The success of his chain proves he’s right. Consumers have their own bottom line, once they are alert to broader concerns. They are interested in fresh and local foods, they want foods without pathogens or dangerous bacteria, and they want to see animals treated humanely. More and more consumers understand that supposedly cheap food comes with far-reaching environmental and moral costs, even if the scanner at the checkout counter doesn’t pick them up. Good businesses, like Whole Foods Market, are showing the way—and consumers and competitors are following their lead. Within the sector, foods labeled as “organic” and “humane” are suddenly big sellers, and even the “superstores” are getting the message and reserving shelf space for products with those labels. This is just a single example of how much one man and his team, by basing a business model on doing the right thing, can begin to change the standards for an entire industry.
Values matter, especially in business. Americans generally don’t favor driving down cost by abusing workers or despoiling the environment. In a talk I had with evangelical minister Matthew Sleeth, who himself grew up on a dairy farm in Kentucky and now speaks out against factory farming, he underscored that considerations about a social concern for others, including animal cruelty, make us who we are as a people and a nation. “When you have the mind-set to have the cheapest price, you end up with slavery and animal cruelty,” he told me. “We choose to make the society we want.”
After all, just about any product can be made cheaper if you don’t mind taking moral shortcuts—if you simply subordinate every other consideration to cost. But there are natural costs to producing goods—costs that assume the basic moral boundaries will be observed—and a proper accounting includes them all. In every system of democratic capitalism, it is understood that even with all its virtues, the free market has its dark underside, where the weak are left at the mercy of the strong unless the law stands in their defense. This is where farm animals have been left, and why legal protections are so desperately needed.
Realizing just how bad things have gotten in modern farming, many people are searching for companies with a conscience, and for industries with a sense of social responsibility. And this presents a growing opportunity. There’s plenty of evidence to show that a new, humane economy has greater earning potential for businesses, generating more economic activity and more jobs, as well as a safer environment and healthier and better lives for consumers. Commerce built around appreciation or respect for animals has a far larger consumer base than the businesses that disregard these principles. Cruelty and destruction of nature have, for good reason, become deeply unpopular, and no successful business can survive in the long term by relying on them.
WELL BEYOND THE BAYS of Cape Cod, the progress of the global whale-watching industry shows us how a humane economy can work. Coastal towns all over the world are gaining both jobs and profits from whale watching. The prospect of seeing whales draws a hundred thousand visitors a year to the town of Kaikoura in New Zealand, which as a nation generates more than $80 million directly from this line of business. In western Scotland, on the Isle of Mull and in other coastal communities, whale watching generates $12 million a year. Worldwide, there are now more than three thousand whale-watching operations, employing about thirteen thousand people. The global business has grown bigger every decade since it all began around 1950 at Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego, where visitors could spot gray whales from an observation point. According to the International Fund for Animal Welfare, more than thirteen million people took whale-watching tours in 119 countries worldwide in 2008, generating ticket fees and tourism expenditures of more than $2.1 billion.
The whale-watching industry is a product of Schumpeter’s “creative destruction.” For two centuries, America had been at the center of a global whaling industry, as boats filled with “iron men in wooden ships” launched from several dozen Atlantic seaboard towns to ply the world’s oceans for months at a time in pursuit of whales. Even by the standards of that time, it was horrible and dangerous work. After a whale was spotted, the crew would lower smaller, more maneuverable boats into the water, and the men on these boats would close in on a whale and throw their deadly harpoons by hand. The harpoons had ropes tied to them, tethered to the front end of the hunting boats, often smaller than the whales themselves. After the whale was struck, they’d be pulled along as the whale fled. Once the whale succumbed, typically to blood loss, and was hoisted on board the main vessel, the men cut up the carcass to extract the commercially valuable products, mainly the oil. It was a precious cargo, which, once delivered to port and sold, would fuel the lamps and grease the machines of a growing nation.
Then, in 1859, a gusher in Titusville, Pennsylvania, signaled the beginning of a new era of energy production. The extraction of fossil fuels from the earth—first oil and then coal—over time made the slaughter of whales for such purposes obsolete. Oil and coal were abundant and seemingly inexhaustible. Whaling by other nations would continue to thrive well into the twentieth century, providing oil for the manufacture of the nitroglycerine-based explosives of both world wars, the lubrication of the heavy machinery of the old Soviet Union, and reduced friction in the finely calibrated instruments of space exploration. But it would never again be at the center of any nation’s economy.
Although innovation and entrepreneurialism in the energy sector triggered the decline of whaling in America and other nations, it was love of whales that created a thriving global watching industry, whose revenues now far exceed the money made by the few nations that still kill the animals—if they make any profit at all. It is successful not only because it is humane, but also sustainable. There is no harm in watching animals over and over again. They keep on living, and, economically speaking, keep on giving. That contrasts with the harpooning of whales or clubbing of seals, which, by definition, involve onetime uses of individual animals. The exploiters of these animals hope that survivors will replenish the population, but in so many cases, whether it is with whales or with elephants slaughtered for their ivory, there are often no limits observed and the killing results in depletion.
