Archive for year: 2011

What follows is an edited version of the text of my presentation at Hobart and William Smith Colleges on March 31, 2011 as the 2011 Foster P. Boswell Distinguished Lecturer in Philosophy:

WHAT MICHAEL VICK TAUGHT US

Remember Michael Vick?

Do you remember all the commotion about Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick and his involvement in a dog fighting operation on some property he owned in Virginia?

Of course you do.

A better question would be to ask whether there is anyone on the planet who does not recall this matter, which was covered by the media nonstop for weeks when it first came to light in 2007 and, again, when Vick came out of prison in 2009 and signed with the Philadelphia Eagles. Vick continues to be in the news regularly. In March 2011, he was going to be recognized as a ‘hero’ by a local arts organization in Virginia and there was such controversy about the matter that Vick did not attend the ceremony. People really were furious with Vick and many still are. There are football fanatics who boycott the Eagles because of Vick.

Why?

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Dear Colleagues:

As long as we eat animals and animal products, which is completely unnecessary and serves only our palate pleasure, we will continue to use animals for other clearly frivolous purposes. In other words, if you think it is okay to impose suffering and death on animals just because you like the taste of animal foods, you are not likely to think circuses, zoos, hunting, and animal clothing are morally objectionable.

Getting people to see that something that they do three times a day every day of their lives is morally objectionable is the key to opening their eyes to the immorality of all animal use.

It’s really a matter of simple logic and common sense.

If you are not vegan, go vegan. It’s easy; it’s better for your health and for the planet. But, most important, it’s the morally right thing to do.

The World is Vegan! If you want it.

Gary L. Francione
©2011 Gary L. Francione

Dear Colleagues:

Animal rights is a binary matter: you exploit animals or you go vegan.

There’s no third choice.

You cannot exploit “compassionately.” You just exploit. Your “compassion” is about making you feel better about continuing to exploit animals. “Compassionate” exploitation has nothing to do with the obligation of justice that we owe nonhuman animals.

Justice requires that we stop using animals altogether. “Humane” exploitation is nothing more than a fantasy. All animal use involves torture. And even if it did not, and even if we could treat animals we exploit “humanely,” we cannot justify using and killing animals for our palate pleasure, sense of fashion, entertainment, or any other purpose.

But make no mistake about it: “compassionate” animal exploitation is nonsense, just as “compassionate” slavery or “compassionate” genocide is nonsense.

If you are not vegan, go vegan. It’s easy; it’s better for your health and for the planet. But, most important, it’s the morally right thing to do. You will never do anything else in your life as easy and satisfying.

The World is Vegan! If you want it.

Gary L. Francione
©2011 Gary L. Francione

Imagine that you are talking with a group of people who are classic car enthusiasts and who drive just for the pleasure of driving and not for any particular purpose. In fact, these people believe that driving classic cars for pleasure is an important tradition; a crucial part of their culture and every day, they get into their cars and drive just because they enjoy it so much and regard it as integral to who they are.

If you were try to argue to such a group of people that it is morally wrong to use their cars to drive to a physician’s office for a medical examination or test, or to drive an injured family member to the emergency room, they would most certainly think that your position made no sense. After all, they think it’s acceptable to drive purely for pleasure. Indeed, driving for pleasure is an important aspect of their lives. Why would they accept that driving for an important reason is a bad thing when they think that driving just for the pleasure of driving is a good thing?

Imagine a second scenario. Instead of trying to persuade this group of people that driving for an important medical reason is wrong, you maintain that driving for pleasure to a particular destination, which is no different than any other destination, is wrong. Again, the group of pleasure drivers would find your position to be bizarre because it is entirely arbitrary. Why is driving for pleasure to one place any different from driving to another place? And if they were to accept that driving to some arbitrarily chosen destination was wrong, that would leave open whether driving for pleasure as a general matter was wrong. Their treasured activity would be threatened.

This simple hypothetical helps us to understand the moral, logical, and psychological reasons why veganism must be the baseline of the animal rights movement and why single-issue campaigns make no sense whatsoever.

