Posts tagged animal welfare
New video available: “You Can Help Stop This”
Aug 2nd
L.O.V.E.’s new video and pamphlet documenting speciesist oppression, “You Can Help Stop This,” is now available at YouCanHelpStopThis.com. Video subtitles are available in Chinese, Dutch, English, and Greek, with more coming soon (please contact us if you’d like to contribute another); pamphlet translations are coming soon. The video can be watched on Youtube and Vimeo, as well, and it can be downloaded from this page. An image for DVD burning will be available soon.
The core difference between “You Can Help Stop This” (YCHST) and other animal advocacy videos is that YCHST repeatedly emphasizes exploitation, whereas “Meet Your Meet,” Earthlings, and other videos focus on specific details of various industries. For this reason, “Meet Your Meat” is not a vegan video but an anti-factory-farming video. While Earthlings addresses many speciesist practices, it makes each argument separately: specific reasons to change our diet, specific reasons to boycott circuses, specific reasons to stop using leather. Comparatively, I think the message in YCHST is coherent, holistic, and clear. The first titled section directly addresses exploitation, the following sections all return to exploitation, and veganism is defined as a principle of non-exploitation. I think this clearly presents speciesism as a system of oppression, and I think it presents veganism as a coherent, effective response to speciesist oppression.
From the beginning of this project, I imagined like-minded vegans using this video in place of other activism clips that, while emotionally powerful, are limited in their presentation of a vegan perspective. If you believe in veganism as a principle of non-exploitation, not just a lifestyle that happens to solve various problems, I encourage you to view this video and share it with people you know, to spread it online and show it in your communities. I feel very satisfied upon completing this video and sharing it with you all; I think it expresses my reasons for “being vegan” more clearly than I ever have before. Thank you very much.
Click here to watch the new video: www.YouCanHelpStopThis.com
On not mistaking social service for social change
Oct 25th
Ida’s recent post at The Vegan Ideal, “The Absurdity of ‘Triage’ and the Need for Social Change” recalled for me Paul Kivel’s excellent essay “Social service or social change?” in The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. A version of the essay is available online. In this excerpt (this portion is not in the online version), Kivel describes the difference between social service and social change, and the limitations of social service in the context of his work to end domestic violence:
Social service work addresses the needs of individuals reeling from the personal and devastating impact of institutional systems of exploitation and violence. Social change work challenges the root causes of the exploitation and violence. In my travels throughout the United States, I talk with many service providers, more and more of whom are saying to me, “We could continue doing what we are doing for another hundred years and the levels of violence would not change.” I meet more and more people who are running programs for batterers who say, “We are only dealing with a minute number of the men who are violent and are having little impact on the systems which perpetuate male violence.”
In a similar way, from an anti-oppression perspective, animal welfare, which has exploitation as a precondition, is a form of social service and veganism, which recognizes and challenges the structure of oppression, offers the possibility of social change. Ida writes:
[I]f we don’t address the exploitation that is underlying the structure of human supremacy and is justified by speciesism, then there will always be nonhuman animals who are casualties of that exploitation.
…
Prevention means radically transforming our perspective on the exploitation of other animals. Instead of taking the exploitation of other animals for granted and working to do “triage” on the so-called “worst” cases – while leaving others to linger in their exploitation – we view the exploitation of any animals as obsolete. No longer is exploitation seen as a given, but as something that needs to be radically replaced with nonexploitation.
This is not to say that social service work is not valuable: far from it! It is of course important to attend to the immediate needs of individuals.* This is simply being honest: social service, by itself, does not lead to social change.** In fact, Kivel’s essay explains why “many social service agencies may be intentionally or inadvertently working to maintain the status quo,” and this is where social service can hinder social change.
If our goal is liberation for all, I think it’s important to acknowledge the limitations of social service so we don’t mistakenly believe that our work in animal welfare (social service) will somehow lead to animal liberation (social change). And I think it’s important to not confuse social service for social change, so that if our hearts ask us to work for social change, we are able to fulfill that request.
* Though, note: many animal welfare campaigns don’t serve the needs of actual individuals.
** Sanctuaries for non-human animals, though often problematic in practice, are a form of social service that in theory attend to the needs of individuals. But since sanctuaries address the effects rather than the causes of exploitation, they are assured a constant stream of individuals in need of their services. The service violence provider who said, “We could continue doing what we are doing for another hundred years and the levels of violence would not change,” could equally have been speaking about sanctuaries and speciesist oppression.
Sustainable animal agriculture and ethical vegetarianism
Aug 28th
The sustainable dairy, egg and meat trend presents an interesting moment for animal advocates, as it brings to the fore the limitations of the anti-suffering, anti-cruelty rhetoric of animal welfare organizations. Read any vegetarian starter kit or eat-less-meat booklet from one of these groups and you’ll find they are treatises against factory farming (animals suffer in factory farms; factory farms hurt the environment). Many take great pains to state clearly that they’re talking specifically about factory farms, and not about other farms that breed, raise and kill non-human animals.
