I never suggested outlawing it. I suggested regulating it. Tort liability might suffice, but I don't have enough information to tell if additional regulation should be in place. I believe people have certain rights, and owning pets is one of them. Some pets, however, can be inherently dangerous to other people if they escape. Jackals, for example, are likely not to be very tame in captivity. Certainly there are rules in place for dogs, and they are not 'outlawed'. Leash laws, animal cruelty laws, etc. I merely suggested that rules might need to be in place for large cats. How certain are you that there has never been an incident of a large cat escaping from home confinement and attacking innocent bystanders? Perhaps they are more docile than I have imagined. However, I'm not about to go reading up on that - I'll leave it to you and others. Perhaps existing tort liability is sufficient regulation.
One reason to believe that it's never happened is because PETA has a painfully long list of incidents and not one of them include an escaped big cat killing or injuring anyone. If it has happened PETA doesn't know about it and they do like digging up the dirt. I find it a little hard to believe the "never" part myself but that's what it seems to be. PETA also says that fatal attacks and serious injuries are rare, but, and they follow the "but" with babble. Docile or not, they don't go looking for people to attack. Big cats in captivity are amazingly non-aggressive. My biggest problem with "rules" is that they are used to force people out of the business. There seems to be little if any need for regulation at all other than that one thing, to abuse the regulations to close down big cat operations.
I'll take your word on it until I hear to the contrary. The only big cats in captivity lashing out at people I've heard about were the show ones in Las Vegas. They are presented as fierce animals, and of course in the wild they are (and of course so are dogs, small cats, etc.) Personally, I would not want one around my kids (or large dogs either - too many horror stories of kids being killed by dogs of various breeds), and indeed that might be one possible area of rule-making, making certain they are not allowed to roam free with children (as it should be with some dogs too, but the apparent tort rule has developed that dog's get one free bite before the owner has to have them locked away or on a leash). If an adult (18+) wants to live with a tiger, and gets mauled, that's his/her business. It becomes society's business if minors are around, however, and as I've said, I don't have enough information on the proclivities of big cats as home pets. Likewise, if an adult wants to go camping around Grizzlies, that his/her business. Taking kids into the woods where grizzlies are present becomes child abuse/endangerment. I doubt if that happens often. I also agree that we should minimize "Big Brother", and constant rule-making where unnecessary is often just a means of empowerment of government peole over non-government people, to the detriment of society as a whole. I can assure you, however, that if a Big Cat ever does escape and maul someone, the rule-makers will be up in arms, whether the mauled person lives or dies.
What I don't approve of is using the existence of the children to slow every other person's life to a crawl. Fine, make rules, but really, I don't believe that taking a child into grizzly country is child abuse or reckless endangerment. I would rather that the view that it isn't is the view that dominates. Why? Because we are talking about low probability events where the presence of danger is usually imaginary, almost never realized. This is the definition of "potential danger", isn't it? This is a little more than me just wanting what I want. Humanity's soul is suffering from this attempt to exclude some risks at all costs. It's just some risks, too, and not the really dangerous ones. It's the risks that would lead us back into contact with our natures and the natures of others. This contact seems to be the one risky thing that they try to forbid us above all others. Why else be so much more afraid of what will happen to the children if exotic animals are around them than we are of what will happen to them if they take up smoking and drinking? It's almost no risk at all but some of us are deathly afraid when we need to be otherwise.
You make a very valid point. I believe you're used to people taking strong opposing views, and read into my posts some of that opposition. Clearly, if the risk is commensurately low, you can take your kids into the woods. If grizzlies have been spotted all over, and perhaps there was a recent grizzly attack, it would be foolhardy to take your kids into the woods under those circumstances. However, I know of no rules against it (other than child endangerment laws, which aren't enforced under those circumstances anyway unless something happened). It depends entirely upon the circumstances. Essentially, it becomes a call of weighing the risks of 'getting back to nature' versus nature coming at you with a vengance, which risk is actually very low (I've done my fair share of camping in the woods) in most parts of the globe. However, Lions still do kill lots of people in some areas of Africa, crocs and alligators do still regularly eat people in some places, and let us not forget, stingrays do still kill scuba divers on occasion. I also agree entirely that we allow our kids to routinely face (and indeed encourage) many other risks such as tobacco and alcohol, yet as a society do very little (or nothing) about those risks, often in the name of allowing them their freedom. So, when do you get your first large cat?
