Archive for month: May, 2021

Is being sensitive about injustice a good thing?

You bet it is.

Racism, sexism, homophobia — and speciesism — are all around us. We need to be aware of these various forms of discrimination and we ought to reject them. Principle 5 of the Abolitionist Approach to Animal Rights is clear: Abolitionists reject all forms of human discrimination, including racism, sexism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism, and classism — just as they reject speciesism.

Abolitionists reject speciesism because, like racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of human discrimination, it uses a morally irrelevant criterion (species) to discount and devalue the interests of sentient beings. But any opposition to speciesism makes sense only as part of a general opposition to all forms of discrimination. That is, we cannot oppose speciesism but claim that, as animal advocates, we do not have a position on these other forms of discrimination. We cannot say that we reject species as a morally objectionable criterion to discount or devalue the interests of nonhumans but that we do not have a position on whether race, sex, or sexual orientation/preference are morally objectionable criteria when used to discount or devalue human interests. Our opposition to speciesism requires that we oppose all discrimination.

So to the extent that “woke” refers to being awakened to the pervasive societal discrimination against human and nonhumans, that’s great. For example, Black Lives Matter is a movement that is necessary to help to educate everyone about how systemic racism pervades our society.

But there are ways in which “woke” is nothing more than speciesism masquerading as progressive thought. I will give you two examples of the problem — two of the many examples I could give and that I will be writing about at length at a later time.

I. Veganism as a Moral Imperative is “Racist”

It is fairly common to encounter the argument — particularly (but not exclusively) in academic circles — that it is “racist” to maintain that veganism is a moral imperative even for communities of color or other groups that have particular food traditions.

It is important that we ignore the bigoted accusations of racism and see this position for what it really is as a matter of moral theory: the transparently speciesist claim that tradition can justify ignoring the fundamental interests of animals.

The claim of tradition does not take on greater weight because it is articulated by those of a particular community. Just about every culture has a tradition of eating/using animals. That’s one of the reasons why we don’t yet have a vegan world. The argument is speciesist whoever articulates it and it does not — indeed, cannot — have a different and greater moral force when articulated by a particular group.

The claim that their particular ethnic animal foods are part of their group identity is like saying that a particular sort of pornography is part of the identity of a group that practices sexism. When we are talking about pervasive, ubiquitous behaviors, such as consuming animal foods or sexism, using tradition is nothing more than saying that something being criticized is a practice that has been going on for some period of time, and instead of regretting that something morally wrong has been going on for far too long, the tradition argument says “we’ve done it for a long time so we can do it some more.”

As a general matter, we should always reject the argument that tradition can justify a practice that harms others. The fact that we have been inflicting harm for a long time does not mean that the infliction of harm is morally justified.

A version of this argument is that to say that veganism is a moral imperative represents “cultural imperialism” to the extent that it maintains that some tradition in a foreign country violates the fundamental rights of animals. This is nothing more than the application of the tradition argument to other countries and it does not work for the same reason: it assumes that speciesist practices have moral value simply because they are practices. They don’t. Consider female genital mutilation performed on children who cannot consent. That is a tradition in some places. Is it okay because it is a tradition? Of course not.

Yet another version of this “woke” argument is to claim it is “racist” to promote veganism as a moral imperative because many Black people are poor and it is wrong to say that poor people have an obligation to be vegan.

First, if this argument works — and, as we will see, it doesn’t — it cannot be limited to just poor Blacks. There are plenty of poor people who are White, Latinx, people of color who are not Black, etc. So the argument needs to be reformulated as that it is classist to say that poor people have an obligation to be vegan.

Let’s be clear from the outset: poverty sucks. Poverty makes life difficult in all respects. It is imperative that we move toward a more just society that sees poverty as unacceptable. We need to be concerned about and to fight for greater access to healthy food in poor areas. I have long argued that animal advocates who care about justice as a general matter need to educate themselves about how those with limited economic means can avail themselves of more healthy food. Indeed, in the book that I co-authored with Anna Charlton, Advocate for Animals: A Vegan Abolitionist Handbook, we discuss at length the topic of advocacy in low-income communities.

Second, to say that veganism imposes an unfair burden on the poor assumes that veganism is both expensive and difficult. That’s wrong on both counts. Veganism is generally cheaper than non-veganism and, unless you are going to compare all food preparation to the ease of eating the fast food that, by the way, is destroying the health of the poor, making vegan meals is not necessarily difficult. On our website, HowDoIGoVegan.com,we present many cheap and easy vegan recipes.