The extractive practices are built around taking—akin to grabbing fistfuls of cash and running away with it—while the sustainable approach is grounded on the strategy of keeping all the living capital in place and profiting from these investments in perpetuity. And on the demand side, there is no comparison. Few people anywhere in the world desire whale meat or sealskin coats, and that market is constricting further as younger generations of Norwegians and Japanese take a pass on these products. At the same time, the market built around appreciating animals is vastly larger, and by all indicators is expanding rapidly.
For my part on that spring day, I was happy to be just another customer of an industry of the new, humane economy. There were perhaps a hundred of us on a 130-foot boat, with no clouds in the sky and the water reflecting a bright sun. The air temperature was a seasonable fifty-four degrees, but it was chilly, with the wind blowing from the north and the boat moving at twenty-five knots. Most of us huddled inside to escape the cold, though we were all poised to race to bow or stern when the captain cried, “There she blows!” It’s no small thing to lay your eyes on a living creature fifty feet in length and weighing fifty tons, and all of us were primed for it.
After thirty minutes, we were in the mouth of Stellwagen Bay, where the ship’s small crew spotted our first group of white-sided dolphins, who were pacing the boat on the starboard side in small pods and rising in an arc out of the water and then back in again. They may have been looking for fish, but it sure seemed like they were having a rollicking good time in the open ocean. Maybe they knew they were part of the draw for us, a kind of opening act, and they did their part to hold our attention and lift our spirits. As we studied the dolphins, all of us with smiles on our faces, we seemed to forget about the chill in the air. Standing outside in the ocean air and peering over the rails was the only place to be.
Then, from his
perch on the top deck, the captain announced his sighting of small plumes of misty water up ahead, signaling the blowhole of a whale. He tacked to the right and headed in that direction, slowing down to avoid any collisions with whales—one of the few hazards that this industry can pose to the animals. It wasn’t long before two humpbacks—a mother and her baby, about 150 feet apart—came into view.
The baby was splashing around at the surface, but the mother was more purposeful. The captain explained that she was blowing clouds or rings of bubbles around schools of fish, and as the bubbles rose, the fish got trapped within the water column she created. She then quickly rose up and took in an enormous volume of water through the baleen scales in her mouth, filtering out the water and ingesting the fish—a deft, efficient, and learned maneuver.
We watched for a while, and then mother and calf moved on, and so did we. Shortly thereafter, on the opposite side of the boat, off in the distance, we saw minke whales breaking the surface. In relative terms, they are “small” whales, with adults at twenty-five to thirty feet long but still twice the weight of an elephant. Minkes are among the most abundant whale species, and they also are the ones principally targeted by the handful of nations that still engage in commercial whaling, which left me wondering if they had faced threats during their transatlantic movements and knew that humans posed a danger. Certainly, they stayed a good distance from the boat, seemingly more wary than the humpbacks who had hardly seemed to notice our presence. I was unsure if they kept their distance out of instinct or as a learned behavior. Those who have studied whale communication have always marveled at its complexity, and a part of me has to believe that word gets around about human hunting and the ways of men.
It’s always struck me that the hunters’ worst offense was taking the lives of innocent animals. But a second serious offense was that their attacks on animals made the surviving members of their pod, or herd, or population more skittish and fearful of humans—thereby threatening the features of a humane economy inspired by an appreciation of animals. Fearful animals don’t stick around to gauge the intent of humans, so that diminishes the experience of seeing wildlife for people who pursue them with cameras and binoculars. When I was in Kenya, which has banned sport hunting since 1977, I didn’t have any trouble seeing animals—the great herds of game don’t scatter at the first sight or smell of a person because they’ve become accustomed to a nonthreatening presence. The Kenyan government has affirmed this no-hunting policy time and again, rebuffing lobbying by the Safari Club International to overturn it, knowing that while hunters may generate some commerce, they will deprive many others from generating a far greater amount. The market for ecotourists dwarfs the market for killing wildlife, and if present trends hold, that gap will widen in the years to come. As for whales, just two or three governments engage in commercial killing, with government elites defending a practice that long ago lost its economic utility and cultural significance for coastal peoples.
The captain of our boat then sped farther north, and this allowed us to see our first fin whale a few hundred yards away. This is the second-largest whale in the world, with adults measuring up to eighty feet and weighing in at more than seventy tons. Rogue whaling nations target these animals, too, even though there’s hardly any demand for their meat. Whale meat is stockpiled in government freezers in both Japan and Norway—a symbol of waste and stubborn allegiance to the abstract principle of cultural sovereignty and killing, rather than the necessity for any of it.
As we traversed the bay, we saw more white-sided dolphins, and then a few more humpbacks. One of the humpbacks flipped on his side and raised an eight-or ten-foot-long fin fully out of the water, slapping it down to create a magnificent splash. Other humpbacks rose almost entirely out of the water and crashed down on the surface, in the signature move seen so many times in television commercials and wildlife films.
