So that's okay, then

If circus tigers and lions were born and raised in captivity, they’ve never known the wild. So that makes it okay, then. If chickens - sorry, “broilers” - were bred for the frying pan and have never seen the sun, then that’s okay too. The same goes for any other animal who exists at the whim of humanity. They don’t know what they’re missing, so it’s okay.

I’ve heard this argument over and over again, and I have to admit I’ve even used it myself - for trees, not animals. To my shame, I once said that it’s alright to cut down pines in plantations because that’s what they’re grown for, isn’t it? So it’s okay, then.

People fall for it all the time, and I think it goes down so easily because of the way it objectifies and commoditises animals. Once an animal’s purpose is to be a slice of bacon or a juicy steak or a leather jacket or a circus act, it’s just a thing now, isn’t it? It doesn’t know what it’s missing, and it only exists because we said it could, anyway.

That’s the argument circus owner David McClaren likes to trot out when animal activists stand up for “his” animals. “They’re all on about wild animals in the circus but these animals were born in captivity, and they are not going to go into the wild,” he was quoted as saying in a Cape Town newspaper, Echo, on 9 February after a protest led by Beauty without Cruelty.

So that’s alright, then - especially as the tame wild animals in his circus are “well cared for”, to quote Mr McClaren again. In fact, they’re just like “pets”, according to one circus-going member of the public quoted in the same report. “My take on this is, here at the circus, these animals must be viewed as pets,” she said. “It looks as if they are well treated, cared for, even loved.”

What lucky lions and tigers. What on earth are those animal activists getting so upset about?

It’s almost impossible to offer a coherent counter argument to someone who insists that animals were born for the purpose we humans see fit for them. If you don’t see an animal as a sentient being, then nothing I can say is going to change your mind.

So let me offer an argument that’s as far removed from reality (or maybe not) as the born-in-captivity cliché.

Imagine if up there in space, a nation of “aliens” was eyeing out earth’s seven billion (and growing) humans and thinking how useful we could be for all kinds of sci-fi horror-movie things, like vitamin supplements and ingredients and organ transplants and circus acts and cute little pets.

Imagine if the sole reason we existed was for them.

Would that be okay, then?