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Dear Colleagues:

Those who support welfare reform are all excited. They are pointing to an article in the Journal of Agricultural Economics entitled “Impacts of Animal Well-Being and Welfare Media on Meat Demand,” and welfarists claim “Science Weighs in At Last: Campaigns for Welfarist Reforms Cause People to Buy Significantly Less Meat.”

(Note: The paper from the Journal of Agricultural Economics, which was originally available on line is no longer available and has to be accessed from a subscription to the Journal. But the working paper entitled, “Media Coverage of Animal Handling and Welfare: Influence on Meat Demand,” is available here.)

I am presently talking with colleagues trained in economics and statistics/study design to present a full reply to this study, which I think suffers from multiple methodological problems and is poorly designed. But I would suggest that even a casual review of the article indicates that the claims by welfarists are, to say the least, hyperbolic.

First off, meat consumption is increasing and not decreasing. This study does not say that welfare campaigns have resulted in any actual decrease in consumption. Rather, it says that demand, measured over an approximately ten-year period, did not increase as much as the authors would have thought if media attention on welfare issues had not increased. The authors acknowledge that this reduction in demand increase is “small, but statistically significant.”

There are many, many problems with the study. For example, the authors were not able to find the same “small” result in the case of cows. Moreover, the authors claim that “this lost demand is found to exit the meat complex rather than spillover and enhance demand of competing meats.” But they define the “meat complex” as involving cows, pigs, and poultry. The lower rate of demand increase, small as the authors acknowledge it is, may have shifted to many of the other animal products that are not part of the “meat complex” as defined. The authors also make clear that there are problems linking the results they found to animal welfare concerns.

In short: animal consumption is increasing but it did not increase as much with respect to pigs and chickens and that might have been due to animal welfare concerns but it might not have had anything to do with animal welfare concerns, and any failure of demand increase may very well reflect a shift to fish, eggs, dairy products, and prepared meat foods.

And welfarists are excited about this?

In the past ten years, welfare organizations have spent billions of dollars in promoting welfare campaigns. Putting aside the methodological problems with this study, if this is the best that welfarists can show, then I would agree that science has, indeed, weighed in: animal welfare reform is useless and completely cost-ineffective.

I will post further information about a more formal reply as things shape up.

If you are not vegan, go vegan. It’s easy; it’s better for your health and for the planet. But, most important, it’s the morally right thing to do. You will never do anything else in your life as easy and satisfying.

The World is Vegan! If you want it.

Gary L. Francione
©2011 Gary L. Francione

Postscript added August 1, 2013

After my post in March 2011, my interest in doing a formal reply diminished in part because the study seemed to be so obviously flawed–and useless for the purpose that welfarists promoted it when it first came out–that it seemed a complete waste of time. In addition, my statistics expert was otherwise occupied at the time. So it fell off my radar screen.

However, when I spoke at the “Animal Rights 2013 National Conference” several weeks ago, I heard people from Farm Sanctuary and the Humane League remarkably claim that this study proved that “billions” of animals had been saved by welfare reforms. That’s astonishing and, at best, just silly.

It is still not clear to me that this study merits any formal response given the many other more worthwhile projects that need to be done. And, frankly, people who want to believe the “happy” exploitation propaganda fed to them by the new welfarists wouldn’t be dissuaded anyway even if they could be persuaded to read something that criticized the study.

The bottom line: I repeat the above synopsis of the study. The study claims that:

animal consumption is increasing but it did not increase as much with respect to pigs and chickens and that might have been due to animal welfare concerns but it might not have had anything to do with animal welfare concerns, and any failure of demand increase may very well reflect a shift to fish, eggs, dairy products, and prepared meat foods.

In other words, the not-as-rapidly-as-expected increase in the consumption of pigs and chicken (but not beef despite there being lots of campaigns that focused on the welfare of cows) may be related to animal welfare campaigns. But it may also have been related to the weather, health concerns, economic concerns, or it may well have been related to the advocacy of those who maintain that veganism is the moral baseline and had nothing to do with welfare reform campaigns, or it may have been related to any number of other things having nothing to do with welfare campaigns.

In short, this study, and however much it costs to buy a Starbucks soy latte, will get you a Starbucks soy latte. If you think that it proves that animal welfare campaigns cause or incline people to go vegan, that is because you want to believe that, not because this study supports that belief.