Here we are trying to reintroduce grizzlies and wolves into their native habitats in Western Montana and Northern Idaho while these areas are becoming more-and-more populated by retirees who are intent on wiping them out. There are less than 1,000 grizzlies left in the lower 48, yet this year alone there were over 20 cases of poachers - just local residents - that shot and killed a grizz for absolutely no reason: unprovoked, causing no threat to anyone. Grizzlies become dangerous when they become habituated around people - rather than having their natural aversion towards them, as they are - mostly because of people who see them on the side of the road and offer them food while they snap a few photos to the human's delight. Then they start to associate humans as a food source. The other "very extremely rare" cases of unprovoked unhabituated human attacks are caused by a grizz that is in starvation, to the point of being so dilapidated that it looks as if it is just about ready to die and "won't last another season," a mother protecting it's cubs, or in some other equally rare cases a grizz taken by surprise.
I will get my first large cat soon after I become independently wealthy. How that wealth may come about is entirely another story. You've said it exactly right, Walter. The risk of nature getting back at you with a vengeance is pretty low. Knowing what I know about people's relationships with big cats, from some personal experience and from a lot of testimony from others, the chance of nature rewarding you is extremely high, and that's what I'm looking for, the rewards to humanity. Humanity can create its own turning point, making itself deserving of the high place that people think it holds in the world, by becoming the best caretakers in the world. A death by animal attack while caring for animals is actually a more honorable death than dying while fighting others of our own kind, by my measures. It is to be avoided, but I would not say at all costs. These should be treated as accidents like automobile accidents or industrial accidents, accidents incurred while we are going about our legitimate business. This may be the key concept in all of this. A deadly accident that happens while people are doing the right thing is not a crime, not child abuse, not an indication of ultimate stupidity or suicidal or homicidal urges. It is an accident that happens because while someone was doing a good thing, he or she made a mistake, or something unpredictable happened. We're going for the lowest common denominator of intelligence and being the most destructive when we try to avoid accidents by getting rid of the good thing, in this case, the caretaking of the animals that we share the Earth with. We've been forcefed a very mentally ill view of this kind of accident. Why not charge parents with reckless endangerment if a child dies when he is of age to learn to drive and he drives legally and has a fatal accident? It is because this is a normal activity. It is also a normal activity for children to be around animals. We don't charge farmers with reckless endangerment when children are killed by horses or cattle. Why take a mentally healthy view of these things and take a mentally unhealthy view when the animal involved is a pit bull or a tiger? There's always this reasoning that if someone hadn't tried something, a given person would not have died. This neglects the fact that life consists of risks for rewards. Every risk we take has a potentially deadly side to it, whether we stand on a stool to change a lightbulb, take a shower, pet a dog, drive a car, or eat a bite of steak. This is not a good reason to treat these things as some kind of deliberate self-endangerment or endangerment of others. We need to take a healthier view of risks.
Exactly right, and these are the people who might poison your dog for annoying them. Some of these retirees are those poisonous people you know who survived puberty, adulthood, and into old age, just getting meaner as they went. Putting animals in the wild exposes them to their machinations. Keeping it legal to keep them in your backyard at least creates a safety in numbers for the species.
With large cats, however, it's a different story, and a bit out of my realm, but cats are more predatory carnivores. If someone in an "urban" environment wanted a large cat, how would they be able to give it the space that it needs? Even in a rural area this would be difficult. How to contain it? There'd always be the risk of escape and then attacking and killing the neighbor's kid. I don't think that this would be a wise undertaking by just one individual. You'd best to have a group or an organization that can provide continuous attention and monitoring around a safe-enclosed area.
