Paw Talk: Love animals? Why aren’t you vegan?

Like Mary, I was invited to write a guest post over at the blog for Paw Talk, a site that is very much developed and promoted from the traditional welfare view. In other words, the animals of concern there are all "pets" and the issues that affect them are those of welfare and the law. The invitation came almost exactly two months ago, and at first I wasn't even sure I'd be able to offer anything. I certainly don't want to reinforce the notion that animals are means to our ends, rather than ends in themselves (the notion of a "pet" or a "companion animal" is rooted in our conception of that animal's relationship to us, rather than that animals' autonomy).

After pondering the matter for a bit, I decided that the only type of post that would make sense for me to provide was the sort of discussion found at the heart of the Boston Vegan Association's "Respecting Animals Means Going Vegan" pamphlet, which addresses people's concern for cats and dogs and extrapolates that to animals beyond those generally considered "pets". I connect to this discussion on a personal level because my own veganism was facilitated by making the connection between animals I had considered family and those I had considered commodities and realizing that my behavior toward animals was inconsistent. Once I had the idea, it took me a couple of months to find time to adapt the pamphlet's base argument into something resembling a blog post, but it was finally published today. Here is a link to the entry if you'd like to check it out. Let me know what you think.

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Labels: animal rights, animal welfare, companion animals, veganism

This Saturday, from 10a to 11a, tune in to WZBC 90.3 if you're interested in hearing an interview with me regarding the connection between animal rights and veganism, as well as my organization, the Boston Vegan Association. I will appear in-studio with the host of "Expanding Awareness," Victor Venckus. WZBC is sandwiched between WGBH and WBUR on the FM dial in Boston, MA. If you that station is not broadcast in your area, you can listen in online at wzbc.org.

FYI, the second half of the show is a call-in segment: (617) 552-4686.


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Labels: advocacy, animal rights, Boston Vegan Association, BVA, interview, radio

Introduction

In order to respect the basic moral rights of nonhuman animals, we must abolish their use. Once we’ve done this in our own lives by becoming vegan, we are left with the question of how to abolish the use of animals in society at large. Given that the use of animals will not end overnight, and that we have a duty to help today’s animals, the question can be more specifically framed as, “What sort of advocacy leads incrementally to abolition?”

Much of the modern global animal protection movement’s advocacy work is grounded in the belief that we can bring about abolition--or at least animal “liberation”--by focusing on how nonhuman animals are treated by humans. Broadly speaking, the idea is that advocating welfare reform and educating the public about animal suffering will incrementally reduce that suffering, eventually leading to the abolition of animal use or to greater consideration for the preferences of nonhuman animals. In his work, professor Gary L. Francione calls this ideology new welfarism.[1]

New welfarism

There are at least two major strands of new welfarism recognizable within the modern global animal protection movement.

The first is comprised of people who consider themselves abolitionists. Their objective is to eliminate animal use. The second strand includes those utilitarians who, like Peter Singer, seek as their objective the equal consideration of interests or preferences, not abolition. Because utilitarianism is not inherently opposed to animal use, this position can be difficult to distinguish from traditional welfarism, which holds that it is acceptable to use nonhuman animals as a means to human ends. But unlike most traditional welfarists, Singer-style new welfarists believe that humans and animals are equal and that their preferences must always be weighed equally.

Regardless of their differences, what all new welfarists share in common is that they focus their efforts primarily on improving the welfare of exploited animals—i.e., their treatment—rather than directly challenging the notion of animal use.[2] They believe that that their objective can be achieved through welfare-based reforms and by educating the public about how animals are treated. Below are some key beliefs characteristic of new welfarist ideology. A new welfarist need not hold all these beliefs, nor should this list be seen as exhaustive.

1. The new welfarist believes that legal and institutional welfare reform campaigns offer animals increased protection and reduce animal suffering today.


2. The new welfarist believes that, by raising public awareness of the cruelty caused by institutionalized animal exploitation, reform campaigns will prompt people to reduce or even eliminate their use and consumption of animals and products derived from animals. Under this belief, new welfarists support and promote non-vegan vegetarianism as a way to reduce one’s contribution to animal suffering.


3. The new welfarist believes that reform campaigns will damage the animal-using industries.

In the next installment of AR101, I will examine these beliefs in more detail to determine whether they are well-founded or whether we should look to another incremental approach to abolition.

Next: A Closer Look at New Welfarism

Previous: Utilitarianism

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1. See Chapter 2 of Gary L. Francione’s Rain Without Thunder for a more thorough introduction to new welfarism.
2. For an extended discussion of use versus treatment, read Gary L. Francione’s “Introduction / The Abolition of Animal Use versus the Regulation of Animal Treatment” in Animals as Persons.

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I hope you're finding this series useful. I've enjoyed the reading comments I've been receiving so far, so please continue to share your thoughts by commenting below.

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Labels: abolition, animal rights, animal welfare, AR101, theory

I was invited to participate as an "Expert" over at Opposing Views, a site that sets up debates on various topics by asking "Experts" to weigh in with their arguments (OV's About page). I mentioned the site previously in a post on California's Proposition 2.

The topic I was asked to take on was Should Animals Have the Same Rights as People? As of now, Bob Torres and I represent similar viewpoints, while two other viewpoints are set forth by Tibor Machan and Paul J. Fitzgerald, S.J..

I've laid out only three arguments at this point, mainly to pick apart the question and to support my views with very basic posts regarding animal rights (you may recognize some of the content from the AR101 series I'm running here). Please take the time to visit and read them:

1. What Are Rights?
2. Sentience is Sufficient for Basic Rights Protection
3. Making Sense of the Question

You may offer your thumbs-up under each argument as a recommendation if you like, or even offer comments in support of or against. Please let me know if you feel there's something else I ought to be arguing, either here in comments or via email by using the "Contact" link above.


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Labels: animal rights, theory

The Boston Vegan Association:
Respecting animals means going vegan

The BVA's 8-page abolitionist vegan outreach pamphlet is now ready and available for viewing online and sharing. I have also had a "generic" version prepared so that you can include your own information on the back cover instead of the BVA web address and logo (pictured). If you would like to receive copies for distribution, please get in touch.


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Labels: abolition, activism, animal rights, literature, veganism

Utilitarianism

In a nutshell, utilitarianism holds that the consequence of a given action is what determines its moral worth. According to the principle of utility the right action is that which maximizes "utility." Under hedonistic or classical utilitarianism, utility is defined in terms of pain and pleasure. The morally correct action to take in any given situation, then, is the one that leads to the greatest pleasure for the greatest number of individuals affected by that action.

In counting the pleasures and pains of all those affected, each individual must "count for one and none for more than one." Because nonhuman animals can also be affected by an action (i.e., an action can cause them pleasure or pain), their pleasures and pains must also be taken into consideration when deciding whether an action is wrong or right.

Peter Singer

Peter Singer, probably the most well-known modern proponent of utilitarianism, defines utility in terms of preferences rather than pleasure and pain. Preference utilitarianism holds that what is intrinsically valuable in any given scenario is not pleasure, per se, but the satisfaction of preferences (i.e., desires or interests).[1] Of course, these preferences might include avoiding pain and seeking pleasure, but preference utilitarianism might be seen as a more nuanced or graded approach.

In addition to the principle of utility, Singer advocates even more forcefully a principle of equal consideration for other beings' interests. In determining the consequences of our actions, he argues that we must accord equal consideration to equal interests, even going so far as to say that nonhuman animals have a right to this consideration. He describes at length how excluding nonhuman animals from equal consideration (or otherwise disregarding their interests) is speciesist, an arbitary bias in favor of one's own species membership that is analogous to excluding humans from equal consideration on the basis of their race or sex.[2]

Singer later expressed regret at allowing "the concept of a right to intrude into [his] work so unnecessarily." Though he is often called "the father of the animal rights movement," this stance is not all that surprising when you consider that his views do not and cannot lead to a respect-based animal rights view given his adherence to the principle of utility.[3]

Issue: Tension between equal consideration and utility

The principle of utility is problematic for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the tension between considering like interests equally and maximizing utility.

Despite his belief that we ought to determine what will maximize utility on a case-by-case basis, Singer holds that animals' interests must always be given equal consideration. Though this insistence also informs the egalitarianism of rights theory put forth previously, it creates problems here because taking all interests equally into consideration may well fail to maximize utility, at which point we would no longer operating in the realm of utilitarianism.

The corollary here is that the principle of utility conflicts with the principle of equal consideration when maximizing utility would require us to ignore the interests of some individuals or otherwise allow them to be harmed if doing so serves the "greater good." In other words, utilitarianism’s emphasis on the consequential benefit of a potential act favors the majority and allows for exploitation of the minority.

As Tom Regan writes, “The modest point being urged here is that, for all its emphasis on equality, utilitarianism would sanction recognizable forms of sexism and racism, if the facts happened to turn out a certain way.”[4]

Issue: Treats interests as tradable

The rights view protects interests even when it would benefit others (or the greater good) to violate or ignore them. "[T]he defining characteristic of a respect-based right is that the interest that it protects cannot be compromised for consequential considerations alone."[5] Utilitarianism, on the other hand, treats interests as tradable. If ignoring the interests of certain individuals maximizes utility overall, then utilitarianism would say that the right thing to do in that situation is to ignore those interests in favor of the interests of the many, effectively treating interests as tradable, not inviolable. Such a view "is consistent with animal exploitation if the consequences justify that exploitation and if the decision to exploit is not based on species discrimination."[6]

Indeed, though Singer advocates vegetarianism, it is not certain how he can prescribe this measure on a utilitarian basis. An appeal on consequentialist grounds would suggest that vegetarianism maximizes utility, but the principle of utility could well come down against vegetarianism if the consequences of everyone becoming vegetarian actually turned out to have less utility than if everyone continued to eat at animal products.

Singer thinks that the negative consequences for the animals involved in factory farming outweigh the benefits, but as Regan points out, "[t]he animal industry is big business," and although "[i]t is uncertain exactly how many people are involved in it, directly or indirectly, . . . the number must easily run into the many tens of thousands." Those involved in animal agriculture "have a stake in the animal industry as rudimentary and important as having a job, feeding a family, or laying aside money for their children's education or their own retirement." . . . The problem is that once the preference satisfaction of everyone involved in factory farming (humans and nonhuman) is deemed relevant and counted equitably, Singer's assumed result appears to be much more controversial than he recognizes.[7]

In light of these complications, the utilitarian impact of becoming vegetarian is not at all clear, particularly on the individual level. Because utilitarians must make the moral calculations on a case-by-case basis, they cannot demonstrate that becoming vegetarian will always maximize utility, which means that utilitarianism can make no standing argument for vegetarianism at all, much less veganism.

More consistent with the utilitarian view is his assertion that it may be morally justifiable to eat animals who "have a pleasant existence in a social group suited to their behavioral needs, and are then killed quickly and without pain."[8]

Issues: Fails to offer normative guidance

The vegetarian question points to a lack of normative guidance (i.e., guidelines for standard, everyday behavior) offered by Singer's views. In Animal Rights Theory and Utilitarianism: Relative Normative Guidance, Gary L. Francione reveals utilitarianism's lack of normative guidance by focusing on three components of moral theory that he identifies as the ideal level, the micro-level, and the macro-level.

The ideal level asks what ideal state a theory aims to achieve. The clarity of a theory's ideal state is important because it helps guide micro- and macro-level components of moral decision-making. The micro-level component of a theory guides our personal behavior. The macro-level component examines whether a theory prescribes how to effect incremental change in order to achieve a theories ideal state of affairs.

Under the rights view, it may be said that the ideal state is the complete abolition of institutionalized animal exploitation, a fairly clear, measurable objective. Knowing that this is our ideal state, it becomes rather plain that our personal obligation on the micro level is to avoid participating in activities that, at the very least, contribute directly to animal exploitation (i.e., we ought to be vegan). On the macro level, a coherent prescription for incremental change guides us to a strategy of spreading rights-based ideology and veganism.

Singer's ideal is much more vague, requiring as it does that offer nonhuman animals equal consideration for their interests while maximizing utility. How do we describe or measure this objective, much less know when we have reached it (assuming it is a place one could even "reach")? This view offers no practical guidance for making decisions, ultimately leading us to make best guesses about what is likely to "reduce" suffering to some indeterminable extent.

The calculations required to follow this rule for micro-level decision-making are stunningly complicated. Among our variables are every individual who might be affected by what we choose to do, the preferences those individuals have, and the varying weights of these preferences. Assuming it was possible to gather all this data, we would then have to make comparisons of these prefrences between individuals and across species, and we would have to determine which satisfied preferences maximize utility, which don't, and so on. As if this wasn't burden enough, we must perform this complex calculus for every considered action, and there's still a chance our estimates could be wrong due to our lack of perfect knowledge, our inability to predict how other involved parties might behave, much less our general inability to predict the future.

On the macro-level of decision-making, the admonition to do whatever we think might best reduce suffering is equally unhelpful. Already ourideal state is vague, so this sort of guidance makes it hard to know where we're headed incrementally as a group. Nor do we always know whether and how much our actions will reduce suffering, which is perhaps what leads certain animal advocates to focus on what some new welfare advocates call the "low-hanging fruit."

This approach to advocacy involves welfare campaigns that are problematic for a number of reasons that I will analyze in my next AR101 installment. Suffice it to say for now that the macro-level component here fails to meaningfully distinguish our incremental actions as a movement from those who exploit animals (none of whom believe we ought to, say, increase suffering). It is hard to see how animals will be liberated if we are merely reinforcing the existing paradigm that it is acceptable to use animals, so long as we minimize their suffering.

Conclusion

Compared to a rights-based approach, which simply tells us that equal consideration means equal protection for those interests that are equal (leading to veganism), utilitarianism is unclear and could possibly even lead to immoral results. In my next installment of AR101, I will examine the new welfare approach of the modern "animal rights movement," which is informed by utilitarian thought. As we shall see, utilitarianism's vague, conflicting, and difficult-to-fulfill prescriptions offer little, or worse, confusing guidance for our advocacy.

Next: New Welfarism

Previous: Property

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1. Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 14.

2. ______, Animal Liberation, Ecco paperback, first edition (New York: Harper Collins, 2002), 6.

3. Much is made of the influence wrought by Animal Liberation on the "animal rights movement," though its author distances himself from rights theory, calling his use of the term a concession to popular moral rhetoric (Peter Singer, "The Parable of the Fox and the Unliberated Animals," Ethics 88, no. 2 {January 1978}, p. 122). Despite this, the utilitarian's groundbreaking 33 year-old book continues to be recommended by a number of prominent advocates, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, as the "animal rights 'bible'." PETA's merchandise catalog states, "If you read only one animal rights book, it has to be this one."

I want to be clear on a few things. Animal Liberation does raise some important philosophical questions regarding our treatment of animals. It is not a trivial work, and it obviously influenced a new movement on behalf of animals that, in some form, is still around today. However, its own author has disavowed rights, and Animal Liberation does not promote any sort of rights theory whatsoever. It is not an animal rights book. As such, it does not provide any clear guidance for rights advocacy.

If you want to read an animal rights book, and you can read only one for some reason, then allow me to recommend Gary L. Francione's Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? Within that book, you'll find a concise and easy-to-understand discussion of animal rights theory, along with a coherent prescription for a rights-based approach to abolishing animal exploitation.

4. Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, 1st ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 227-28.

5. Gary L. Francione, "Equal Consideration," in Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 168.

6. ______, Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 49.

7. ______, "Animal Rights Theory and Utilitarianism: Relative Normative Guidance."

8. Singer, Animal Liberation, 229-30

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I hope you're finding this series useful. I enjoy the reading comments I've been receiving so far, so please continue to share your thoughts by commenting below.

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Labels: abolition, animal rights, AR101, theory, utilitarianism

Property status

Humans have long dominated animals, including wild (or "free-living") animals, treating them as if they were our property since well before our laws formally defined them as such. Over time, our sense of entitlement to use animals as things for our benefit became firmly embedded in our culture. Indeed, it was animals' de facto property status that led to them being legally classified as property to begin with.

This deeply entrenched property status is the key obstacle to securing legal rights for nonhuman animals because, as long as humans perceive nonhumans to be property, we will be unable to abolish their legal property status. As mentioned in my previous post, property cannot possess legal rights, only persons can.

Persons are the humans, corporations, and other institutions endowed with rights by law, including the right to own and use property as a means to some recognized end. For instance, a person's bicycle is a means for her to travel from one place to another. That bicycle belongs to her, and she may use or not use it as she sees fit. Because the bicycle is an inanimate object, it is not sentient, and therefore it has no interests for her to take into consideration.

Unlike bicycles and all other inanimate objects, sentient animals do have interests that merit consideration, and this presents us with our problem: Because they are legally classified as property that humans may use as a means to any recognized end, just like inanimate objects such as bicycles, they are prevented from possessing any legal rights that would protect their interests.

Legal welfarism

In lieu of legal rights, numerous welfare laws and anticruelty statutes have been enacted over the past 200 years or so, with the intent of protecting at least one very important animal interest that humans have recognized as significant enough to be given our consideration: that of not being made to suffer. To avoid causing animals "unnecessary" suffering in the course of our using them as means to our ends, welfare laws seek to ensure that persons treat animals "humanely." "Necessity" is evaluated by balancing human interests against the interests of animals in a given scenario.

Gary L. Francione identifies the futility of this balancing act in Animals, Property, and the Law:

...although the law prohibits the infliction of "unnecessary" pain and suffering on animals and requires that they be treated "humanely," these terms are interpreted in light of the legal status of animals as property, the importance of property in our culture, and the general tendency of legal doctrine to protect and to maximize the value of property. (p. 4)

In other words, as long as animals are regarded as the property of humans, their interests will never count for as much as legally protected human interests, and so the scale will be rigged in favor of humans before the balancing has even begun. Despite the existence of myriad animal welfare laws and cruelty statutes intended to protect animals from suffering, then, animals' interests remain more or less unprotected. Without legal rights, even an animal's most significant interests cannot be protected from being traded away in favor of any trivial human interest so long as that human interest is in some recognized end (see Legal welfarism illustrated, below, for an example).

Francione calls this entire framework "legal welfarism." Unlike rights theory, which regards every animal as an end, legal welfarism regards nonhuman animals solely as a means to some end ("food animals," "lab animals," "game animals," "fur animals," "companion animals," "animal actors," etc.). Presuming from the outset that animals are property for us to use, legal welfarism asks only that we determine whether or not an animal is being treated "humanely" in the course of being exploited--and provides them with only that level of protection that facilitates humans using them as a means to their recognized ends, e.g., advancing scientific knowledge, producing food, and so on. As Francione suggests, "The only activities that remain to be prohibited by such statutes are those where no socially recognized benefit can be traced to the animal killing or suffering." (p. 129)

Legal welfarism illustrated

To illustrate legal welfarism in effect, let's examine a couple of hypothetical scenarios involving the use of a cow. Bear in mind throughout that the cow has an interest in not being used as property precisely to avoid being the victim in either of these hypothical scenarios in the first place.

Now, to determine whether or not an activity would be prohibited by an anticruelty statute, we must break the question of "necessary" suffering into two parts (See Figure 1, below). Part 1 asks whether the end is recognized, i.e., whether or not using the cow provides some recognized human benefit. If the end is, say, "satisfying a teenager's sadistic interests," the answer for Scenario 1 is "No." The law does not recognize the end of satisfying one's sadistic intersts as providing some human benefit--quite the contrary. Regardless of the teenager's exact plans for the cow, any suffering he causes the cow in the end of satisfying his sadistic interests will be considered "unnecessary," and is thus prohibited.

Case closed. On to Scenario 2.

If the end in question is "using a cow for the purpose of food, clothing (or some other recognized end)," then the answer to Part 1 under the legal welfarism paradigm would be "Yes." While the cow has the exact same interest in not suffering as in Scenario 1, the law recognizes that producing food and clothing provides a human benefit, and so it is determined that this activity or end is "necessary." The cow's interest is effectively trumped, and so we move on to Part 2.

Part 2 asks whether the means the cow's owner employs to the end of using a cow to produce food or clothing is consistent with that end. If the cow's owner lets her starve due to neglect, then the owner will have caused "unnecessary" suffering. Neglect is therefore prohibited. Starving one's cow is not consistent with the end of using that cow to produce food or clothing. It's a pointless "waste."

On the other hand, if a cow experiences suffering in the course of being used as a means to the end of producing food and clothing for human benefit, that suffering is considered "necessary" so long as the suffering is the result of a standard industry practice. Of course, the law also recognizes as "necessary" the death of the cow as a means to achieving the recognized end of feeding and clothing humans, despite the cow's demonstrable interest in staying alive.

The law will rule as "unnecessary" only that suffering which does not conflict with the animal owner's ability to exploit an animal efficiently. Generally, however, the law will defer to property owners when determining whether or not a certain activity is necessary.

It's generally assumed under the legal welfarism paradigm that a property owner wouldn't intentionally devalue his property by causing that property "unnecessary" suffering. Therefore, whatever suffering the owner does incur must be "necessary" to increase the value of the property or maximize the benefits of that use for humans.

What about "wild" animals?

Though many nonhuman animals are born free in nature, as non-persons they still do not have a legal right not to be property. Though they may not technically be property, they are still regarded as if they are property (e.g., as mere things, or potential property), and our laws allow humans to "convert" certain wild animals into their personal property through the act of hunting and capturing or killing those animals.

All animals' interests may be traded away in favor of human interests as long as they are not protected by legal rights. And, even though some animals aren't technically personal property, their property status always tips the scale in favor of human interests, as if they were in fact property.

Conclusion

As long as animals are regarded as property, the balancing of animal and human interests is futile. The only way to balance the scales--to honestly give the like interests of humans and nonhumans equal consideration--is to give animals legal rights that protect their interests, too. Then we'll be on a level playing field. But if we ever want to see this happen, we must first abolish their property status--starting with the very perception that it is acceptable to use animals as if they were property.

Next post: Utilitarianism

Previous post: Animal Rights


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Labels: abolition, animal rights, AR101, property, property status, theory

Introduction

As with the term "rights," there is a great deal of confusion about the term "animal rights." Much of this confusion has been caused not just by the media and the industries that exploit nonhuman animals, but also by activists and animal advocacy groups using the term to loosely describe any actions purported to improve the conditions of animals used by humans. In other words, rather than promoting the moral or legal rights of animals, some so-called "animal rights activists" focus on regulating animal welfare--how animals are treated.

Further confusing the issue, some animal rights activists seek legal rights for only a select category of sentient nonhuman animals (such as great apes), based on characteristics such as higher-order cognitive abilities. The rights theory I put forth here--laid out in far greater detail in Gary L. Francione's highly recommended Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog?--holds that any sentient being has at least one basic moral right simply by virtue of that being's sentience: The right not be treated merely as a means to another's end.

Sentience

To be sentient is to be conscious or self-aware, capable of perception or feeling. Sentient humans and nonhumans feel sensations of pain, pleasure and so on. When a being is sentient, s/he will naturally have interests. For instance, the capacity for sentient beings to feel pain provides them with a clear interest in not feeling pain.

In recognition of this particular interest, we generally consider it unacceptable to inflict pain on another sentient being unless there is an extraordinarily good reason. Take the example of a boy who harms a nonhuman simply to satisfy his morbid curiosity. He straps an ordinary dog down on a table and cuts her open to have a look inside. As he does this, the dog yelps, howls, and struggles, but the boy keeps cutting, ignoring her cries.

I think it's safe to assume we all find the boy's behavior objectionable. Various reasons may be offered for this, from our concern that the boy has psychological problems--and that these problems could lead to him harm other humans some day--to our concern that the dog might belong to another human who has an emotional attachment to her. But these are not the fundamental reasons for our objection. We are upset by the example because we recognize that the boy is causing the dog unnecessary pain.

