DEAR DR. FOX: I really enjoyed what you wrote about the love of dogs in a recent column. Have you read author Stephen Budiansky's book "The Truth About Dogs"? He says dogs are clever, manipulative opportunists. What is your response? -- B.K., Washington, D.C.

DEAR B.K.: I read that book, but decided not to read his other one about cats ("The Truth About Cats"). Your reference to this author opens a window to the concerted efforts, some years ago, to discredit the science and philosophy behind the animal and environmental protection movements -- much like the climate change deniers of today.

In "The Truth about Dogs: An Inquiry Into the Ancestry, Social Conventions, Mental Habits and Moral Fiber of Canis Familiaris," published in 2000, Budiansky asserts, "If biologists weren't victim to the same blindness that afflicts us all, they probably wouldn't hesitate to classify dogs as social parasites."

Some of his other books were lauded by the "establishment," which felt under threat from environmentalists and animal rights advocates.

An earlier Budiansky book, "If a Lion Could Talk: Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of Consciousness," received this write-up from Publisher's Weekly: "Although Budiansky concedes that animals most likely experience emotions, he denies them consciousness, which, in his view, is inseparably linked to language, an exclusively human invention. Furthermore, Budiansky contends, animals don't really suffer, at least not the way we do, because their sensation of pain lacks a social context. Budiansky, a science writer ('The Nature of Horses') and U.S. News & World Report deputy editor, uses this debatable thesis to bash the animal rights and deep-ecology movements. Whatever one thinks of the correctness of his argument, it has value as a levelheaded critique of our tendency to anthropomorphize animal behavior."

Yet another book in this distancing-from-animals vein is "The Covenant of the Wild: Why Animals Chose Domestication," in which Budiansky argues that some species actually chose to be domesticated. The book came with the publisher's description: "Animal rights extremists argue that eating meat is murder and that pets are slaves. This compelling reappraisal of the human-animal bond, however, shows that domestication of animals is not an act of exploitation but a brilliantly successful evolutionary strategy that has benefitted humans and animals alike." Manuela Hoelterhoff's review in The Wall Street Journal put it this way: "Budiansky's slim, elegant discourse is a persuasive counterweight to the pastoral delusions of sentimentalists intent on seeing humans as malevolently at odds with the noble animal kingdom."

Budiansky was not alone in politicizing and twisting science to discredit animal welfare and rights advocacy and environmental protection. But for me, the icing on the cake was his article "Academic roots of paranoia: The Unabomber may not be such an intellectual loner" from the U.S. News & World Report of May 13, 1996. In it, he wrote: "A surprising number of leading academic writers on animal rights and the environment share the Unabomber's paranoid hostility to science -- the first is the Unabomber [the FBI's most-wanted fugitive, Theodore Kaczynski] and the second is Michael W. Fox, a widely published writer on animal rights and the environment."

This was all part of a concerted effort to dismiss animals as sentient, conscious beings. Instead, it was argued, animals are unfeeling automatons governed by instinctual reflexes. This "mechanomorphizing" of other animals helped create the "great void," as I call it. The exploiters of animals needed this to continue their activities in good conscience, and for protection from public accountability and censure. Distancing us from the environment and from other animals and severing empathy and compassion served the ultimate aim: maintaining the status quo of animal and environmental exploitation.

This great divide was eventually bridged by ethologists and other biological and animal welfare scientists, marked by the 2012 "Cambridge Declaration on Animal Consciousness" (drfoxonehealth.com/post/the-cambridge-declaration-on-animal-consciousness). Well before this declaration, and in spite of the paranoid pontifications of Budiansky et al, veterinarians had been diagnosing and treating emotional conditions in animals also seen in humans, and with similar medications as for depression and separation anxiety, a field of veterinary care I helped establish in the early 1970s.

For evidence of homologous and analogous human emotional responses in other animals, including insects, crabs and lobsters, read the article "The question of animal emotions" by Frans B.M.de Wall and Kristin Andrews, published in Science on March 24.

When we liberate animals from all forms of cruel exploitation and incarceration, we may yet recover our humanity.

