As I look down at the pen in my hand, haunting images cross my mind as the ink spills across the page. As I take notes, I picture a young white rabbit strapped to a table, shivering in fright, her eyes pleading for release. No eyes return her gaze.
As I look down at the pen in my hand, haunting images cross my mind as the ink spills across the page. As I take notes, I picture a young white rabbit strapped to a table, shivering in fright, her eyes pleading for release. No eyes return her gaze.
No ears hear her pleas. Choking on pen ink as it forces its way down her throat, she cannot scream. The gurgling sound of the black ink dies down in the silent room as she drowns.
“You have to see who that animal is, get to know that animal, not it, but who!” Steve Smit’s voice reaches out to grab me from the horror of what he has come to speak about: vivisection. “What is vivisection again?” the person next to me asks. I simply write, ‘cutting up animals’ in response in my note book.
But there is more to it than that. According to the Animal Rights Africa website, vivisection literally means the 'cutting up' of living animals, but has now become more generally used as the term for all experimentation on living animals.
On Thursday 12 May for animal rights week, Smit, a spokesperson from Animal Rights Africa and a renowned animal rights activist, encouraged people to arm themselves with knowledge “…until every cage is free”.
This is the organisation’s slogan. “We don’t want bigger, better cages for animals, we do not want them in cages at all,” said Smit. “We don’t want ethical meat production or ethical research practices and we all know that dairy cows suffer more.” Smit added that in fact it would be better to eat meat because diary cows are prone to getting mastitis and other diseases which cause them to suffer.
But before the talk began, platters of snacks arrived for the guests. Cheese sandwiches, cheese on a tooth pick and a few samoosas and spring rolls were to be washed down with Namaqua wine (a wine which uses animal products during the filtering process).
Animal rights organisations promote veganism because animal products should not be commodified for human gain. Perhaps we didn’t all know how much suffering went into the making of that platter after all.
With the number of sandwiches outnumbering people, the turn-out was looking dismal. The crowd was made up mostly of ROAR committee members, the organisers.
Strange that more people were willing to take their clothes off and parade through the street in the cold during the “Wear your own skin” streak, than were willing to attend a talk on the disfigurement, mutilation and torture of non-human animals as a result of experimentation.
“We know nothing in South Africa,” says Smit as he talks about the legislation and practice of experimentation on animals. He also admits that talks on vivisection are not frequent and that vivisection is not a fad topic.
It is up to animal rights organisations to encourage people to have a vested interest in fighting testing on animals.
After all, the practice is not only stealing the lives of countless non-human animals but humans too. There is no conclusive evidence that shows that testing on animals means medication is safe for humans.
