Archive for year: 2012

Anyone who has ever done animal advocacy has had the experience of explaining rationally why animal exploitation can’t be morally justified, only to have the person with whom they are talking say something like, “Yes, that’s interesting but I just don’t think that it’s wrong to eat animal products,” or “I think you’re being perfectly logical but I just love ice cream and cheese and am going to continue eating them.”

How can this be? How can people reject logical and rational arguments?

The answer is simple: logic and rationality are crucial to moral analysis. But they can’t tell us the whole story about moral reasoning. It’s more complicated than logical syllogisms. Moral reasoning—about animals or anything else—requires something more than logic. That something else involves two closely related but conceptually distinct notions: moral concern and moral impulse, which precede our engagement on a rational or logical level.

To put this in the context of animal ethics: in order to accept an argument that leads to the conclusion that all sentient beings are full members of the moral community and that we should abolish, and not regulate, animal exploitation, you must care morally about animals. You do not necessarily have to “like” or “love” animals. You do not have to have a house full of rescued animals or even have one rescued animal. But you have to accept that at least some animals are members of the moral community; that they are nonhuman moral persons to whom we have direct moral obligations.

And you have to want to act morally with respect to animals; you have to have a moral impulse concerning animals. You have to feel your moral beliefs in the sense that you want to do the right thing by animals. If you do, logic and rationality can be used to make compelling arguments that all sentient beings have that moral status and no animal exploitation can be morally justified.

But if you don’t care about animals morally and you don’t want to do right by them, then all of the arguments in the world won’t make much difference. If you do not think we owe animals anything, you won’t be very interested in arguments that concern which animals we have direct moral obligations to, or what those obligations require us to do. Read more

There is no better way to celebrate Mother’s Day than by putting an end to your support of the exploitation of nonhuman mothers represented by milk, cheese, and other dairy products.

A cow raised for her milk is forcefully impregnated yearly, and her babies are taken away within a few days. She is either pregnant or lactating 9 or 10 months out of a year only to have the cycle repeat once she gives birth.

All calves are taken from their mothers within a few days. Some female calves become dairy cows and the rest, along with male calves, are sold for veal.

Many organic or local dairies advertise with pictures of happy cows. In reality, “organic” only means that the cows are fed organic food and are not given antibiotics and growth hormones but they are still, under the very best of circumstances, tortured. And all of those mothers–whether on a conventional or “organic” farm–end up in the same hideous slaughterhouse.

There is no such thing as “happy” milk or “happy” animal products of any type.

Today, think about the suffering and death you support just because you like the taste of dairy, cheese, butter, yogurt, ice cream, etc. Think of what that means for cows, the gentle mothers whom we exploit. Ask yourself if it’s worth it. If your heart says “no,” go vegan.

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Being vegan is a matter of nonviolence. Being vegan is your statement that you reject violence to other sentient beings, to yourself, and to the environment, on which all sentient beings depend.

The World is Vegan! If you want it.

Gary L. Francione
Professor, Rutgers University

©2012 Gary L. Francione

Certain secularists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens, often referred to as “New Atheists,” are the latest to tell us that we should look to rationality and science to figure out what to think about important moral issues. These New Atheists generally reject the notion that there can be independent moral truths or that actions can be intrinsically wrong; and they reject the notion of absolute moral rules. They maintain that morality informed by spiritual or religious considerations should be rejected.

I want to examine some aspects of this position as a general matter which, in many ways, is really not new with the New Atheists. I want also to discuss how this position affects our thinking about animal ethics given that, for the past several years, I have noted an increase in animal advocates who believe that animal rights are able to be grounded securely on rationality and science alone and who reject the notion that there can be independent moral truths or that actions can be intrinsically wrong.

Let me make two points at the outset: First, this is an involved issue that requires more than a single blog post. I am offering my preliminary thoughts here and will have much more to say at a later time in work that I am doing on moral realism and animal rights.

Second, I want to stress that if we reject scientific rationality as providing what we need to know about morality, we are not relegated to embracing “supernatural” beliefs or retreating to some sort of moral relativism or subjectivism. One may subscribe to views about moral realism or may accept the principle of nonviolence as a moral truth, for example, without subscribing to views about a creator deity or the survival of personality past death. Indeed, part of the problem is that this debate is often characterized as one requiring that, if we reject relativism, subjectivism, or some similar view, we must choose between the supernatural or scientific rationality. That is a false choice. Read more

If we are ever going to see a paradigm shift, we have to be clear about how we want the present paradigm to shift.

We must be clear that veganism is the unequivocal baseline of anything that deserves to be called an “animal rights” movement. If “animal rights” means anything, it means that we cannot morally justify any animal exploitation; we cannot justify treating animals as human resources, however “humane” that treatment may be.