Walter, some regulation may be needed and reasonable. The number one problem we have with the idea of regulation right now is that there are organizations like HSUS and PETA (HSUS is run by a PETA member) that pretend to be friends of the animals but continually promote the idea that exotic animals are untrustworthy, extremely dangerous, can only be handled by experts, and so on. Every rule they promote, every idea they promote, is aimed at their already publicly stated goal of getting rid of big cats and every other animal kept by humans. This amounts to the genocide of everything that is not human because humans will continue to colonize everywhere they can, and PETA type rules would mandate that we do nothing to preserve the animals whos habitats they take. We don't have a regulatory body that is aimed at doing anything but destroying the exotic animal business, preparatory to destroying all animal-based businesses. There are very few efforts at reasonable regulation of such businesses that are outside of the animal rights groups and their agendas. I think that it is possible to normalize the view of the risks of keeping exotic animals to the point that we see them as being as normal to have around as dogs. I think that it is necessary. I keep pushing this view, and it may look like I am pushing it too hard, because the stakes are very high for the animals. There is almost no animal rights/animal welfare involvement with the idea of integrating other animals besides the "regular" types into our society. They even marginalize horses, cattle, goats, sheep, and chickens, so that we are left with small cats and dogs. Two species are allowed to be integrated and they're hammering at getting rid of those. I also wonder if the homicide and suicide rates wouldn't increase tremendously without animals among us. There's no real way to tell. The slight risk of someone dying because they fall off of or are trampled by a horse, versus the benefits of having the horse to care for and to care for us, it's a tough question. A lot of the rules get passed by people who are rather nasty to young ones, who are sometimes abusive of younger people, and this kind of rule is a form of abuse more than a form of protection, and the people who pass these rules are intolerant of difference opinions, races, religions, and age groups. I stopped swallowing the excuses a long time ago, and when the probabilities are low, they are just excuses, not valid reasons. Some people will see it as a path to destruction but I see it as a path to life, where humans make themselves worthwhile and learn to make themselves see it. Big cats and other animals have shown me that I am worthwhile when my own race couldn't or wouldn't. Have you ever had a big cat demonstrate to you that he thought that you were the most wonderful person on Earth? One that you have just met? You've seen it with dogs, most likely, and horses, probably, but big cats, the kind of beings they are, when they speak to you like that, you tend to listen. Who does an 800 pound tiger lay down the law to? That's right. Anyone he wants. Figure out why he would want to tell a human that the human is wonderful. When we lose ourselves in them, we will regain ourselves.
Well, I argue that the risk of a large cat escaping and killing the neighbor's kid is low because no one has a story of it ever happening. There have been many opportunities for this to happen. I think one of the reasons for its rarity is that even with the gate open a lot of animals stay near their homes. True, that's not always. Whatever the reason, the actual risk is acceptably small. When we have well-monitored preserves and safe enclosed areas, the kvetchers still kvetch. They can't stop pushing people around, and they work to get even the safest of safe places banned outside of government sanctioned zoos. I have seen published plans to even eliminate the zoos, and the prime movers, as I have said, want humans and animals to be completely separate. Right now I can't see any significant number of private sanctuaries surviving in any place where it is not legal to own big cats without a license. The "reasonable regulations" cascade until a county can simply refuse to have a permit process in place to allow someone who actually has a USDA license to use the land the way he wants, when he owns it and pays the county taxes on it. The counties do not handle the regulations responsibly, so they should not be allowed to regulate. I know someone who is a victim of this stupidity, as are his cats. His land has in fact been confiscated for public use without just compensation, and in the years that it would take for him to win a legal battle about this, they can keep assessing fines against him that he would never be able to pay, and bully a legitimate owner out of existence when he is in the right. It isn't the occasional death that prompts this. Animal rights organizations prepare, sometimes directly and often by proxy, the legislatures to be ready to pounce on an incident and use it as an excuse to do something that they have planned for some time. They can't hide their involvement very well and they count on being able to con their customers into accepting what they did as being for the greater good. They do of course lie to achieve this, but it's PETA and friends, what do we expect? These days regulations are only good for destroying the small businessperson in favor of large businesses.
