important areas of debate.
On Tuesday, a group called Seriously Ill Patients for Medical Research (SIMR) extended its campaign to Scotland, putting the case for humane use of animals in laboratory research as the only hope of finding cures for many fatal illnesses.
That same day, a document entitled The World Zoo Conservation Strategy, outlining the crucial role that zoos must play in preventing the extinction of threatened species by captive breeding programmes, was published in Scotland.
On the following day, a high court judgment in England ruled that the ban on hunting imposed by Somerset county council on land within its jurisdiction was illegal. A Scottish hunt is consequently taking legal advice about the possibility of overturning a similar ban by Strathclyde region. All three of these developments represent an advance by the forces of sanity against mindless political correctness.
Viewed in an historical perspective, today's preoccupation with animal "rights" is a reflection of mankind's diminished self-esteem. During the age of faith, when man believed himself made in God's own image and likeness, with the destination of eternal life, the concept of an immortal soul placed an irreducible gulf between the human species and the animal kingdom.
Today, when western man is a short-term consumer, with no higher destiny than the crematorium and no intellectual curiosity regarding an afterlife or the significance of creation, he has come to regard himself as nothing more than a gifted ape.
This is especially true in Anglo-Saxon cultures. "I prefer animals to people" is a commonplace observation by the brain-dead in our society; such dehumanising nonsense would have been derided in any previous age. So donkey sanctuaries and abortion clinics flourish equally in this country.
The reaction of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection to the case put by SIMR was chilling in its purblind disregard for human life. SIMR, it claimed, was "misguided in showing a naive faith in research scientists".
Is that dismissive remark more clinically informed than the statement by Dr Joyce Baird, specialist in diabetes at Edinburgh's Western General hospital? Baird said that, as a result of research carried out on rats and mice, "Hope of a cure is no longer unrealistic." She added: "In the debate between scientists and animal rights activists, the voices of the sufferers, their relatives and their doctors have rarely been heard."
On the issue of zoos, Professor Roger Wheater, director of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, observed: "There are those who would rather see a species go into extinction than have it saved by captive propagation. To my mind that is crazy." At Edinburgh Zoo, Siberian tigers, Diana monkeys and the lesser panda are among the species being conserved in this way.
It is all a matter of common sense. A lion imprisoned in a cage for entertainment is a disgusting spectacle; likewise elephants squatting on inverted tubs in a circus ring. Testing women's cosmetics on animals is indefensible. Rare species should not be hunted for their pelts, but mink are bred for this purpose (and who could love a live mink?). Releasing them into the countryside, as activists have done, devastates local wildlife.
There is now a prospect of political correctness fragmenting into civil war: when a male animalist spits on a woman wearing a fur coat, does he not offend against feminist canons? If a cure for Aids depends on animal experimentation, will the homosexual lobby conflict with the animalists?
Hunt saboteurs routinely disrupt meets on Boxing Day; that is precisely the date on which it is impossible to find a space on a canal bank for people drowning puppies, kittens and other unwanted Christmas presents.
Yet there are no protesters there. The priority is to attack "toffs" in pink coats, even if it means injuring horses and hounds. Similarly, if the alternative to hunting is to have foxes poisoned, trapped or maimed by gunshot, tant pis for Reynard. A glance at the disrupters' faces tells it all: these are not animal lovers; they are people haters.