If the dog was not sentient, then she wouldn't have an interest in not being caused pain (because non-sentient beings are unable to sense pain), and so there would be no harm done. But, of course, we know that the dog is sentient, and we know that the boy's actions cause her much pain.

Now, if we were to agree that the pain was for some justifiable reason necessary, we might be distressed by what is being done to the dog, but we would not object to it as a moral matter. For instance, if the boy was attacked by the dog and killed her to protect himself from a similar fate, we might be saddened by her death, but we would say that it was justified in this particular situation. However, it cannot be reasonably held that the boy needs to harm the dog merely to satisfy his curiosity.

This example illustrates how, as long as a being is sentient, we recognize--as a moral matter--that the being has an interest in not being harmed, which cannot be ignored or overridden unless it is truly necessary to do so. This belief is based on no other characteristic than the being's ability to feel that pain. No other characteristics beyond sentience are necessary to merit moral consideration.

Equal Consideration

The principle of equal consideration holds that, as a basic moral matter, we ought to treat like cases alike. Viewed in terms of interests, the principle requires that the like interests of various beings must be given equal consideration. As described above, nonhumans and humans are alike in at least one important, morally relevant respect: they are sentient and, as such, they have interests that must be considered. Extending the principle of equal consideration to all sentient beings requires that we give nonhumans' interests equal weight to humans' interests. Where our interests are the same, we must weigh them equally.

So how does this work?

Let's examine a simple case involving humans. Morally, we disapprove of killing other humans without justification (e.g., self defense). This is because we recognize that human beings have an interest in not being killed. We take this interest very seriously, protecting it with a legal right. A person's interest in not being killed does not derive from skin color, sex, or cognitive abilities. When we give equal weight to the interests of white and black people, people of any sex or intelligence level, we recognize that they all have an equal interest in continued existence, and we accept that we might protect this interest equally.

Species is not the basis for an interest in continued existence, either. Humans do not have an interest in continued existence because they are human, but because they are sentient. As previously discussed, all sentient beings have interests, including a fundamental interest in staying alive.¹ According to the principle of equal consideration, to whatever extent we respect a human's interest in not being killed, then we must also respect a nonhuman's interest in not being killed. If we accept that a human's interest in continued existence cannot be outweighed by another human's interest in pleasure, then we must accept that a nonhuman's interest in continued existence cannot by outweighed by a human's interest in pleasure.

There is simply no non-arbitrary difference between humans and other animals that justifies treating their like interests differently.² Remember, we accord equal consideration where our interests are alike. Because there is no characteristic possessed by sentient nonhumans that justifies giving their like interests less consideration than our own, they ought to be protected equally. This brings us to animal rights.

Animal Rights

Recall from my previous AR101 post that rights protect one's interests against those who would disregard those interests. All sentient beings have interests, both human and nonhuman, and so they all belong in the moral community of rightholders. When we say that nonhuman animals have moral rights, we are basically acknowledging that some of their interests are like ours and that these interests must be given equal consideration to our own. So, if we have a moral right not be killed (even if it might benefit someone to kill us), then our understanding of the principle of equal consideration leads us to the conclusion that nonhuman animals have that moral right as well, as they have the exact same underlying interest.

As discussed previously, we expect that, at some point, legally defined rights will reflect the moral rights that we already accept. Moral and legal rights for animals, then, derive from the notion of equal consideration for their basic interests. Saying that animals have rights is the same as saying that animals are rightholders. It doesn't necessarily say which rights animals have morally, and which they should be granted legally. Moral rights would, of course, become better understood as we begin to give the interests of nonhuman animals equal consideration. The expectation is that legal rights would follow along the same lines.

While we may not agree on all the specific moral rights possessed by sentient nonhuman animals, but there must be at least one fundamental moral right they hold if any other rights are to make sense: The right not be treated as a thing, as merely the means to another's end. This must also be granted as a legal right if any other legal animal rights are going to mean anything. Nonhuman beings simply have no legal rights as long as they are regarded as property, i.e., a means to the ends of a person. Remember, property cannot have rights, only persons can.

In my next post, part four of AR101, I will discuss in more detail how property status relates to animal rights, along with its implications.

Next post: Property Status

Previous post: Rights


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1. Remember, if one is not sentient, one simply has no interests to speak of.
2. There are certainly some interests sentient beings do not have in common. For instance, nonhumans do not have a demonstrable interest in voting, bearing arms, and so on, and therefore we are not obligated to consider those interests. After all, you cannot give consideration to an interest if it does not exist.

Labels: abolition, animal rights, AR101, theory

Though this widely-reported news is nearly two weeks old now, I haven't yet written about the Spanish parliamentary resolution to grant great apes the right to life and freedom. This is due in part to my posting schedule, but mainly I wanted to see how this all shook out. Then last week I heard about a piece by William Saletan at Slate that I wanted to read, which I finally remembered to do this morning when it reappeared at Philly.com (via my news alerts) as an opinion piece.

Time to get to this one, I suppose.

The good news: It seems very likely that Spain will be the first national legislature to grant any animals the legal right to life and freedom.

The Great Ape Project, co-founded by philosopher Peter Singer, has been pursuing this goal for about 14 years now. Singer rejects the validity of moral rights (he's an act--and presumably occasionally a rule--utilitarian) but he believes that certain animals should have legal rights in order to protect them from harm. At the GAP website, a news release states that, "Under most government structures, legal rights are the only way to insure that non-human great apes are free from torture, unnecessary death and capture."

Of course, Spain is not about to turn loose the 315 great apes kept in its zoos, though evidently the law's specifications would require dramatically improving conditions at 70 percent of them. Keeping apes for use in entertainment will be forbidden, backed by Spain's penal code. As of now, there don't appear to be any great apes being used for vivisection in Spain, but there are no laws to prevent that from happening, so the government will update the legal code to outlaw "harmful" experiments on apes in Spain. I haven't been able to turn up the text of this resolution with a quick skim of Google results, but I think that last bit about "harmful" experiments is a some cause for concern. It seems to leave open the option to use great apes for non-invasive/non-"harmful" experiments (behavioral research?). So, with one caveat already noted, this is the good angle on the news.

The bad news: This leaves the vast majority of nonhuman animals completely in the lurch, still waiting at square one. Do we protect humans from torture, death, and restriction of liberty based on cognitive capacity? No, we legally protect all sentient humans with rights. Of course, this protection is generally exclusive to our own species, an arbitrary distinction when it comes to determining which beings merit legal protection for their moral rights. We don't legally give some humans preferential protection from torture, death, and the restriction of liberty on the basis of race or sex, but for some reason we think it makes sense to discriminate against nonhumans simply because they are not human, even though they have the same interests we do in not being tortured, confined, or killed. GAP and others discriminate based on cognitive characteristics.

So, supposedly species membership would no longer be the key criterion for inclusion in the moral community, but GAP's stance and Spain's resolution still advance a hierarchy based on criteria unique to certain species, and which go well beyond the criteria necessary for moral consideration, i.e., sentience. As Saletan notably remarks, "the arguments GAP has deployed in Spain don't advance the idea of equality among animals. They destroy it." GAP and others claim that this is the point of a spear that has broken the species barrier, making it easier for other species to eventually be included within the sphere of legal rights protection. But how can far can this go if we base such rights on how similar animals' cognitive capacities are to humans?

Modern conceptions of rights are generally egalitarian. We have extended fundamental legal rights to all humans, regardless of race, sex, or cognitive capacity. Notions of egalitarianism play directly into animal rights theory, which looks at the reasons for excluding nonhumans from legal rights protection and finds that there are some arbitrary distinctions that lead to grave inconsistencies.

When Tom Regan pioneered actual animal rights theory in The Case for Animal Rights, he focused on equality based on the inherent value of animals who are "subjects-of-a-life," or that they have value in themselves unrelated to how they might be valued by others. If all animals have inherent value (humans and nonhumans alike), then they all have it equally, according to Regan, and they have the moral right not to be treated merely as a means to the end of others.

However, he did stop short of a totally egalitarian approach, requiring animals to meet certain cognitive criteria in order to reasonably be considered a rightholder. His subject-of-a-life requirement is not all that dissimilar from Singer's notion that some animals value their lives more than others. Regan also believes that death is a greater harm for humans than for nonhumans. Both philosophers appear to accept that the more like humans nonhumans are, at least in terms of cognition, the more likely that the nonhumans in question are to qualify for protection for his or her interests. GAP perpetuates discrimination, according to Saletan:

GAP's mission statement says great apes are entitled to rights based on their "morally significant characteristics." It says they enjoy a rich emotional and cultural existence in which they experience emotions such as fear, anxiety and happiness. They share the intellectual capacity to create and use tools, learn and teach other languages. They remember their past and plan for their future. It is in recognition of these and other morally significant qualities that the Great Ape Project was founded.

Morally significant qualities. Morally significant characteristics. These are appeals to discrimination, not universal equality. Most animals don't have a rich cultural life. They can't make tools. They don't teach languages.

Animal activists often take approaches like GAP to be tactical means to the end of extending rights to all animals some day (as points of spears and such), but this kind of thinking misses the mark. We don't need to extend the hierarchy, we need to erase that hierarchy entirely. I'll let Saletan's conclusion, eloquent as it is, serve as my own:

George Orwell wrote the cruel finale to this tale 63 years ago in Animal Farm: "All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others." That wasn't how the egalitarian uprising in the book was supposed to turn out. It wasn't how the animal rights movement was supposed to turn out, either.

FYI, I will publish my next AR101 post this week. In it, I discuss the concept of animal rights in more detail.

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Labels: animal law, animal rights, GAP, primates

Gary L. Francione just posted a self-produced vegan education pamphlet at his blog, The Abolitionist Approach. It's a double-sided document, so it will be easy to reproduce and distribute. A lot of people have been clamoring for a resource like this, and now you finally have it, from the very person behind the abolitionist approach. If that's not good enough for you, I don't know what is! Get out there and spread the message far and wide.


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Labels: abolition, activism, animal rights, literature, veganism

Animals as Persons: Essays on on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation was released May 23rd, but it has taken me a while to finish reading Gary L. Francione's latest book because I'm perpetually swamped lately. However, working it into my ridiculous schedule was relatively easy, in part because the book is comprised of individual, self-contained essays that allowed me to conveniently break my reading up into manageable sessions as time permitted. You might find this helpful as well. While the essays range in length, none of them are terribly long (particularly after the first two), and together they all provide an excellent and highly readable introduction to Professor Francione's abolitionist theory of animal rights. If you are one of those people who have put off reading his earlier books due to time constraints or for any other reason, this might be an ideal place to start.

I recommend not skipping over the introduction, particularly if you've never read Francione before. In it, he gets right to the pivotal assertion that the animal advocacy movement is, in effect, two very different movements: one that seeks to abolish animal exploitation by eradicating the property status of animals, and the other a movement that seeks the regulation of animal-using industries while failing to effectively challenge the property status of animals.

He expands on the core concepts of abolitionism in the first chapter, "Animals as Persons." That essay is itself a relatively brief but thorough presentation of Francione's theory as developed more fully in Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? (ITAR) While it is not a substitute for reading that book, "Animals as Persons" is a very clear essay that will quickly have you up to speed on the basic concepts.

The next chapter is an essay called "Reflections on Animals, Property, and the Law and Rain Without Thunder." In it, Francione responds to various critics who have argued that the property status of animals does not necessarily prevent advocates from improving animal welfare, and that animal welfare regulation is an effective way of moving incrementally toward recognition that animals have more than the value that we assign to them.

You don't necessarily need to have read the two books to appreciate "Reflections," though I'm sure I got more out of it because I had. I found the essay particularly interesting because Francione deconstructs real-world legislation such as Florida's gestation crate ban and California's foie gras ban. While he frequently deconstructs current events on his blog, as he did with the announcement that KFC Canada would adopt a controlled-atmosphere killing policy, these case studies offer new readers relevant and useful applications of his abolitionist theory.

In his third essay, "Taking Sentience Seriously," Francione focuses on flaws in the "similar-minds" theory, a critical analysis all the more relevant in light of news that Spain's parliament plans to extend legal rights to life and freedom for great apes. Based as it is on cognitive abilities rather than sentience, this pending legislation is a case in point for Francione, so you'll definitely want to read chapter 3 if you don't know why this seemingly good news is a bad precedent for animal rights.

Returning to his critics, chapter four's essay, "Equal Consideration," focuses specifically on Cass Sunstein's review of ITAR, in which he claims that Francione fails to justify why animal advocates should not focus on regulating human treatment of animals rather than abolishing animal use. This gives Francione an excellent opportunity to point out some fatal flaws in Sunstein's thinking, along with that of Jeremy Bentham and Peter Singer, who seem to believe that some sentient beings have no interest in continuing to live, despite the logical implication that their very sentience gives these animals an interest in continued existence.

Francione's fifth essay examines the justifications for vivisection, which he also covers in IATR (along with descriptions of numerous specific experiments). Here, too, he observes that even if there is some plausible empirical claim for necessity, this form of animal use cannot be morally justified. "The Use of Nonhuman Animals" is one of the clearest, most concise critiques of vivisection I have read, from both the empirical and moral points of view. While the empirical section should be sufficient in and of itself to clear up any confusion as to whether vivisection is as valuable as is usually claimed, Francione footnotes our way to additional resources, and of course he follows this up with a moral critique that is impossible to refute without engaging in hypocrisy.

His next essay, "Ecofeminism and Animal Rights," is actually a 1996 review of Beyond Animal Rights: A Feminist Caring Ethic for the Treatment of Animals, in which he examines arguments made against animal rights and for an "ethic of care." Like Cass Sunstein's review of IATR, essays in Beyond Animal Rights suggest that we do not need to end the institutionalized exploitation of nonhuman animals in order to include them within the moral community, and even go as far as to actually legitimize that exploitation, ironically perpetuating speciesist hierarchy at the same time that they condemn the rights view as hierarchical. Francione swiftly and effectively counters these views.

Finally, Francione turns his attention to perhaps the world's best-known animal rights author and philosopher, Tom Regan, who in his seminal The Case for Animal Rights makes a sustained, comprehensive, and complex philosophical argument for animal rights. In the course of his argument, which can be seen as a case for which criteria are valid for inclusion in the moral community, he presents the "lifeboat case" as an example of a conflict between rightholders. The lifeboat case is a hypothetical scenario Regan resolves in part by claiming that death is a greater harm to humans than it is to nonhumans such as dogs. Francione critiques this view with "Comparable Harm and Equal Inherent Value," a 1995 essay updated with a 2008 postscript to respond to the new preface Regan wrote in 2004 for the second edition of The Case for Animal Rights, in which he responded to critics of his lifeboat example.

One of the few drawbacks of gathering together all these different essays is that, even though the case studies and responses to specific criticisms may prompt you to understand Francione's abolitionist theory more clearly, you frequently end up reading the same thing you've read elsewhere in his work, including other essays in this book, and sometimes nearly even verbatim. However, it is that very deja vu experience that reminds you how so many supposedly different debates always come back to the fundamentals, which we would do well to learn... and that may just be the reason Francione keeps repeating them.

In recapping his abolitionist animal rights theory and defending it with such precision, clarity, and authority, Gary Francione successfully reasserts the view that nonhuman animals will not be meaningfully protected from unnecessary harm so long as they are considered human property, and that welfare reforms or variations on the theme are incapable of leading to their emancipation. Animals as Persons is a must-read for anyone claiming to support or to even simply be interested in animal rights. Right now you can purchase it and all Columbia University Press animal studies titles at a steep 50% off until August 1st.

While you await your copy, you can read the publisher's interview with Francione and listen to his most recent interview (part 1) on Vegan Freak Radio (part 2).


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Labels: abolition, animal rights, book, reviews, theory

Rights

The term "rights" is widely misunderstood. It will be helpful here to distinguish between moral and legal rights. These classes of rights are similar in at least one respect: in both cases, a right protects a person’s interest by providing that person with a claim against any party who interferes with the satisfaction of the person's protected interest.

An example

Let's look at an example in which a person is protected by both kinds of rights.

Person A is an average human being whose interest in continuing to live we can hopefully agree is important enough that it should not be arbitrarily ignored by any other person. When we say that Person A has "a right to live," we are more or less stating that Person A's interest in continued existence is protected by a "claim" against any person and/or actions that would prevent Person A from continuing to live. Another way of looking at this is that the right protecting Person A's interest in continued existence imposes a duty on other people not to ignore this interest.

Of course, there are limitations on this protection. If Person A attempts to kill another person, then most people would not object to the other party defending herself with lethal force, or to Person A being shot and killed by an officer of the law. Person A's interest in continuing to live has not evaporated, but his actions have provided appropriate justification for ignoring that interest.

With this example in mind, let's take a look at the difference between legal and moral rights.

Legal rights

The law identifies that certain interests ought to be protected, even if infringing upon those interests would serve the interests of another person, or the interests of the greater good. When a person's legal right is violated by another party, then the right provides the person with a justified legal claim against the violating party.

Valid legal claims can lead to various legal sanctions against the violating party, including financial penalties and/or imprisonment. Legal rights are generally codified and enforced by a political institution, such as a government, and they are held by certain entities functioning as legal "persons," such as humans and corporations.

Moral rights

Moral rights derive from objective morality, not from governmental authority. They can be understood to have approximately the same logical structure as legal rights, but they are not backed up with the same sort of protection offered by legal rights. However, the claim a person has against another party who infringes upon a moral right is no less valid. Consequences for violating moral rights can range from a personal demand for an apology to being ostracized by one's community.

The relationship between moral and legal rights

Moral rights and legal rights are distinctly different, but they are closely related. We can think of a moral right as an underlying, pre-legal form of a right. Whatever moral rights a being holds will ideally (if not now, at least some day) be reflected in the legal system. For instance, our moral right to liberty is reflected in our legal right to that liberty. As public opinions about right and wrong shift, laws generally evolve along with them. Humans enslaved in the United States before 1865 had the same basic moral rights as every other human, but these moral rights were not reflected in the law until the 13th Amendment was passed.

It is possible for legal rights to clash with moral rights. For example, some animal rights advocates believe that all sentient beings have at least one basic moral right: the right not to be treated exclusively as a resource by others. This moral right conflicts directly with the morally indefensible legal right humans have to own nonhumans.

Other considerations

A right typically does not need to be understood by someone who possesses that right in order to receive its protection. For example, the interests of children and mentally incompetent persons are protected by rights. Claims to these rights can usually be made on their behalf.

Because nonhuman animals are legally classified as property instead of persons, they cannot possess legal rights.

Conclusion

In my next post, I will describe animal rights. It will be helpful to keep in mind the above discussion as we consider what interests nonhuman animals have.

Next post: Animal Rights

Previous post: The Need


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Labels: abolition, animal rights, AR101, theory

This is the first in a series of posts I am writing to introduce readers to the most basic fundamentals of the abolitionist approach to animal rights as laid out by Gary L. Francione. I have also read works by Joan Dunayer and Lee Hall but, for my purposes here, Francione's body of work currently offers the most thorough and original explication of abolitionist animal rights and our duties as animal rights advocates.

Though this blog is obviously not the best forum for me to be completely comprehensive, that is not my goal. If you're looking for that, you should be reading the following books anyway: Rain Without Thunder, Introduction to Animal Rights, and Animals as Persons. Instead I will attempt to distill in my own words the basics of abolitionist animal rights advocacy that I have learned over the past 18 months or so. I will work through the basics, beginning with an understanding of the term rights, and working through what it means to be an animal rights advocate.

Post One:  The Need

The animal rights "movement" has been diluted by welfare-oriented advocacy to such an extent that the term "animal rights" has come to be widely understood merely as a catch-all label that refers to any activity carried out on behalf of animals, whether the activity is related to the moral or legal rights of animals at all. Most often it is not. 

Labels: abolition, animal rights, AR101, theory

Mary Martin deconstructs an editorial in today's New York Times, which states in no uncertain terms that "animal husbandry has been turned into animal abuse." I'd like to chime in on a quote Mary pulled from a Pew Commission report referenced in the editorial:

"The present system of producing food animals (sic) in the United States is not sustainable and presents an unacceptable level of risk to public health and damage to the environment, as well as unnecessary harm to the animals we raise for food."

(emphasis mine)

I was surprised Mary didn't include a deconstruction of the hideously speciesist term "food animals" (i.e., nonhuman animals bred, confined and killed for the purposes of consumption), but she was already taking on a lot with that post, primarily the underlying assumptions in the editorial and these reports. It would seem that they all take for granted that consuming other beings is necessary.

As vegans know, there is some faulty thinking behind this assumption, and I wanted to expand on Mary's post briefly by offering an excerpt of my own, from Gary L. Francione's Introduction to Animal Rights, in which he works from the principles that inform our animal welfare laws and builds out from there, doing the proper mental math:

...we are supposed to balance our interests against those of animals in order to determine whether particular animal use or treatment is necessary. But because animals are property, and because we have great respect for property rights, we have decided--before we even start our balancing process--that it is morally acceptable to use animals for food, hunting, entertainment, clothing, experiments, product testing, and so forth. That is, we generally do not question whether particular institutions of animal use are necessary; rather we inquire only whether particular practices that are part of those various institutions are necessary.

(emphasis mine)

This is a very important distinction, but it is frequently overlooked even by animal rights advocates. Focusing on how animals are treated takes as its base assumption that using animals is necessary and acceptable in the first place. Those of us who purport to advocate animal rights ought to be focusing everything we have on exposing the inaccuracy of this assumption, not reinforcing it with activism that seeks to regulate the ways in which humans treat nonhumans.


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Labels: animal ethics, animal rights

Hypocrisy on the High Seas

In a new article published by the German newspaper, Die Welt, Australian philosopher and bioethicist Peter Singer attempts to shift the international debate over whale hunting and slaughter from protecting an endangered species to protecting whales as "social mammals with big brains, capable of enjoying life and of feeling pain – and not only physical pain, but very likely also distress at the loss of one of their group." In doing so, he turns the tables on Westerners who condemn whale hunting while continuing to support other forms of hunting, and to consume the bodies and secretions of other morally relevant 'factory farmed' beings. However, it is odd that he narrows the hypocrisy to consuming factory farmed beings. After all, animals bred, confined and killed in non-intensive conditions have as much an interest in avoiding pain, suffering and death as factory farmed animals, much less free-swimming whales.

Singer's basic assertion in this piece is that it is impossible to humanely kill whales, and thus whaling is unethical. It's hard to disagree with this statement, though it begs the question of whether it is possible to humanely kill other beings. Later in the article, he refers to sentience as a basis for extending moral consideration to other beings ("the wrongness of causing needless suffering to sentient beings is not culturally specific") but, unfortunately for some animals, Singer does not seem to view sentience as a sufficient characteristic for protection from being unnecessarily treated as a means to human ends. When it comes to the wrongness of unnecessarily killing sentient beings for our purposes, presumably without causing them suffering, Singer looks to their cognitive capacity, a characteristic that is irrelevant to whether or not they deserve moral consideration.^[1]

Are some animals more equal than others?