Third, the theoretical problem with this argument is that it is blatantly speciesist. No one would argue that poverty allows the poor to violate the fundamental moral rights of innocent third parties. Even if someone would argue that it is morally acceptable for the poor to violate the fundamental rights of the rich and to harm them in order to get their resources, no one would argue that it is morally acceptable for the poor to impose suffering or death on other innocent poor people in order to get resources. So why is it okay for the poor to disregard the fundamental rights of innocent nonhumans? It isn’t, unless you make the anthropocentric assumption that humans matter morally and nonhumans do not.

I am not saying that if you are literally starving, it is wrong to eat an animal product. Compulsion does not justify violating the fundamental rights of others, but it may mitigate the moral culpability involved. For example, if I am on a desert island and will literally die if I do not eat an animal, my killing and eating the animal is not morally justifiable. That is, my killing and eating the animal is morally wrong. But the wrongness of my action may be excused or mitigated by the compulsion in the situation. I did not have a choice. Similarly, if I am a poor person who is in danger of perishing, eating an animal product in a situation where I do not have a choice to eat a non-animal product may be excusable because of the compulsion. But it is never morally justifiable.

II. Only Some People Can Express Certain Ideas

A second type of problematic “woke” argument is that only certain people can articulate certain ideas.

I was giving a lecture at a University on the problems of animal welfare and explaining that, because animals are chattel property, animal welfare standards will provide little protection because of legal and economic limitations. I pointed out that these legal and economic limitations also occur in the context of regulating slavery.

Two Black students interrupted my lecture to accuse me of “appropriating slavery” to further animal rights. I asked them what they meant and they explained that, because I was White, I had no business using a uniquely Black experience in my work. I responded that slavery has existed for thousands of years and not all of it is race-based and there has been race-based slavery that did not involve Blacks. So slavery is not a uniquely Black experience. But let’s assume that slavery was exclusively race based and exclusively Black. Were the students saying that I, as a white scholar, was prohibited from publishing or talking about research that demonstrated that there are, as a factual matter, legal and economic similarities between the regulation of humans as chattel property and the regulation of nonhumans as chattel property?

Their answer: yes, that area of research is off limits to me.

This position, if accepted, would mean that only those who were members of a particular group could talk about an issue that affected that group. Such a position is transparently absurd. In order to determine whether a position is right or wrong, we need to look at what is being said and not who is saying it. Whites participated in the prosecution of Derek Chauvin; some of them worked for free. Was that unacceptable because only Blacks can be involved in a case about police violence against Blacks? Did those Whites “appropriate” police misconduct?

The fact that someone enjoys the benefit of race or class — what is usually referred to as “privilege” — does not make the facts that that person puts forth wrong, and does not make their arguments unsound or invalid merely because of their status. Similarly, the facts and arguments put forth by those who do not enjoy those benefits are not factually correct or sound simply because of the status of the speaker. Privilege or a lack thereof, should never be used to determine who gets to join the discussion. But privilege or a lack thereof has no necessary relationship to truth/falsity or validity/soundness.

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In sum, it is important for those who promote the abolition of animal exploitation to embrace the idea that all exploitation and discrimination based on irrelevant criteria such as race, sex, sexual orientation, class, etc. is wrong — just as is discrimination based on species and informed by anthropocentrism. Unfortunately, much “woke” ideology is, far from being progressive or radical, nothing more than reactionary speciesist propaganda.

Part 2 of this essay is here.

Originally published on Medium.

For the past thirty or so years, I have developed what has come to known as the Abolitionist Approach to Animal Rights. One aspect of that theory rejects the status of animals as chattel property and maintains that we are morally obligated to abolish, and not merely regulate, the use of animals exclusively as resources. My Abolitionist theory sees veganism as a moral imperative and maintains that if animals matter morally, we cannot justify using them for food, clothing, entertainment, or research as all of those uses assume that animals are nothing but commodities, or things we may use and kill for our purposes.

As part of this rejection of the status of things that exist only for our benefit, the theory also rejects domestication and maintains that, although we have a moral obligation to care for those domesticated nonhumans who are here now, we should not continue to produce domesticated animals to use and kill.

But what about animals such as those species we use as companion animals, or “pets”?