(Send all mail to animaldocfox@gmail.com or to Dr. Michael Fox in care of Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106. The volume of mail received prohibits personal replies, but questions and comments of general interest will be discussed in future columns.

Visit Dr. Fox’s website at DrFoxOneHealth.com.)

DEAR DR. FOX: I am an ethical vegan. I do not eat meat, poultry, eggs, seafood or dairy products. We don't need to kill or exploit animals for food, at least in areas where we can get good plant-based diets.

You are a veterinarian, and I wonder about a possible conflict of interest in your profession: What about veterinarians who heal animals, then go home and eat other animals? Do you? If vets really care for animals, should they not be vegans? -- D.K., Fort Myers, Florida

DEAR D.K.: You raise a pertinent -- and perhaps to some, an impertinent -- question. I do not know how many veterinarians are vegan (substituting plant proteins and fats for those from animals) or vegetarian (perhaps eating eggs and dairy, but no meat). I cannot disagree with you about a seeming conflict of interest, and this is currently being debated in the British Veterinary Association. An association of vegan veterinarians has been established in the U.K., and their colleagues in the farm animal sector have taken issue with this question even being raised.

The ultimate resolution must be not to impose one's values on others, but to openly confront and consider one's own. It is true that a life unexamined is a life unlived, and we must all examine our dietary choices and related personal and family health, professional and planetary responsibilities.

Many of us are very fortunate in being able to choose, and afford, to eat what we want. But millions of people have virtually no choice, and an ever-increasing number have no food at all, under the juggernaut of climate change-induced disasters.

Indigenous peoples, like the Ojibwe in Minnesota, revere the land and seek food self-sufficiency through horticulture, rice harvesting, fishing and raising (and, on occasion, humanely killing) bison. They have a sound ethical basis for consuming animals because they are assuming their sacred duty of land stewardship and careful regeneration. But the global populace is simply too large for everyone to live this way and, in my opinion, we have an ethical imperative to become vegetarian -- ideally, vegan.

DEAR DR. FOX: When I lived in Florida, people routinely used glue traps to catch palm rats by putting then outside in bushes and trees. This resulted in birds, lizards and other small animals being trapped and dying horrible deaths. Since the traps were outside, many people just put them up and never bothered checking them.

If we hadn't unbalanced our natural world so badly, we wouldn't need all these traps and massive amounts of pesticides. I fear we are past the point of no return. -- L.D.R., Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania

DEAR L.D.R.: I appreciate you adding to the discussion on glue traps for catching rodents. It is a tragic fact that, out of ignorance and indifference, humans continue to harm other sentient beings and fail to find ways of peaceful coexistence.

PET FOOD MANUFACTURER SUPPORTING FARM ANIMAL WELFARE

Readers may find this press release from Earth Animal, whose products I have periodically recommended in this column, of interest. From EarthAnimal.com:

"Earth Animal is taking yet another step in its commitment to animal welfare by signing The Better Chicken Commitment (BCC), in cooperation with international farm animal welfare organization Compassion in World Farming ... Earth Animal joins 220 companies in the human food space and is just the fifth signatory in the pet food industry to commit.

"'We believe that all animals deserve to live a good life, and therefore we have a fundamental responsibility to protect and advocate for the animals in our families and those that are born, raised and slaughtered for our pet foods and other pet products,' says Earth Animal co-founder Susan Goldstein. 'We adopted the pet industry's first comprehensive Animal Welfare Framework in 2022, where we committed to setting objectives and targets to improve the welfare of animals in our supply chain. Because chicken is our most used protein, the BCC is the logical first step in actively promoting animal welfare throughout our source ingredients.'

"The Better Chicken Commitment is a science-based chicken welfare policy developed by a group of animal welfare organizations ... The standards address animal welfare issues related to breeding for fast growth and high yield, housing conditions, stocking density and slaughter. ...

"'Chickens raised for meat, also known as broiler chickens, make up approximately 95% of the farm animals in our food system. Over 9 billion are raised and slaughtered each year in the United States,' said Julia Johnson, Senior Food Business Manager, Compassion in World Farming USA. 'By announcing their pledge to the Better Chicken Commitment, Earth Animal is demonstrating that they care about the quality of life these chickens have, as well as transparency to their customers about their own elevated sourcing standards.'"