While Singer maintains that an animal's sentience is sufficient for us to avoid unnecessarily causing him or her any pain or suffering, it is conceivable under his theory that unnecessarily killing certain animals could be justified. One gets the impression from his work that it does not harm some animals to be killed, assuming it is done painlessly. In his book, Practical Ethics, he states that there is

no single answer to the question: 'Is it normally wrong to take the life of an animal?' The term 'animal'--even in the restricted sense of 'non-human animal'--covers too diverse a range of lives for one principle to apply to all of them.^[2]

Here he determines quite arbitrarily that sentience alone is insufficient for determining whether or not it is acceptable to kill animals in the normal course of events. For Singer, there must be some criteria other than sentience we must take into account when giving equal consideration to their continued existence:

Some non-human animals appear to be rational and self-conscious, conceiving of themselves as distinct beings with a past and a future. When this is so, or to the best of our knowledge may be so, the case against killing is strong, as strong as the case against killing permanently intellectually disabled human beings at a similar mental level.^[3]

Singer basically layers cognitive capacities over sentience in order to determine whether or not it is morally acceptable for us to (painlessly) kill other beings. For Singer, the wrongness of (painlessly) killing animals derives from the loss of pleasure that it may involve, not ignoring an individual being's interest in continuing to exist. So, even if a whale could somehow be killed painlessly, it would still be wrong to kill her because she presumably has a sense of self, a sense of the future, and because any calves she had might suffer psychologically (and even physically) from the loss.

This theory is all well and good for cetaceans, primates of all species and probably most mammals, but what of beings with diminished, indiscernible, or simply no higher cognitive abilities? Do they not have an interest in continuing to survive? We can't say that they do, for that would be biologically and evolutionarily counterintuitive, regardless of their ability to conceive of themselves, the future, or any other cognitive characteristics. All sentient beings have an interest in survival, so any additional criteria are irrelevant.

Sentience: The basis for animal rights

Apparently Singer believes that non-rational, non-self-conscious sentient beings do not have an interest in continuing to exist, which justifies taking their lives for our benefit so long as it is done painlessly and so long as we replace such beings with new ones to continue experiencing pleasure in their stead, as if individual beings are somehow replaceable. He asserts that a "wrong done to an existing being can be made up for by a benefit conferred on an as yet non-existent being."^[4]

First of all, if killing a being is wrong, as Singer states it is, shouldn't we avoid committing that wrong in the first place? Second, this statement suggests that the individual matters less than that individual's capacity to sense. As long as the sensations continue, the individual sensing them appears to be totally interchangeable.

Fascinating.

How might we replace individual beings with like beings? Animals are not inanimate, insensate household furnishings you can replace at will with a quick trip to IKEA. In fact, it is this attitude toward animals that leads to problems like overpopulated shelters and rampant animal cruelty. Unlike furniture, sentient beings have a demonstrable interest in continued existence, whether or not they are rational and self-conscious, and so it harms them to end their lives, regardless of whether or not they are killed painlessly, much less "replaced" by someone else.

Even if we were able to find a suitable replacement, we would not permit the slaughter and consumption of a human being who lacks self-awareness and is irrational. This is not simply out of concern for such a person's familial attachments, nor is it due to species bias, though that may well be the rationale some individuals use. Ultimately the reason that we do not as a general matter permit the slaughter and consumption of such mentally incapacitated human beings is because we recognize that depriving them of further existence would harm them irrevocably.

By the same token, there is no justification for slaughtering and consuming nonhuman animals. As with human beings, their sentience is a sufficient criterion for us to also protect their interest in continued existence with a legal prohibition, or the basic right to not be treated as a means to our own ends.

Rights? What rights?

Of course, Singer rejects the existence of rights, beyond the term's rhetorical usefulness^[5], so how are we to protect whales under his theory, much less any other beings? He does not prescribe any remedy, other than perhaps an intimation that a morally wrong activity such as whaling ought to be rejected by those in the society that perpetrates the activity, such as Japan. In turn, anyone who objects to whaling would be hypocritical not to reject the killing of any other rational, self-aware beings--such as pigs, cows and, yes, chickens--even if it were done painlessly. But what of those that continue to accept whaling or steak-eating as morally acceptable? Without prohibitions that ban the use of nonhuman animals as a means to our ends, such practices will continue, however unpopular various types use may become.

Many countries provide basic rights for humans to avoid this very problem. Most of us agree that it is wrong to treat humans as a means to our own ends. But because some people do not agree with us, we have passed laws as a means of protecting humans from such people. Any justification for failing to extend similar basic rights to any sentient nonhumans is arbitrary, as they too have a demonstrable interest in not being used as a means to human ends.

Which animals?

If basic rights are legislated on behalf of any beings, they must be legislated on the basis of their sentience, not their cognitive capacity. Otherwise the law(s) would unjustly exclude morally relevant sentient beings. By focusing on whales--and on their cognitive capacity in particular--we risk seeing such laws passed, creating a new, arbitrarily-derived hierarchy under which some sentient beings could legally be harmed.

Certainly we should not ignore the plight of hunted whales. But we must encourage people to see whales as representative of every sentient being, and to encourage an attitude toward all beings that is consistent with their attitude toward whales. We should be asking that every sentient being is accorded the right not to be treated as a means to human ends, not just those with big brains. Otherwise, we too are hypocrites.

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[1] The point of this entry is not for me to sit behind a computer and take potshots at Peter Singer, but to critically assess his argument, as everyone should. Because this site aims to promote animal-friendly living, in particular living a life that is consistent with respecting the interests animals have in not being used as a means to human ends, it is my goal here to further clarify the positions animal advocates ought to be taking publicly if they intend to abolish animal exploitation.

I appreciate that Singer and others are attempting to turn the international debate over whaling into one that focuses on the moral problem of unnecessarily harming animals for our benefit, rather than merely the conservation of "natural resources". However, I am concerned about the repercussions of his exclusive approach. If we base our attitude toward animals on their intelligence, and not on their sentience, we risk leaving morally relevant beings out of the discussion, and that would merely perpetuate the speciesism we are attempting to end.
[2] Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge University Press; 2 edition, 1999) 131
[3] Ibid. 131-132
[4] Ibid. 133
[5] Herbivore Magazine, July 2007, Interview: Peter Singer

Labels: animal ethics, animal rights, sentience, whaling

Foie gras prohibition has been repealed in Chicago, and it comes as no surprise. Mayor Richard Daley was hell-bent on defeating the ban from the get-go.

However, I originally saw the near-unanimous support for this ban among Chicago's aldermen as an encouraging sign. I supported the campaign at the time, thinking it was an incremental step toward abolition (though I confess to having no idea what abolition really meant back then). Here we had not a regulation of animal treatment, but an outright prohibition on selling a certain kind of product derived from animals. Good news, or so it seemed. Right away, Chicago restaurateurs made a mockery out of the ban by giving foie gras away for free with the purchase of another product, or turning into "duckeasies".

But loopholes weren't the only problem. The fundamental flaw with this ban, as I have come to understand it, is that it was based on the cruelty of foie gras production in particular (primarily the forced feeding), as opposed to the immorality of unnecessarily using any animals as an instrumental means to our ends. In other words, this was a ban on a certain type of product, not any sort of incremental legal admission that animals deserve the right not to be used as property.

It's actually kind of amusing to review one of my posts from September 2006, as it reads almost identically to some of the letters and comments I've received about my "Abolitionists: Fringe or Core?" post, suggesting as it does that this anti-foie gras campaign, even if unsuccessful, would promote "a national awareness of the cruelty inherent in the modern diet, and an alteration in people's food choices." Well, unless the alteration we are talking about is the rise of "happy meat", I was being awfully unrealistic.

I experienced a major shift in thinking here at AAFL a few months after this ban was passed--not all that dissimilar from when my paradigm shifted toward veganism--and I have come to reject as counterproductive measures that reduce animal advocacy to addressing certain "most egregious" cruelties and that do not strike at the root of our collective presumption that it is acceptable to use animals in the first place. Chicago's foie gras ban is a perfect case in point. Single issue campaigns like these (and those against other "low-hanging fruit" like fur, for example) fail to change the popular view of animals because they perpetuate speciesism by implying that certain forms of exploitation are worse than others (they even suggest that foie gras would be more acceptable if forced feeding was not being used), and they typically fail to address the interest animals have in not being used instrumentally as a means to our ends.

In reality, a wide array of animal uses cause unnecessary harm, and of course all animal advocates know this. So why aren't we all focused on abolitionist vegan advocacy? Apart from the political value of focusing supporters on a single campaign goal, it has also been said that such an approach is unrealistic. But we have here evidence that reductionist animal advocacy is unrealistic, seeing as how it expects to deliver animals from suffering without addressing its root causes.

Now, I don't write this to perpetuate "infighting", as some would suggest. I seek to critically examine what we do on behalf of animals, and to explore ways we can act that are most consistent with our beliefs and that are most effective for animals in the long-run. If we do not allow for critical thinking, then we have already lost. I mean, who do we think we're fooling? Even the mainstream media understands the inconsistency of focusing on one form of animal exploitation over another. As Jeffrey Steingarten writes for Men's Vogue:

When we buy the flesh of a mammal, bird, or fish in a restaurant or food shop, we are an agent in the slaughter of another living thing. We are taking life. This is a serious act, not a casual one. But our purpose is not survival or even sustenance; most of us can live comfortably without eating meat. No, our goal is pleasure, pure sensory pleasure. We chew on the succulent muscle of a steer, crunch through the crackling skin of a pig or turkey, suck out the marrow from the shin of a calf. If we are willing to kill for our pleasure, shouldn't we also be willing to force-feed ducks for our pleasure?

Ultimately, if we want to see enough popular support for an effective, permanent ban on animal-derived consumer products, we have to shift popular opinion in favor animal rights, and that means spreading a consistent message about vegan ethics far and wide, not the message that only certain forms of animal use are bad. Only after that shift occurs will we have the broad-based support we need to promote legislation that recognizes the interests of nonhuman animals and abolishes their exploitation on the basis that unnecessarily using them for our pleasure or profit harms those interests.

Labels: abolition, animal rights, animal welfare, foie gras

Background

In its May+June 2008 Reader Letters section, VegNews magazine is taken to task by its activism advisor:

In the recent article about the humanecalifornia.org ballot initiative ("Taking the Initiative," Jan+Feb 2008) to ban some of the worst confinement practices on factory farms, I was disappointed to see equal weight given to statements by a fringe group opposing such bans. Attacking progress may make the critic feel relevant but does not result in meaningful change for animals. Such negative views are not widely shared in the animal protection movement and should not be portrayed as if they are to newer activists who can sometimes easily be pushed to a counterproductive approach.

The author of this letter is activist/attorney Bryan Pease of Animal Protection and Rescue League, an organization that actively promotes husbandry reform campaigns such as the initiative favorably discussed in the article.

Writer Mat Thomas begins the piece by claiming that, if passed, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act would "set a new precedent for animal protection by improving the lives of more farmed animals than any voter initiative in US history." He goes on to repeatedly quote the senior director of HSUS's Factory Farming Campaign in support of the act's benefits. HSUS is, along with Farm Sanctuary, one of the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act's main proponents. Thomas sets aside just one paragraph in the middle of the article to 'balance' the piece with a perspective from Friends of Animals' legal director, Lee Hall.

After briefly paraphrasing Hall's question as to whether "husbandry campaigns truly cultivate respect for animals or merely reinforce their status as commodities," Thomas wraps up the paragraph with a single quote. Hall asks where society can find a coherent message, if not from vegetarian activists, "Steadfast support for the movement to opt out of animal agribusiness would cultivate and strengthen genuine respect for animals and the ecology."

Marginalization

For the crime of including this single bit of animal-friendly critical thinking, Pease expresses his disappointment that "equal weight" was "given to statements by a fringe group." Maybe he expected readers not to go back and examine the Jan+Feb issue, but anyone who does so will see that Hall didn't receive anything resembling equal weight in Thomas's article. Equal weight for the abolitionist viewpoint would have meant offering a more meaningful opportunity for Hall to describe how husbandry campaigns reinforce animals' status as commodities, which is ultimately at the crux of this debate. Of course, such a discussion would have undermined Thomas's thesis.

Still, Thomas's lop-sided approach is not enough to satisfy Pease. Unable to brook any dissent, he attempts with his bullying letter to debase an animal rights activist who was simply asking us all to ponder whether husbandry reforms are actually effective animal advocacy and to suggest that it would be consistent with vegetarian ideals to ask people to opt out of consuming animal products altogether. In addition to calling such a view "negative," Pease packs his brief letter with other loaded, unsupported and biasing terms or phrases, like "attacking progress," "may make the critic feel relevant," "counterproductive" and, most notably, the marginalizing "fringe," when describing Hall's group, Friends of Animals.

In effect, by browbeating readers--and even VegNews' editors--with his authoritarian argument that abolitionist statements should not be given "equal" weight, Pease demands that the magazine suppress opposing views. Even more pernicious, and in the same vein, he patronizes newcomers to animal advocacy by trying to prevent them from hearing other points of view, a suggestion that newer activists are incapable of thinking for themselves.

In light of his predilection for censorship, it should come as little surprise that Pease does not mention Friends of Animals or Lee Hall by name in his letter. It's as if he is afraid of bringing further attention to them. But perhaps his greatest disservice to FoA, to animals and, frankly, to the animal rights movement is his cavalier dismissal of the organization as a fringe group. I wouldn't object here if you found Pease's attempt to marginalize abolitionist animal rights activists to be eerily similar to ongoing efforts made by those profiting from animal exploitation to marginalize vegans and animal advocates (poke around the Center for Consumer Freedom's website, animalscam.com, if you don't know what I mean). His VegNews letter is a very deliberate attack on a group promoting animal rights and veganism, and from the same guy who claims that Hall is attacking "progress".

A false corollary

So, what sort of "progress" is Pease claiming? He doesn't tell us. If, as many modern animal advocates do, he means progress toward the abolition of animal exploitation, then his claim is untenable. This is the message Hall was trying to deliver. Unlike Hall, who recognizes that husbandry reforms are inconsistent with an abolitionist approach, Pease and others believe such reforms will somehow lead to abolition, as if there was a correlation between regulating the treatment of animals and abolishing their use. But there is no correlation.

The Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act is not progress toward abolition because it does nothing to address the root causes of animal suffering. Instead, it superficially focuses on the symptoms of their use as property: their ill treatment in factory farm operations. Further, assuming the act is passed and not later overturned--and that it is actually enforced--we won't necessarily see any empirical reduction in animal suffering. The suffering will simply look different, as animals are transferred out of the frying pan and into the fire, so to speak. Now, if someone has developed a new-fangled gauge for quantifying the suffering of animals for the sake of comparison, please let me know, but this would still miss the point: The Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act intends to replace one form of animal exploitation for another. Even if someone could empirically prove that this act would meaningfully reduce the suffering of animals, it is hard to see how one can call it progress for animals when its aims are not even pointing down the right 'slippery slope'.

Regardless of any regulations successfully mandated by husbandry reforms, the industry will go on using animals in hatcheries, on farms and feedlots, during transport, at stockyards and in slaughterhouses. After all, there's nothing to stop them. Farmed animals are property of the industry, things for owners to use for their own benefit, and laws regulating the treatment of animal property further entrench the commodity status of animals, as Hall suggests.

Paving the way... to happy meat?

Worse, such laws make the use and consumption of animals seem more palatable. As far as traditional welfarists (i.e., those who accept the use of animals for human ends) are concerned, their moral obligation to reduce the suffering of those whom they wish to eat will have been discharged by this act, and now they will proudly eat their 'humane' animal products. If I had a dollar for every time someone responded to my veganism by stating that they only eat cage-free eggs or free-range flesh, I could probably cover the hosting costs for this blog.

Speaking of money, another way 'humane' organizations undermine abolitionist advocacy is by selling animal exploiters on the improved economic efficiencies, the potential for increased demand, and the market premiums associated with adopting husbandry reforms, going so far as to produce research reports supporting these claims. Why are animal protectionists promoting husbandry reforms as a means to increase demand for animal products? Such tactics, like the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, facilitate the enhanced exploitation of animals, without doing anything to prevent animals from being used as a means to human ends.

In order to abolish animal exploitation, wouldn't it make sense that the means to this goal resemble the ends? In other words, shouldn't animal rights activism be focused on eliminating the roots of animal suffering--that is, the instrumental use of animals for human benefit? It is hard to see how such an approach can be construed as 'counterproductive,' as Pease claims. On the contrary, abolitionists are critically engaged in pursuing effective campaigns to foster veganism while engendering respect and meaningful protection (rights) for animals, which seems to me rather more productive than easing the consciences of those who consume animal products.

Fringe v. core

Perhaps Pease is correct in one sense. While it is hard to see how any rational being might consider Hall's views negative, it is clear that they "are not widely shared in the animal protection movement." This should come as no surprise, given the widespread shift toward husbandry reform campaigns carried out by activists participating in what is still frequently referred to by many as the 'animal rights movement'.

The appeal of the phrase 'animal protection movement' is no doubt its value as a generic, catch-all phrase calculated to create as broad a band of supporters as possible to negotiate non-rights husbandry reforms with industry or to push legislative initiatives, while not scaring off supporters and potential supporters with the term 'animal rights'. Even when the term 'animal rights' is mentioned, it is often used to describe non-rights protections or activities, either as a "loosely" defined term or "as a rhetorical tool as part of a political campaign". In effect, 'animal rights' has become rhetorical shorthand to refer to any ostensibly pro-animal activity, even those that have no direct correlation with securing basic rights for animals.

To achieve and maintain 'legitimacy' with institutions and the public, the 'mainstreaming' of the animal rights movement into the animal protection movement--a rebranding, if you will--has led to the suppression, marginalization and even outright rejection of those who promote the movement's core animal rights ideals. Activists that advocate for an abolitionist approach to animal rights are labeled 'fringe', 'radical' or 'extreme' in a bid to put as much distance between them and husbandry reform advocates as possible. Now, I don't know about you, but it would seem to me that--in a movement claiming to be in favor of animal rights--the activists whose means are consistent with the movement's abolitionist ends should be considered the core, not the fringe.

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Learn more about the arguments discussed above by reading Gary L. Francione's Rain Without Thunder.

Labels: abolition, animal rights, animal welfare, humane movement

I'm not all that big on promoting veganism with environmental arguments, though I did originally go vegan in part due to environmental concerns I had related to consuming animal products, and those concerns continue to be very real and pressing. Even the media--which goes into overdrive in the week leading up to Earth Day--has seized on a recent reports by CIWF, the FAO and others, and has been expending considerable column space to eating lower down the "food chain". Of course, these articles only recommend reductions in flesh consumption, particularly "red meat", and even then, far less dramatic than the reports themselves recommend for anything resembling sustainability.

Now, as people are becoming more aware, one of the greatest environmental moves we can make is to consume less, period. And because vegan diets generally require one fourth the energy as meat-based diets, that is similar to switching from an SUV to a Prius. So, added to lots of other facts you'll find in the above-linked reports and articles, I don't complain when activists suggest that veganism is mandatory for "true" environmentalists. There's simply little evidence suggesting that everyone needs to become vegan for the planet to sustain our current population.

Labels: animal rights, environment, veganism

All beings have an interest in continued existence. "Being" is, in fact, a noun meaning "existence". To be is to exist. So, by definition, a being has an interest in continued being, or existence. Otherwise, that which we are describing is not a being at all.

Is there anyone reading this that believes animals are not beings? I would hope not. It is clear that animals are nonhuman beings, and it is clear that, being such, they have an inherent interest in continued existence. There are many who illogically claim otherwise, including a shocking number of pro-animal advocates.

It is important for us to recognize this basic interest that animals possess, like us humans, as it creates an obligation for us never to deprive them of continued existence unless we come into genuine conflict with them and our only means of continued existence is to deprive another being of continued existence (e.g., we are attacked with lethal force, etc.). This duty requires us to be vegan--to avoid harming animals and to avoid consuming animal-derived products, as they are not necessary for our own continued existence.

I'm continually amazed at the number of animal advocates who are not only not vegan, but who look at my veganism and completely miss the logical consistency, finding me extreme. I realize that our culture has thousands of years of cultural bias against animals stuffed into our brains, but if we are to continue to evolve, we really ought to get off our asses and stop regarding animals as things. Like us, they are beings.

Labels: animal ethics, animal rights

I originally wrote this piece for the Boston Vegan Association blog. Below I have repurposed it for AAFL. Where I still refer to my BVA constituency, insert yourselves!

In late 1944, before the end of World War II, Donald Watson and two dozen other "non-dairy vegetarians" formed the world's first Vegan Society, coining the word "vegan" in the process. The group was formed expressly to draw a moral line in the sand and honor new visions for a society that would some day view "with abhorrence the idea that men once fed on the products of animals' bodies."

The urgent need for such a group, according to Issue 1 of The Vegan News, was "an obvious danger in leaving the fulfilment of our ideals to posterity, for posterity may not have our ideals." Watson reminds me here of why I conceived of starting the BVA in the first place, and why I continue to press for other motivated individuals to take up abolitionist vegan advocacy.

"Did (William) Wilberforce wait for the 'ripening' of time before he commenced his fight against slavery?" Watson asked. Of course he did not. He saw injustice, realized his privilege to act, and worked tirelessly to end the slave trade. Watson saw the parallels between Wilberforce's mission and his own: "We can see quite plainly that our present civilisation is built on the exploitation of animals, just as past civilisations were built on the exploitation of slaves..."


Even back then--mind you, over 60 years ago--when eggs were in short supply due to the war, but lacto-vegetarianism was not too terribly uncommon (and factory farming was still around the corner), it was apparent that welfarism and vegetarianism fell short of the mark:

Mr J.W. Robertson Scott, Editor of "The Countryman", has written to us - "I should be glad to hear what success you have in collecting non-dairy produce consumers. I have always felt that from the agricultural point of view the vegetarian occupies an illogical position, for just as eggs cannot be produced without killing cockerels, dairy produce cannot be economically got without the co-operation of the butcher." The clarity by which vegetarians generally are seeing this issue is well represented by the result of a recent debate arranged by the Croydon Vegetarian Society, when the motion was carried almost unanimously 'That vegetarians should aim at eliminating all dairy produce'.

Today we still confront the protestations of people who eat only organic, free range "meat" or vegetarians who don't see a problem with egg and dairy consumption. This only makes our continuation of the Vegan Society's work all the more important. After all, look how soberly they could look at the issues over six decades ago, when there was very little know about the health impact of eating an entirely plant-based diet!

While we know much more about nutrition now, it is ironic that we continue to deal with still other frustrations that they experienced:

We may be sure that should anything so much as a pimple ever appear to marr the beauty of our physical form, it will be entirely due in the eyes of the world to our own silly fault for not eating 'proper food'. Against such a pimple the great plagues of diseases now ravaging nearly all members of civilised society (who live on 'proper food') will pass unnoticed.

Sound familiar? At least the viability of a vegan diet has now been recognized for 15 years by no less an authority than the American Dietetic Association.

Unfortunately, despite the monumental rise in factory farming and the annual worldwide slaughter of around 55 billion non-marine animals (and growing!), we do not receive significant support from other animal advocates on behalf of vegan advocacy. Vegan outreach remains a miniscule part of most national organizations' budgets and, in many of the cases where dietary advocacy is employed, the recommendation is obscured by a call instead to vegetarianism, a position Watson called "a half-way house between flesh eating and a truly humane, civilised diet".
As he suggested, it is up to vegans to lead the way, to help evolve civilization.

When we are confronted with nay-sayers who argue that veganism is scary and unpopular, remember that the anti-slavery movement was very unpopular when William Wilberforce took on the establishment, of which he was very much a part. If we don't draw that line in the sand, as did Wilberforce, who will?

The time is now for us to build the foundation for a vegan world, one that sees animals as beings instead of property. That world grows a little closer each time we help someone to go vegan. Do not be discouraged if we cannot convince every person we come across in our lifetimes. Watson was wise indeed to advise us not to concern ourselves if we fail to convert others. Our job must be to advocate veganism. Only our audience can decide what they will do with the information we give them. 

