I think everyone of you should read EATING APES. Here is a little review summary from somewhere over the rainbow internet:
"Dale Peterson, who has written widely about primates in Africa, makes Ammann's story the centerpiece of his wide-ranging account of the bushmeat problem. Although he shares Ammann's partisan views, Peterson explains why conservationists cannot simply will the end of ape-eating through legislation. Selling ape meat is already illegal throughout most of Africa. But so many people rely on bushmeat for protein, and so many regard it as a delicacy that connects them with their past and their ethnic identity, that game wardens and police officers are more likely to buy bushmeat from a poacher than to arrest him.
Peterson shows, too, how European logging corporations in Central Africa are playing a key supporting role in the growth of the bushmeat trade. They cut roads deep into virgin forest, giving hunters ready access to once-remote habitats. They cut costs by feeding cheap bushmeat to the loggers. And the truck drivers they employ run a lucrative side business in the transport of contraband ape body parts, concealed in compartments under their engine hoods. The net effect is that hunting bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas has now become big business. And the targeted species, already endangered, may be driven to extinction.
With such strong economic and social forces in play, any argument that simply appeals to the repugnancy of eating our closest cousins is bound to be dismissed as ethnocentrism. If the French eat horses, or the Vietnamese eat poodles, who's to say the Africans can't eat apes? Peterson counters that eating apes endangers public health. He cites the work of Beatrice H. Hahn, a virologist at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, who in 1998 traced the AIDS virus to a virus known as SIV, common among chimpanzees. This past June, Hahn and her colleagues reported in the journal Science that the chimpanzees themselves may have contracted the virus by eating monkeys.
Unlike chimpanzees, though, people can clean up their act. If advocates like Peterson and Ammann prevail, apes may someday disappear from the market and the dinner table. With any luck, that will happen before they disappear from the rainforest as well."
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Hey,
I thought this post was really eye-opening. I'm not very familiar with primatology or the bushmeat crisis, but this post shocked me and saddened me. Not only did the plight of the animals and the health problems associated upset me, but the international political implications worried me as well. I am planning to major in Political Science with a concentration in International Relations, so I follow international politics. This week in my IR class, we've been discussing international political ethics. The problem of people arguing that it is a cultural right to eat bushmeat and ethnocentric to prevent the hunting is only one limiting factor for countries attempting to make ethical arguments against the practice. IR theorists call it the problem of a weak consensus in values--people in different places have different ideas about what is moral and immoral, and it is tough to impose your moral standard on a sovereign government that disagrees. However, other problems exist as well for ethical arguments, such as the difference between individuals and states, the complex chain of consequences, and weak institutions. The same ethical standards that would be applied to individuals can't always be applied to countries or regions, and there are often consequences of banning an activity that are tough to predict (such as hurting people's ability to find food by banning bushmeat). Its also tough to implement a ban on anything, especially if, as the post points out, the law enforcement officials are opposed to a ban. The manpower and funding needed to institute such a thing would be large.
Thus, the bushmeat crisis has quite a lot of underlying issues, simply from an ethical point of view. When I look at the issue, I say to myself, well, this is simple, killing primates and eating them is a terrible thing that should be stopped, no matter what the cost. But when others look at it, especially policy makers, they see a lot of problems.
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