Glue Trap Performance and Francione

I want to do a performance art piece. It would consist of sticking glue traps to the spectators' hair, eyes, mouths, genitals, nipples and to the rest of their naked bodies and then pulling very hard on the traps trying to force them off. At the end of the performance the "victims" will be discarded into the garbage cans and left to die from dehydration, starvation or suffocation. Anyone coming? I'll be sending the invitations soon!

GLUE TRAPS


Anyone can go to their local hardware or a general store and buy a glue trap to torture and to kill a nonhuman individuals called "vermin" who in their ability to feel pain and suffer are no different than their dog, cat or their child and whose only fault is that they reproduce successfully and need food, water and warmth.

Glue Traps are worse than poison. Not only do they kill indiscriminately, but they suffocate, blind, rip off body parts of the individuals as they try to free themselves from the glue, which is impossible for them to do. It's like being stuck in the quick sand. The more you struggle, the more you get embedded into the glue. Try sticking one of them to your own face, mouth and your eyes.


Residential torturing and killing, catching in non lethal traps and then misplacing, which humans do in their homes, is only the tip of the iceberg. Zillions more of these nonhuman individuals are killed and tortured by poison, suffocation, starvation and dehydration in these glue traps and other industrial devices; in the cities and plantations, public and private commercial buildings where food is produced, stored and handled; in parks, schools, churches, hotels and restaurants. This is done by paid to torture your friendly professional exterminators every second of every day everywhere.

At the same time, the reaction to this mass torture from the public and even from the majority of "animal rights crowd" is one of indifference, laziness and complacency. (To my knowledge only PETA is actively doing something about this). Killing is inexcusable but torture is evil. If cats and dogs were tortured in this way on this scale there would be an uprising. When seals are getting clubbed to death, great apes being experimented on, or puppies abandoned on the streets, there is a public outcry and rightfully so, but where is the outrage when mice and rats are being poisoned and tortured slowly to death every day and every hour, five feet from your cushy office chairs or around the corner in the kitchen of a restaurant as you are feasting on body parts of chickens or cows, enslaved and then killed for your appetites?

FRANCIONE


For example, one of the leading animal rights theorist Gary Francione writes:

If we shift from a meat-based agriculture to a plant-based agriculture, we will inevitably displace and possibly kill sentient animals when we plant vegetables. Surely, however, there is a significant difference between raising and killing animals for food and unintentionally doing them harm in the course of planting vegetables, an activity that is itself intended to prevent the killing of sentient beings.

In order to understand this point, consider the following example. We build roads. We allow people to drive automobiles. We know as a statistical matter that when we build a road, some humans–we do not know who they are beforehand–will be harmed as the result of automobile accidents. Yet there is a fundamental moral difference between activity that has human harm as an inevitable but unintended consequence and the intentional killing of particular humans. Similarly, the fact that animals may be harmed as an unintended consequence of planting vegetables, even if we do not use toxic chemicals and even if we exercise great care to avoid harming animals, does not mean that it is morally acceptable to kill animals intentionally.


First, I think it is disgustingly misleading and ignorant for Francione to compare human car accidents with deaths of billions of sentient beings in crop production, transportation, storage and distribution, and whom he barely acknowledges by saying that they may be "possibly killed." Automobile driving by humans is consensual and in no way the number of car accidents can be compared to massive killing of various species and the total destruction of their habitat by harvesting and other production machinery. Maybe we can compare this to the genocide and the destruction of cities and countries by wars, but to say that this is equivalent to car accidents is obscene.

Second, he doesn't even acknowledge the sentient beings considered "vermin" who are intentionally exterminated so that his food can be produced and delivered. I suppose this may be because it would show that his broken record mantra "animals as the property of humans" doesn't fit very nicely when applied to "pests." I doubt anyone would want to consider "pests" as their property. However, I think he gets away with these distortions and lies because most of people are ignorant to how their vegan food comes to their plates in a similar way that most of people are ignorant to how animal flesh comes to their plates. Growing up on a small family vineyard, I have seen how rodents get poisoned, rabbits and seagulls trapped and shot to keep them away from crops all year around. Also, it was not hard to find the following which speaks about the protection of soybean fields:

As many as 16 hunters a day will be allowed deep into Lone Star Lakes on six dates in November... The city hopes they will thin the deer population more effectively than farmers have been able to do with permits that let them protect their fields most of the year. (source)

As evident in his statement above, Francione disrespectfully denies the existence, suffering and deaths of these sentient beings: mammals, birds and others who are deliberately tortured and murdered without any "welfare" protection whatsoever - the sentient beings called "vermin" and, obviously, I am not talking only about insects and only about unintentional deaths. This is indeed repugnant. Moreover, the level of hypocrisy, contradiction, or just plane ignorance is hard to believe when you read this statement by one of his followers:

In the human context, we hold the one who gives the order to kill no less accountable – morally and legally – than the one who carries it out. The "contract killer omni" cannot be held less accountable than the butcher on the grounds that she is unaware of her part in the deal. As Gary Francione stated on Twitter, "in criminal law, acting with purpose [killing ] and acting with knowledge [paying someone to kill] are both treated as acting intentionally," Francione also said, "Actually, the fact that X pays Y to do what X could not do makes X particularly morally culpable in my view." (source)

MICE RESCUE


A 1983 test that evaluated the effectiveness of glue traps found that trapped mice struggling to free themselves would pull out their own hair, exposing bare, raw areas of skin. The mice broke or even bit off their own legs, and the glue caused their eyes to become badly irritated and scarred. After three to five hours in the glue traps, the mice defecated and urinated heavily because of their severe stress and fear, and quickly became covered with their own excrement. Animals whose faces become stuck in the glue slowly suffocate, and all trapped animals are subject to starvation and dehydration. It takes anywhere from three to five days for the mouse to finally die. This is nothing less than torture.

It is important to remember that though small and removed from our day-to-day world, mice and other small animals are mammals, with nervous systems and perceptions of pain that are similar to humans. There is no evidence that mice suffer any less than we do. (source)

If you find a mouse caught in a glue trap, you can save his or her life. Simply pour some cooking vegetable oil (sesame oil is really good) where the mouse is stuck. Pour some more oil all over the glue board and around the mouse and let them work their way out of it into a dark and safe inclosure such as a mailing tube with the opposite end closed. Since sesame oil is not toxic and they actually like it, you don't even have to clean them much afterward. They will slowly lick it off themselves. All you need to do is let them bury themselves inside of a lot of paper towels.


My first mouse rescue from a glue trap was on the sidewalk in front of a condo building on 4th Ave near Astor Place in NYC at about 3:00 AM as I was taking a night stroll, long time ago. Most likely, he was thrown out of the window still alive bleeding and stuck onto the glue board.

If only a small fraction of what humanity spends on face lifts and missiles is used for research, invention and implementation of contraceptive methods for "vermin control," there would be no excuse for torturing and murdering billions of these sentient beings.