Imagine if spectators at the London Olympics had to gingerly make their way past loose pit bull terriers and XL bullies, some of them rabid. No civilised country would tolerate several million stray dogs on the streets, and indeed we don’t. If a stray dog is found on the streets of London it will be captured and taken to Battersea dogs home, or the equivalent. If it is not claimed or adopted it will likely be euthanised.
Logically, a western campaign against culling of stray dogs in Morocco ought to attract the attention of the ‘decolonialisation’ brigade.
‘Enlightened’ western animal lovers seem to expect something rather different from Morocco, however. A group called the International Animal Coalition has launched a campaign against what it describes as a mass cull of stray dogs ahead of the 2030 World Cup, which the country is to share with Spain and Portugal. The country, it says, is – shock horror – shooting the animals or capturing them and poisoning them. Maybe, as the group alleges, there are inhumane practices involved which cause pain to the animals. But the campaign doesn’t stop there: it reacts angrily to the very principle of taking a dog’s life. It wants the animals to be vaccinated and neutered instead, and allow to live out their lives on the streets.
Morocco has, by the way, denied it is carrying out a mass cull of dogs, but leave that aside. Why shouldn’t the country clear the streets of these animals if it wants to? Are they going to campaign against the control of rats next? In Britain, we happily cull deer and many other species – although badgers, it has to be said, have been the subject of a campaign against control of their numbers. Yet the control of dogs in Morocco runs up against two tendencies in the West. Firstly, there is the mawkish sentimentality attached to dogs. Just because westerners have adopted them as pets, and fawn over them, we expect the rest of the world to do the same and become morally outraged if they do not. Secondly, we have long imposed different standards towards third world countries when it comes to wild animals in general. We expect people in these countries to live in close proximity to all kinds of dangerous and poisonous species – while we live peacefully and securely in landscapes which have been largely tamed of dangerous wildlife since medieval times.
Logically, a western campaign against culling of stray dogs in Morocco ought to attract the attention of the ‘decolonialisation’ brigade. It ought to be saying: how dare western sentimentalists try to lecture a developing country on how to deal with feral animals, especially in a Muslim country which has a very different cultural connection with dogs. But this is not how things seem to work.
The campaign against Morocco’s alleged dog cull exposes another Western moral blindspot. One of the most vociferous campaigners against Morocco’s right to cull dogs is an actor called Mark Ruffalo, who has tweeted ‘killing millions of dogs to prepare for a global sporting event is not progress, it’s a moral failure.’ This is a little odd because the very same Mark Ruffalo seems to have no problem with the culling of unwanted members of his own species. Indeed, when Texas introduced its ‘heartbeat law’ in 2021, prohibiting abortions in cases where cardiac activity can be detected, he thought that was an outrage, sharing a tweet for people ‘not to obey this archaic and sexist law’.
That just about sums up the deep moral confusion of western liberals. A campaign to cull 3 million dogs? An outrage. But an estimated 73 million abortions of humans around the world each year? It doesn’t even register with their consciences.
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