I don't know of any stories of this either, but the potential is there, and I would think the risk would be high - one quick dash out the door is all it takes. And it would be inhumane to keep a large cat confined to a small apartment or even a large house: for your entertainment only - as it tears up all the carpets, furniture and everything in sight. Then you realize that it is too much of a destructive hassle and too much to maintain and have to decide what to do with it. Taking care of any large cat or any other large wild mammal takes a lot of planning, research, financial backing to provide a sizeable safe beast-friendly domain, and a staff of trained personnel to take care of it. There are numerous stories of people who have raised pythons till they became too big, then escaped or were let free and have then killed a child. Many localities and counties have banned pit bulls for the same reason: there are many cities across the U.S. where pit bulls are now illegal to own because they have attacked and killed infants. I'm sure that some locals have strict regulations against gators too. I've heard of cases of snakes and gators getting flushed down the toilet when they became too big for the owner, only to show up in the local reservoir, or crawl through the pipes into the neighbor's house. It's all about the "safety issue" for other people. People a community have a right to be safe. Most localities aren't so strict as to ban ALL "exotic pets," but in most cities they have to be registered. All wild mammals they need to be vaccinated to prevent rabies and other transmittable disease. Other than a zoo, I don't know about other states, but here in Arizona we have two wildlife safaris with large cats: one in west Phoenix, another up North somewhere. Florida has Gatorworld in Orlando, the famous "St. Augustine Alligator Farm," and a number of other alligator farms around the Everglades. But all these farms and ownership of alligators in Florida are very tightly regulated, as they should be. There are also a couple of tourist attractions in Gatlinburg Tennessee in the Smoky Mountains that have tamed Black Bears and I believe there's one in Montana that has tamed Grizzly Bear(s). People pay to go there to watch the bear's trained antics and take photos. Sounds a bit inhumane to me - like a circus - because the animal is being deprived of its natural habitat and free-range. But then, I think the same is true about all zoos, although in the last twenty years there's been an increasing concerted effort to improve their enclosure to be as much of a natural-like habitat as possible rather than just being in a confined steal-rod cage, as they were enclosed in just a few decades ago. Still, they have no free-range and when you go there you often see them just pacing back-and-forth with nothing to do. Look at what is happening to confined dolphins, whales and sharks? Look what happened to Keiko ("Free Willy"): they saved him from Mexico, brought him to Oregon, then spent millions more transporting him to Iceland to try to rehabituate to the independent ocean-life to rejoin his original group there and the he suddenly died. On the flip side, we have large wolf breeding programs - large farms, but not parks that are open to the public - in Idaho, Montana and one in Pennsylvania with the intent on researching their behavior and habitat and releasing the wolves back into the wild for repopulation efforts, and with great success. Even African safaris have their drawbacks for the wildlife as they're constantly being "pursued" by camera-wielding tourists kicking up dust in their domain. This changes their natural habitat and behavior. An ever increasing number of tourists are travelling up to Katmai Nat'l Park to view the Kodiak Bears along the McNiel and Brooks River - something like 30-40,000 or more a year now on platforms along the river that are meant to hold only 25 people at a time. These people come back with scores of film rolls and fantastic stories about their experiences there viewing these wild beasts, but the fact is that the Katmai Kodiak Bears are no longer wild in the natural sense. It's just like a zoo. The 500 or so bears there are all habituated to human presence and just go about their business of snatching salmon out of the water in disregard to humans. There behavior is no longer wild and natural and the tourists that clamber in are constantly breaking the rules by getting too close or throwing them food scraps - which is just like giving a bear a death sentence, because if they then get too overly habituated to human presence, with NO fear, then they have to be put down. Katmai averages four to five human-to-bear violations a day. How about this one, my brother who used to be a ranger in Yellowstone, told me that one Japanese tourist was arrested for trying to mount a buffalo so that his wife could take a picture! Now that's a bit out of control. The point is, in domesticating these wild animals, we're depriving them of their natural habitat and natural behavior that have unforeseen impacts on their reproduction rate and survival that we have yet to study thoroughly. Do we have any alternatives in today's world of massive over-population, the new wave of "eco-tourism," and those who are intent on seeing the remaining "wildlife"? Maybe not. Think of how all this is going to end up 20, 30, 50 years from now? If they're not all extinct by then?
Valich, I'm not worried about the potential harm when it has not been realized in over forty years of people keeping big cats.
You'd still be depriving them of their natural free-range open environment if a large cat were confined to an urban recluse, if this is your intention. Sounds to me like it would eventually be difficult to handle. Can't provide much more info on this without researching it, but I bet there are some chat groups out there that you can connect with for advice - and you definitely should! You really do need to know what your getting into and have some sort of resource(s) to discuss what situation(s) might and certainly will come up. If you really do have your heart set on doing this, and can't find a chat group, let me know and I'll put you in touch with someone, or find a chat group for you (dvsparky@hotmail.com). It would be an educational experience for me as well.
