A friend of mine recently asked the following question: “What do you say to people who are vegans and who educate others about veganism but who are also concerned about circuses, hunting, and other particular forms of animal exploitation. Do you advise that they not address those issues at all and just focus on veganism?”
Of course not.
Martin Balluch, an Austrian animal advocate and president of the Association Against Animal Factories in Austria, is circulating an essay that he wrote and that he characterized to me as opening a “very new approach” to the rights/welfare debate.
Balluch’s essay is long and, at places, convoluted, but the basic thesis is really quite simple.
According to Balluch, taking the abolitionist approach and promoting vegan/abolitionist education rather than welfarist regulatory reform “cannot but fail” because, in a speciesist society, “to live vegan costs an enormous amount of energy, so that only a tiny minority will ever have enough motivation and resolve to be able to sustain it.”
So what is the “very new approach” that Balluch proposes?
He argues that we should support welfarist reform. Balluch argues that “it is at least possible” that welfarist regulation will eventually lead to abolition on both an individual and social level. That is, supporting animal welfare reform will, as a psychological matter, lead the individual toward veganism and will, as a political matter, cause the society to move toward abolition.
In short, Balluch is not proposing a “very new approach” at all.
One of the things that I hear frequently is that educating people, particularly strangers, about veganism, is difficult.
On the contrary, our everyday interactions with people provide us with many opportunities to discuss veganism. This essay will discuss a couple of examples. I will discuss more examples in future essays.
On January 8, 2008, the European Commission rejected calls that it postpone its Directive calling for a “ban” on the conventional battery-cage, which is scheduled to go into effect in 2012 (after being first announced in 1999). According to the Directive, producers will have the choice to go “free-range,” “barn” (known as “cage-free” in the U.S.) or to use “enriched” cages where stocking densities are lower and that must have a nest, litter, perch and clawing board.
And the welfarists are, as you would predict, just as excited as they could be, although some at least had the good grace to reveal a small hint of the skepticism that is warranted.
Among the many notices that I receive about various events and conferences focused on animal issues was an announcement about a conference sponsored by the welfarist group, United Poultry Concerns. The title of the conference is: “Cage Free, Animal Friendly, Go Vegan -What’s the Problem?”
According to the announcement, the conference will ask:
Should activists work to reduce the suffering of billions of chickens and other animals who will never live to see a vegan world, or is such work counterproductive—a moral betrayal of animals?
This question assumes that animal welfare reforms significantly reduce the suffering of animals and will lead us along incrementally to a vegan world. There is no support for such an assumption.
It is a new year. It is a time to resolve to do better.
A simple suggestion: If you are not a vegan yet, get off the fence and stop exploiting nonhumans.
If you are vegan, then educate yourself about the relevant moral arguments, as well as the environmental and health benefits, and try to work veganism into every conversation that you can. Look at every omnivore (including vegetarians who are not vegans) who you meet as someone who can be convinced if you work hard enough at it. Many will not listen; some will. And every person who becomes a vegan makes a difference.
Veganism is the most important personal change you can make; educating others about veganism is the most significant form of activism in which you can engage.
Happy New Year.
Gary L. Francione
© 2008 Gary L. Francione
Recently, there was a debate on the excellent and always lively Vegan Freak Forums between what may generally characterized as “postmodern feminists” and “radical feminists.” Postmodern feminists acknowledge that a woman’s choice to commodify herself sexually may represent an act of empowerment and cannot be assessed in any definitively negative way. These feminists are often pro-pornography, or are at least not anti-pornography. Radical feminists are more inclined to reject the commodification of women as inherently problematic. They are generally anti-pornography and are particularly opposed to pornography in which women are depicted as recipients of violent or abusive treatment. They regard most gender stereotypes as harmful to both women and men and seek to undermine these stereotypes. Postmodern feminists often argue that “feminine” stereotypes can help to empower women.
This debate has some interesting and important parallels with the debate on abolition vs. welfare. Indeed, postmodern feminism and animal welfare are the same theory applied in different contexts.
A Media Release (October 25, 2007) from Animal Rights International (ARI) President Peter Singer announced that ARI has placed billboard-style ads on New York buses for a month. These ads apparently show how battery eggs are produced. In the Release, Singer explains how terrible battery cages are. Singer states: “‘Battery cages are being phased out in Europe—why are we lagging behind?'” Singer claims that “there is a bright spot in this dark picture”:
Cage-free eggs, while presently only about five percent of sales, are the fastest growing segment of the market. As more people become aware of the enormous suffering inflicted on caged layers, they often choose to spend a few extra pennies for a more humanely produced egg. ARI hopes that by reminding New Yorkers that breakfast comes at a price for hens, many will spend a little more to get them out of the cages.
The ARI/Singer Release is problematic in at least three respects.
A central theme of my work for the past decade or so has been the exploration of our cognitive confusion—our “moral schizophrenia”—when it comes to nonhuman animals. Recently, I commented on how entertainer Ellen Degeneres sobbed on her television show about a dog that she adopted and gave away while, at the same time, promoted her dead-animal luncheon menu on her website. Football player Michael Vick was excoriated for his involvement with dog fighting by a public that thinks nothing about eating nonhumans tortured every bit as much as one of Vick’s dogs.
We humans claim to have some sort of “special” characteristic that justifies our exploitation of nonhumans. One such supposed characteristic is that we are supposedly rational and they supposedly are not. When we consider that it is humans who build nuclear weapons and who destroy the very environment necessary to sustain life, including our lives—just to identify two irrational human behaviors—the rationality claim rings rather hollow. But every now and then, particular examples of what a strange species we are really hits me. I want to share a recent experience with you.
Number of animals killed in the world by the meat, dairy and egg industries, since you opened this webpage. This does not include the billions of fish and other aquatic animals killed annually.
Based on 2007 statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations' Global Livestock Production and Health Atlas.
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