In the US last week People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals revealed videotapes from a camera planted by a group member who worked undercover at a slaughterhouse in West Virginia. Employees of the slaughterhouse, which has a contract with the fast food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken, were filmed stamping on live chickens and hurling them against walls. Eleven workers were sacked and the slaughterhouse was warned by KFC’s parent company Yum Brands – itself the target of lawsuits aimed at making it stop forcing birds to grow so fast that their legs collapse – to improve conditions or lose the contract.Cruelty towards animals brutalises the human beings who take part in it, as philosophers have long understood. In 2002, about 80 per cent of the 2.7 million animal experiments performed in this country were mandatory toxicology tests, designed to prevent companies from harming their customers.I have not even begun to mention the suffering imposed on animals by factory farming. Indeed the vehemence with which supporters of animal rights are denounced is designed to obscure the fact that most experiments on animals have little to do with great medical or scientific advances.

So it has been instructive to note, in the past week, how many times money has wiggled its way into the argument in favour of animal experimentation. As a lapsed vegetarian, I am well aware of my own failings in this respect, but the general trend has been towards granting greater rights to animals. Few people have changed their minds as quickly as Michael A Fox: less than a year after he published a book called The Case for Animal Experimentation in 1986, the Canadian philosopher recanted, conceding that he could no longer see any justification for human beings benefiting from the suffering of animals.The usual justification is that laboratory animals suffer and die in the noble cause of finding a cure for HIV or cancer. Does that make me an extremist? I don’t think so, any more than Jeremy Bentham was a crazed zealot when he wrote in the late 18th century that “the day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny”.Philosophers have been debating this subject for hundreds of years. This category, according to the Mail, includes not just people who use threats and violence but those who “bullied cowardly Whitehall into denying a knighthood to Professor Colin Blakemore”, a leading advocate of animal experiments.
Actually, it is reasonable that a democratic society should withhold honours from a man who advocates something many regard as morally dubious. That is why we have laws against cruelty and neglect in this country, as well as a ban on experiments on higher primates. This needs to be pointed out forcefully in a week when the Daily Mail praised the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, for promising to get tough with “animal rights extremists”.

George Bush is no longer a “compassionate conservative” but a divisive ideologue And Democrats are motivated to turn out as never before Let battle commence
More from John Rentoul. Of course animals have rights. But now it’s time to show a bit of edge.With the election poised 50-50 in the polls, the main potential of the Democratic convention was never on the upside, but on the down. By maintaining what the Republicans call “message discipline” on national security, the Democratic Party got through the week unscathed.

He needs only one of the big states that Gore failed to win last time He is a better candidate than Gore, even if not by much. Some of the jokes were even funny (such as Al Gore’s opening line: “You win some, you lose some. And then there’s that little-known third category.”)By not messing up, Kerry is still competitive. I think he is going to win, for the reasons rehearsed here before. “They put him in a brown jacket and jeans and get him to move some hay or drive a truck, and all of a sudden he’s the Marlboro Man I know this guy. During the primaries, he spoke to a Democratic audience about how the President’s image was managed.