Valich, my intention is for the species to survive. We don't actually have any significant danger in keeping them. We just have people's attitudes that there is a danger, to the extent that they won't even differentiate between what is truly dangerous and what is not. For example, wolves are included in the bans and as far as anyone I've read knows, there have been two deadly incidents, period, with captive wolves if you include Canada. There have been zero with cougars and they are on the list. Horses are not on the lists when we have more than two hundred fatalities involving them each year. The point in making it legal, if I can, to keep them in urban settings is that the people who are so ban-happy have been pushing them out of secluded rural settings, out of entire counties in Kansas that are almost uninhabited.
I understand your plight but legalizing Tigers and exotic pets is the reason why they have depleted in the first place. A long time ago people could roam the forrets and hunt Tigers or easily buy one off the market. This led to certain acticvities that led to their demise. What happened was the market was not in equilibirum; the demad was greater than the supply. Right now we just haveto wait till their population rekindles before we loosen the regulations. If we decide to farm Tigers in the safety of private people, here's what's going to happen Certain ambitious bad people will corrupt the system, Tiger trafficking will be restablished, demand will restablish itself, nobody will know whats going on, fingers will be pointed, names will be called with no real evidence, a black market will be establshed(driving the price down), and the Tiger population will return right back to where it started. However, the biggest problem facing these Tigers is encroachment of human settlement, which means that sooner or later we are going to have to give one or two to private hands...but you can be rest assured whats going to happen to those ones without regulation.
We do have active ongoing programs to reintroduce wolves back into their native habitat - at acceptable levels - all throughout the West: Montana, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming, Arizona and New Mexico. Can't comment on other states due to lack of knowledge and research. As stated, large cats in urban confinement, and in zoos deprives them of their large free-range natural habitat and this is inhumane. Would you like to be locked up in your house for the rest of your life? I agree with you 100% that people's attitudes about the unsubstantiated danger is a major problem that needs to be actively addressed, especially for these reintroduction programs. We have a major problem with this "falacy" in Arizona regarding our substantial mountain lion population, and we do actively educate residents about their habitat and behavior, threat level, and what they should be aware of. Unfortunately, we still have to put cougars down that become habituated too close to human environments because then they do pose a threat to people, especially small children and their pets. The incidences are rare, but cougars stalk prey, and when they habituate their presence too close to populated areas, they can stalk a jogger and attack, as has happened in Southern California. They often start to take down livestock or pets which creates a major problem for livestock farmers. So we first try to circulate warnings in the areas that residents should keep their homes well-lighted at night, keep their pets inside, make sure that their children are in the house at dusk, and report all cougar activity. We also reimburse farmers for their livestock losses. Still, we cannot control thne cat's natural behavior. Once they start getting too close, they have to be put down, as happened in Tucson two years ago. There's really no other option as we have no place to relocate them. Once they start stalking people and realize that human's can be a potential source of easy food, they don't leave and need to be put down. There really is no other alternative. I think that we in Arizona have the best and most liberal policy toward mountain lions compared to any other state. We do what we can do educate the people while trying to maintain a healthy cougar population.
Would you, like Chatha, rather have the animals dead than domesticated? Would you rather just assume that they are too unhappy to live and let them go extinct? They do breed and they do act like they are happy. They do have nowhere else to go. You can talk about how the animals get habituated to humans and sometimes attack, but what the hell? Humans choose to live where they live. Humans invade their feeding grounds and just presume that humans have the right to shove them aside even if it kills them, which it will, because the world has a finite number of territories for each big cat, and humans keep moving into them. Also, look at how they phrase it. They never say "the humans invaded and the cats fought back." But if you raise a mountain lion with humans it won't kill humans. Cougars have been popular pets when they were allowed. I don't even know of serious injuries, let alone deaths. I've been around them and they love playing with humans and being petted. So domesticate them already, they already love it.
