As a young girl developing my interest in veterinary medicine, I quickly realised that my love of animals contradicted my lifestyle. I was surrounded with animal products that required animals to die for my habits — from the food that I ate, to leather for my saddle. The animals I was using most certainly would not have chosen to die, had they been able to choose. As I began working in veterinary practices, it became that much harder as I fought to save lives each day. As a result, I decided that I had to choose one way or another. Either I am an animal advocate, or I am not. There is no middle ground. I couldn't nurse a cat from the brink of death after being hit by a car only to then watch a healthy lamb get slaughtered when we were perfectly capable of surviving without its meat. Many years later, societal pressures place me somewhere in the middle again, but I often struggle with this issue, especially when heated stories come up in the news.
Case in point as last week a young giraffe at a Copenhagen Zoo was euthanised simply because it was surplus to requirements. The argument of the keepers was that it was not as genetically superior as the others, so he would have to be castrated, which would negatively affect his quality of life. He was then euthanised and butchered to provide meat for the lions. Needless to say, many people have been very upset about this and had spent several unsuccessful weeks petitioning the zoo to reconsider the move.
As veterinary professionals we can help ensure humane death for animals. We can also confirm that when we take responsibility for an animal's life in captivity, that we provide the basic necessities that are the right of any living creature. We can provide adequate nutrition. prevention of disease, rapid treatment of illness, sufficient shelter, and an environment which allows the animal to display normal behaviour with minimal distress. All of these things we can, and should be offering to captive animals. But, are we really doing the right thing assisting in the death of a healthy animal's life simply because the captors made a mistake and allowed its parents to breed in the first place? Is that truly in our duty of care? How did the veterinary industry become both defender of life and assailant?
These questions are not easy to answer, and neither is euthanasia an easy subject to discuss; nonetheless, it is part of the daily lives of veterinary professionals everywhere. So when some of these professionals choose to carry out euthanasia of healthy animals, it affects us all in some way by perpetuating the belief that we should all be willing to put animals to death, just as we are willing to save them from death. We are servants of humanity's ever omnipotent rule over other creatures.
It would be hypocritical to claim that one giraffe's life is more important than the millions of cows, sheep, pigs, chickens and countless others that are put to death each year for humanity's own use. However, this visible case once again highlights the tenuous grasp that our profession has on animal welfare and how the line is perpetually blurred with respect to euthanasia in veterinary medicine. Food for thought.
We hope you enjoy this issue.