Labels: abolition, activism, animal rights, veg*nism, veganism

It's not just the fact that animals are being endlessly killed and brutalized or, worse, that animal use is hiding more and more behind allegedly less inhumane treatment. One of the more  depressing, frustrating things about reading animal news feeds anymore--and I still do it every day, even though I don't post as frequently lately--is how everything simply misses the point. This doesn't mean that we should throw up our hands and quit. The fact that animals are featured in the news more than ever is an opportunity for rights advocates to speak up more frequently and raise the level of discussion.

Recently I linked to a few published letters in the "links" menu above, using a Google search to find "Eric Prescott" and "letters". Unfortunately, it didn't bring up a few things I have printed out in a binder, but it gives you a sense of my best and worst. I spend more time than ever writing letters and posting comments under widely-read blogs and articles, in an attempt to clarify thinking and expose the roots of animal cruelty from an animal rights perspective. Fortunately, my own work and writing have become more precise and clear over the past few months, so these letters and comments are getting better, too. But, as the following stories demonstrate, there is no shortage of work still to be done.

We are far from the media and the public understanding the problem any better than I did even 2 years ago, no thanks to animal activists who themselves don't get the difference between welfare and rights (or who willfully conflate the two). But I learned to distinguish the two, many of you have done the same or are doing so, and thus we can look at stories like this and find ways to educate and better frame the discussion of animals depicted in these stories, taking the focus solely off of treatment, and examining the human sense of entitlement that results in using animals in the first place.

First we'll start with an opinion piece in The Buffalo News regarding the HSUS investigation that resulted in the largest "meat" recall ever, as well as the permanent shuttering of the Hallmark/Westland plant that shipped out the potentially contaminated "product". Of course, from the get-go, the primary focus has been on the public health aspect of this case, but the footage of "downed" (spent) "dairy cows" (who, according to HSUS, make up 17% of the annual "beef" slaughter in the U.S.) has obviously sparked a high profile national conversation about how animals are treated. In most cases, it is widely accepted that the cruelty seen in the footage HSUS's investigator captured is unacceptable.

Of course, this is about where the conversation ends, as exemplified by the opinion piece (a sort of wrap-up on the subject). On one hand, Stephen Hedges goes further than most in describing the conditions of cows used up by the dairy industry and spit out to become hamburgers:

Prices for “culled” dairy cows can be half to about a tenth of the price of a fully fed steer in the beef market. The reason for the discount is that some dairy cows go to slaughter plants in rough shape. Typically, they have often been milked for several years, leaving their bodies without the muscle, fat and calcium of grazing, well-fed beef cattle. Some dairy cows appear emaciated when they are sold to slaughter plants, their hides stretched tight over their hindquarters and ribs.

On the other and, even this description keeps the discussion focused on just how bad animals are treated in the industry (and, in this case, Hallmark/Westland is being held up as an aberration), never questioning whether it's right to use animals at all.

What Hedges and others don't yet see is that, as long as animals are relegated to the status of human property, their interests will always be subservient to the interests of the corporations that are struggle to eke a profit out of their flesh and secretions. This means, of course, that cases like this will continue, whether or not they are exposed. Realistically, if animals were treated as gently as everyone would like (almost like pets with an expiration date), most people would be unable to afford the products of their exploitation, certainly on a daily basis, and there would still be room for cruelties to which even these "conscientious consumers" would object. This is why the industry puts forth bucolic imagery and glosses over the slaughterhouse completely. We get dairy "farmers" claiming, as quoted in The Buffalo News, "We care about animals. It’s what we do.” No, what you do is exploit animals until they are no longer profitable, and then you send them off to be turned into hamburger, in one last bid to earn a buck off the body of another being. That's what you do. Real caring. I can't believe anyone can even say such a thing with a straight face.

There's no getting around the inherent cruelty in dominating and killing animals, and this should be the topic of conversation. Much as welfare organizations have been effective in getting animal suffering on the map, rights activists need to keep working to get the animal exploitation conversation happening and taken seriously on a wider scale. Of course, we don't have the resources of an HSUS, and even the least welfare-focused animal nation protection organizations are not seriously challenging the perceived human entitlement to use animals, but if we are clear about what we need to do, and all of us go after this goal together, our voices will be heard.

Turning now to China, we see that the country is far, far behind even the U.S. when it comes to animal treatment, but the problem is no different here than it is there. As usual, it all stems from the perception that animals are inferior (on such morally irrelevant grounds as being different from us in terms of appearance, intelligence and so on. Dog-eating in China is not at all uncommon, and the restaurants that serve dog flesh are contributing to some unfathomable cruelty. The government, aware that hypocritical Westerners will be mortified not just by the conditions in which dogs are kept but by the sheer fact that animals perceived as companions are being used as food, is shutting down such restaurants (China: Dog Meat Restaurant Ban 'Masks Nationwide Cruelty'). Of course, as with most of the actions being taken by the country in advance of the Beijing Olympics, this move is completely for show and has nothing to do with ethics.

British welfare activists are quoted in the story and they certainly have plenty to say about the cruelty they documented over there, but they say nothing about the roots of this cruelty, and prescribe nothing to end it permanently. While China is a massive country, growing very fast and rapidly ramping up its consumption of animal products, we should not give up on the idea of animal rights taking hold there. Sure, human rights are still an issue for the developing nation, but the tie behind human and nonhuman animal rights is protection from oppression by humans, and so there is no reason why the two can't be addressed simultaneously. We simply need to identify our commonality with nonhuman beings, and work from there. It certainly won't be easy, and it will obviously take a long time, but that is no reason not to get started right away.

Staying international for a moment, Canada's annual seal slaughter is nigh, and so the media stories have begun to proliferate. This year, the two big news bits are the slightly increased kill quota (AP) and an attempt to make the slaughter somehow more palatable (Sydney Morning Herald | Environment: Make sure they're dead: humane seal clubbing).

Let's address the increased quota story first:

"The seal hunt is an economic mainstay for numerous rural communities in Atlantic Canada, Quebec and the North," Federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn said in a statement Monday.
"It's with these people in mind we make decisions based on science to help maintain an economically viable and sustainable seal hunt."

Here we see the usual economic justification for killing other beings, which can be no justification. While it is important that people find ways of sustaining themselves in their culture, surely bludgeoning defenseless animals can be defended no more than clubbing human babies. Morally speaking, there is no difference between the two. Species membership is not a meaningful distinction. Unfortunately, we can't rely on animal groups to make that case. Instead, welfare groups (which are twice mistakenly referred to as animal rights groups by the AP reporter) rely on the usual objections, playing right into the industry's hands, because it gives creedence to their arguments by taking them seriously and then challenging them on the same grounds:

"There is absolutely no way this increase in quota can possibly be justified. The science doesn't support it, the markets can't support it, and the Canadian public won't support it."

The Humane Society of the United States attacked the announcement as an attempt to pander to the sealing industry.

We need to reframe the discussion entirely. The reporter mentions animal rights, but nowhere in the story is there a discussion of what rights are and what they would mean to seals. Now, unlike animals bred and confined for exploitation and slaughter, seals are a wild animal (a natural "resource", as some would put it), so the property discussion is not quite as on point, but the fact remains that, even in this case, humans still feel a sense of entitlement to use animals as they see fit, and that is the oppressive core of animal domination that must be addressed. That opportunity is missed entirely here.

With respect to the article on "humane seal clubbing"... I'm sorry, but why wasn't that title laughed out of the news room? If, as Merriam-Webster says, "humane" means "marked by compassion, sympathy, or consideration for humans or animals," how can killing any animal in any way shape or form be considered humane? As you might expect--and I'm sorry if this is sounding like a broken record, but now you know why I don't post every day anymore, because this is what it would be like--there is nothing in that article to suggest that anyone even knows what "humane" means. This is how the word is misused by the industry:

Hunters will have to follow three steps recommended by an independent panel of vets. After clubbing or shooting the seal, a hunter must check its eyes to ensure it is dead and if not, its main arteries must be cut.

"The vets think the three-step process provides more certainty around humaneness," Kevin Stringer, a fisheries spokesman, said.

Well, gosh. That is so kind of the veterinarians. Glad they are so sympathetic to animals. This isn't about sympathy, though. It's about numbers. Both dollars and the number of seals that are supposedly thriving out off the coast of Canada, and just how many of them "fishermen" can "sustainably" kill. Obviously such discussions completely disregard the rights of individual sentient beings, focusing as they do on profits and populations instead of the rights holders themselves.

Speaking of rights, this article misuses "animal rights", too, referring to activists who "said the new rules would make little difference since there were not enough inspectors monitoring the hunt." If that's their concern, then clearly they are more focused on the suffering of animals than the fact that animals are being killed for unacceptable reasons. Obviously suffering is bad but, again, where is the argument that the best way to eliminate animal suffering is to eliminate their exploitation?

Moving on to the foie gras issue. After much fanfare following bans and lawsuits seeking to eliminate foie gras, the press has been relatively quiet on the subject lately. However, the SunHerald.com business section actually published a press release from Artisan Farmers Alliance in its entirety. AFA is a front group representing the financial interests of the American foie gras industry, so you can see just how unbiased this "article" is. I wonder how many people will even catch that Maryland Legislature Rejects Proposed Foie Gras Ban is not an actual article.

In it, the AFA frames the debate over foie gras as a customer choice issue. I have to wonder whether abolitionists encountered this argument when they were fighting human slavery. Worse, because the debate has been framed as a matter of cruelty, the AFA and Maryland's restaurant industry were able to demonstrate for state officials that foie gras production was no worse than any other use of animals for human enjoyment: "When we visited the Hudson Valley farm, we saw nothing that would indicate that the care and feeding of the birds was not entirely consistent with generally accepted humane farming practices."

And there's the problem: it's generally accepted that farming animals is humane. Thanks for crystallizing that for me, Melvin Thompson (VP of the Maryland Restaurant Association). The debate is in the wrong arena entirely. Focusing on the cruelty aspect of foie gras production does two things: (1) it states that animal use is acceptable so long as it is not unusually cruel, and (2) it encounters heavy resistance from the industry, veterinarians and others who will always point to normative views of animal use. Anything that falls outside the norm will be reformed, and that is the best we can hope for. Because the human sense of entitlement to animal use is never challenged, nothing is gained, not even an opportunity to educate the public about animal rights, because they never see an intelligent argument about it hit print. Sure, most people will argue against actual animal rights activists that our use of animals is acceptable, but that is a subject that we can continue to debate and gain ground on.

And, on that note, time to switch gears from the confusion between animal welfare and animal rights to the confusion between animal liberation and animal rights.

The serial harassment of animal exploiters through home demonstrations and other tactics has been receiving plenty of negative media attention for some time now, and understandably so. The Washington Post today describes one technique that has been successfully deployed on at least one previous occasion: an injunction against activists. While we are in a different world today than we were when the University of California Regents successfully sued Last Chance for Animals, the Regents and UC researchers are seen as the victims in this case, and not the animals. The reason for this is simple, however. The public is alarmed when other people--people they relate to--are threatened and intimidated by people they do not understand and who do not make any effort to explain their position, so they get scared and angry at the people doing the threatening and intimidating.

I've never understood harassment to be an effective tactic for effecting positive, lasting changes within society. While such techniques have resulted in people giving up animal experimentation, and even leaving the field entirely, there are reasons why this approach has nothing to do with animal rights. At the very least, someone else will take up this research, even if it ends up getting outsourced to another country entirely. Until the basis for animal use is eradicated, there will be a never-ending supply of vivisectors to harass. Rights are moral and legal protections campaigned for by people in a society that care enough about animal interests to seek those protections against their use by humans, which directly violates those interests. Scaring that society and liberating animals from labs (when possible) do nothing to contribute to that future vision. If anything, they work against it, particularly because such tactics focus on the treatment and use of animals for one purpose, rather than a broad, sustained critique of the entitlement humans claim in order to use animals for any purpose.

Society does not relate to what they perceive as, at best, loud, angry misanthropes and, at worst, what they perceive as terrorists. This is a dead end. I know many of these activists don't care what society thinks. The animals are "their clients." I actually understand this notion and, of course, I understand the desire to free individual animals suffering in cages right this very minute. It's anguishing to think even think about them. But the fact is that their clients will never be free so long as they do not receive rights, and liberating animals from cages or intimidating researchers into giving up their work is not going to lead us to animal rights.

"To agree with animal rights means, at essence," Lee Hall wrote in Capers in the Churchyard, "to repudiate violence, and to transcend the habit of seeing others as instruments to our ends, of taking advantage." Liberationists of the sort featured in this WaPo story may reject physically harming human beings (though some do not), but violence does not always mean physical harm, and the tactics employed against people to get them to stop testing animals very much treats them as instruments to our ends. Such approaches are frequently justified through means-to-an-end reasoning, but that very same reasoning is what keeps animals under our feet in the first place. You can't fight that paradigm while simultaneously invoking and reinforcing it.

On the other hand, Animal rights would give animals the right not to be treated as property and, therefore, not only would they be freed from cages, but no other animals could legally be caged again. Animal rights will necessarily liberate animals. As Hall put it in Capers, nonviolent animal rights advocacy is actually more radical than harassment, property destruction and other forms of intimidation, because it gets right to the roots of animal exploitation like nothing else can.

Whatever we do, we cannot persuade society to accept animal rights by settling for economically beneficial refinements in animal husbandry, nor can we persuade them to accept animal rights by frightening them into not using animals for specific purposes. As Hall and others have wisely noted, people cannot be forced to change their minds by external pressure, violent or otherwise; they have to decide for themselves. As these stories and my deconstructions hopefully demonstrate, the path to animal rights is understanding AR and widely educating others about it every single day, whether through conversations we have with those in our sphere of influence or any writing we can to reach beyond. It can be done.

We can lay the foundation for animal rights in our society, but the work has to start now. We cannot wait and hope that people will make the connection between animal suffering and our use of them on their own. We must draw the connections for them, introduce cognitive dissonance into the minds of all those around us so that we may finally open up some minds about animal rights and end what philosophers and educators have called our "moral shizophrenia", that state of mind that allows humans to treat some animals as family while eating and wearing others, even though they are morally no different from one another.

Labels: animal experimentation, animal liberation, animal rights, animal welfare, dogs, foie gras, seal slaughter

I was wracking my brain trying to figure out how to get one of my upcoming Taste Better columns down closer to the preferred 1,000 word length. I spent way too much time trying to preserve the whole thing. It is abundantly clear to me now that, while somewhat helpful to the discussion, an approximately 650-word discussion of how veganism fails as a boycott is a bit of a tangent.

That said, I will probably post here again when the column goes up and refer back to this post, in case you want to see how it fit into the original piece. The passage I am preserving down below would have basically acted as a segue breaking up a paragraph on veganism as way of taking personal responsibility for abolishing animal exploitation and how, for many of us, this is still not enough.

For a handful of reasons, it's good that I made this cut. First, now the column is down to a more digestible thousand-word proximity, which will make Jason Doucette and my readers over there happy. Second, the column is a bit more focused. And, finally, I kind of wanted this particular excerpt to be made available sooner rather than later, due to a recent post by Mary Martin over at Animal Person. The column I extracted this excerpt from won't go up for another month or so.

I have included just enough of the paragraphs before and after to help the piece stand alone. I look forward to your thoughts in comments, as always.

Going vegan is taking personal responsibility for abolishing animal exploitation. In this respect, it is an essential step toward achieving animal liberation and their right not to be treated as property. Nothing else comes close.

Unfortunately, legal processes are not yet open to eliminating the property status of animals, mainly because at this time not enough people in our society support such an idea. Activism on the corporate level fails as well, particularly with respect to boycotts, which are generally a tool for reform, not for abolition.

In a typical boycott, faced with public pressure, companies institute reforms that eventually restore confidence in their business. Once such measures are in place, consumers return to purchasing its products and the boycott ends. However, respecting the right of animals to not be treated as property means never accepting their use for our trivial interests in food, clothing, entertainment and so on. In other words, the boycott can never end.

By way of example, a boycott of one company because its workers were caught using chickens as footballs only serves to express disapproval over using chickens as footballs. It does nothing to convey how seriously wrong it is to have bred that chicken as a commodity in the first place, which is ultimately how he ended up as a football. Once the company can assure the public that the chickens it owns are no longer being kicked around, there is nothing to prevent consumers boycotting the company for this abuse from buying its products again. But the company still owns the chickens, and the chickens' intrinsic interests are still subservient to the economic interests of the company.

Cargill, ConAgra, Tyson, Smithfield and others will never stop enslaving animals until the demand for such products subsides to the point that no profitable system can be found to carry on, hence the need for consistent, widespread vegan advocacy, not a boycott. After all, it's not one particular company that's a problem, nor is it the way these companies produce the products, per se. It is the products themselves--it is the fact that the products are even products to begin with.

The issue is becoming particularly urgent as we see animal exploiters, with help from some animal welfare organizations, carve out a whole new "conscientious consumer" category, adopting and touting "humane reforms" that ultimately improve their bottom line while doing nothing to eradicate the perception of animals as property. Quite the opposite, "humanely-raised meat" (and related labels) help consumers to feel better about eating animal-derived products, many of which have been called "guilt-free", as if selectively breeding, mutilating, dominating and killing sentient beings for no good reason can ever be considered guilt-free.

For many, what seems to matter most is that animals live their lives as pain-free as possible while they are being exploited, never mind that their rights are being violated so long as they are property (since, as discussed, the interests of property can never be properly balanced with the interests of the property's owner). Illuminating the faulty basis for some people's dietary choices, some vegans have reportedly gone back to eating meat now that it's allegedly "happy". A recent issue of Good Magazine even highlights a former animal activist who is now a rancher! If a boycott means improving the treatment of animals, and not eliminating their use as commodities, then this is where it ultimately leads.

Companies must know that we will not eat any of their products, as long as they are derived from animals. So, unless vegans are boycotting Tyson or Smithfield in hopes that they will eventually stop exploiting animals and will become all-vegan companies (don't hold your breath on this one), they must be vegan for other reasons. That reason must be abolition.

As many of us have realized, the only way for us to abolish our own contribution to animal slavery is to go vegan. Doing so rejects the speciesism that contributes to our society running roughshod over animals' interests in avoiding pain and suffering, feeling pleasure, bearing offspring, nurturing their young, and so on.

But for some, as big a step as going vegan may have been, it is not enough.

Labels: activism, animal rights, animal welfare, boycotts, happy meat, humane meat, veganism

I had a letter published by USA Today, which the editors called No 'humane meat'. It was written in response to another reader letter, In defense of animals, which in turn was written in response to Animal rights groups pick up momentum, an article that received a fair amount of attention in AR circles a couple of weeks back. I do like keeping the discussion going (and, ideally, sending it headed in a better direction).

Go ahead and read all three in chronological order, especially if you haven't already read the original article. Honestly, you don't need to check it out to understand why I sent in a response to the previous reader letter, but you should definitely see what she wrote first. And, don't forget to take a look at the comments below the story. The nasty ones posted fast. You might want to counter those with some positive, enlightening replies, if you don't mind quickly registering.

Labels: animal rights, Letters

Striking at the Roots: A Practical Guide to Animal Activism
by Mark Hawthorne
O Books, $19.95 (Jan. 25, 2008)
282 pages

I recently started a three-part column over at TasteBetter.com, called "Opportunities for Activism." What occurred to me after writing that column is that it's not enough to simply outline various types of activism; you need to inform that activism with education, despite the "just do something" mentality that pervades the animal protection movement. It's precisely that approach that keeps animal activists from focusing on the actual cause of all this suffering and cruelty that so many of us work so hard to fight.

As I was already working on my follow-up column, Mark Hawthorne's new book, Striking at the Roots: A Practical Guide to Animal Activism, arrived in the mail. With a name like "Striking at the Roots," you'd certainly expect that what lies between these covers will help activists better understand the basis for animal exploitation and eradicate it. Unfortunately, SatR does not fulfill these expectations.

Toward the end of the book, Hawthorne offers a quote from pattrice jones--an articulate, thoughtful activist whom I admire--in which jones discusses the value of multiple approaches in any given movement. The problem I have with using that quote in this book is that the animal welfare movement and the animal rights movement are distinctly different. The first focuses on improving the welfare of animals, while the second focuses on advocating moral rights for animals and one day securing their legal right not to be treated as a means for human ends (i.e., as property, entertainment, food, etc.).

An animal rights movement with a diversity of approaches applied toward securing rights for animals (i.e., tabling, leafleting, writing letters, demonstrations, public speaking, and so on) is indeed stronger than an AR movement that focuses only on, say, writing letters. What is missing, though, is the background required to know whether one is leafletting or demonstrating on behalf of animal rights or animal welfare. Despite the fact that most, if not all, of the various types of grassroots activism catalogued in SatR could be employed in the service of improving animal welfare or animal rights, there is virtually no discussion of the forces that perpetuate and encourage animal exploitation or how to address these forces, and therefore the book fails from the start to help animal activists truly strike at the roots of animal oppression.

Instead, the book relies heavily on long-time activists to make its recommendations, many of whom work for various national organizations. One such recommendation is for grassroots activists to focus on welfare campaigns while simultaneously downplaying the importance of animal rights rhetoric and education. Suggesting, for instance, that leafleting requires almost no background in the issues makes no sense. If an activist is confronted by a member of the public and does not have a strong grasp of animal rights, then there is very little that activist will do to advance the cause of animal rights in that moment. After all, the activist with no background in the issues doesn't even really understand the concept of animal rights. Also, by not understanding whether the literature s/he is distributing addresses the use or the treatment of animals, s/he may not realize that s/he is doing little to expose or condemn the roots of animal exploitation, either.

Now, in his introduction, Hawthorne does draw a distinction between the animal rights and animal welfare movements, and notes that he is well aware of the divisions within the animal protection community over the appropriate path(s) to animal liberation. He understands that animals are "sentient individuals with their own interests" and "an intrinsic right to exist on their own terms, free from any human exploitation," but he ends his intro with a call for reform. So despite this brief preamble, SatR winds up focusing on the symptoms of animal exploitation and avoids the root causes, an approach which could well harm the animal rights movement. The last thing animals need are more animal rights activists who don't think about what they are doing and why. Too many animal rights supporters out there already have no idea that, in promoting welfare reforms, they are not doing anything substantatively proactive to help secure the rights of animals.

So, while Hawthorne has come up with a very practical guide to specific activities that could well be put into service of animal liberation--HSUS's Paul Shapiro offers some tips on leafleting, for example, that are quite valuable, despite an earlier assertion that we should downplay animal rights rhetoric and instead focus on systemic abuses--a reader following SatR's suggestions to the letter would be promoting the interests of a humane or welfare movement, not the animal rights movement. Any successes activists have promoting veganism to reduce suffering or promoting legislation to reduce the most egregious forms of animal abuse in factory farming operations will leave the roots of oppression completely untouched.

Despite the assertions of many of the book's participants, animal rights activists simply cannot afford to devote so many of our resources to reforming what are basically the symptoms of animal exploitation. It is the job of a humane reform movement to leverage society's disapproval of animal abuse so that it can improve conditions for animals, certainly. But, if we are indeed concerned with the widespread adoption of animal rights principles, activists need to focus on shifting the perception of animals as things to be used in the first place, and that won't happen as long as we do nothing to challenge this assumption. If we do address the roots of our society's justifications for animal use--targeting its "might makes right" mentality and its sense of entitlement--animal abuse will necessarily be addressed. So it makes logical sense that animal rights activists ought to be striking quite literally at the roots of the oppression that allows cruelty to occur in the first place, rather than striking at the symptoms, and there are many ways to do that. It is important to recognize this, since we all have different interests and gifts that we can bring to bear on the problem.