I suggest that that domestication itself presents a serious moral problem for anyone who maintains that animals matter morally and even with respect to animals with whom we may have a more benign relationship.

Although some of us treat our companion animals as family members, some of us do not. But however we treat our dogs, cats, etc., they are property as far as the law is concerned. If you regard your dog as a member of your family and treat her well, the law will protect your decision just as it will your decision to change the oil in your car every 1000 miles — the dog and the car are your property and if you wish to accord a higher value to your property, the law will allow you to do so. But if you wish to accord your property a lower value and, for instance, keep your dog on your property for use as a guard dog to whom you provide minimal food, water, and shelter, and no companionship or affection, the law will protect that decision as well.

The reality is that in the United States, most dogs and cats do not end up dying of old age in loving homes. Most have homes for a relatively short period of time before they are transferred to another owner, taken to a shelter, dumped, or taken to a veterinarian to be killed.

And it does not matter whether we characterize an owner as a “guardian,” as some advocates urge. Such a characterization is meaningless. If you have the legal right to take your dog to a kill shelter, or to a veterinarian to be killed, or to “humanely” kill your dog yourself, it does not matter what you call your dog. Your dog is your property. Those of us who live with companion animals are owners as far as the law is concerned and we have the legal right to treat our animals as we see fit with few limitations. Anticruelty laws do not even apply to the vast majority of instances in which humans inflict cruel treatment on nonhumans.

But we could, at least in theory, have a different and more acceptable relationship with nonhumans. What if we abolished the property status of animals and required that we treat dogs and cats similarly to the way we treat human children? What if humans who lived with animals could no longer treat them instrumentally (e.g., as guard dogs, “show” dogs or cats, etc.) but had to treat them as family members? What if humans could not kill nonhuman companions except in instances in which at least some of us regard it as acceptable to allow assisted suicide in the human context (e.g., when the human is incurably ill and in great pain, etc.). Would it be acceptable to continue to breed nonhumans to be our companions then?

The answer is no.

Putting aside that we would have to stop breeding animals with characteristics that are harmful to them — and that includes many domesticated animals — and ignoring that the development of general standards of what would constitute treating nonhumans as “family members,” and the resolution of all the related issues, would be impossible as a practical matter, this position neglects to recognize that domestication itself raises serious moral issues irrespective of how the nonhumans involved are treated.

Domestication represents the ultimate expression of anthropocentrism in that we have through selective breeding and other manipulation created animals who are completely and perpetually dependent on us and have no independence whatsoever. We have bred them to be servile and submissive resources and to have those qualities that facilitate their use as our resources. Domestic animals are dependent on us for when and whether they eat or have water, where and when they relieve themselves, when they sleep, whether they get any exercise, etc. Unlike human children who, except in unusual cases, will become independent and functioning members of human society, domestic animals are neither part of the nonhuman world nor fully part of our world. They remain forever in a netherworld of vulnerability, dependent on us for everything that is of relevance to them.

We may make some of them happy in one sense, but the relationship is made possible because of an institution that is inherently problematic. They do not belong stuck in our world irrespective of how well we treat them and those who are treated well represent only a small fraction.

These observations are more or less true of all domesticated nonhumans. They are perpetually dependent on us. We have to control their lives because, as domesticated animals, they are beings whom we have selectively bred to require our control. Moreover, we often select for characteristics that are positively harmful to animals. For example, certain dogs and cats are bred to have an appearance that adversely affects their health and inbreeding generally results in inheritable diseases and disorders. Various animals exploited for food are bred to have certain characteristics that cause them to gain weight quickly, and they will continue to gain that weight if they are not killed.

My partner and I live with five rescued dogs. All five would be dead if we had not adopted them. Three of our dogs were in shelters as the result of cruel treatment. One was born the day after her mother came out of a puppy mill. One is blind and deaf — the result of breeding grey (or merle) shelties so that breeders can produce a predominantly white sheltie, which commands a high price. We love them very much and try very hard to provide them with the best of care and treatment. (And before anyone asks, all seven of us are vegans!) You would probably not find two people on the planet who enjoy living with dogs more than we do.

But if there were two dogs left in the universe and it were up to us as to whether they were allowed to breed so that we could continue to live with dogs, and even if we could guarantee that all dogs would have homes as loving as the one that we provide, we would not hesitate for a second to bring the whole institution of “pet” ownership to an end. We regard the dogs who live with us as refugees of sorts, and although we enjoy caring for them, it is clear that humans have no business continuing to bring these creatures into a world in which they simply do not fit.