While the morality and economics of commercial whaling have been a continuing matter of international debate, due to the intransigence of whaling nations, there’s been consensus on the issue in the United States for some time. Here we were in Stellwagen Bay near the north shore of Cape Cod, which, along with the nearby island of Nantucket, once served as the hub of the global whaling industry. Now the place had been transformed, and it was just another coastal region in the world generating revenue from whale watching. And it was not just the businesses that supported this new economy, but also the political leaders. Senator John Kerry and the congressmen who’ve represented this area have long been among the strongest supporters of whale watching, as well as the fiercest opponents of commercial whaling.
To my mind, there’s no better example of the path to progress for animals than the issue of whaling. A century earlier, ships that set out in search of whales had a far different purpose than the ones that launch today. America in the nineteenth century was an animal-based economy, with whales killed to make candles and horses yoked to punishing loads that wore them out in the nation’s rapidly developing cities. As new sources of energy were discovered and new machines developed to run them, the human reliance on whales and horses fell away. New bonds could form between people and these animals. And with practical realities and economics no longer driving the moral decision making, Americans could begin to see them as something more than instrumentalities, and more as individuals.
This is the pathway for other species, too. With new economic opportunities and options, we can imagine a new and better relationship with animals. Everybody wins. We just have to be open to the possibility of change, and creative in the designs of new industries that would drive prosperity and growth, putting an end to behavior that causes harm and exploitation, and substituting what is both right and moral and profitable in every sense of the word.
Wild Neighbors
THESE DAYS, WE DON’T have to go on a whale-watching boat or even hike in a national park like Isle Royale or Yellowstone to see animals in the wild. The venues for watching wildlife are often close by—at a local state park, a hiking trail, an Audubon nature center, or even in a determined patch of forest contained within a jumble of our homes and commercial buildings. Bird feeders hang in our backyards, brimming with seeds and grains that draw in birds, squirrels, and other creatures. Today, wildlife watching is officially America’s favorite form of wildlife recreation, with estimated expenditures at about $50 billion—about the same amount as total spending on our pets. The number of people engaged in this pastime far eclipses the combined totals for participation in hunting, trapping, and fishing, with more than seventy million people, or one in four of us, considering it a hobby.
I count myself among this class of enthusiasts. And while it’s on the upswing in popularity, it can hardly be considered a modern invention. Watching other creatures is built into our DNA, since for 99 percent of human history, our survival depended on studying other animals, so we could obtain food, protect ourselves from them, and even learn from them. Whether it was Native Americans before European settlement, or the explorers who gazed in wonder at the splendor and variety of wild animals in the New World, or city dwellers who trek into field and forest, people in this country have always drawn pleasure and inspiration from simply seeing and sharing surroundings with other creatures. And while our relationships with wildlife are conflicted, and sometimes contradictory, there can be no question that it’s a basic expression of the human-animal bond.
For those of us who love watching wildlife, we typically have to search for them, going into natural areas to find them going about their business and straining to be quiet enough not to cause them to scatter. Sometimes, though, it’s wild creatures who find us, showing up in the most unexpected places. In the spring of 2009, two wild creatures found me, and I soon realized life would change for me in a small way. They swooped down from above and made themselves at home on the small deck of my apartment in a high-rise in Washington, D.C.
My visitors were pigeons who decided to make a nest in a pot that itself house
s a four-foot-tall plant. The plant looked beautiful when I got it at Home Depot, but I must confess it did not get the best stewardship from its caretaker. Horticulture has been an interest of mine but never a strong suit, and as a consequence the plant did not get properly trimmed, and it began to dominate an entire corner of my deck. The mother pigeon must have identified it as a pretty good hideout, and one also that would shield her soon-to-be hatchlings from the sun and predators.
She made a smart bet I wouldn’t evict her. The HSUS has among its many operations an active urban wildlife program. That program is grounded on the conviction that people should not think of wildlife in our midst as intruders or trespassers, but as “wild neighbors.” The unexpected arrival of pigeons is just the sort of wildlife experience we encourage homeowners to welcome. Like us, animals explore and search and find nice places to live, seeking comfort, protection, and pleasant surroundings. So when I realized she was going to stay for a while, I tried to be understanding. I asked Dr. John Hadidian, the director of our program, about the nesting habits of pigeons. John told me they’d be around for at least six weeks, with both mom and dad attending to the nest.
Despite both parents pitching in, they didn’t make much of a nest—just a thin cluster of twigs. But after a short while, mom produced two fine-looking eggs, and she and dad started sharing duties incubating the clutch. Before long, there were two hatchlings who looked more scraggly than fuzzy. They would have been vulnerable to a predator or to a person not fond of pigeons, but with the cat inside, the deck five floors up, and a friendly mortgage holder, this was a bit of a sanctuary in itself.
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