So, go on: read the book. Get inspired with ideas for the types of activities in which you may want to participate on behalf of animal liberation, but be skeptical about suggestions you will find to limit rhetoric about animal rights or to focus heavily on welfare campaigns. If you really want to strike at the roots of animal oppression, you will thoroughly educate yourself about animal rights, you will seek to understand with greater clarity the forces that keep animals in abusive situations, and you will start to consider just what you ought to be doing and saying to raise this awareness in others, and how best to be doing it and saying it, in order to maximize your contribution to the wholesale shift in our society that we are going to need if we truly want to see an end to animal suffering.

For example--just to reference a handful of chapters--there's no reason why, when leafleting, you can't make a concise, sensible and accessible case for animal rights if you educate yourself well on the matter, rather than dwelling merely on reducing animal cruelty. There is no reason why your letters can't take an opportunity to present animals as sentient beings with interests that matter. Tabling is an excellent opportunity to talk about animal rights in a coherent fashion, rather than simply glossing over the subject of use and focusing instead on the treatment of animals. Even demonstrations and protests can take a singular act or area of animal cruelty and use it as an opportunity to educate people about the root causes of this treatment, exposing the power dynamic of oppression that makes cruelty to other sentient beings possible, and why it is wrong. The section on food outreach is practical, and fairly agnostic, frankly, so there is much to be learned there.

You get the idea. I'm not one to throw the baby out with the bath water, as they say, but (despite my own participation in the book) I simply couldn't have recommended Striking at the Roots for its practical aspects without first offering my opinion on how best to apply its suggestions, all the more so because I very much do believe that the most important activism we can perform is that which strikes at the roots.

Labels: animal rights, animal welfare, book, reviews

Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights
by Bob Torres
AK Press, $17.95
153 pages

A lot of animal activists like to say they want to address the root causes of animal exploitation, but few see past the symptoms (i.e., suffering). Even fewer see through the hierarchical justifications for using animals as commodities. But, with Making a Killing, Bob Torres has synthesized abolitionist animal rights theory and social anarchy to expose the commonalities of oppression (such as privilege and "might makes right"), to recommend an integrative, anti-speciesist approach to advocacy that eschews "lifestyle politicking" and narrowly focused approaches to animal (much less human) liberation, and to explain why--unlike so much other activism--promoting veganism as a means to the abolition of animal exploitation is actually consistent with that end.

The book is written accessibly for the most part (I found myself re-reading only a handful of paragraphs) and, at 153 pages, it's a fairly quick read. As someone with almost no background in anarchism of any sort, a relatively solid foundation in abolitionist animal rights, and a real itch to undermine the root causes of oppression, I found Making a Killing to be a useful starting point for understanding the application of anarchist theory to animal rights. It builds solidly on the notion that the enslavement of nonhuman animals is made possible because of the hierarchical structures in our society that lead to the domination of animals and their exploitation as commodities, and it prescribes a change in our approach to social relations that undermines these structures and actively presents an alternate vision for the world that we can start living right now.

Though I don't know many anarchists (at least, I don't think I do), I got the sense that this would be a solid intro to animal rights for those already steeped in anarchist theory on the Left, but who have not yet given animals due consideration. For those unfamiliar with Bookchin, Kropotkin or even Chomsky, this may be a relatively simple introduction to how their ideas lend themselves to animal rights. For still others, this may represent their first occasion to grasp a theoretical foundation for why veganism makes so much sense, beyond the common knee-jerk response to animal suffering. For those unconvinced that capitalism itself is the crux of the problem, you will find yourself challenged by a scathing critique that indicts a system built on exploitation.

In addition to capitalism, Torres takes to task some rather sacred cows in the animal rights establishment, along with corporations that promote veganism as a consumerist, "ecosexual" lifestyle. Though some in the animal rights movement might well be taken aback, assuming they have missed out on much of the recent to-do over abolition versus what Gary L. Francione called new welfarism in Rain Without Thunder, I have yet to see any heated responses on this front. Please do share your comments with links below if you have come across any of this. I'm curious to read those reactions, as well as any other reactions to Making a Killing.

Labels: abolition, anarchy, animal rights, book, reviews

This "enlightening" piece by John Mariani in Esquire magazine leads off with:

Animal rights activists say duck liver is evil, the by-product of an abusive system. They don't know what they're talking about.

Mariani doesn't know what he is talking about. First of all, actual animal rights activists consider the consumption of duck liver--and all animal-derived products--to be wrong because doing so involves the totally unnecessary commodification and exploitation of another living being, not because conditions for producing foie gras are simply inhumane. Mariani is confusing rights with welfare, which is no surprise considering how many animal rights activists do the same thing.

Then the article actually gets started, spending its focus entirely on the relatively high welfare experienced by force fed captive ducks at Hudson Valley Foie Gras' massive operation in the Catskills, where he "didn't see any of this suffering those crazies are screaming on and on about." Regardless of how foie gras is produced at this or any other facility (clearly not all facilities are the same), rights violations are occurring. This article conveniently forgets (or does not care) about whether the ducks have an interest in living in their natural environment, expressing natural behaviors and doing something other having their livers fattened up so they can be slaughtered as a "delicacy."

Animal activism that fixates on welfare standards inevitably comes down to stand-offs like this one: "Hey, man, these animals are treated better than a lot of people. Get off our backs so we can get on with eating them." Sure, the animals most people eat most of the time are treated atrociously, and the only way to make sure one avoids this cruelty is to avoid eating them. But this path does not lead to respecting animals' rights. It implies rather that it's acceptable to eat a hamburger (or foie gras, for that matter) if you know the "food animal" led a life comparable to your own "companion animal", even though you'd never consider eating your companion (voila: moral schizophrenia).

"...there's no need to feel guilty," Mariani concludes. But he has not made that case at all. He has simply put forth another weak attempt at justifying unjust behavior by making it seem harmless (note that he doesn't focus on the slaughter, though). He's succeeded in making welfarism look foolish, but he has not even begun to understand animal rights.

Labels: animal rights, animal welfare, foie gras

SOURCE: The Vancouver Sun: Nothing fishy about personality traits in animals, study finds

Of course, in typical fashion, researchers note that wild fish may have personalities, then they decide to grab a bunch of them for their study. Evidently, in their minds, having a personality has no relationship to having an interest in being left alone.

McLaughlin and student Alex Wilson found that the personalities stayed distinct even after the young fish, still just two to four centimetres long, left their natural homes.

For instance, he put the fish in a dark tube in the aquarium. The more active fish were always the ones that emerged into the main body of the tank first. They were more ready to take risks, and less afraid of unfamiliar objects in the water.

"What they do in the field predicts what they do in the lab," he said. "We were getting this sense that they perceive the environment differently, and the kind of things we measured are part of what people are starting to call personality traits in animals."

Is it just me, or do some scientists occasionally act like little children, sort of like pulling the tails off gerbils just to see what happens? And, of course, we tell children not to harm animals...

Maybe this will get easier as more and more people recognize animals as individuals with distinct personalities.

The idea of personalities is starting to spread across our views of the whole animal kingdom, says Rob McLaughlin, the Guelph biologist who ran the study. This seems obvious in the case of dogs or chimpanzees, but less obvious among fish.

Of course it's obvious, mainly because we have more experience with them, but there's also the consideration that some animals seem more neurologically advanced than others. But people need to stop assuming that non-humans and humans do not share certain basic, evolutionarily-developed traits like pain, fear, affection (love) and even personality. The pressures applied to our respective species, and our ability to adapt to them as individuals, result in different outcomes for each of us. Look at the difference between feral cats and house cats for one patently obvious example of how one's environment shapes personality in animals.

The more rational course, in my opinion, would be to work from an assumption that all animals are unique beings with fundamental interests and leave them alone, rather than exploiting them to find out where we are right or wrong. Because, when we're right--when we do research on an animal and find that they do, in fact, experience pain and have personalities--it's at the expense of another being that we now know didn't deserve to be treated like an object.

Labels: animal ethics, animal experimentation, animal rights, wildlife

Tribune-Chronicle: ProAnimal Coalition

GET THIS: The ProAnimal Coalition is a group of people "dedicated to getting out the truth about the excellent care farmers give their animals and the misinformation from the various animal rights activists." Time for a double-take.

Nowhere in the article is it explained how you can be pro-animal and still breed, kill and eat them. Nor does the author attempt to point out the inherent deceit in calling a group ProAnimal Coalition when your goal is to ensure that you can continue to breed, kill and eat animals.

It's difficult from the way the article was written to discern which passages are the author's editorial comments, and which are the author paraphrasing speakers from the ProAnimal Coalition meeting, but somebody in this article adds more of the emotional fuel to the fire that animal rights activists (ARAs) are accused of stoking by resorting to language such as "our way of life in this country at stake" and "[groups like HSUS and PETA] keep nibbling at our rights as consumers."

Of course, nowhere does the author explain what ARAs are doing to threaten our way of life, or what exactly our way of life is. If the American way of life is to kill other beings for fun, profit and taste, then perhaps we are threatening it. Good for us. Certainly the American way of life should be about compassion and freedom for all beings, not just humans.

As for nibbling away at consumer rights, this is a common right-wing tactic that means nothing in reality. Consumers aren't permitted to buy certain things for very intelligent reasons. Would we consider the prohibition on trafficking in human body parts an infringement upon consumer rights? Again, the author is merely trying to stoke up basic fears in a demographic that is particularly sensitive to having their freedoms "taken away." Talk about emotionalism.

In stating "Truth means nothing to [animal rights groups]," the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation's Joe Cornely tells his own bald-faced lie. If ARAs (and, by the way, here we have more conflating of animal rights groups with animal welfare groups) were lying, they would be brought to court, they would lose, and they would no longer be able to function. It's a straightforward insult and, correct me if I'm wrong, libel to suggest that truth means nothing to animal rights groups. The whole point of animal rights activism is to expose the truth behind animal exploitation so that people can make up their own minds about whether or not to reject their use. We may not agree on whether animals are ours to use or not, but that does not entitle either side to accuse the other of lying, unless that side is deliberately deceiving people. But nowhere does Mr. Cornely or the article's author back up their inflammatory claims.

Now, this article appears in a smallpaper in a small town I've never heard of. But it may well have been read by more people than read this blog, and it represents a certain backlash I've been noticing in the farmed animal sector, which we are already starting to see ripple in the public with the co-option of animal welfare language like "humane-raised" meat, labels like "United Egg Producers Certified," and articles extolling the virtues of "happy veal."

As much as they're fighting animal rights, the animal exploiters are looking more and more to become the final word on what animal welfare means, which only makes the need for promoting animal rights that much more urgent. The welfare of animals will never be entirely secure so long as they are used as a means to human ends.

IN HAPPIER NEWS, The U.S. Forest Service agreed to withdraw plans for logging 190 acres of spotted owl habitat in the Central Oregon Cascade Range that was burned last year in the Black Crater fire:

The lawsuit said the timber sale violated federal law by distorting science that shows spotted owls still use forests after they burn and by keeping the public out of the decision making.

The lawsuit also said the project would violate the Northwest Forest Plan by logging in an old growth forest reserve primarily to make money from the trees, and not to improve the forest.

SOURCE: MSNBC

ALSO AT MSNBC.COM: Mothers again urged to eat fish. After going on paragraph after paragraph about the benefits of fish, finally an alternate source of omega-3s is mentioned: Flax seed and oil. It would be nice if they included other sources, but at least alternatives are being mentioned. I'm gravely concerned about this new push to increase fish consumption, particularly when so many species are being pushed to the brink of collapse.

Labels: animal agriculture, animal rights, animal welfare, endangered species, environment, fish, habitat encroachment, health, humane meat, omega-3

The following is the original version of the speech I gave today at Toastmasters (I had to cut it down a little for time):

THE LANGUAGE OF LIBERATION

Let us take a few minutes to examine language or, more specifically, the words we use every day. We use so many of them, so often without even thinking, that we forget: Words are powerful.

Well-chosen words hold the secret to liberating animals, those who cannot speak for themselves. How? Because emancipation begins in the mind. We can physically rescue as many individual nonhuman animals as we want, but the only way to truly achieve lasting liberation for all nonhuman beings is to first alter the mindset, or attitudes, of a meaningful percentage of those responsible for their exploitation. But how best to alter attitudes? By reshaping the way humans perceive nonhumans. And how do we alter perception? Language. Words.

What I'm talking about is shifting the dominant paradigm, our society's current framework for understanding the world around us. Humans develop their attitudes toward the world through the frameworks they've been taught, words and phrases that have molded their minds from a very early age to see things in a certain way, a paradigm validated solely because it has been successfully indoctrinated in such a large percentage of the population for so long.

In order bring about a more egalitarian paradigm, it is crucial that we reframe society's perceptions of nonhuman beings by challenging speciesist language in our daily lives, that is, language that fails to accord equal consideration and respect to other species. In our advocacy, it is essential for us to carefully choose words that paint a vivid impression of nonhuman animals as morally relevant, morally meaningful beings. As the use of our non-speciesist language takes root, it will expose the injustice of speciesism, and rational humans will eventually come to recognize the inherent cruelty of using other beings as resources for their own purposes.

So where do we begin? Let's focus on three scenarios in which the choice of words may influence the public's perception of our fellow beings.

The other day I was watching a CNN piece on Oscar, a cat that seems to know when terminal patients at a nursing home are going to die. During an interview, a psychologist representing the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals repeatedly referred to Oscar as "it," even though CNN's reporter had already referred to the empathic kitty as "he." Let's deconstruct this: A person brought in to represent animals knew Oscar's gender and called him "it," implicitly approving and encouraging the objectification of sentient beings.

Granted, ASPCA reps are far from animal rights activists, but surely they know that nonhuman animals are not inanimate objects. This particular rep lost an opportunity to reach hundreds of thousands--even millions--of engaged, interested television viewers with a powerful message that other animals matter, too. Moral of the story: even if you don't know the gender of another species, never refer to him or her as "it." Get people used to thinking of nonhuman beings in terms of identities, personalities… individuality.

Here's another recent scenario. At the national animal rights conference a couple of weekends ago, I heard several activists refer to chickens as "broiler hens" and cows as "livestock." Why do we let the dominant paradigm influence how we describe or advocate for nonhuman animals? Haven't we shattered that way of looking at the world for ourselves? Then why should we lend creedence to the terms "livestock" and "broiler," among others? When you use speciesist vocabulary as an advocate for nonhuman animals, you are implicitly endorsing its use by others, as well as reinforcing its validity.

Why not describe the reality behind these terms instead? Livestock and broilers are, more descriptively, cows and chickens bred and slaughtered for their flesh. If we hold up this reality in place of the usual euphemisms, we can invalidate those speciesist terms and educate the public at the same time, eventually influencing society as a whole to reject speciesism, the same way activists before us sought and continue to seek to eliminate racism and sexism. So don't be lazy--Wipe speciesist vocabulary from your speech.

My third example deals with animal disparagement: "Ugly" bugs, "dumb" cows or "stupid" chickens. How often have you heard the interests of nonhumans dismissed because they are not as attractive or intelligent as humans, as if such criteria are somehow a moral basis for dismissing the interests of any being? Do we dismiss the interests of a mentally incapacitated or conventionally ugly human? Of course not, but rarely is language like this challenged when it comes to nonhumans. And, along these lines, when animal advocates call for primate rights ahead of other animals, they further reinforce the notion that animal rights ought to be granted based on how human a given nonhuman animal is fortunate to be. We, as advocates for all animals, must shatter this anthropocentric view of the world.

Defining the value of other beings based on how much like us they are is self-serving and morally repugnant when, in fact, our morally relevant interests are the same. Despite our differences in the areas of intelligence, appearance, and other morally irrelevant traits, we do share morally significant interests in avoiding pain, seeking pleasure, and living in sync with our animal natures. By denying these interests and using nonhuman animals as resources--by evaluating species on such an arbitrary basis as human-like intelligence--we reveal our own stupidity.

Can we breathe underwater, like fish, or take flight like the hummingbird? Do we see half as well at night as the common feline? What I wouldn't give to be able to soar through sky, feel the wind in my hair, and to coast along on a current of air. But, alas, I am merely human.

While most animals may not have the intelligence that serves our ecological niche, assuming for a moment that even humans do--and there is plenty of evidence to the contrary--other animals certainly have an intelligence or other abilities that serve their ecological niche, and this is what matters. We must shatter this anthropocentric way of looking at the world. By looking at nonhuman animals and the environment as resources for us--by evaluating species on such an arbitrary basis as human-like intelligence--we reveal our own stupidity.

Quite simply, animals' rights are not necessitated by their worth to us. Such "rights" would only be a reflection of our own vanities. True rights for animals--all animals--are rooted in their interests, such as the enjoyment of life and liberty. These are rights that we take for granted, but which are denied other animals every single day, simply because we've been taught that they are "dumb" or "ugly". But isn't that dumb? Isn't that ugly?

Ultimately, it's our language, and it's flexible. It can be transformed. We can use this fact to our advantage as advocates for nonhuman animals within the human community. If, within our own spheres of influence--family, friends, the opinion pages--we implement the lessons of the three examples I've given, we can veganically prepare the soil, society, to receive the seeds of animal liberation.

As people adopt language that recognizes nonhuman beings as more than mere objects--and certainly not as beings below us--we will see the ground grow ever more fertile, allowing animal rights to flower into a world more favorably disposed to the interests of all beings. And there we'll find liberation.

Labels: animal intelligence, animal liberation, animal rights

About a month ago, I asked any readers who might be attending last weekend's Taking Action for Animals conference in D.C. to report back with their thoughts on it.

Well, the fine bloggers (mostly Jennifer, but Joel jumped in today) over at AnimalBlawg went one better and have been posting thorough reactions to various aspects of the conference, confirming my worst suspicions, and raising excellent points that the conference should have addressed.

You can catch up by clicking on the following links:

Overview and themes
Health and environment science
Animal science
The welfare strategy
"Humane meat"
TAFA and “humane meat” - Joel’s take

Great job, you two. Only, I didn't see Level 5 veganism on the scale, Joel...

Ryan over at VegBlog has a brief entry on the conference as well. He agrees that we need to be talking about this more openly as well. Sampling:

What surprised (and disheartened) me most, though, was that nearly half of the crowd at that presentation was ooh-ing and aah-ing at the pictures and stories of the animals, completely falling for the whole “humane meat” thing.

Labels: animal rights, animal welfare, events

The Salt Lake Tribune has reprinted a Philadelphia Inquirer opinion piece by Crispin Sartwell that joins a tiny choir of people leveraging all of this media attention over the Michael Vick dogfighting case to point out our moral schizophrenia when it comes to animals. While the philosophy professor somewhat misunderstands animal rights, Sartwell does ask readers to consider animals' value beyond our own interests in them:

We need to decide: (a) Do animals count? and (b) How, exactly, not as dwarfish, or four-legged, or stupid people, but as real things whose existence is, though connected to ours, profoundly external and different?

Right now the article is averaging thumbs down, so scroll down and give it a thumbs-up. Comments are taken as well. This discussion must continue, and it must grow beyond its current incarnation as "what we owe what we eat."

You might use this as an opportunity to suggest that Sartwell is right to question our completely confused attitude toward animals, and to clarify the meaning of animal rights as a philosophy that recognizes animals have intrinsic value and seeks to protect the interests we share with them (life, liberty...) from being violated by us.

Labels: animal ethics, animal rights, dogfighting

Let's say you want to learn more about what you can do for animals. Let's say you want to go to AR2007 this July 19th-23rd, but you live on the East Coast and travel is an obstacle. Let's say you're interested in hearing from advocates who won't be speaking at AR2007, like Compassionate Cooks' Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. You might consider attending Taking Action for Animals from the 28th-30th of July in Washington, D.C., a scant 5 days after AR2007 ends (no, I won't be making it out there myself).

Unlike AR2007, which stands for animal rights, Taking Action for Animals is run by the Humane Society of the United States, an animal welfare organization. I took a look at the schedule and found that there may be a few sessions among all the welfare-focused discussions that rights advocates might find interesting (Colleen's plenary talk, for instance, is called "Being a Joyful Vegan in a Non-Vegan World"), plus all the food served at the conference is vegan, so take a look and see if any of this is for you. Discounted registration of $125 ends July 13th.

If any of my readers do attend, I'd be very interested in reading reports. There's more than one way to help animals, but I'm a bit disheartened by some of the titles emphasizing the treatment of animals over their use, and what could be construed as a watering down of vegan advocacy to reach a broader audience. I want to hear from people who actually attend the conference so I can better assess the event.

Labels: animal rights, animal welfare, events, HSUS

The Oregonian writes today that the legal tussle between Primarily Primates Inc. and Chimps Inc. over the fate of two chimpanzees, Emma and Jackson, hinges less on property rights (the two orgs are non-profit sanctuaries), and more on the interests of the animals themselves, which could set a meaningful precedent for animal rights. According to Pamela Frasch, adjunct professor at Lewis & Clark Law School and vice president of legal affairs for the Animal Legal Defense Fund, "This case is very interesting because it could develop that area of law where the courts are considering the best interests of the animals when considering where those animals may be placed."

This has been an ongoing saga, with Friends of Animals taking control of the rundown Primarily Primates to bring it up to some sort of humane standards, and PETA and other animal advocates bringing suit against the sanctuary in the first place. I don't have the time to get into all the politics and history on this issue (see the links in this paragraph to PETA's and FOA's sites), but it is noteworthy that a custody battle between animal advocates could bolster the growing case law that takes animals interests' into consideration, just as the courts do with children in custody suits.

Labels: animal law, animal rights, chimpanzees, Friends of Animals, PETA, primates

Whenever an outlet in the media publishes a story on animal issues, it presents an excellent opportunity to respond with letters on behalf of animal interests. Today's article in the Los Angeles Times, Animal welfare issue boiling, focuses on animal welfare, and how consumer interest in "compassionate eating" is growing. However, it doesn't once question the compassion behind killing a creature for food when it is entirely unnecessary to do so.

It would be easy to thank the Times for covering animal interests at all, but it is vital that we not stop there. It's important that we use this opening to expose readers to cogent arguments on behalf of veganism as the most compassionate dining choice, and to publicly declare the right of animals not to be treated as commodities.

Here is the letter I sent this morning with that intent:

Thank you for highlighting the shift in consumer eating and Big Ag's response to these preferences ("Animal welfare issue boiling").

Missing from the discussion, however, was any mention that it might be inherently inhumane to breed, raise and kill an animal solely to enjoy his flesh or her reproductive byproducts (eggs and milk) when it is entirely unnecessary to do so. Evidence continues to grow that plant-based diets are, in fact, healthier than diets centered on animal-derived foods.

Nothing tastes as good as compassion feels, and the only truly compassionate choice we can make for the animals is to stop treating them as products.

If you choose to write your own letter to the editor, please be sure to include your name, address and a phone number where you can be reached to verify authorship. Remember to keep letters short (100-150 words) and positive (even if critical, like mine) to improve the odds of your message reaching an audience. Feel free to share your letter in the comments below this post (see footer).

If you are asked to register, but you want to read the article without doing so, services like bugmenot can help you with that.

Labels: animal rights, animal welfare

Okay, no time for messing about. Here's what you'll want to read today:

The Gazette: Beagles flown to labs for testing
"All we could hear during the boarding and before the takeoff was barking, crying and whimpering"

Guardian Unlimited: 'Noah's Ark' of 5,000 rare animals found floating off the coast of China
"[The coast guard] found more than 200 crates full of animals, many so dehydrated in the tropical sun that they were close to death."

Animal Person: Happy Birthday Gary Francione!
"I will match, dollar-for-dollar, the first $1,000 in cash donations to Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary in his name."