You can't just take a large wild cat and expect to just take it into your home and have it be magically "domesticated." This process takes hundreds, sometimes thousands of years of breeding to achieve the desireable traits of domestication. In Arizona, we would rather not shoot a mountain lion that becomes habituated near the human-nature interface, and I think we take all precautions to only take it down when it clearly becomes a threat to people and shows clear signs of aggressive behavior, and this subject is highly debated here. If we can find a new location or an acceptable refuge for the cat, as we did with two out of the three in Tucson that began stalking joggers and showing up in backyards and showing up next to an elementary school in the early morning hours, then we certainly take that option. I believe one had to be put down and down the other two were transferred to a new refuge area in Arizona. There are also locations that took them in the past in New Mexico but California cannot accept any due to their over-population. Zoos also cannot accept anymore. For an individual to have it in his home, thinking that it can be domesticated and safe just like a normal fuzzy little pussy cat is completely out of the question. There is also a large cost factor involved. To tranquilize the cat, have it airlifted out by helicopter, transported to a new location some hundreds of miles away, costs well over $50,000. The issue of humans infringing on a mountain lion or wolves' territory is a hot topic often debated here. I think coyotes are relatively safe animals but now were getting these Californians buying up homes in new developments near Phoenix and Tucson, and they see a coyote roam through their backyard and freak out. How ridiculous! I guess some of these retirees are getting so old that when or if they see a coyote go by, they might have a heart attack. Geez! The NFS, NPS and other active groups have brochure that we hand out to try and educate the people about the wildlife around them, but what more can be done? I agree with you. Humans are invading THEIR territory, but thus in life in the world that we live in. We control it now. We're overpopulating the entire planet to the point where almost no pristine wilderness areas are left. But this is a different issue, right? If you raise a mountain lion at home, it still has natural instincts to hunt and prey, and yes it can still kill a human. Look what happened to Roy of Siegfried & Roy. After 30 years at Las Vegas with their white tigers one of them turned on him and the obvious threat - whether real or perceived - shut the whole works down and almost killed Roy. He was in critical condition for quite a while and was lucky to survive. Yet here you have these "professionals," not just you or me that decide to raise a wild cat, but professionals with over 50 years of experience taming and training cats, and it turned on him. Look at the case with Timothy Treadwell in Alaska with the grizzlies, claiming they were safe once you get to know them. Going up to the grizz and saying, "Why are you growling at me? I love you. Really! I do. I do. I do." They ended up pulling him and his girlfriend's remains out of the bear's stomach. Sure, if you raise them from a very early age, the chances are far less that they'll be a threat, but you just cannot totally eliminate their "innate" wild instinct just because you bring them up and raise them in a domestic situation. Genetics and evolution does not work that way. And we certainly can't take a wild cougar that's alreading stalking people and expect it to be tamed in a person's home! That's just common sense. It would pose a threat to the unexpecting novice owner as well as the entire community if it were to escape. You could never know for sure: when, where, how, why or if? "Stories about Cougars being sweet, loving pets are not common in public press. Although many Cougar owners are delighted to tell such stories; unfortunately, their stories are ignored because of the sensational stories that surface when Cougars and people meet unexpectedly—many times with tragic although hyperbolized consequences." http://www.exoticcatz.com/spcougarlastpet.html I think you'd like to read the rest of the above weblink page as the owner talks about the love and bond that he formed between himself and his pet cougar, yet heed the initial paragraph that he writes. He admits that he is only trying to offer some balance. You might want to also investigate some of the links on the page. "Cougars are similar to bears when it comes to human safety, wildlife biologist Dave Bostick said. “Both are predators - at least some of the time. They tend to chase things which run from them. Many attacks out west were joggers or mountain bikers. It's pretty tough to expect children to face an animal twice their size and not run away, but running away is the absolute worst thing you can do. Facing the animal, making yourself look larger than you are by raising your hands or opening your coat, reacting aggressively if the animal comes toward you by shouting, those are all things that have been effective. I'm aware of children as young as 12 years old being able to beat off a cougar attack." http://www.dowagiacnews.com/articles/2006/01/24/news/dnnews3.txt
Cougars are safe raised from babies. There is no good reason to ban people from keeping them. This thing about the risk to other humans, it doesn't happen with tame cougars that people have raised from babies. The hyperbole is more than just hyperbole, it's a way to lie, and the lies are malicious, not just someone being "cautious." "Balance" means that we take the experience of the thousands of owners of cougars and other big cats into account. Why does one incident with one tiger count more than the approximately ten thousand tigers who cause no one any trouble each year? When it's like that, it isn't the tigers doing it. It isn't the privately owned cougars doing it because they aren't hurting anyone seriously. The problem is not with the animals. It's with the jerks who are manufacturing a false image of the animals and of ownership. It's not even the bad owners who give ownership a bad image. It's special interest groups whose interest is not in the safety of the animals or humans, and who have no interest in telling the truth or respecting human rights.
