Jane Goodall is no longer with us…
It is with deep emotion and sadness that we learned of her passing. She seemed to defy time and age. She has left us at the age of 91, and we can only celebrate 91 years of a magnificent life, devoted to opening our eyes and hearts to what other sentient beings are: capable of emotions, friendship, caring, comforting each other, expressing grief, making tools, and so many other wonders.
A tireless spokesperson for other species, our co-citizens in this world, Jane commanded respect through her unique combination of gentleness and an unwavering firmness and determination to defend great apes, especially chimpanzees, whom she had observed with such patience, closeness, and insight.
She was a great lady of rare elegance who commanded respect and admiration. I had the good fortune to meet her on several occasions and to be the happy beneficiary of her friendship. She will remain forever in my heart as a powerful source of inspiration.
Here is an excerpt of a dialogue I had with her in Brisbane, Australia, in 2011.
Matthieu: There is an unbroken connection and continuity between the various animal species and humans. The reality of this continuum should make humans re-examine the way we treat other animals
Jane Goodall: There is, of course, no question that there is a continuity of feelings and emotions. There is no question that animals feel pain. I don’t know how far down the scale of species it goes, but I am sure that insects feel some kind of pain since they avoid bad stimulus. In the case of animals with more complex brains, it is not only the pain they experience, but also the fear and the suffering, mental
suffering as well as physical.
What I find so extraordinary is that people seem to be almost schizophrenic when you speak to them about the terrible conditions in the intensive animal “farms”, this cruel cramming of sentient beings into tiny spaces, so bad that to keep them alive you have to give them antibiotics all the time otherwise they just give up. I tell people about the transportation nightmare, about the abattoirs where so many animals aren’t even stunned before they are skinned alive, plunged into boiling water. It is horrible. If they fall while being transported, they are pulled up by one leg that gets broken. It is obviously excruciatingly painful. When I tell this to some people, they often reply, “Oh please don’t tell me, I am very sensitive, I love animals.” And I think, “What’s gone wrong in that brain!”
The practices of the food industry, the meat-eating industry, is particularly shocking because they are condoned by governments and by the people. Even if they do not consciously condone it, they are doing so by eating meat. And these practices are increasing as more and more people want to eat more and more meat. It is destroying the environment, it’s shrinking water supplies, and it’s wasting huge amounts of energy, transforming vegetable protein into animal protein in totally wasteful ways (it takes 10 g of protein from plants to make 1g of meat protein). That’s all quite separate from the huge suffering, the massive, massive, the endless suffering going on every day. It’s suffering from birth to death. I grew up eating bits of meat, because we all ate meat, we didn’t even think about where it came from and so on. I only learned about “intensive farming,” or the cruel way that animals are bred and slaughtered when I first came back from Gombé, because it started in England before I left. I looked at this piece of meat on my plate, and I thought: “That symbolizes fear, pain, death.” That was the last bit of meat that I ever looked at on a plate of mine. I haven’t touched meat or fish since.
But in addition to that, there is the animal testing that is going on. It’s pharmaceuticals, which are the worst, and then it’s medical. They are supposed to be guidelines, rules and regulations, but they are most of the time not enforced. Here again, you get this schizophrenia: a man has a home, wife and children, and a dog. He talks about his dog as a member of the family, he says, “she understands
everything I say”. Then he goes into a lab, puts on a white coat and does unspeakable things to dogs.
Matthieu: TV broadcasts incredibly gory horror movies, but if you want to show a little bit of what is going on these industrial farms and slaughterhouses, nobody wants to look at it. I guess because it points at our complicity. It is a permanent torture house that goes on and on. How could we revive human values and make people more sensitive to the suffering we create?
Jane: This is what we are doing with “Roots and Shoots”, a program I am doing to engage and empower youth with service. We don’t tell the young people what to do. They sit around, talk, and choose three projects: to help people, to help the environment, and to help the other animals, including domestic ones. I bring these topics into all my talks, and they start thinking and learning, and begin to be completely horrified by what they are finding out. So, they will not tolerate those conditions when they grow up. The only way to sensitize people in the long run is working with the youth. I also meet with senators and congressmen. You have to get to their hearts. They are doing it all through their heads.
Jane Goodall’s spirit lives on through the Jane Goodall Institute, which continues her work by protecting chimpanzees, raising awareness, and inspiring everyone to take action for a world where humans, animals, and nature coexist in peace.