Chicago Tribune: Ruffling feathers
"Movement leaders acknowledge that part of the reason animal rights doctrine is becoming more accepted is that the focus now is on education."

Los Angeles Times | Obituaries: Gretchen Wyler, 75; Broadway actress became animal activist
"Wyler died Sunday at her home in Camarillo after a long battle with breast cancer"

Labels: abolition, activism, animal experimentation, animal rights, animal testing, companion animals, dogs, wildlife, wildlife trade

I had a fairly busy animal-friendly weekend, including a fundraising brunch with Dennis Kucinich at Madeleine Bistro in Tarzana, CA, along with readying my home to receive some out-of-town guests coming to visit this week, so I had time to sift through stories, but not enough time to post. Lots of stories I wanted to highlight, and I have little time, so this will be yet another overview. Hopefully I can find the time to write about Dennis and the brunch this week.

In the meantime, check out his stance on the issues, and send him $50. If a million citizens who care about getting corporate money out of politics contribute at least that much, Dennis will be able to compete with those candidates beholden to their big-ticket sponsors.

I'll let Kinship Circle kick things off with an important alert:

URGENT: Don’t Let Illinois Resume Horse Slaughter
http://www.horse-protection.org

BACKGROUND:

5/2/07, from National Horse Protection Coalition -- Following the passage of Illinois HB 1711 by the Illinois House of Representatives on April 18, 2007, the bill now moves forward for consideration by the Illinois State Senate.

HB 1711 has been assigned to the Illinois Senate Committee on Public Health and a public hearing on the bill is scheduled for May 8, 2007. It is now more important than ever following a ruling by the DC Court of Appeals granting Cavel's emergency stay motion. The two judges in the majority issued no opinion on their ruling while the lone dissenting judge wrote a detailed opinion agreeing with the humane community and district court judge who earlier rejected their request. This ruling allows Cavel to begin killing horses immediately.

For more information on the Illinois bill and facts about horse slaughter: http://www.saplonline.org/ilfacts.htm

CONTACT INFORMATION TO TAKE ACTION:

Please contact all members of the Illinois Senate asking them to vote "YES" on HB 1711. The order of priority for calls and faxes is as follows:

1) Public Health Committee Members.
2) Senators who are "new" and/or "did not vote"
on the previous IL bill.
3) Senators who voted "yes" on the previous bill.
Please ask them to continue their support.
4) Senators who voted "no" on the previous bill.

EVERYONE CAN COMMENT: CONTACT INFO for Senate Public Health Committee members. CONTACT INFO for members of ILLINOIS SENATE.

ILLINOIS RESIDENTS ONLY: Find your State Senator and his/her contact info.

(IL Senators' previous vote record)

For further background, the Star-Telegram has this story from the Chicago Tribune. (Illinois horse-meat plant gets reprieve)


In related news, celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey has proven quite adept at generating publicity for himself in the UK by stirring up controversy. This time he is encouraging Britons to take up the consumption of horse flesh, provoking mixed responses, though mostly revulsion. Fortunately, many people are seeing the hypocrisy of not eating one animal while finding others to be perfectly acceptable. The Daily Mail is a bit annoying in how it veers back and forth between strongly considering the merits of Ramsay's exhortation and genuine disgust for the notion (mainly because of the charismatic horse's exhalted status among humans), but there are plenty of choice quotes, like this one:

I ate horse last year, in Kazakhstan. And while it was perhaps not at its gourmet best (served in huge boiled chunks in a lukewarm greasy stew with a sheep's head perched on top) the thought of what I was eating - and I'm not talking about the sheep's head - was a thousand times worse than the nasty taste.

But why is that? After all, we happily eat cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks and even deer on a regular basis. Over recent years, we've embraced all manner of faddy meats - ostrich, emu, even kangaroo and crocodile. But a nice juicy horse steak? Never.

There's a Borat gag in there, but I'll leave it alone. The main thing to note is that the line between the species we eat and those we don't is incredibly arbitrary. The more we highlight that, the clearer it becomes that we shouldn't be eating any animals. You can send letters to the Daily Mail and the Sunday Telegraph. Don't forget to keep them short, to the point, and to include your location and contact information for publication.

Sources:
Daily Mail: Gordon Ramsay is urging Brits to try horse meat, but would you eat it? (allows comments)
Sunday Telegraph: We should eat horse meat, says Ramsay


On to other animals most people arbitrarily wouldn't consider eating...

This story from Pennsylvania's Tribune-Democrat drives home the need to ban the commercial sale of animals:

“I’ve had pet stores approach me and say, ‘How can I find quality puppies?’ I say, ‘You’re not going to.’ ”

This from a county Humane Society Officer, though she also suggests those interested in buying animals do so from a "reputable" breeder. This, as opposed to purchasing from pet stores that seem to be getting a lot of unhealthy animals from Amish puppy mills in the Lancaster and (now) Somerset County areas of Pennsylvania. It's sad that she'd suggest buying animals at all, rather than taking the opportunity to recommend adopting needy animal companions. But at least she paints a vivid picture that will hopefully keep people out of pet stores:

“The tragedy is with females who live their lives in cages, and their value is measured in how many puppies they can breed,” Gower said. “When they can’t breed anymore, they’re excess dogs.”

Source: The Tribune-Democrat: Bust brings puppy-mill problem to light


While I'd like to see commercialized breeding banned entirely, I'm not too thrilled with breed-specific bans, or any legislation singling out a single breed of dog, as frequently happens with pit bulls. Some Massachusetts legislators are planning a hearing next week to consider crackdowns on certain breeds of dogs, including the possible outlaw of breeds linked most frequently to attacks. I'll sum this nonsense up with a quote that mirrors my own thoughts on the issue:

"It's prejudiced to put a ban on a breed," said Milford Animal Control Officer Rochelle Thomson. "It's all about the individual animal - each one should be judged themselves."

All that said, if we didn't breed animals for our own ends in the first place, this wouldn't even be an issue.

Source: MetroWest Daily News: State may consider banning pit bulls


On to some more positive legislation, Indian Gov. Mitch Daniels signed an animal cruelty bill on Friday that would make it a "Class D felony, punishable by up to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine, to kill an animal with the intent of threatening, intimidating, coercing or terrorizing a household family member." "Deviate sexual conduct" with an animal is now also a Class D felony. I can only say "finally," to that. Isn't all sexual conduct with animals deviate? Despite Peter Singer's assurance that sexual relations with other species is not transgressive if no cruelty is involved, I don't see how you can make an honest case for mutual consent. Besides, if animals are not ours to use for food, clothing, or any other self-serving purpose, why on earth would it be okay to have sex with them?

Oh, the Google hits that will bring up this post now...

Source: The News-Sentinel: Daniels signs minimum wage, animal cruelty bills (AP)


Next up is a rather lengthy op-ed condemning the trial in Vienna over granting a chimp named Hiasl certain rights previously granted only to humans. Now, this trial has been controversial for numerous reasons, including the complaint that all animals should be granted the right to life, liberty and happiness.

But this piece is rather specious in its straw man set-up, pitting this trial against the neglect of deprived humans around the world, as if one cannot simultaneously move forward in various areas of ethical consideration. One need not neglect animals to aid humans, and vice versa. The authors don't even seem to understand what rights are!

I wish I had more time to deconstruct this piece, because it is a grievous wrong to attack any justice movement solely to raise awareness of the plight of others. There are more constructive ways to make a case for compassion.

Source: OpEdNews.com: Primate Worship? Or Depo-Privations?


A big thumbs-up to Colorado State University's Tissue Engineering Laboratory for working to reduce the use of animals in research.

"As a researcher, I want to understand tissue cellular responses and develop a greater capacity to mitigate or prevent damage," said Dr. Tom Eurell, veterinarian and expert in toxicology and immunology and director of the laboratory. "As a veterinarian, I want to minimize or eliminate painful experiments in animals. Tissue engineering allows me to do both

It's nice to see movement forward in this area. The article tells readers that "recent developments in soft tissue research, including corneas, skin and muscle, can greatly reduce the number of animals used to test compounds and research tissue repair after trauma." While it would be preferable to end animal experimentation based on their right not to be used as a lab tool, I'm sleep just fine if it can be ended even sooner through replacement technologies. In effect, the race to find these replacements is a tacit acknowledgment that animals have a right to not be used this way; we're just not willing as a society to state it openly until it serves our interests to do so.

Source: High Plains/Midwest Ag Journal: CSU engineers tissues to reduce use of animals in research


I always enjoy seeing headlines like Rodeos cruel, unnatural: RSPCA (ABC News Australia). Drive that point home!

It's a pretty short, straightforward article, with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals restating its "strong opposition to rodeos" ahead of last weekend's State of Origin international rodeo in Melbourne. The RSPCA's president, Dr. Hugh Wirth, said the government should go further than regulating rodeos, arguing that they should be banned altogether:

"What we're saying is that it is morally wrong to make horses buck and for humans to be riding cattle just for human entertainment, its shades of the Roman Colosseum."

Here's a bright, organic carrot of encouragement to Dr. Wirth!


On that note, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus officials have cried foul about pending legislation in Connecticut to ban the use of common elephant-herding tools, saying that it would end their appearances in the state. Cry me a river.

Oh, wait. This is about money. Silly me.

Circus officials said the economic impact if it cancels annual runs in Hartford and Bridgeport would be about $2.6 million, including $200,000 in state and local taxes and $400,000 in locally purchased supplies.

Gotta love it. The circus is going to boycott Connecticut if they ban bullhooks. Is it just me, or is that the essence of what this is all about? Not delighting audiences, and it's certainly not appreciating and respecting animals. No, as always, it's about greed, pure and simple.

If you're looking for a juicy quote from this piece, I'm happy to oblige you:

...for them to say they won't come to Connecticut is like saying 'we won't bring our corporation into the state unless we can beat up our employees.'

(part-time activist Karen Laski)

But let's not forget something very important. The real issue here is about the use of elephants in the first place, not just the tools used in their abuse. Priscilla Feral, president of the Connecticut-based Friends of Animals puts the issue into sharp relief:

"I really see it as nonsensical, because it purports to regulate the treatment of animals," Feral said. "Whether the bullhook is banned or not, you have to deprive the animal of its freedom. They're hoping to regulate the circus to make it palatable. We're saying animal acts have to go because depriving animals of their freedom is the mistreatment."

Source: The Connecticut Post: Circus claims law will end state visits


I hope this collection of top animal stories from around the world will tide you over until I am free to post again. As always, comments are welcome, but not required!

Labels: animal agriculture, animal cruelty, animal law, animal rights, circus, companion animals, dogs, elephants, horse slaughter, horses, pets, primates, puppy mills, rodeo

Newsweek | April 23, 2007 Issue: Know Thyself—Man, Rat or Bot

I don't really like reporting favorably on research involving animals, but we can't just ignore the knowledge gained from behavioral tests. As an animal-friendly person, I'm also inclined to be more interested in information that may one day help us decide to stop breeding and keeping animals captive for research altogether.

This story gets into artificial intelligence (AI), which is a bit of a distraction for my purposes (though certainly fascinating), but the first page focuses on a behavioral test purportedly demonstrating that rats--like "higher mammals" such as rhesus monkeys and dolphins--are capable of reflecting on their internal mental states or, in other words, they are capable of knowing "when they don't know."

For a society in which most people think of the average animal as dumb as a rock, such insights could rock some ethical foundations and bolster arguments for animal rights. Still, we'll have to get past some rather insipid thinking, like the head-shaking ending of this article. Like most Newsweek stories that would seem to hold positive news for animals, it ends on a disappointing note:

As self-awareness dawns on machines and as scientists find it in animals, it may be that vegetative patients are not the only ones whose glimmers of consciousness can be dismissed as nothing special.

In other words, Newsweek science writer Sharon Begley runs the opposite direction with this information. It's ludicrous to me that she could interpret these results as meaningless, or nothing special, though I suspect this is why AI was brought into the discussion in the first place.

If a program can be aware of its own "thoughts" and we laugh at the notion of giving software rights, surely it's laughable to give animals rights on this basis, too, at least according to Begley. But it's a total straw man argument, as non-human animals have an inner life well beyond mere programming logic and, what's more, they have feelings. It is the sum total of their self awareness that impels us to recognize the rights of animals to be treated as individuals and to not treat them as things.

Articles such as this one seem strangely to be out to actually block progress toward this acceptance under the guise of detached scientific thinking. To me, it's just incomprehensible, inhumane, and inhuman to dismiss the consciousness of non-human beings as "nothing special."

Labels: animal ethics, animal intelligence, animal rights

Thanks to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, U.S. Representatives Christopher Shays (R-CT) and Tom Lantos (D-CA) are aware of the cruelty involved in rodeos, and now the politicians are taking the Army to task over the $2 million it spends annually to sponsor rodeos, citing animal cruelty concerns.

While perhaps a small handful of individuals will have their eyes opened to the suffering of animals in live entertainment and will no longer support it, and while the Army may well withdraw financial support of the industry, nothing meaningful would be gained on behalf of the animals if this is successful. Sponsors will be found elsewhere and rodeos will continue on, seeing as how there has been no fundamental challenge to their existence.

Rooting arguments in cruelty and welfare might raise some awareness of animal suffering in the general public (for those that are more inclined to believe PETA's stance on cruelty than the industry's stance on welfare), and a very small handful of people might even be moved to abandon some exploitive lifestyle choices, but the foundations of animal exploitation that allow rodeos and bull-riding to continue operating remain completely unshaken.

It's a conflict not unlike what we see with the fast food industry. While in this case welfare improvements have the potential to make a direct impact on animals' quality of life, they are minor, and the victims are still doomed to life as a commodity and all that is inherent in being treated as someone's property, such as the opportunity for abuse. So McDonald's and Burger King adopt the tiniest of welfare improvements, but animals continue to be viewed as commodities for our consumption. Without challenging the tenets of our traditional subjugation of animals, the institutions go nowhere.

I've heard and read the statements of a number of people who argue that it's better for exploited animals to have lived for a short time and to become a sandwich filling than to never have lived at all, but I have never been able to find justification for this. Their genes are tinkered with, they are pumped full of hormones, and their lives are generally unnaturally short, cruel, and entirely free of self-determination. How is that preferable to never even knowing what existence is? If you could get me to believe that never being brought into existence is a form of eternal torture, alleviated only by being born, you might get me to think about this differently. But, as far as we all know, if you don't exist, you can't suffer. If you don't exist, you cannot be treated as a means to some other entity's ends.

With this in mind, let's examine some statements from animal exploiters in entertainment. One bullrider was recently quoted as saying

"If they don't buck in the rodeo, they're Big Macs," said Soksoda, who owns five bulls himself. "If I was a bull, I'd rather be out here."

This is a logical fallacy, a false dilemma. The bulls, if they had real choice, they most likely would prefer other options more suited to their interests, if not the option to have never been bred into the world at all. They would most certainly prefer to neither wind up as a Big Mac nor as captive, exploited entertainment. Where in those two options are the bulls' interests taken into consideration? The only acknowledgment of a bull's interests given is that, in the conflict in which humans place bulls, the bull's sole desire is to get that "cowboy" off his back. While it might be in the best interests of the bull to do this, it would certainly be in the better interests of the bull not to place him in this conflict in the first place.

Yet a spokeswoman for Professional Bull Riders states that "These are bulls that buck and enjoy bucking," emphasizing that they've been bred for this behavior, as if animals are machines that can be manufactured to do just one thing over and over again, and have no other needs or desires. As if animals ought to be bred for any other species' purposes in the first place. Honestly, people. These bulls--if given an option--would likely skip the bucking, preferring like most animals to do a lot more eating, sleeping, and mating.

Clearly the core problem is the use of animals as commodities for our own ends. Even if it was possible for bull-riding, calf-roping, or steer-wrestling to be done without cruelty (and let's not kid ourselves; it isn't), it is inherently inhumane and exploitive to keep an animal captive and to use that animal as entertainment so that humans can make a fortune off a non-humans' misfortune. Welfare campaigns that fail to focus on this fundamental inhumanity fall short of what is necessary to transform society into a more humane world for everyone.

Labels: abolition, animal cruelty, animal rights, animal welfare, bull-riding, PETA, rodeo

U.S. News & World Report | To The Contrary: Viewpoint on Animal Rights

Bonnie Erbe is heartened by recent "media references to animals that suggest perhaps America's attitude toward basic animal rights is maturing," and I would like to think she is right. It certainly does seem these days that there is a subtle, but seismic shift underway in our society, despite strong and mounting resistance from those with the most to lose when animals gain the respect and protection they so deserve from us.

Among other stories in which Erbe finds hope for animals, she cites a listener comment on NPR's All Things Considered, which expressed sadness at the use of elephants in circuses. She follows this up with a mention of a New York Times story I linked in yesterday's news update. While I didn't find much to celebrate in that piece, Erbe noted that free-range farming is less inhumane than factory farming. That didn't exactly wow me. But then, as if to prove her own point that America's attitude toward basic animal rights is maturing, she followed this concession up with the following essential observation:

...if the reason for bringing an animal into this world is to profit from its slaughter, there is little humanity in that.

Indeed.

Labels: animal ethics, animal rights

Note: I tried posting this in the comments at Inspired Protagonist, but was experiencing grave technical errors that prevented me from doing so. I have modified my opening for this post to reflect that it is being posted at AAFL instead.

I'd like to thank Geoff for inviting me over to The Inspired Protagonist to chime in on Mr. White's response to my original entry. I'd also like to thank readers who have taken the time to share their thoughts there in the comments section.

I am, frankly, a little concerned that my post may not have been well-read, but was rather reacted to as a generic critique of Heifer International. I infer this because a number of my points are either avoided or simply missed by Mr. White in formulating his response.

Anyone that takes the time to read my post can see quite plainly that a) I'm male (Hi, my name is Eric), b) I do propose alternatives, and c) I provide a link to support the contention that Heifer International is doing more to pave the way for an animal-based agriculture in the developing world than merely providing "livestock" and skills to people in need.

The reason Mr. White and I may not find common ground, despite Geoff's request that we try to do so, is that Heifer International at its very core considers animals to be livestock, meant for our use, whereas animal rights philosophy, in finding that animals exist for their own purposes, considers the common view of animals inherently unjust.

I mentioned that this philosophy can be somewhat more problematic when advocating in developing countries, as often people square off animal rights against human rights in a false dichotomy. But Mr. White seems to have misunderstood my meaning. I never called people who believe animals are less important than humans "fanatic." Such a view is, of course, the dominant paradigm of our time.

I merely lamented that, when attempting to espouse animal rights when humans are suffering, people who still see nonhuman animals as things instead of individuals generally argue that humans are more important than nonhumans, rather than seeing that one need not pit the two against one another. One can help humans without harming animals. My point in identifying the common (often knee-jerk) response against animal rights in this arena was to point out that, so far, this sort of third-way thinking has been sadly absent.

Unfortunately, the same mindset that pits animals against humans highlights the very same deep-seated beliefs that Heifer International espouses, namely that animals are ours do with as we please.

But the power and strength to subdue animals and bend them to our will does not make it right to do so. We are a powerful and intelligent species, it's true. And that is why it is ever more incumbent upon us to find ways not to exploit animals, and to implement compassionate alternatives.

Beyond the philosophical reasons, there are still numerous concrete objections to the use of animals in agriculture, even at this small scale. Mr. White seems to have missed my observation that helping out at this level provides a foundation for the growth of livestock industries in these areas in the future (he's being disingenuous if he suggests that profit-challenged industries aren't salivating over the potential to exploit developing economies as Europe and the U.S. become less desirable places to raise and slaughter animals). In other words, contributing to Heifer International now lays the foundation for a society that views animal flesh as a commodity and, as that society grows, so will its flesh consumption, along with all the negative environmental, health, and animal issues attendant to modern "animal agriculture."

Again, because Mr. White seems to have missed it, I also originally suggested a number of alternatives, including giving to Food for Life or VegFam and reclaiming the deserts. In fact, a number of projects have already done this quite successfully, and you can see links to just a small handful of these in my original post as well (Here's an additional permaculture website).

Remember that, despite the fact that we may not eat exactly the same food, nonhumans drink the same water as humans, and contribute to desertification. Even in our own country the aquifers are being drained at an alarming rate, with a substantial portion of that water going to "domesticated" nonhumans and the food they eat. Why put all those resources into animals, when they are not an energy efficient source of nutrition for humans? It's rather well known these days that the lower you eat on the "food chain," the more efficient and sustainable your diet is.

Bearing all this in mind, I'd suggest that Heifer International promotes reliance on livestock, rather than self-reliance. That is a dangerous position to place people whom you're trying to help become self-sufficient and to grow into a prosperous society in the long-term.

If anything, developing countries offer people that want to help an opportunity to take the lessons we've learned in our own cultures to help others grow in ways that are truly sustainable, from the ground up. That means not hooking them on the animal-based agriculture that--with its contributions to global warming emissions, deforestation, and competition for resources--threatens the very survival of the planet we all share.

Labels: animal agriculture, animal rights, environment, hunger relief

While I wasn't able to attend the first night of the 21st Annual International Compassionate Living Festival due to a scheduling conflict (and I heard that I missed out on a great keynote by Dan Piraro), I did make it for the entire day Saturday, and it was a wonderful day.

One great thing about the festival, themed "The Strength of Many," was the focus. All the talks and panels were conducted in one room, so I didn't have to worry about missing something by having to choose from among multiple intriguing options. Of course, it's a smaller festival than the one I attended last year, AR2005, with a showing of about 250 and fewer exhibitors. But I did enjoy the slightly more cerebral tone, what with writers, lawyers, professors, and philosophers making up a good part of the discussion.

I would have preferred a little more time for Q&As, and to hear fewer self-contained discussions that could have been from any conference on animal issues, but even those were quite interesting, and the whole day was generally pretty motivating and informative. I'd go into more detail, but I have such limited time right now, and couldn't really do them justice in blurb form. I will take a moment to highlight two of the presentations I felt were particularly relevant to why we were in that room. One of them dealt with non-human primates, and aggressive efforts to include them in our circle of protection, since they are so demonstrably like us in so many ways. The other, from WorldWatch Institute's Mia MacDonald, highlighted just how grim the global picture is when it comes to the export of Western-style diets and animal agriculture. While not nearly as entertaining or celebratory as Erica Meier's fabulous presentation on Compassion Over Killing's successful battery-caged hen campaign against misleading labels -- it was, in fact, quite sobering after all the talk of success -- MacDonald's presentation may have succeeded in motivating people rather than depressing them, despite the magnitude of the problem.

I also had the opportunity on Saturday to catch up with or meet a lot of people, including all the speakers I mention elsewhere in this entry, as well as Tom Regan, IFAW's Julie Janovsky, Lorri Bauston, Beverly Kaskey, Miyun Park, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Gene Bauston, Dana Lyons, hard-working local activists that I've met at demos or previous conferences, people I've met through the marvel that is "The Internets," as well as making some new friends. There were a few people missing I was surprised not to see there, and a few that I wish could have made it out from the East Coast, but as it was, I had a very full day, with lots of good energy.

Lunch was important in maintaining my energy level as well, of course. The Renaissance Monatura's hotel kitchen did a pretty good job with that. Dessert was Temptation's vegan ice cream, including Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough or Fair Trade Organic Chocolate. I'd been wanting to try this brand for some time, but I can't seem to find here in Los Angeles just yet. So I was excited to try the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, which turned out to be pretty good. Sadly, though unsurprisingly, the chocolate was gone before I could try some.

