Questions of Excess

I suppose we could reduce the waste of food by refusing the sale of fresh supplies to householders with full garbage bins.

We might similarly forbid breeding of new babies until the child shelters were emptied by adoption.

The "butter mountains" and "beef mountains" could be obliterated by suspending production? Hardly. In any event on reflection they are mere foothills of prodigality compared with the Himalayas of spoilage and waste.

This type of intuitive economics is silly at best and responsible for the destruction of the Russian Empire in its worst form.

Unfortunately economic systems only work on the basis of oversupply just as canals function on the basis of overspill lagoons which are drawn down to maintain levels.

The cruellest example is the necessity for a reservoir of unemployed humans in order for the "system" to work. (Tell me if you have an answer to this! No. Tell the world)

Sadly there seems to be no form of human emotional bond that insures wives, husbands and children against the redundancy of estrangement and abandonment.

It is thus with pet animals.

I see the reduction from 20 million to 8 million in the US figures of pet wastage. This is good. Education and steady argument for very careful acquisition of pets is working and must be encouraged. No level of wastage is satisfactory but a certain level will always exist. Let it be the lowest.

The general quality of our lives may rest with thoughtful parsimony in our consumption of every type of "commodity". Those who shape the culture such as writers, film makers and accountants may have a part to play.

It will not be achieved by strident belabouring with emotive legislation!

Robin E Walker B.Vet.Med. M.R.C.V.S.
The Veterinary Clinic
78 Bromyard Road
Worcester
WR2 5DA, UK
Tel (++44 (0)1905 421296
Fax ++44 (0)1905 422287

Centre of Applied Pet Ethology
Association of Pet Behaviour Counsellors

Copyright 1999, Robin Walker, All rights reserved.

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