New course explores the human-animal connection

The intimate connection between animals and humans has never been murkier.

In this confusing era of animal rights movements, engineered creatures, cloning, factory farms, animal research and chronic cartoon anthropomorphizing, the age-old relationship between animals and humans has been redefined. It is far cry from the clear-cut juxtaposition of our agriculturist ancestors and their domesticated farm animals.

Now, however, in an attempt to clear away some of the polemic and misinformation that clouds our modern perspective of human-animal symbiosis, a new course that explores the many issues and realities of how people work with, befriend and utilize animals is being offered at the university.

“I don’t think there’s a class like it in the world,” says Mark Cook, a professor of animal science and the driving force behind the new offering. “We certainly don’t have any education on this campus involving issues of animals.”

The new class, according to Cook, will explore the tangle of concerns that beset the modern symbiosis between animals and Homo sapiens. The history of vivisection, animal welfare laws, the agricultural use of animals, the animal rights movement, human-animal communication, and ethical issues in biotechnology, among others, are topics that will be explored in the weekly lectures for the class, Human/Animal Symbiosis.

Offered for the first time this semester (Spring 2003), the one-credit class was developed with the help of Lindsay Meeks, an undergraduate zoology major and a lab technician who works for Cook. Meeks, who aspires to work for a zoo, considers herself to be a moderate animal rights advocate and so has approached the development of the class from a different philosophical perspective than Cook who, for the past 20 years, has been one of the university’s leading poultry and animal scientists — and sometimes a target of animal rights groups.

“We tend to have opposing views,” Cook says, “but that’s OK. It just strengthens the course. I think the issues need to be discussed. We need people to know the truth. I’m a firm believer that the truth will set you free.”

The truth about our relationships with animals, Cook argues, is clouded in misinformation and rhetoric, and tends to be hidden from the vast majority of Americans who’ve never been in touch, for example, with the gritty realities that support the nation’s diet of fast food or its reliance on modern medicine.

The course, to be held on Mondays at 4:35 p.m., is intended for a broad cross-section of society, says Cook, and the hope is that members of the Madison community with varying perspectives on animal issues will sign up.

“We’d like to try and inform people about what I perceive as this huge divide between animal agriculture and animal rights,” he says. “The course will be broad, and we’re hoping people in the community who have an interest in animals can come and learn the facts on both sides.”

For Meeks, a member of the Madison Coalition for Animal Rights, the goal is similar: “Some of the scientific facts (about animal production and laboratory use) are skewed. Some of the (animal rights) groups skew the facts in the opposite direction. I want people to see both sides and make their own decision.”