LETTERS Chickens' charter
From Professor Raymond Wacks Sir: There is a fashionable tendency in con- servative thought that, sadly, is increasingly reflected in your pages. It consists in both deriding those who protest against animal suffering and rejoicing in this savagery with puerile bravado (`Headless chickens', 19 August). Amid graphic accounts of mind- less barbarism, we are invited to dismiss the idea of concern for animals as deluded wimpishness. Tough guys are unmoved by, even enjoy cruelty: 'shooting each other with the spray from headless chickens in a real-life zap zone'.
The foundation of Mr Hume's argument is specious and dangerous. If animals are `filthy' and too 'dim' to exercise rights, Mr Hume would presumably deny similar rights to newly born, senile or demented human animals.
His assertion that 'animals are idiotically endowed with rights that are really the pre- serve of people' not only confuses the descriptive with the normative (as does much of his piece), but also glibly neglects the possibility of alternatives to 'rights' that might afford a satisfactory legal and moral basis for securing animal welfare.
Let us reject the fatuous political correct- ness that seeks to conceal the truth or dis- tort the unpalatable. Where, however, it happens to coincide with compassion and sensitivity towards our fellow creatures, we should not be too chicken to face up to our ethical duties.
Raymond Wacks
Professor of Law and Legal Theory, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
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