Animal rights extremism

Bonkers anti-shooting organisation Animal Aid is trumpeting its new patron, Peter Tatchell.

It would be easy to go all Daily Mail about Tatchell's career campaigning for lesbian and gay rights, including a spell acting as press officer for "Faggots Rooting Out Closeted Sexuality", and a campaign to lower the age of homosexual consent to 14.

I shan't, though, because that would draw attention away from what this really tells us about the dangerously extremist aims of Animal Aid.

Tatchell himself explains: "The campaigns for animal rights and human rights share the same fundamental aim: a world without suffering, based on compassion and care."

The key word here is "rights." Organisations like Animal Aid are very good at drumming up support - and funds - by showing cute photos of fluffy lambs, and banging on about how they're fighting cruelty.

But what's the real agenda? They want animals – all animals – to be given "rights" equivalent to the human rights that are now enshrined in European law.

Just think about the implications, when every animal from an elephant to a rat has rights like these, no doubt vigorously defended by the same nutters currently found in organisations like Animal Aid.

Want to ride a horse? Sorry, Article 4 prohibits slavery and forced labour. Want to trap that rat in your kitchen? Nope, Article 2, right to life. Eat meat? No chance. This is Animal Aid's "kinder, gentler world," "based on compassion and care."

Goodness knows what they make of predators killing prey. Perhaps that's ok because it's "nature" (and H. sapiens eating meat for 200,000 years isn't).

All the shooters I know abhor real cruelty. They are horrified by the ill-treatment of animals, whether it's pets, livestock or wildlife. That's animal welfare, and believe it or not shooters, Joe Public and antis are broadly in agreement on animal welfare.

Animal rights, though, is something else entirely. The public may fall for Animal Aid's fluffy lamb marketing hype, but they will never back the extremist aims lurking in the shadows behind it. Tatchell may have a great campaigning record, but he will prove to be a liability to the animal rights movement.