Quarterly Essay 45 Us and Them : On the Importance of Animals

In this dazzling essay, Anna Krien investigates the world we have made and the complexity of choices we face. From pets to the live cattle trade, from apex predators to scientific experiments, Krien shows how we should - and do - treat our fellow creatures.;Front matter; Title Page; Contents; Us and Them: On the Importance of Animals; Killing; Testing; Hunting; Other Beings; Correspondence; Peter Hay; Eric Knight; John Quiggin; Ben McNeil; Charles Berger; Jeremy Baskin; Robert Merkel; Peter Karamoskos; Barney Foran; Response to Correspondence: Andrew Charlton; Contributors; Copyright; Subscribe. For the first time in history, humans sit unchallenged at the top of the food chain. As we encroach on the wild and a vast wave of extinctions gathers force, how has our relationship with animals changed? In this dazzling essay, Anna Krien investigates the world we have made and the complexity of the choices we face. From pets to the live cattle trade, from apex predators to scientific experiments, Krien shows how we should – and do – treat our fellow creatures. As she delves deeper, she finds that animals can trigger primal emotions in us, which we are often unwilling to acknowledge. This is a clear-eyed meditation on humanity and animality, us and them, that brings out the importance of animals in an unforgettable way.“I am not weighing up whether our treatment of animals is just, because it isn’t. That age-old debate is a farce – deep down we all know it. The real question is, just how much of this injustice are we prepared to live with?” Anna Krien, Us and ThemAnna Krien’s first book, Into the Woods, won the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction and the Victorian Premier’s People’s Choice Award. Her writing has been published in the Monthly, the Age, The Best Australian Essays, The Best Australian Stories and the Big Issue. For the first time in history, humans sit unchallenged at the top of the food chain. As we encroach on the wild and a vast wave of extinctions gathers force, how has our relationship with animals changed?

In this dazzling essay, Anna Krien investigates the world we have made and the complexity of the choices we face. From pets to the live cattle trade, from apex predators to scientific experiments, Krien shows how we should – and do – treat our fellow creatures. As she delves deeper, she finds that animals can trigger primal emotions in us, which we are often unwilling to acknowledge. This is a clear-eyed meditation on humanity and animality, us and them, that brings out the importance of animals in an unforgettable way.

“I am not weighing up whether our treatment of animals is just, because it isn’t. That age-old debate is a farce – deep down we all know it. The real question is, just how much of this injustice are we prepared to live with?” —Anna Krien, Us and Them In this dazzling piece of reportage, Anna Krien investigates the contemporary animal kingdom and our place in it. From pets to food, from wildness to science experiments, Krien also reveals how animals are faring in this new world order. Examples range from the joyful to the deeply unsettling