There are those who think that recognizing animal rights necessarily means that nonhumans have some sort of right to reproduce, so that it is wrong to sterilize nonhumans. If that view is correct, then we would be morally committed to allowing all domesticated species to continue to reproduce indefinitely. We cannot limit this “right of reproduction” to dogs and cats alone. Moreover, it makes no sense to say that we have acted immorally in domesticating nonhuman animals but we are now committed to allowing them to continue to breed. We made a moral mistake by domesticating nonhumans in the first place; what sense does it make to perpetuate it? Moreover, if some domesticated animals, such a dogs and cats, have a right to reproduce, then that is also true of the billions of cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, and other domesticated animals. There is no limiting principle. So if we all became vegan, but recognized a right of reproduction, our vegan world would be overrun by animals.

If we want to say that domestication is morally acceptable, then, if we are to avoid a transparently speciesist position, we must be committed to the idea that there is nothing morally wrong with bringing into existence humans who are perpetually vulnerable in order to be “citizens” who serve us in various ways. This is not a hypothetical matter. We are on the brink of being able to do all sorts of things in the laboratory. It will be possible to bring into existence humans who have all sorts of cognitive and physical traits and who do not have families that care about them. If it is acceptable to bring perpetually dependent animals into existence so that they can provide companionship and products, why is it not acceptable to being into existence perpetually dependent humans who serve as companions or to do some tasks around the house? My guess that most of us would reject this absolutely.

There are some who claim that we will lose “diversity” if we no longer have these domesticated nonhumans. Even if continued domestication were necessary for biological diversity, that would not mean that it would be morally acceptable. We do not, however, have to address that issue. There is nothing “natural” about domesticated animals. They are creatures whom we have created through selective breeding and confinement and who cannot survive independently in the wild. To the extent that they have undomesticated relatives living in nature, we should certainly seek to protect those nonhumans first and foremost for their own sake and secondarily for the purposes of biological diversity. But our protection of presently existing domesticated nonhumans is not necessary for any sort of biological diversity.

Finally, some argue that animals consented to domestication. They point to wolves who stayed close to humans and got food in return for providing an alert in the event that the humans were threatened in some way. This is claimed to show that dogs consented to domestication. Putting aside that this explanation has no application to the many other animals we have domesticated, it also has no application even to dogs. To say that wolves, who had the freedom to come and go as they please and to otherwise live as wolves, stayed close to humans in some symbiotic relationship means that they consented to be domesticated as dogs who live as “pets” is nonsense. To respond that at least some dogs have lives that are easier and less perilous so that those dogs are better off than their non-domesticated wolf counterparts is not only to ignore the absurdity of the claim that wolves would have chosen to be pugs or teacup poodles, but to assume that wolves would have made a decision not be wolves and not to live as wolves in return for a mat near the fire and their daily serving of pet food.

Domestication, Dependence, and Disability, and Slavery

In Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights, authors Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka reject my Abolitionist theory in favor of a theory that seeks to make animals “citizens” in our political community. This position is often referred to as the “political turn” in animal ethics. From what I can tell, the “political turn” is, despite its claims of being a radically different way of looking at the human-nonhuman relationship, just another theory that allows us to continue to exploit animals, albeit in a more limited way. Some “political turn” theorists reject killing animals for meat, but many also maintain that we can use animals for eggs and dairy. So, in other words, the “political turn” involves a rejection of veganism as a moral baseline. I have elsewhere argued that we cannot use animals for dairy and eggs without harming them; these uses necessarily involve harm to animals. But for present purposes, I want to explore what the “political turn” in animal ethics says as a general matter about my views on domestication.

In Zoopolis, Donaldson and Kymlicka present two arguments against my position on domestication.

Argument One: It is ableist to think that complete dependency is not inherently valuable

The first argument that there is nothing wrong with the dependency of domesticated animals on humans. Indeed, they call my view “morally perverse” and claim it “would have pernicious consequences” if we applied it to humans because it would be ableist to disregard the dignity of humans who are disabled and dependent on others.

It would certainly be ableist to disregard the dignity of disabled or dependent humans. But it is also certainly the case that we cannot analogize domesticated animals to humans who are disabled or dependent.