Dinner wasn't quite as good as lunch, unfortunately, though dessert was a chocolate cake with berries, and it's hard to mess that up. I got enough to eat, though, and enjoyed having the opportunity to see and hear Dana Lyons perform live. He even got many of us to sing along to a couple of songs, including one of my all-time favorites, "Cows With Guns." Afterward, Jeffrey Masson gave a fantastic keynote. I'm looking forward to hearing him speak again, and will have to get around to reading one of his books. As I mentioned in my review of Capers in the Churchyard, his Forward alone was reason to purchase the book. He has a really great way with words, and he's not one of those people that can only wield them on the page, either.

I did end up hanging out for a while at the hotel bar afterward, generally having a blast with movement leaders, dedicated activists, major supporters, and newer, younger activists alike. In retrospect, it was really cool how all those types could come together around a table and enjoy themselves, veering from deep philosophical discussions to absurdity throughout the night. I think those experiences are essential to developing stronger bonds with one another, especially since so much of the day is spent listening to speakers and maybe asking a question or two. Even at meals, you're limited in your ability to talk, since there's a speaker at each meal, and the tables are big enough to prevent conversation with more than three or four people.

The next day, which was to end at about 12:30pm, I arrived just after Diane Beers got started, slipping into the conference room with oatmeal, fruit, and some coffee, and trying not to spill it on my self or my neighbor as I found a convenient seat. Beers' talk provided some fascinating historical context for the animal rights movement, both with respect to other justice movements, as well as its own lesser-known history.

The closing speakers were Kim Stallwood and Tom Regan who, as you would expect the key people behind the event, really delivered on the promise of the "Strength of Many" theme today.

One of the expectations I had going in to the conference was that, with all these minds together, we'd be looking at animal protection from a fundamental public policy perspective, not just discussing what happens to animals and making sure people go vegan or get out there and do demonstrations or whatever.

When I originally went to the Animals & Society Institute's website to learn more about the conference, I got the impression that this event was going to be about addressing root causes, perceptions, the big picture, all that sort of thing. You see, ASI is a think-tank focused on animal issues, and the sheer notion of an animal-focused think tank got me buzzing pretty good. It just made sense, considering how think tanks of all sorts pretty much dominate politics. Now, you can rail against that, and you can try to change that system. But, in the meantime, if think tanks are involved in shaping public policy, then this concerned citizen wants to see a think tank operating on behalf of the animals.

So, Kim Stallwood spent some time talking about what he is doing with The Animals' Platform, which could well play an important role in developing the frontier of animal representation and law. Take a look at the platform, and see what you can do at the local, regional, and national level to support it. As we have witnessed in the UK and, increasingly in the U.S., legal measures to protect animals can have some measure of success if there is a concerted effort behind their passage.

After a brief break, I was given the opportunity to let the attendees know about The 3rd Annual Artivist Film Festival, which I also posted about here last week, and that was pretty well received, which seems only natural. After all, a large film festival that provides day-long exposure to animal rights issues in the context of social and environmental justice is pretty rare, especially for a festival of this size.

After that announcement, I had the pleasure of introducing Tom Regan for his closing presentation. It was an interesting take and, cued by the subject of the talk, I guess it was fitting that it felt much like a sermon. Not a boring, dry sermon, mind you, but I had never seen so much open talk of religion versus secularism and all that in an AR context, so in that sense it was a novel experience for me. The gist of Tom's message was that with such mighty rivers coming together to create a powerful, battering waterfall against animal rights, the goal of animal-friendly activists ought to be to bring more into the fold from the tributaries feeding those rivers, increasing our own strength and, in doing so, drying out the rivers altogether and removing the sources of animal exploitation.

So, that was a great note to end on, and after a couple of brief closing statements, the conference somewhat abruptly came to a close. Somehow, that didn't feel right, like it was ending too soon. Yes, I had missed Friday evening, but that was just a few hours. With only one full day between two half-days, the 21st Annual International Compassionate Living Festival really was a whirlwind. And, while that makes it manageable and can help prevent burnout (which I'm sure is what affected me at AR2005 last year), I found myself wanting to delve deeper into this issues. To not just talk, but to achieve something. To set goals, and to make a plan.

Of course, there are many ways for us to do this outside of the festival, and one of them is through The Animals' Platform. So, again, please give that a visit as soon as you can, especially with elections coming up in a month. There's a lot still to be done for the animals.

Labels: animal rights, events

The Boston Globe

This guy was (allegedly) so dumb that he didn't think through the notion that animal rights activists would never burn down a pet shop without saving all the animals inside first. Duh:

Yesterday, police arrested Thanh Trinh , 42, of Charlestown, the store's manager, along with two alleged accomplices. Trinh pleaded not guilty yesterday to charges of willful burning of a building, malicious killing of animals, cruelty to animals, larceny over $250, and larceny from a building. He was detained without bail and transfered to Bridgewater State Hospital for a mental evaluation. He will have a dangerousness hearing on Oct. 13.

His alleged accomplices -- Dennis Nickerson , 21, of Somerville, and Zachary Azzam , 17, of Cambridge -- pleaded not guilty to the same charges and were held on $1,000 bail.

Of course, with not guilty pleas, this will be interesting to see through. I'm not sure what the maximum penalty on this could be, as of yet, but I do hope that he's found competent for trial and penalized to the maximum extent.

It bothers me that anyone at any point believed this could have been related to true animal activism:

The store's owner -- Dianne San Filippo , who was also at the scene -- wondered why animal rights activists would burn pets to death. ``Is that kind of death better than exploitation?" she asked.

This type of confusion is one more reason I'd prefer to see less destruction of physical property by actual animal advocates (not that there's really all that much to begin with), and more education of the public, who ought to be well-enough informed at some point to be able to see through something as phony as this.

Labels: animal rights, companion animals, pets

Listen to this entry as a podcast (MP3, 30MB)

Since my review of Capers in the Churchyard, I've been attempting to put together a follow-up with commentary inspired by and cut out of that review for practical purposes.

Lee Hall's book has certainly come out at just about the right time. Over the past year, since I attended the Animal Rights 2005 conference, it seems the conflict between animal welfare versus rights continued by the book has fomented to a point where people are ready to discuss it openly, which despite the apparent conflict is a good thing for the animal protection movement. You can't deal with an issue unless you discuss it openly first.

In recent weeks, the subject was examined at AR2006, taken up in an Erik's Diner podcast, picked apart in an essay by Vegan Outreach's Matt Ball, and it dominates the most recent issue of Satya. I strongly recommend visiting those links as a companion to what I'm contributing here.

What follows is a sort of essay in the spirit of this continued debate, cobbled together and pared down from notes provoked by the book's ideas as I reviewed it back at the beginning of August. I'm only just now able to carve out enough time to shape this into something cohesive enough to share. At over 6,000 words, it was a bit unwieldy to put together with my limited time, and should not be taken as any sort of dissertation. For the sake of convenience, you might want to print it out for later reading if you're not interested in downloading the podcast (AAC, 16MB) for your portable digital device (you can subscribe at the iTunes Music Store for my very infrequent podcasts). Apologies in advance for the quality of recording. It is literally all over the map, with some places sounding great, and others sounding like dirt. I have no idea why. This is my first podcast using the new features of the most updated version of Apple's GarageBand, which is designed for podcasting, but I haven't really had time to study it, and right now my most pressing concern is getting this piece up and out there.

Apologies also for a few small, last-minute edits to the piece after recording and uploading the podcast. I don't have time to redo the entire thing, but my thinking continues even now. I'm still sifting through my thoughts on this complex issue, and feel that in writing a piece to comment on and even balance my review with some criticism I may have extended myself further than I'm fully able to stand by. I really haven't had as much time as I'd like to fully develop the thoughts jotted down as mere notes a month ago.

For example, though I'm a huge fan of large welfare organizations ending battery cage egg operations, foie gras production, and promoting vegan diets with their literature and media, I'm not a fan of animal protection organizations condoning the sale of any animal product just because certain conditions have been met. In my mind, protecting animals means not allowing them to be exploited or consumed at all.

I don't think having that opinion means you necessarily have to be against improvements in conditions at factory farms, or that you have to avoid stores that profit from animal exploitation, but I think it does mean you have to step back as an animal advocate and say, "What am I doing to actually stop people from eating these products altogether? What campaigns would reach people where they're at in their thinking, convince them that even less inhumanely produced animal products are still cruel and end their consumption of animal products entirely, rather than sending them to some humane-certified animal product?"

Hopefully mine will be only one of many voices taking the conversation beyond this adversarial schism. Please contribute to the discussion in the comments for this post and/or at the Satya forums, especially since their next issue will keep this subject alive for some time.

To refresh, Capers in the Churchyard focuses on failings of both militant animal activism (ALF, et al) and welfare-oriented approaches (HSUS, et al) to make the case for animal rights to the public, focusing as they do on animals as victims, and exploiting them in their own way to create support for what they do.

Now, in summarizing so succinctly, I've already done an injustice to the book. Would that Hall had warned readers similarly, as Capers roundly condemns numerous animal welfare organizations and even veg-oriented magazines without taking the opportunity to balance that criticism with a look at what they have accomplished on behalf of animals and continue to do, from lobbying against foie gras and horse slaughter to vegetarian and vegan outreach.

Of course, vegetarianism has been around far longer than factory farming. Many wise and revered figures have shunned the flesh of animals for reasons many animal-friendly people will find familiar and agreeable, primarily that killing another living being for no other reason than enjoying the taste of flesh is barbaric. Even the best welfare reforms will get us no further than our vegetarian forbearers. Where's the progress?

We will still have to consider the question of whether it is appropriate for a compassionate, self-aware civilization to traffic in the lives of autonomous, sentient creatures for our own gain, and that is ultimately the point of Capers in the Churchyard. Regardless of the status of animal welfare, that question underlies everything. Hall thus calls on activists to focus less on the mechanics of animal welfare and rescuing individual animals, and more on educating others on the need to abolish the injustice that puts all of the individual cases in a common context. In other words, not to make killing more palatable, but to end the killing. Or, as some have put it, not bigger cages, but empty cages.

Like Hall, I wholeheartedly advocate honest, ethical, non-violent efforts to move forward and spark a paradigm shift away from exploiting animals, and I agree that the intimidation tactics of the more militant liberationists will never lead to such a necessary shift. As Hall and others have wisely noted, people cannot be forced to change their minds by external pressure, violent or otherwise; they have to decide for themselves.

I agree also that when a society changes its values and withdraws its support for a system, the foundations that allowed the system to function will crumble, welfare reforms will no longer be necessary, nor will rescues, nor direct action. But I'm leery of a strategy that eliminates the opportunity to make palpable changes now, and to open the door to discussions that address the root rationale for animal exploitation, grounded in real-world scenarios like the foie gras campaign, for example.

Such a strategy would eliminate the gains achieved by dedicated and influential welfare advocates, who not only strive to improve the daily lives of animals that will for the forseeable future continue to be bred, mistreated, and slaughtered regardless of what we think about the practice, but who also raise awareness of animal conditions in the industry (and do greatly aggravate the industry with their successes), playing a vital role in pursuading many animal-friendly people to adopt a plant-based diet and beyond. This is to say nothing of many groups' efforts on behalf of companion animals and especially wild animals, which is a dreadful omission from Capers, I dare say.

A lot of the current backlash within the animal protection movement I referred to from the outset is against the dialectic between animal rights and animal welfare, with many calling it an over-simplification. I tend to concur. I don't know many animal activists that intend to settle for bigger cages once that victory is complete. That's one step in a much bigger goal. The debate appears not to be over the goal, but the approach, and that's where Hall's biggest criticisms are aimed.

The very first chapter of Capers argues that those who pursue a means-to-an-end strategy breed an atmosphere of distrust, whether it's the militant activists that will do anything to bring down vivisectors or whalers, because all's fair in war, or the media-chasing tactics of the animal welfare groups that trot out spokespeople to claim success on behalf of the victimized animals we're here to protect, and if you send your donation now we'll be able to help so many more. After all, what is incremental welfare, but another means to and end (i.e., abolition)?

Hall asks "How can you trust someone with that brand of integrity?" Everyone becomes a pawn subservient to the charismatic "swashbuckling" activist's hierarchical message, which Hall calls "one of most effective silencers of the ethically consistent activist's voice." In pointing out the ego-driven nature of these individuals, Hall criticizes the words and actions of some of the animal rights movement's darlings, but it's hard not to see the truth at the core of what she's saying. In a world that celebrates means-to-an-end tactics, that almost cries out for leaders and followers, victims and heroes, activists that play into these constructs -- who play by the 'rules" -- actually validate them.

The messages that swashbuckling figures like Capt. Paul Watson and Dr. Jerry Vlasak send the public may gratify activists, as some sort of success for having broken through, Hall argues, but those people misunderstand animal rights, and their messages could set activists back in their attempts to find common ethical ground with the public, who find them unrelatable, if not downright scary. "To agree with animal rights means, at essence," Hall says, "to repudiate violence, and to transcend the habit of seeing others as instruments to our ends, of taking advantage." She specifically words it this way to include all beings, not just non-human animals. In other words, animal rights isn't just about animals; it's also about us. Animal rights is about seeking a world in which respect prevails and love without coercion is possible. It's about challenging our hierarchical paradigm. Doing so will impact subjected peoples and animals alike.

Rather than challenging this paradigm, Hall says, welfare organizations have actually become gatekeepers -- arbiters might be more accurate -- letting their members know what is okay to eat, sometimes going so far as to certify products made from animals, so long as the product falls within the boundaries of their members' meat- and egg-eating ethics, allowing the root cause of animal exploitation to continue: the accepted culture of domination over animals, of objectifying them to serve our ends. Thus these organizations codify the human right to use animals, as long as the property is treated with care, whereas true welfare would not allow for animals to be fashioned into commodities at all.

In other words, to the average consumer, if a large animal welfare organization (often called animal rights by the media) says that a producer is doing the right thing by, say, euthanizing chickens humanely, then it must be okay to eat at KFC, or so the thinking goes. This is not an argument that should be shooed away. A rather large number of people actually think this way. As long as the animals have a good life and die gently, as if in their sleep, what's the big deal?

There is currently no animal rights answer to this question that has successfully resonated with the majority of consumers, which is why they go right on eating animal products, if only those that are organic, grass-fed, free range, cage-free, etc., etc. I talk to non-vegans constantly (most of whom don't know I'm vegan), and the pervasive attitude is that animals are ours to do with what we want, and that our only moral obligation is to make their lives as free of suffering as possible before we take them.

Hall implies that part of the reason welfare organizations capitalize on this paradigm and validate animal husbandry improvements is to grow their organizations for financial reasons, much as the Center for Consumer Freedom accuses them of doing (this after criticizing the CCF earlier in the book). After all, they don't want to turn off potential donors. A lot of grassroots activists criticize the bigger organizations for their concern over turning off the mainstream and losing donors. Some even go so far as to consider it a betrayal. As if the primary goal of these dedicated career activists is to make money and perpetuate their jobs.

To be fair, most of these organizations do utilize imagery of suffering animals in order to raise campaign funds, but most also fund operations that promote veganism, either as part of their organization, or by providing financial support to smaller organizations and offering up their media libraries for free (without requests for credit) to simply raise awareness so that people might pause to think before ordering a hamburger the next time they eat. One only has to read the criticisms of PETA and HSUS among the more strident pro-meat writers to see that they all know the ultimate goal of both organizations is the elimination of all animal consumption. It's not a well-kept secret, after all.

However, it appears that Hall would consider leaning on this imagery a misuse of animals that does more to perpetuate the perception of animals as victims than to liberate them. Of course, with approximately 10 billion land animals killed in the U.S. every year for food, I have a hard time arguing with the notion that these animals are victims.

Under this same basic reasoning it is not acceptable to turn farmed animals into cuddly pets or mascots at sanctuaries, who use images of captive and rescued animals to raise large amounts of funding for campaigns against foie gras, gestation crates, and other cruel practices. I have little problem with supporting organizations that have successfully helped outlaw foie gras, as an example. Not only is a glaring example of cruelty for luxury on the defense and losing, but the controversy stirred up by these bans circle around a slippery slope argument ("What's next? Hens have it just as bad."). This is taking the conversation exactly where it needs to go. "Yeah, how about those hens?"

And, while it can be a bit infantilizing for the animals, I don't really have a problem with humans falling for cuddly imagery. As the movie The Witness demonstrated, sometimes an unlikely human-animal bond can be the catalyst for a paradigm shift. Hall does not provide an alternative catalyst. Don't get me wrong. I'm not looking for a silver bullet here, but it's remarkable how many people respond favorably to the comparison between species we call pets and the species we call food when they really think about it. I certainly don't want to see cows, chickens, and pigs raised to be companion animals, but if consumers can see these beings as more than meat and cheese machines, then we're really on to something.

As if welfare organizations are so far off-course, Hall recommends returning to vegan advocacy, making people aware of their complicity in horrors they never knew or wanted to know were imaginable. Funny, but haven't I already established that most of them do this, too, and quite successfully?

All large organizations -- private or public, for-profit or non-profit -- have their pros and cons. PETA, in my view, frequently goes out on a limb to raise awareness. This occasionally results in startling or refreshing insight or perspectives for a small number of people, but more often brings mockery and derision on the subject of animal rights, which many dedicated and decidedly less controversial activists work so hard every day to have taken seriously. PETA means well, of course, but some of its campaigns have arguably made the efforts of less outrageous campaigners more difficult while achieving controversy, increased donations, and little more than prurient outside interest, if any.

That said, and at the same time, PETA offers one of the most aggressive campaigns for promoting a cruelty-free lifestyle, with free veg starter kits, mainstream campaigns to generate debate in newspapers or even amongst friends and family, provocative media like up-to-the-minute music videos, online support, and a free library of devastating animal footage and photos from inside factory farms and slaughterhouses. "Meet Your Meat," in fact, is one of the most powerful tools I've seen turn people away from animal products, and it's available free online at their site, YouTube, and just about everywhere for anyone to copy and show to friends or use for outreach activities. As if to prove my point, as of the moment I'm writing this, PETA has in the upper right-hand corner of its home page a link to its Animal Liberation Project, which reminds us that we are all animals.

If, as Hall maintains, this media becomes fetishized by some in the movement as a way of holding the animals continually victimized, and thus exploiting the animals' plight for further donations, the fact is that this footage will become moot if the conditions no longer exist, and as long as the footage represents the vast majority of real conditions, it is what will continue to give the average, uninformed person a window into barbarities that are more and more restricted from public access, for obvious reasons. As such, it will generate donations that are used to further increase this awareness and fight factory farming conditions. Frankly, if it weren't for the photos and video footage that I saw one fateful day (the majority of which surely were most likely offered online by PETA), I don't know if I would be vegan and advocating for animal rights today. And I'm positive I speak for a lot of people when I say that. It's hard to conceive of people being moved purely by abstract reasoning, or even numbers. But to see animal cruelty with one's own eyes is to abhor it.

Hall certainly has a point in finding fault with welfare approaches that offer businesses and concerned consumers the appearance of "guilt-free meat." "Ethical consumerism" is a rather hot category right now, led by a massive surge in organics, and I have zero interest in making it easier for corporations to sell people products they don't need, especially when they result in death for billions of sentient creatures every year, but I do think that the growing awareness of the origins of one's food is a pivotal shift in the modern history of animal advocacy.

Just as people have wanted to know how their clothes were manufactured, are rejecting the political status quo, and are seeking the truth about global warming, many are now seeking to know what goes into producing their food. This is an opportunity to guide people to make choices that are better aligned with their own compassionate views, and welfare-oriented organizations are better-suited to reach out to these people than militants, if for no other reason than the language is couched in terminology that doesn't scare them. The first thing that concerns people around those going vegan -- friends, family, spouses -- is whether the new vegan is going to become all radical and militant and unrelatable. People may want to choose a more compassionate lifestyle, but they don't want to lose all their friends, alienate their family, or change or lose their job. It's just too huge.

There is something to be said for picking apart the carnist mindset with different tactics. After all, you can't very well expect people to jump across a vast canyon in hopes they'll land next to you on the other side. One only has to read what the average meat-eater has to say about vegetarians to realize this. After all, the vast majority of the world continues to see our dominion over animals as perfectly normal and acceptable. But some tactics seem to cause more harm than good. Attacking meat-eaters physically or by calling them murderers or comparing them to Nazis will not win them to your way of thinking. To change people's paradigms, you have to meet them where they are, take them by the hand, and walk them across the bridge.

Even this doesn't guarantee a new wave of veganism. While some people will choose to eliminate as many animal products as is sanely practical when confronted with the realities of modern animal agriculture, others may only decide we've gone far off course from their idyllic memory of Grandma and Grandpa's farm. Maybe they'll only go "flexitarian," or maybe they'll start purchasing meat raised and slaughtered organically and locally from ranchers they trust.

At least they're thinking about their food at this point, and they're exercising the power of their monetary vote. Perhaps they will be more open to the other problems of animal agriculture that do not go away with more environmentally sustainable and "humane" farming practices. They may well be receptive to arguments that animals reared in this way are still subjected to the horrors of the slaughterhouse, and may find that they can't abide that. There are simply some people that will not flip the switch from a meat-eating lifestyle to one devoid of animal products without first moving in that direction in a more subtle way.

Another valid concern is that people may give up, shut down, and just eat whatever's handy, simply because it's all too much. I've seen it happen with a lot of compassionate people facing the troubles in our modern world. They're overwhelmed by all that's crying out for their attention, but they just want to live their lives and make their monthly mortgage, and so on. They may not believe ignorance is bliss, but they have to create a dissociation in order to maintain the status quo. This is where it's important to keep reaching out, to continue supporting vegan businesses, so they'll be there to support potential vegans, making it easier than ever to not give up, to simply throw one's hands up and dismiss animal agriculture altogether without having to change one's entire life. It has to be easier to go vegan than to worry about whether this or that meat or dairy is humanely raised, or whether the advertising is snowing you. Animal welfare activism, with its incremental approach, moves the mainstream in this general direction.

This isn't to say that groups that focus on liberation and animal rights over animal welfare wouldn't have a place here as well; they most certainly would. While a lot of mainstream consumers might find it easier to slide into a plant-based lifestyle with nudges from welfare groups rather than rights groups, which require a broader paradigm shift that people resist without even realizing how deeply it scares them, this only demonstrates the necessity for rights or liberation organizations to continue their work. It must be easier to address people with liberation ideas after they've accepted that cruelty toward farmed animals is just as unacceptable as it is to companion animals, for instance.

I know that when I went vegan overnight years ago, I had not really considered animal testing, zoos, circuses, and all that. It started with removing my support from factory farming. In that sense, one could argue that I started out with an animal welfare viewpoint, though I never did not seek out more "humanely" raised animal products. That one day, I simply accepted that there was no need to eat animal products at all if it was possible to be healthy and happy without them. I also drew the connection early on between the many companion animals I'd had in my life and the animals we saw as food. I did not immediately look at these issues from an animal liberation framework or otherwise embrace all the complexities underlying a vegan point of view. These take time to develop, and came after being vegan for a while and doing a lot more reading.

I'm going to take a wild guess and assume a large number of experienced vegans followed a similar path, and I'd also go so far as to suggest it's a much easier, even more logical path to follow. One draws the connection between suffering and diet, and cuts it off, even without understanding the ripple effect inherent in that decision. That awareness comes later, and changes the way one looks at the world. The full paradigm shift may well not come until after going vegan, though I do think it's essential for staying vegan.

I'm convinced that many lapsed vegans give it up because they never rejected animal exploitation altogether. They make that initial leap to withdraw their support of cruelty. But as they discover cage-free eggs and similar products, they start consuming those items, thinking they're still rejecting cruelty, but in a more "reasonable" way.