We must stop thinking that people will find veganism “daunting” and that we have to promote something less than veganism. If we explain the moral ideas and the arguments in favor of veganism clearly, people will understand. They may not all go vegan immediately; in fact, most won’t. But we should always be clear about the moral baseline. If someone wants to do less as an incremental matter, let that be her/his decision, and not something that we advise to do. The baseline should always be clear. We should never be promoting “happy” or “humane” exploitation as morally acceptable.

The notion that we should promote “happy” or “humane” exploitation as “baby steps” ignores that welfare reforms do not result in providing significantly greater protection for animal interests; in fact, most of the time, animal welfare reforms do nothing more than make animal exploitation more economically productive by focusing on practices, such as gestation crates, the electrical stunning of chickens, or veal crates, that are economically inefficient in any event. Welfare reforms make animal exploitation more profitable by eliminating practices that are economically vulnerable. For the most part, those changes would happen anyway and in the absence of animal welfare campaigns precisely because they do rectify inefficiencies in the production process. And welfare reforms make the public more comfortable about animal exploitation. The “happy” meat/animal products movement is clear proof of that.

We would never advocate for “humane” or “happy” human slavery, rape, genocide, etc. So, if we believe that animals matter morally and that they have an interest not only in not suffering but in continuing to exist, we should not be putting our time and energy into advocating for “humane” or “happy” animal exploitation.

Welfare reforms and the whole “happy” exploitation movement are not “baby steps.” They are big steps–in a seriously backward direction.

There are some animal advocates who say that to maintain that veganism is the moral baseline is objectionable because it is “judgmental,” or constitutes a judgment that veganism is morally preferable to vegetarianism and a condemnation that vegetarians (or other consumers of animal products) are “bad” people. Yes to the first part; no to the second. There is no coherent distinction between flesh and other animal products. They are all the same and we cannot justify consuming any of them. To say that you do not eat flesh but that you eat dairy or eggs or whatever, or that you don’t wear fur but you wear leather or wool, is like saying that you eat the meat from spotted cows but not from brown cows; it makes no sense whatsoever. The supposed “line” between meat and everything else is just a fantasy–an arbitrary distinction that is made to enable some exploitation to be segmented off and regarded as “better” or as morally acceptable. This is not a condemnation of vegetarians who are not vegans; it is, however, a plea to those people to recognize their actions do not conform with a moral principle that they claim to accept and that all animal products are the result of imposing suffering and death on sentient beings. It is not a matter of judging individuals; it is, however, a matter of judging practices and institutions. And that is a necessary component of ethical living.

If we take the position that an assessment that veganism is morally preferable to vegetarianism is not possible because we are all “on our own journey,” then moral assessment becomes completely impossible or is speciesist. It is impossible because if we are all “on our own journey,” then there is nothing to say to the racist, sexist, anti-semite, homophobe, etc. If we say that those forms of discrimination are morally bad, but, with respect to animals, we are all “on our own journey” and we cannot make moral assessments about, for instance, dairy consumption, then we are simply being speciesist and not applying the same moral analysis to nonhumans that we apply to the human context.

When we discuss veganism with vegetarians or other consumers of animal products, we should never convey the message that we think that they are “bad” people. We should instead focus on how any form of animal exploitation is inconsistent with the moral principle that they themselves claim to hold: namely, that animals are members of the moral community and that the imposition of suffering and death on any member of that community–human or nonhuman–requires a compelling justification. And whatever constitutes a compelling justification, taste preferences, convenience, fashion sense, etc., do not.

Finally, we should always be clear that animal exploitation is wrong because it involves speciesism. And speciesism is wrong because, like racism, sexism, homophobia, antisemitism, classism, and all other forms of human discrimination, speciesism involves violence inflicted on members of the moral community where that infliction of violence cannot be morally justified. But that means that those of us who oppose speciesism necessarily oppose discrimination against humans. It makes no sense to say that speciesism is wrong because it is like racism (or any other form of discrimination) but that we do not have a position about racism. We do. We should be opposed to it and we should always be clear about that.

Veganism is about nonviolence. It is about not engaging in harm to other sentient beings; to oneself; and to the environment upon which all beings depend for life. In my view, the animal rights movement is, at its core, a movement about ending violence to all sentient beings. It is a movement that seeks fundamental justice for all. It is an emerging peace movement that does not stop at the arbitrary line that separates humans from nonhumans. Changing a hierarchical paradigm of pervasive exploitation that has dominated for millenia requires a great deal of hard work. And that hard work requires clarity.

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If you are not vegan, please consider going vegan. It’s a matter of nonviolence. Being vegan is your statement that you reject violence to other sentient beings, to yourself, and to the environment, on which all sentient beings depend.

The World is Vegan! If you want it.

Gary L. Francione
Professor, Rutgers University

©2012 Gary L. Francione