The view of “political turn” theorists — that all dependence is the same so that to reject domestication because of the dependence of animals is to marginalize dependent humans — is simply wrong. There can be significant differences in human dependence. A person may be dependent on their partner for emotional support. But that situation is very different from that of a severely disabled person who is dependent on their caretaker for survival, although when talking about humans, we may be talking about degrees of dependence in most instances.

However, any human dependence is qualitatively different from the dependence of beings of another species whom we have, in essence, created through selective breeding and other manipulation to have no independence whatsoever. That is precisely what we want from them: a complete lack of independence. We may make them happy in one sense, but the relationship can never be “natural” or “normal.” They do not belong stuck in our world irrespective of how well we treat them.

This is more or less true of all domesticated nonhumans. They are perpetually dependent on us. We control their lives forever. They truly are “animal slaves.” They exist to serve us and satisfy our interests and they are bred to do just that. We may be benevolent “masters,” but we really aren’t anything more than that. And that cannot be right. The dependence of vulnerable humans on other humans occurs in a context that reflects social decisions to care for more vulnerable members of society who are bound together and protected by the complex aspects of a social contract. And the nature of human dependence does not strip the dependent human of core rights that can be vindicated if the dependence becomes harmful.

In any event, what we would allow or encourage in the context of disabled humans tells us nothing about a practice of continuing to produce domesticated nonhumans who are necessarily and invariably dependent on their human owners for every aspect of their lives, and where the normal safeguards to protect the vulnerable party are not present because they have no application in that context. The analogy fails. The dependency of a domesticated nonhuman is qualitatively different from the dependency of a disabled human. That dependence is deliberate and is intended to result in submission and to facilitate control

We put a great deal of resources into trying to prevent human dependency in most contexts. We put a great deal of resources into helping humans who are dependent to be as independent as possible or as independent as they wish. The fact that we seek to prevent this sort of complete dependency and to enable independence does not mean that we value dependent humans less; indeed, a central tenet of my Abolitionist theory is that all beings — human or nonhuman — who are sentient, or subjectively aware, should be treated equally in that none should be used exclusively as a resource for others. But it is absurd to ignore, as the “political turn” theorists do, that we do not see complete dependency as inherently valuable in the human context. It is speciesist to view it differently in a nonhuman context.

Argument Two: Domesticated animals are like human slaves

Donaldson and Kymlicka talk about domesticated animals as analogous to human slaves but not in the same way that I do. When I say that domesticated animals are like slaves, I mean to point out a factual similarity: nonhuman animals and human slaves are both chattel property that exist for the benefit of others and the regulation of animal use and the regulation of slavery are similarly problematic for jurisprudential and economic reasons.

Donaldson and Kymlicka use the analogy of domesticated animals and human slaves in a different way. They claim that just as we faced the challenge of making slaves “full and equal citizens,” we face the same challenge with nonhuman animals. They claim that to argue that we ought to stop producing domesticated animals is analogous to claiming that we ought “to seek the extinction of American-Americans, or to repatriate them to Africa.” They see domesticated animals as analogous to human slaves in race-based slavery. Yes, we have certainly changed the animality of animals we selectively breed to be compliant. servile, and submissive, but, according to Donaldson and Kymlicka, “the experience of slavery” also changed those who were enslaved: “It changed their cultures, their physical being, their sense of identity, their aspirations and options.”

Putting aside the irony of maintaining that my rejection of domestication is ableist while maintaining the arguably racist position that enslaved African-Americans were, in fact, analogous to domesticated animals, this argument misses an crucial point: slaves are human persons on whom we have imposed the legal status of property. If you remove that legal status, you still have a human person who can live an autonomous life. That human may have to adapt to a new social situation, but that human is the same as s/he was before, minus the legal disability of being someone’s property. Any changes that slavery imposed on humans are simply not analogous to the changes that domestication imposed on animals. The change from a wolf to a dog is not like the change from an African to an African-American, and it is breathtaking that “political turn” theorists would maintain this. Whatever challenge that we face in integrating formerly enslaved persons into the society of free persons — however difficult — is qualitatively different from the challenge we face in integrating nonhuman animals whom we have bred selectively to be submissive, servile, and dependent on us for every aspect of their existence to be “citizens” in our political community.

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Originally published on Medium. Some of the material in this essay was taken from Gary L. Francione and Anna E. Charlton. “The Case Against Pets,” published in Aeon at https://aeon.co/essays/why-keeping-a-pet-is-fundamentally-unethical.