This is why I think liberation and rights activism are so important. Liberation and rights concepts will continue to meet with a lot of resistance in the broader public eye, but where they have breakthrough potential is with new vegetarians and vegans, who are now highly receptive to pro-animal messages and may need some help seeing just how far the rabbit hole goes.

But embracing the concept of liberty and rights for animals does not necessarily preclude support for animal welfare work. True and complete animal welfare reform of both animal husbandry and slaughter necessitate dismantling factory farms and a creating a drastic reduction of animal product consumption out of sheer financial and physical necessity, which is what has the large-scale producers of animal products up in arms.

While there is concern that the expansion of non-factory-farmed animals in a sort of corporatized version of land-based family farming could endanger wildlife further, since such operations would require even more land for grazing, the limitations of this approach should be readily apparent. Even if we removed all wildlife from the United States, there simply wouldn't be enough land to sustain current levels of animal agriculture on a non-CAFO basis, which would lead to higher prices.

Imports from regions with laxer regulations would become more common and undercut U.S. businesses as people cling to the notion of cheap animal products, and we would be unable to compete with those businesses on any other front than the "humanely raised" aspect, for those willing to pay much more for that. Hardly a sustainable model, which has producers in this country fighting animal welfare to preserve their livelihoods.

Surely this is a strong position for animal welfare organizations to be in. Cargill, Tyson and their front groups can easily ridicule animal rights and "militant extremists" because the average consumer doesn't relate and, in many cases, disagrees with their goals, much less their tactics. On the other hand, most Americans agree with an obligation for better treatment of animals. This is where animal activists have the strongest connection with Americans, and it would be foolish to discard it simply because it does not directly serve the goal of abolition, especially if it means inconveniencing large-scale animal agriculture.

The big producers are aware of consumers' concern for animals, and exploit this with false imagery in all their ads. This provides a huge wedge for activists to drive between those companies and their customers. When compassionate, civilized people realize where their food comes from and reject en masse the propaganda of the industry, then the producers will have a huge problem, and that can only mean positive changes for animals as producers rally to meet the ethical demands of their consumers.

There is some concern that these for-profits will consistently outstrip non-profits with their ability to dream up novel uses for animals that create a moving target for welfare groups, whereas a fundamental approach to animal protection that rejects our right to exploit them as we see fit undercuts the basis for these companies' activities. If the public no longer wants to see animals used for any commercial reason, then it doesn't matter what novel product or "humane" reform they adopt, the public will reject the product.

What Hall argues for is a more concerted effort to build up this fundamental approach, to go to the underlying root mentality that justifies the use of animals whether they are in cages or not. Rather than focus on attacking the industry, cultivate an alternative viewpoint in popular culture, one that takes hold, gains energy, and becomes plausible to enough people to effect a paradigm shift. I like this idea, but how does an ethical animal rights activist convince people that the dominant paradigm is wrong, especially when so many people accept without question that our dominion over animals is simply a matter of course, an understood and widely agreed-upon way of things?

This is where the welfarists come in again. There already is a paradigm shift underway. It's not a wholesale shift toward not exploiting animals, but it is an intermediate step toward recognizing that animals are not machines and that we are obligated to treat them as thinking, feeling creatures. The shift is nascent, but it's taking off with the help of animal welfare organizations and their donors, gathering that energy to take hold, and it is having an effect on how people shop. As mentioned, some people are going veg, while others are buying animal products they feel are produced more humanely, which may even be recommended by groups claiming to advocate on behalf of animals.

Let's argue for a moment that this surge in consumer interest, as part of the overall "ethical eater" movement, gains hold and becomes the new dominant paradigm. We're a ways off from that, first of all. Second, the changes this would require from animal agriculture are so massive as to be unpredictable. How will the companies adapt to a flexitarian consumer base? Will the majority of their products end up going to China and other markets? Will ethical consumers allow animals to be treated the way they are now even for other markets? Or, much like the recent Congressional ban on horse slaughter suggests, will they legislate against factory farms in this country altogether? It's hard to say where this could lead us, but it's certain that even this slight paradigm shift would result in huge changes for animal agriculture, most of them generally positive for the animals who remain a part of the system.

As I argued earlier, increased awareness of animal sentience and consciousness raises moral questions that many thoughtful people will respond to by eliminating animal products from their lives as much as possible, as some already do. The difference in this new paradigm is that not only will this notion be more common and acceptable, but it will be more widespread, with a sizable marketplace to entice more people to the fold, all without necessarily requiring the acceptance of animal rights, per se.

As this marketplace grows, we will see the rise of a much more mindful population. Eating flesh will be looked down upon. Guardianship will take the place of ownership as animals finally gain standing for their own intrinsic worth. More advanced theories and laws guiding our treatment of animals will replace our primitive attitudes and legislation, where currently even welfare laws only scratch the surface.

In this new climate, the idea of providing liberty to animals will gain traction, as they become a major moral concern to a majority of humans. With the values of those that make the laws changed, the laws that hold animals captive will also change. We'll see exotic animals disappear from circuses and increased pressure on zoos to do more for the animals they keep in captivity, as well as their brethren in the wild. Present welfare codes specifying the use of animals will transform into laws governing our relationship to them altogether, no longer perceiving animals as commodities but as individuals, which is very much what Hall calls for in asking that we nurture an alternative viewpoint rather than merely opposing animal exploiters.

That said, the foundation needs to be laid in the lawbooks now, almost like training wheels. Look how difficult it is to get animals considered as more than mere property, much less for them to gain standing in the eyes of the law. We start where we're at or, in other words, we get where we're going by meeting people where they are.

We certainly don't get there by giving up and turning the majority into our enemy, which describes the out-sized public reaction to more militant animal activism, leading us back to the inspiration for Capers in the Churchyard.

Three of the activists implicated in the Newchurch grave robbery described by the book's title were convicted and sentenced last May to twelve years in prison, setting a precedent the likes of which, Hall argues, paves the way for animal industries and law enforcement agencies to increase surveillance on activists, pass new laws protecting corporations further, and even more severe punishments. We're already seeing these effects in the news. So, Hall argues, militant "direct action" is no more effective at changing the root thinking that allows for animals to be subjected to testing. It puts the focus instead on the corporations as victims and the activists as criminals and aggressors -- even terrorists -- and the animals get lost in the fray. In the long-run, these activists may well be harming more animals with their tactics.

Violence, intimidation, and criminal behavior have a negative effect. They don't change values; they harden them, like a turtle withdrawing into its defensive shell. Violence increases misunderstanding and ridicule and further obstruct mainstream acceptance. Despite the rejection for mainstream approval voiced by influential people within the movement that support these actions, animals will never be free without majority support of society.

The means-to-an-end reductionism in the logic of militant activists -- taking down HLS to end cruel lab experiments on animals, for example -- misses the big picture. As long as the government requires animal testing, some company is going to take on the job, and the government is going to take on the responsibility of ensuring their safety by drafting ever more draconian laws and spending more money on law enforcement, which also happens to benefit the companies that privately manage the prisons to which twenty-something activists may well be dispatched upon sentencing.

What's more, as the media freely associates these acts of intimidation with animal rights activists, the public is hardened even more to the notion of animal rights, and is more liable to support their institutions in stopping these crimes.

Widespread public support for animal liberation would change all this. But, as Hall suggests, no type of lab protest against using animals that people already eat will be broadly successful until consumers stop seeing these same animals as food, much less inferior. Given mainstream acceptance of the subjugation of pigs as porkchops, it's a small leap to harvest their organs for potential transplant into humans. Especially when one considers that an organ might save a life, while a porkchop might only fill a belly for a short while.

While my own path did indeed take me from rejecting animals in my food to rejecting other uses of animals, I'm not so sure the leap is as small as Hall suggests, at least not for everyone. There are a lot of people who realize they're only eating meat because they "like it," and consider maybe that's not a very good reason, but most of these same people are terrified of death and would be happy to sacrifice as many animal lives as researchers see fit for that speculative hope that some human benefit might come of it. After all, it's necessary.

With the current mindset, it certainly is. If we can conquer disease and death in humans, our society sees it as a moral obligation to do so, with the ends justifying the means (witness the disgraced researchers who violated rules of ethics in order to achieve "progress," much less the daily disposal of mice that have served their purpose). And yet, this is a depraved, morally bankrupt, and mentally disturbed view of life. It goes back to that vested interest, putting ourselves above others. Ugly, but true. One wonders how many people would be willing to sacrifice a few brain-dead humans if it meant a cure for cancer might be found.

We all know our deaths are inevitable, yet we discard millions of other animals annually in order to find a way to postpone it, as if someday we'll become so medically proficient as to become immortal, as if this is somehow desirable to us or our planet. Before all our technology allowed us to live longer lives, we maintained populations that were healthier for the environment, even if that meant some of us died from some pretty nasty and (now) easily curable diseases. These days, people live long enough to see their great, great-grandchildren, and the population of our species has risen to unsupportable numbers, with one billion living in poverty while about a billion live in affluence. Meanwhile, the rest of the planet's species are in decline, with many animals going extinct every day, and many more important species in a precipitous state of endangerment.

The popular mindset is that I'd have to be crazy not to want to prolong my life, but no one can give me a good reason, other than their own fear of dying. But what's so wrong about living a full, happy life and dying an honest, unprolonged death with a healthy attitude? You have to die sometime, after all. Why burden the public or your family with all the healthcare costs associated with (often unsuccessfully) fighting terminal disease? Why put your family through all the grief of suffering a cure almost as hazardous as the disease, only to relapse and go through it all over again a year later? Put a smile on your face, wish everyone goodbye, and die with dignity.

I realize such a well-adjusted approach to death is a lot to ask of people, and easier to say than do, but is it too much to ask that one become aware of what predisposes people to fall prey to many of these diseases, and to change their lifestyles to minimize their occurrence preventatively? After all, many of our most deadly Western diseases are diseases of affluence, stemming as they do from the environmental wastes of an affluent society, and the over-consumption of such unnecessary goods as processed food and animal proteins.

We're out of touch with our planet and ourselves. As Hall writes, "We've literally alienated ourselves from life." We've lost touch with the notion of living on a healthy, living planet, one that contains risks we're apparently unwilling to accept. When wildlife "invades" a housing development at the outer reaches of town, the people -- those that invaded the wild and attempted to tame the animals' habitat -- are made to be the victim, instead of admitting this is the price of never-ending expansion. These are all aspects of the same thinking, the mindset that if we keep on the path we're on, we'll eventually dig our way out of this hole, when we're only digging deeper. In other words, we attempt to solve our problems using the same thinking that created them. As Albert Einstein noted, that doesn't work so well.

Despite opposing some of Hall's criticisms, I imagine it's clear from what I've written here and in my review that I find the overall message behind Capers in the Churchyard invaluable, and so I will end with a quote from the Epilogue with which I think all animal-friendly people can agree:

Social justice movements everywhere find guidance in the idea that another world is possible, and that once an idea can be conceived, it can be achieved. Theories can indeed be put into practice overnight, for example, by simply declining to buy what the animal vendors are selling. With each person who decides to do that, a movement takes a step in the direction of ending oppressive industries and replacing them with life-affirming ones.

I think we're on our way to doing just that.

ADDENDUM (also not included in podcast): This is a difficult subject, which should be obvious in my poor attempt to wrangle some meaningful ideas out of all this... but taking over 6000 words to do so. Then again, Satya's devoting 2 magazine issues to it, and the animal protection movement has been wrestling with it for some time now, with some of the movement's brightest minds strongly disagreeing on the best course to animal liberation. My views above do not represent my complete thoughts on the subject, nor are they set in stone. We all need to keep an open mind, and to consider how each of us might better reduce and eliminate not merely the suffering of animals, but how we might decrease the exploitation of animals altogether.

Labels: animal rights, animal welfare, reviews

Post-Tribune (Northwest Indiana)

You know something, I realize sometimes you have to make hard choices, and sometimes that means some die, and some live, but the firefighters in this situation weren't saving people. They were saving property. They didn't have to risk their lives to fight that fire, so the choice set up by the farm's president is totally false.

They could have let the building burn to the ground, containing the damage, but evidently it was more valuable property than the 35,000 - 40,000 chickens that died from excessive heat when power was cut to help the firefighters battle a "smoldering blaze" on a battery-cage egg farm. Surely that fire could have been contained without endangering any lives.

No crying over lost chickens, though. Rose Acre vice president Tony Wesner said, “Some of the others (chickens) are going to suffer some, too. They’re not going to be at peak production for a few days until things get turned around.” Ah, well, good to know that they'll be "productive" again so soon. That's a real relief for the chickens, I bet.

This story shows that animals do need rights. They shouldn't have been bred like some kind of commodity and kept in that battery-cage operation in the first place. But the law doesn't recognize a nonhuman animal's right to freedom, so this is their fate until people stop eating eggs.

Labels: animal cruelty, animal rights, battery cages, eggs

Lee Hall, legal director for Friends of Animals, has written a new book on animal rights that seems aimed primarily at animal advocates, though I can imagine many others benefitting from it, particularly those wishing to understand the fundamental concept of ethical, egalitarian animal rights.

The book's title, Capers in the Churchyard, is meant to recall a six-year campaign that last year forced to an end the breeding of guinea pigs at a family-run farm in Newchurch, England. (My post on this subject a year ago amounted to a brief paragraph condemning those animal rights activists for creating victims out of the guinea pig farmers)

Regrettably, Capers in the Churchyard sounds more like an old and, in all likelihood, mediocre British mystery novel found languishing at a used book store than an important work on animal rights.

The subtitle, Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror, is (as I suppose many subtitles are) much more descriptive, but one's eyes may not scan far enough down the page to read this, thanks to a cover photo that depicts the Newchurch burial site where the body of the guinea pig farmer's mother-in-law was robbed by animal rights activists. Without having seen images of this location already, a potential reader has zero context for the stodgy image of a church and its attendant cemetary, and is unlikely to be enticed into picking the book up off the shelf.

But, as it is said, you can't judge a book by its cover. The old adage holds true once again, for there is much between the covers to recommend Capers in the Churchyard. Despite the slim nature of this volume, which does fortunately lend itself to a quick reading (and even repeated reading), Hall goes big, asking timely questions that need to be pondered and discussed thoroughly by anyone who cares about the fate of animals and our planet.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of When Elephants Weep, opens with a Foreword that praises Hall for moving the thinking on animal rights forward, and he really nails it with that assessment. Capers in the Churchyard is not a retread, nor a history lesson, but a call to focus the approach of animal rights advocacy to its fundamental level.

Masson turns his Foreword from a mere introduction into a powerful meditation on living an animal-friendly life, acknowledging that it is not always easy to do so, that often it is easier to accept things as they are. He acknowledges that our goal must be not to force people to change, but to change the ground that they are standing on, to inspire epiphany, to move things closer to how they ought to be.

As you can see, the Foreword itself is worth a close read.

And that's just the beginning. Lee Hall takes the militant campaign at Newchurch and uses it as a starting point to take apart modern animal advocacy, critiquing not only an increasingly militant faction of the animal rights movement, but also the growing influence of animal welfare organizations.

Embracing the word "radical" from the get-go in favor of its latin meaning, root, Lee Hall observes failings in those two major forms of activism, arguing that they do not focus on the root of the problem and, in some cases (giving free-range animals a public endorsement, for example), help animal oppressors to calcify and codify their practices, while also endangering wild animals and the environment, what with free-range grazing contributing to deforestation, desertification, and so on. While welfare reforms may reduce suffering experienced by animals, they are still commodified, and their expanded use and presence pushes nature aside (witness wild horses sent to slaughter, and wildlife shot if it threatens livestock) if overall consumption of animals is not steeply decreased. Rather than focusing on pain -- an important evolutionary survival mechanism that the meat industry would be happy to breed out of the animals -- Hall argues activists should place their focus on whether animals should be used at all.

In another argument, Hall argues that both the militant and welfarist approaches also use animals, turning them into victims in order that activists may become heroes (great for generating donations), or reducing advocates to caretakers (how, in the end, does being a caretaker work to end the domination of animals?).

Throughout the book, numerous references are made to major figures in the animal rights movement, as well as organizations and even publications Hall holds accountable for falling into the dominant mode of thinking.

In Capers in the Churchyard, Hall dissects welfarism and militancy, and their impact so far on animals, the activists themselves, society as a whole, and our legal system, urging ethically-minded animal advocates to change their focus to the rationale for claims of dominion over animals, thus taking on the root causes of all domination. Hall argues that by deconstructing the patterns of domination between ourselves and in our relationships with other animals and the planet, and unravelling our hierarchies, animal activists have the key to kickstart the most comprehensive peace movement ever known.

This is certainly an exciting prospect, but it would have been more instructive if Hall provided examples of other organizations besides Friends of Animals that more closely address these concerns, or pointed to the segments of any organizations that already focus on this type of advocacy, why it has been more effective, and how the parent organization should go about shifting priorities to this area in order to realistically make a big impact on the dominant paradigm. Surely Friends of Animals isn't the only group focusing on egalitarian animal rights!

But just to make sure everyone is on the same page, and in light of the general confusion over animal rights, Hall includes a "Handy Pull-Out Guide to Animal Rights," basically one page of the book designed to be cut out and kept handy or reproduced to better communicate the principles of animal rights to an underinformed -- or misinformed -- public.

Of course, one simple sheet only scratches at the surface of animal rights and how to understand the subject. Hall spends plenty of time elaborating on these views, acknowledging that animals do not themselves have an understanding of "rights," conceptually, but that they do have an inherent appreciation for (and interest in) being left alone. Hall writes:

if animal rights will have any meaning at all, no words get nearer to their core than what Justice Louis Brandeis called 'the right to be left alone.' The dignity of one's private life, habits, acts, and relations is essential, Brandeis explained, in a way property rights are not, to the 'inviolate personality.' Justice Brandeis called the right to be left alone the most comprehensive of rights.

The ultimate purpose of the book, then, if I may attempt to summarize my understanding, is to argue that ethical animal rights, both in theory and in practice, is a way of integrity, to reject means-to-an-end mentality in favor of addressing the root causes of animal exploitation without consent, the domination of other entities against their will. This includes simply -- and powerfully -- withholding our money from corporations that profit from their use, and advocating for others to do the same by educating them to the nature of egalitarian animal rights, in the interest of a peaceful revolution based in non-violent veganism. I can whole-heartedly endorse that view.

Capers in the Churchyard is essential reading for anyone interested in the subject of animal rights at this crucial juncture, and I am happy to enthusiastically recommend it for An Animal-Friendly Life.

What's more, I strongly advise those involved or interested in any kind of animal advocacy to read Capers in the Churchyard, because the book's call -- despite the difficulty some may have in heeding it -- could well focus a scattered, sometimes divided and divisive group around a deeper, more important mission for the future of life on this planet.

I have pages of notes I've typed in to prepare this review, and many more hand-written notes. Most of them came off more as commentary on the subject matter than actual review of the book, so I tried to prune them out. I will try to go through and see if I can gather them together in some sort of coherent fashion and present them as a separate post at a later date.

Labels: activism, animal rights, animal welfare, book, reviews

Guest Post

Armaiti May, DVM: Violence in the AR Movement

I was away all day Thursday for jury duty, which was... interesting. Though I'm still part of a jury selection pool, we don't report back until Tuesday, so you have me back for a few days.

I'm not ready to call this duty a privilege yet, but despite many boring patches, I met a couple of cool people while waiting around. I even gave out a Why Vegan? pamphlet in a totally non-threatening context, which kept that conversation going through lunch. I also learned a bit more about our legal system, from the side of the defense table I prefer to be on...

On that note, I have a wonderful guest piece to post from Armaiti May, DVM:

I was deeply disturbed to hear Dr. Jerry Vlasak’s comments on CBS 60 minutes as well as Bob Linden’s “GO VEGAN” show this past Sunday. Condoning violence against animal abusers sets a dangerous precedent for the animal rights movement. Dr. Jerry Vlasak claims that current non-violent tactics being employed are not working because animals continue to be tortured year after year. While it is true that many animals still are being tortured, this is not because non-violent tactics are ineffective. To the contrary, as a result of compassionate non-violent educational outreach, people are becoming increasingly aware of abuses occurring in factory farms and slaughterhouses and we are seeing more vegan restaurants opening, as well as more stores supplying delicious vegan foods than ever before. Also, animal protection organizations such as the Humane Society of the United States are successfully leading campaigns to outlaw horse slaughter, outlaw dogfighting and cockfighting, and improve the treatment of animals raised for food.

As activists we must realize that animal exploitation has occurred for centuries and is deeply intertwined in the fabric of our culture. Consequently, achieving positive change for the animals is a slow process requiring patience on our part.
Currently, less than 3% of the U.S. population is vegan. Despite multi-billion dollar advertising to increase consumption of animal products, Vegan Outreach has passed out ¾ of a million Why Vegan pamphlets in 2005 alone (which is 25% more booklets than all of 2004) which have been shown to have a very powerful effect influencing people towards veganism. Many people who receive these pamphlets have reported they had no idea how badly the animals were treated and subsequently went vegetarian or vegan. Imagine if one of those people who had received a booklet on the animal abuses going on in factory farms had instead read in the morning paper that an animal researcher was assassinated by a militant animal rights extremist. That person would likely come away feeling sorry for the human victim and his/her family, appalled at the violence committed against that person, and yet have no concept of the animals’ suffering. The animal abusers want themselves to be portrayed as victims because that allows them to gain more public support as well as encourage legislators to pass increasingly restrictive laws which put restraints on our civil liberties. Resorting to violence ultimately puts the cards in the favor of those abusing animals, not the animals suffering from such abuse.

Having activists in prison for years does nothing to advance the cause of animal liberation either; it actually does harm because it strengthens the pre-existing negative stereotype of animal activists as crazy extremists. Dr. Vlasak’s ideas about introducing strategic violence into the animal rights movement take this stigma against animals rights activists to a new level which is even more alarming and disturbing. It places us in the same league as Al-Qaeda and substantially decreases our ability to be effective and make lasting positive change for the animals. Now that one of the vocal “leaders” in the animal rights movement has advocated stopping animal abusers “by any means necessary,” it is incumbent upon all non-violent animal rights activists to speak out against this to avoid being lumped into the same category as terrorists.

More importantly, violence goes against one of the core principles that our movement stands for – compassion for all animals, human as well as non-human. Jerry Vlasak himself was once a vivisector, yet somehow he turned around completely and became a vegan and outspoken animal advocate. Everyone has the potential to change and we as activists must recognize that in order to maximize our chances for success. There are numerous others in our movement such as Steve Hindi and Howard Lyman who also were directly involved in animal exploitation before they became vegans and staunch advocates for the animals. We can thank our movement’s progress in large part to Howard Lyman, former cattle-rancher turned vegan activist. What a horrible thing it would have been if some violent “activist” had assassinated him! Where would that have left our movement today? If our movement ever gets to that extreme point, more repressive laws will be passed and more animals will suffer as a result.

While anger and frustration over the injustice of animal cruelty and exploitation is justified and understandable, we must channel that anger towards productive efforts such as raising public awareness if we are to garner more public support and make lasting positive changes for animals. With less than 3% of the U.S. population vegan, we cannot afford to turn people off to veganism or animal rights because of the irresponsible actions of a those who advocate violence as an acceptable means of advancing animal liberation.

Armaiti May graduated from the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, Class of 2005

Many thanks to Armaiti for sharing her thoughts with AAFL and its readership. I am so appreciative of her readership, support, and for taking the time to write this. I hope you'll consider sharing your thoughts below in "comments."

Labels: activism, animal cruelty, animal experimentation, animal rights, guest post, veg*nism, violence