Marsaxlokk market is what you get when non-human animals are considered human property
Submitted by Animal Rights Malta’s Blog
Simone Aquilina writes the following letter in today’s The Times:
“I am writing to utter my complete disgust at what I saw the other day at the market in Marsaxlokk. Apart from this market being a disorganised chaos and looking more like a market out of a third world country, a man was selling birds and puppies, right next to a stall selling imqaret (deep fried pastry filled with a mashed date mixture) if I might add.
What was so horrible was that these poor birds were cooped up in small cages. Some could not even lift their heads, others were packed so tightly in a cage that they could hardly breathe.
Puppies were stuffed four to a small cage and one could see that all these poor birds and animals were very distressed.
One enquires whether this man can actually sell these birds and puppies. Also do the relevant authorities or local council members visit the market to see with their own eyes what is happening?
One could notice quite a number of tourists who were as distressed as I was watching this horrible sight.
Hopefully, through this newspaper (The Times), the relevant authorities will take action so that such sights are not seen anymore”.
Consider non-human animals as property, and a treatment that befits property is what they’ll get. In a free-market economy, it’s profit that matters. If non-human animals are considered to be human property, any consideration (if at all) for their welfare will always be trumped by the maximum profit requirement. If this means more non-human animals cramped in cages in all extreme weather conditions (cold climate in winter and hot climate in summer), so be it, a speciesist entrepreneur would say. And would we expect the government to care? Not likely. The authorities know about the situation at such markets. Letters of complaint have been written (by both locals and tourists) for several years, to no avail. The market people, after all, are only selling goods, and goods (property) have no rights.
Dr Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando (a government MP), on November 9, had written: “Last year I had the honour of presenting the largest petition ever collected on our islands, 40,000-plus signatures, which aimed at pushing specific animal welfare-related demands forward. Both the Prime Minister and the Minister for the Environment, to whom the petition was presented, were very receptive…It hurts me to read certain letters claiming that we live in an ‘animal-unfriendly society’…It is easy for armchair critics to send denigrating letters to the press. One wonders if these individuals do anything concrete to help alleviate the situation some animals find themselves in”.
Let’s wait and see. Who knows? - maybe Dr Pullicino Orlando and his government will stop being “armchair critics” and ban the sale of non-human animals at open-markets (or anywhere, for that matter). Now that would be a true achievement that will benefit non-human animals, not the presentation of signatures collected by someone else and handed over to an unreceptive and uncaring government!
And perhaps, Mr George Callus, who was so “flabbergasted” by my criticism of Dr Pullicino Orlando, should himself make a visit to Marsaxlokk market, and see for himself the state of the non-human animals sold at the market. To use Mr Callus’ closing line in his response to my letter (”One wonders what Mr Cassar is doing, in concrete terms, for animals apart from writing ridiculous letters to the press”) and re-direct it to his beloved Dr Pullicino Orlando: “One wonders what Dr Pullicino Orlando (and his government) is doing, in concrete terms, for animals apart from presenting petitions to oneself and boasting on projects that have not yet even started”.
Mr Callus and Dr Pullicino Orlando should perhaps visit the market together. Who knows, maybe they both will be “flabbergasted”. But then again, maybe they won’t. After all, they both consider non-human animals as human property without rights.
And as a final note, one should remember that the predicament the animals mentioned in the above letter find themselves in, is no worse than the conditions of most animals destined for slaughter so that people may simply enjoy the taste of their flesh. But of course, to a speciesist, these animals do not matter. Somehow, by calling them food, these animals stop being animals and become “livestock” and “meat”.
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