It is often the case that, when a human is mistreated by other humans, the claim is made that the victim was treated “like an animal.”

What is meant by this expression is that the victim has not been treated with any recognition of their moral value. They have been treated exclusively as a means to an end. Their interests have been ignored. They have been treated as a thing.

The problem is that most of us have no problem in treating nonhuman animals as things. Most of participate directly and indirectly in treating animals as things — we use animals for food and other purposes, despite there being no need to do so and despite there being a considerable amount of evidence that animal agriculture is harmful to the planet and to our health. Indeed, most pandemics are the result of humans exploiting nonhumans.

So we object to humans being treated like animals but we do not object to animals being treated like animals. In doing so, we ignore a very large elephant in the room — our treatment of nonhuman animals as things provides a template for our treatment of humans as things. All we need to do is to analogize humans to nonhumans and our treatment of them as things becomes justified.

If you look at the history of discrimination and injustice, you will find in virtually every single case a cultural effort to reduce humans to nonhumans as the pretext for then treating the former as things, as we do the latter. Efforts to justify race-based slavery and racism depended on depicting people of color as subhuman, as did efforts to justify anti-Semitism, as do efforts to justify misogyny and violence against women.

We dehumanize those whom we want to harm unjustly. And the reason for that is transparently simple. If you want to get support for any campaign against any group of humans, the recipe is simple: characterize them as subhuman. Then, anything goes. We can ignore their moral value because they have none — they are like animals.

Does rejecting the idea that animals are things mean that we think that humans and nonhumans are equal? Yes and no. No, in that there are certainly differences between humans and nonhumans that would make talking about giving to nonhumans the sorts of rights we accord to humans nonsense. For example, it would be absurd to talk about giving nonhumans a right to vote (although it might result in our having a better class of political leaders). But yes in the sense that all sentient beings — beings who are subjectively aware and value their lives — should hold one right: the right not to be treated as things. If we recognized that one right with respect to nonhuman animals, it would undercut the main theoretical foundation of injustice and discrimination against humans as well.

We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in — and we’re stopping a lot of them — but we’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals. President Donald Trump (May 18, 2018)

Although Trump later claimed that he was talking about gang members, his statement remains that many immigrants are subhuman, particularly given his statements that Mexico is sending criminals and rapists into the U.S.

Characterization and objectification of others as subhuman places other humans outside the universe of moral consideration. If a human is a criminal, that person can be held accountable, punished, rehabilitated, educated, and understood. Once labeled as subhuman, we are no longer responsible for our own attitudes and behavior. That is corrosive of moral society.

I am not saying that, in a world in which we rejected the idea that animals are just things with no moral value, there would be no violence against humans. I am saying that the theoretical basis that we have used to justify that violence would no longer be there. That would not eliminate all violence but it would make it ever so much harder to justify. It would involve a paradigm shift in our thinking about the very justification of violence.

There are some who claim that, if we reject the status of animals as things, we denigrate humans. That position ignores how treating animals as things facilitates treating humans as things, and represents nothing more than anthropocentrism.

So the next time someone objects to a situation involving one in which the human has been treated like “an animal,” ask yourself whether that event was less likely to have occurred if we did not think it acceptable to treat animals as things. The answer should be clear.

Gary Francione’s most recent book, Why Veganism Matters: The Moral Value of Animals will be published in January by Columbia University Press.

Originally published on Medium.

I used to love the autumn.

For a good part of my adult life, I lived in New York City. Although New York has experienced hotter summers in recent years, the reality is that New York summers have always been unpleasant. Garbage strikes and subways cars without air conditioning made them worse, but they were never great. So I always looked forward to the fall and there were very few things I liked more than walking the streets of Greenwich Village, where we lived, on a crisp October night. But it wasn’t just that the weather was cooler. It was the overall feel of autumn and the energy that seemed to return to the city after three months of the city being “gone” in some bizarre way. Labor Day came, and my spirits used to pick up in an almost amazing way.

I no longer look forward to the autumn. In fact, I dread it.

Some years ago, we moved out of the city because we thought it was time to have a life that did not impose the opportunity costs that come with just about everything that you do in New York. Yes, it’s a great city. No argument there. But day to day life can grind you down unless you have domestic staff who do all of the things that normal people have to do. In any event, we decided that we wanted more space and what, for us, was a better quality of life.

