No Animals Were Harmed: The Controversial Line Between Entertainment and Abuse

No Animals Were Harmed: The Controversial Line Between Entertainment and Abuse by Peter Laufer, Ph.D.
Lyons Press - October 18, 2011
272 pages

Animals have been used and abused for centuries, even millenia. Everyone has their own opinion: circus ringleaders insist that no animals are abused in their work, while animal rights advocates plead to stop it. So the question is, what is use and what is abuse? Is it black and white, or a gray line? Is there any kind of use that isn't abuse? If there is some use that isn't abusive, then what is it? What's okay and what's not? Homing pigeons? Sled dogs? Dancing bears? Elephant polo? Circuses? Cockfights and dogfights? Slaughterhouses? Horseback riding? Keeping a pet?

This is the first nonfiction book that I have gotten to review, and I am glad that it is a good one. I've always had opinions about the difference between use and abuse for animals, and so I wanted to see what they would have to think. One of the best things about the book, in my opinion, is that it doesn't say, like any other book, magazine, newspaper, or website about this topic, what is right and what is wrong. Instead, it asks you to think of what's right and what's wrong. Peter Laufer goes around the United States and Puerto Rico asking people who work with animals what they think. Obviously, cockfighters think that cockfighting isn't abuse and slaughterhouse owners think that eating meat isn't abuse. But they also pose questions for you. The one thing I wholly disagree with is a militant vegan who envisioned a world without any human interaction with animals. If an emaciated, dehydrated animal with a broken bone came to your door, would you turn it away because humans shouldn't interact with animals?

Grade: A