In the Karnataka region of southwest India live the Svetambara monks, a poverty-sworn sect dedicated to nonviolence against living creatures in such an extreme that among members’ few possessions is a broom used when they walk to sweep away tiny animals from the looming peril of their steps.
These are the guys who get to criticize Pets Lifeline for not caring enough about animals. Everyone else should stop barking at parked cars.
This isn’t to say the Eighth Street East pet rescue center is beyond reproach. Like any other nonprofit agency, it has its challenges and will make its share of missteps.
One such cat in the meal-tub was last week’s kerfuffle about an item initially up for auction as part of the organization’s July 30 Paws for a Cause fundraiser – a dinner for 10 in Kenwood with “foie gras served 3 ways.” Foie gras, or fatty goose liver, as many food-conscious folk are aware, is derived through a particularly unsettling method of force-feeding, known as gavage, practiced upon unfortunate birds who live out their days in cramped, immobilizing coops. Many of the most libertine gourmands won’t touch the delicacy simply due to the realities of its procurement.
According to Pets Lifeline officials, the specifics of that particular auction dinner were lost among the pot-purr-i of other epicurean feasts donated to the event. But when supporters called attention to the unsavory foie gras item, they readily agreed that gavage was not something through which the agency wanted to raise funds. They quickly pulled the dinner from the auction.
About that same time, says Pets Lifeline director Nancy King, the agency was receiving a barrage of online posts from supporters of a Grass Valley-based farm-animal rescue called Animal Place slamming the Sonoma agency not only for the admittedly awkward foie gras meal, but for offering meat selections of any sort on the Paws for a Cause menu. Animal Place had conducted “viral outreach,” in the words of its director Kim Sturla, via Facebook, inviting supporters to respond to Pets Lifeline about how it’s “celebrating animals by selling animal cruelty.”
Charges of slaughtering animals and worse were soon all over the event page of the pet rescue center, which, as King points out, last year rescued and sheltered more than 500 cats and dogs, oversaw more than 400 adoptions and returned 67 lost pets to their owners.
But to believe some of the trolls Animal Place was steering to the comment-portion of the page, Pets Lifeline staff were personally garotting every lost kitten from Sonoma to Talkeetna. (That’s the Alaska town which boasts a cat as its mayor. No, really.)
And this was all happening on the eve of the agency’s biggest annual fundraiser, the type of event small nonprofits may depend upon to keep the lights on through the year.
According to Animal Place officials, they were simply trying to “help.”
“Animal Place tried to help Pets Lifeline in the past, but they were not interested in aligning their menu policy with their mission,” Animal Place publicist Gary Smith told the Index-Tribune.
Given that Pets Lifeline’s clearly expressed mission is to “protect… cats and dogs,” one would conclude from Animal Place’s reaction that the Paws for a Cause menu featured Bowser bourguignon and Tigger tournedos.
In reality, the Paws options were largely vegetarian with some beef-skewer starters, plus entrees of pork roast and chicken Veracruz for those supporters who couldn’t waylay their carnivorousness for an evening.
That menu, however, won’t earn Pets Lifeline many gold stars on Animal Place’s “Shelter Report Card,” which grades animal rescue centers across the country on the “animal friendliness” of their event menus.
Ultimately it comes down to an intellectual disconnect from some likely well-meaning activists who fail to recognize their allies in the effort to better the lives of animals – simply because their focus isn’t the same as everyone else’s.
Or put it this way, Pets Lifeline wants to match kittens with little girls, not establish firm vegetarian dietary standards across the Sonoma Valley culinary spectrum. Animal Place is directing its efforts based on a false premise: that its measure of animal advocacy is everyone’s measure of animal advocacy. And Animal Place’s measure of advocacy, according to its mission statement, is as a “farm animal rescue.” Not reptiles, amphibians, arachnids or other non-farm creatures it would seem.
Luckily for Animal Place, the Svetambara monks aren’t on Facebook.
Email jason at Jason.walsh@sonomanews.com.
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