So we found five glorious acres in an area that was set in the midst of some of the most beautiful countryside we had ever seen. We are surrounded by magnificent wildlife. We see birds regularly in our garden that I had never seen before except in books. We have all sorts animal neighbors in addition to the birds: ground hogs, rabbits, foxes, and deer.

Let me emphasize that although we live in area surrounded by beautiful countryside, we do not live in a rural area. On the contrary, we live in an area that is something between a suburban development and the country. We have neighbors and, although we all have wells and septic tanks, we are only minutes away from a shopping center — three actually.

So we thought we had found the best of both worlds. And I was really looking forward to autumn in a place where we had more trees on our property than I had seen in the whole of New York outside of Central Park. The show of colors was breathtaking.

And then I learned that other people loved the autumn as well: the hunters who descended upon the area to kill the deer. Guns are not permitted because, after all, there are lots of humans around here, and guns would be dangerous. So hunters use bow and arrow. When the arrow hits a deer, the tip of the arrow throws out little anchoring blades that prevent the deer from removing the arrow by brushing against a tree or the wall of a garage or other building. Many deer hit with an arrow do not die quickly. Some are wounded and then the hunter slits their neck with a knife.

Some deer who are injured are never retrieved. On a number of occasions, we have seen wounded deer. We are unable to help because, although the deer are actually fairly tame and, while keeping their distance, will nibble at grass knowing that you’re not far, they become terrified when they are injured. And, even if you were willing to pay the expense, you could not get a veterinarian to help because the local vets are prohibited from dealing with “game” and wild animals. One year, there was a wounded deer in our woods. We were told to call the state game commission. We did. They got back to us three weeks later.

The hunters are supposed to have the permission of the landowner before entering on the land but that is a rule observed largely in the breach. “No trespassing” signs are routinely ignored. Although most (not all) hunters will leave if you see them on your land and ask them, you need to be monitoring your land constantly. The bottom line is that if you don’t want to have hunters on your property, you are often made to feel uncomfortable. Over the years, we have had some very unpleasant experiences with hunters when we found them on our property and said that we did not want them there.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that the hunters are any worse as a moral matter from those of us who go to the store and buy dead animals in plastic packages. Not at all. For this very reason, I have been a vegan for almost 40 years. I do not think you can justify killing another sentient being, particularly when your only justification is that you like the taste of their bodies. There is certainly no need to eat animal products. In fact, a growing number of mainstream health professionals are saying that eating plants is a much healthier thing to do. In any event, it’s certainly not necessary to eat animal products for optimal health so I cannot justify the killing — whether by hunters or commercial food companies.

And we should also be clear that the myth that hunting is necessary in order to do “humane” population control is just that — a myth. Apart from the fact that many state game commissions have policies that maximize numbers of “game” animals, the population will stabilize depending on the food supply available.

One of the does who spends a lot of time in our woods had twins. Her twins are exuberant little characters who spend hours playing while mom watches on. Three weeks ago, one of the twins got stuck in a neighbor’s fence and was crying loudly. The neighbor was away and we rushed over to get her out. She ran off and rejoined her mom and sister. Later, all three were grazing peacefully in our back garden.

And soon, it will start again. From now until the end of January, with time off between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the hunters will be in the woods. The deer will be terrified throughout this period and will stay hunkered down for the most part except when they try to find food or get water by the little creek — where the hunters put their tree stands. When you do see them, they behave nothing like how they did before the woods became a place of slaughter. They are skittish and scared. More of them will be hit by cars as they run into the roads in order to get away from human predators.

The twins will probably lose their mom and we’ll never again see them play with the joy that they exhibited this summer. There are other deer who live on our property and many of them will be killed as well. There will be more fawns in the spring and we will love seeing them play and we will welcome their visits with their moms. But, when Labor Day comes around next year, I will feel that dread that I have now learned to feel whenever I think about the autumn.

And I know full well that, when I lived in New York, I was surrounded by many dead animals. Our loft was not all that far from the meat markets on Little West 12th Street. And, although I never ate any of those animals either, I did not know any of them personally. I know these animals. They are neighbors.

I saw the twins this morning. They were standing about 20 feet away when I opened the garage door. They were scampering back and forth across the lawn. The hardly paid attention to me; they looked at me and then went back to playing. As I watched them, I thought that all of this is going to end very shortly, and they won’t be playing any more. They will be hiding in terror.

Sometimes, I find myself having fond memories of hot subway cars in August.

Originally published on Medium.