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"Now that it is past its best it is cast onto the doggy scrap heap. That's exploitation of the worse kind," he lambastes. Heexplains that Chow Chow pups can fetch up to £600 each."Farmers are the worst offenders," he claims. The farm lobby claims that farmers are the best conservationists. He stressesthis is a myth. To them animals are only things to be exploited in the Cartesian scheme of things without considerationfor how they feel. "Yes", he repeats, "they feel just like humans. But what chance do animals have when even the good bookdoesn't give them a decent press.” Pat is quick to point out. Indeed biblical scholars and archaeologist, ecologists andethicists have recently become interested in the extent to which the biblical view of animals has influenced therelationship of modern civilisation with nature. For Pat Nolan it is too late in the day for such pundits. The damage hasalready been done to the animal kingdom by greedy humans, seeking increased profits. He believes the Bible has providedpeople with justification for exploiting animals either as factory farmed chickens or dancing bears in a circus. He arguesthat until recent times non-human animals were given a very low status. In the first part of Genesis, God gives humansdominion over the animals. In the Hebrew Bible this power over so called dumb creatures is moderated by a slight act ofkindness which insists that oxen should be rested on the Sabbath. The Christian scriptures are devoid of a similarconsideration for animals. In terms of metaphor and imagery the dog and certain birds are seen to have negativeconnotations. St Paul is condemned for re-interpreting the Hebrew injunction of resting oxen insisting that the commandis only for the benefit of humans. St. Augustine who came to Christianity in his early 40s, argued that Jesus caused theGadarene swine to drown in order to demonstrate that animals had no rights. Even so great a Father of the Church as St.Aquinas denied that we had any duty of charity to animals. In the medieval times it was not unusual for animals to standtrial for a variety of offences.The father of modern philosophy, Rene Descartes went even further than his Christian antecedents and considered thatanimals were machines like clocks. Descartes, who was subsequently to plague humanity with his Cartesian dualism, saidthat animals move andemitted sounds but had nofeelings. This attitudeappeared to be commonamongst the Europeans. Butthe philosophical low pointof views on animals began tochange back when EmanuelKant, like Aristotle, 500 yearsbefore Christ, reasoned thatwhat separated humanity“until recent times non humananimals were given a verylow status”and the kingdom of the beasts was in fact reason. There was an implied acceptance that animals feel. It was the BritishUtilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham who was the first major figure in Western ethics to suggest that animals and theirinterests should be considered as part of human ethical thinking. Few took him seriously in the late 18th Century. It wasa classic case of an idea whose time had not come. A few decades later Darwin was the first to publish results of researchthat inferred that human beings far from being created in God's image were in fact descended from other primates. He