(Send all mail to animaldocfox@gmail.com or to Dr. Michael Fox in care of Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106. The volume of mail received prohibits personal replies, but questions and comments of general interest will be discussed in future columns.

Visit Dr. Fox’s website at DrFoxOneHealth.com.)

DEAR READERS: I am sure that many of the issues I raise in this column are disturbing, even depressing. But I hope that in being informed, you will be empowered to make the best decisions to achieve a good, secure quality of life for yourselves and for all beings -- especially our animal companions.

Back in the 1980s, I was involved in addressing the animal welfare, environmental and public health concerns involved with factory farms, which were documented in my book "Agricide: The Hidden Farm and Food Crisis That Affects Us All." I met with the director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine to urge immediate action to curtail the feeding of human-lifesaving antibiotics to farm animals. Livestock were being given these medications to boost productivity -- and profits -- and to guard against diseases, to which the farms' inhumane, overcrowded conditions made them more susceptible.

In that long-ago conversation, the FDA official shook his head, even while pointing to a pile of reports on his desk supporting my concerns. He told me that because of the political power of the pharmaceutical industry and the livestock and poultry sectors, his hands were tied.

Now, 40 years later, we face the consequences of what I consider tantamount to a crime against humanity stemming from this profit-driven misuse of antibiotics, marginally compounded by overprescribing physicians and the medications' over-the-counter availability in many countries.

An analysis of human deaths associated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria was published in The Lancet in January. As summarized on Nature.com, the analysis "estimates that in 2019, 4.95 million people died from illnesses in which bacterial antimicrobial resistance (AMR) played a part. Of those, 1.27 million deaths were the direct result of AMR -- meaning that drug-resistant infections killed more people than HIV/AIDS (864,000 deaths) or malaria (643,000 deaths)."

The Natural Resources Defense Council recently did a comparative analysis of human and farm animal antibiotic use. According to its report, "Use of antibiotics in human medicine has remained consistent since 2009. It even declined slightly since 2017, despite the year-on-year increase in the U.S. population. By contrast, sales of these same drugs for use in livestock increased 11.3% from 2017 to 2019 ... Livestock sales are now nearly double the sales for human medicine" (full report at nrdc.org).

This analysis concludes with this important statement: "The CDC states that 75% of dangerous new infections, including pandemics, spill over from animals to human populations. These animal-borne threats include viruses as well as new forms of antibiotic resistance genes and the multi-drug resistant superbugs that carry them. Pandemic preparedness and public health protection should be our nation's foremost priority. We must therefore invest to robustly to track antibiotic resistance and antibiotic use wherever it occurs."

Consumers should remember that no antibiotics are used as feed additives or production enhancers in certified organic meat, eggs, poultry and dairy products.

PANIC KILLING OF MONKEYS

Monkeys in Sao Paulo, Brazil, may have been intentionally injured or poisoned out of fear of the monkeypox virus, despite that fact that it is spread primarily by rodents, not monkeys. The virus is now being spread from person to person. "So do not stigmatize any animal or any human, because if you do that, we will have a much larger outbreak," said World Health Organization spokesperson Margaret Harris. (Full story: The Guardian, Aug. 10)

This is reminiscent of the attacks and mass extermination of bats in many countries after misinformation and fear spread at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bats, like all creatures, have their role to play, and in fact are quite beneficial to humans: Researchers in Indonesia conservatively estimate that bats save cacao growers more than $700 million annually in avoided insect damage. In Mexico, tequila and mescal production, worth billions annually, relies on bats that pollinate agaves. And from Southeast Asia to the Mediterranean, bats provide key pest control for rice growers.

(Send all mail to animaldocfox@gmail.com or to Dr. Michael Fox in care of Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106. The volume of mail received prohibits personal replies, but questions and comments of general interest will be discussed in future columns.

Visit Dr. Fox’s website at DrFoxOneHealth.com.)