Sustainable animal agriculture neatly sidesteps all animal welfare concerns. This is why, for the public, it offers an attractive alternative to factory farms. When I worked for an animal welfare corporation handing out their anti-factory farming literature, people all the time would say to me, “That’s why I don’t buy animal products from factory farms! I buy local, organic, free range!” The arguments against factory farming have no relevance to sustainable animal agriculture (if anything, they support it!).
Peter Singer, around whose philosophy all the modern animal welfare corporations are based, was clear from the start that his anti-suffering philosophy only prohibits eating products from animals in factory farms. In Animal “Liberation”, Singer writes “So we must ask ourselves, not: Is it ever right to eat meat? But: Is it right to eat this meat?” (Second Edition, p 160). In a recent book, The Way We Eat, he tells readers where to buy sustainably and humanely raised animal products. Two of many examples:
- “[A]void animal products that come from factory farms. … Information about farms that do not use factory methods is available … at www.eatwellguide. org [the web site’s tagline: local, sustainable, organic], and from … www.eatwild.com [tagline: the #1 site for grass-fed food and facts].” (p. 287)
- “If you eat marine animals, choose species that come from sustainable fisheries … www.thefishlist.org” (p. 288, in the ‘Sustainable Fish’ section)
It’s an odd quirk of history that Singer’s anti-suffering ideas, which explicitly endorse consuming animal products, have been used as the ethical argument for vegetarianism. It is this tension that is exposed by sustainable animal agriculture.
As vegetarian advocates, I think sustainable animal agriculture offers us a great opportunity to examine our message and our ideas. When speaking with the public about vegetarianism, do their questions reveal problems with the message we are presenting? If so, rather than ignoring those problems, I suggest reconsidering the ideas underlying our message. In my own case, it was speaking with a skeptical public that led me to realize that my own ethical vegetarianism was grounded in the vegan ideal of non-exploitation, and not in the anti-suffering arguments promoted by animal welfare corporations. Of course, your reasons for vegetarianism may be different from mine. Regardless of what those reason are, by continually and honestly examining our personal reasons for being vegetarianism, we strengthen our understanding of our beliefs and become more articulate, confident and effective advocates.
New information or new perspective?
Apr 13th
Lately I’ve been reviewing slaughterhouse investigations and other footage in order to compile an anti-oppression, anti-speciesist video clip for online activism. Much of the footage I’ve reviewed has come from animal welfare organizations, and most of it has included narration from those groups. In reviewing these videos, I’ve noticed a big difference between the approach to narration in those videos and the approach I plan to use.
In these videos, the general method is to “expose” specific practices on factory farms, fur farms, puppy mills, and other such places. Facts and figures are inevitably involved, and credible sources are required to prove that this is really what happens to other animals. Along with the intended purpose of creating awareness of specific cruel practices, I think the effect of this approach is to reinforce the idea that, if the specific practices weren’t so cruel, then confining and killing other animals would still be O.K.
One short video advertisement was over-dubbed with the song “Old McDonald Had a Farm” and showed factory farming footage. The message, of course, is that most animal foods don’t actually come from family farms like “Old McDonald’s”—they come from farms that confine and kill other animals in much more brutal ways. This specific move is common among animal welfare groups. Peta2 prints a pamphlet titled “What They Never Told You” that starts with the same declaration: “This is Not Old McDonald’s Farm. The meat, eggs, and dairy products that you consume no longer come from the small family farms that you see in children’s books.” These arguments criticize factory farms, yes, but only at the cost of reinforcing the idea that it’s harmless to eat meat, eggs, and dairy from smaller, family-owned farms.
If we want to end speciesism and animal exploitation everywhere—not just the most cruel instances of it—then I don’t think a focus on exposing specific cruelties is effective. Due to the excessive emphasis on specific details, there ends up being nothing said about the underlying problem of use without consent (which exists with or without the specific practices). When we focus on “exposing” all the specific details of factory farming, I think we end up telling the public that what they already know about meat—that other animals are killed in order to produce it—is not worth opposing in itself.
I propose an alternative: When using footage or images of specific speciesist practices, we can couple it with text and narration that question people’s whole worldviews, not just their stance on a single product. Instead of getting into so much detail about a specific practice—“Did you know that chickens on factory farms are bred to grow so fast that…?”—we can ask people to reconsider what they already know: “Have you ever thought about how human animals kill other animals—take away their lives—just because we like the taste of their bodies?”
If our goal is to challenge speciesism, then any specific details we present aren’t the main point. The main point is to bring people to face what they already know—that other animals are killed in order to produce meat—and make them look at it closer, see it for what it really is, really confront it and examine it.
If we can make people question oppression this directly, then we are actively working to disrupt the ideology of speciesism—the ideas ingrained in us by traditions, media, and social norms that make us think it’s normal or reasonable for humans to confine and kill other animals.
When we disrupt the ideology of speciesism like this, we’re not only affecting the other animals that new vegans save with their plant-based diets—we’re putting whole worldviews into circulation. We’re giving people the realizations necessary for them to start questioning every speciesist practice they encounter from there forward. We’re actively laying a foundation for the vegan world we want to create.
Anti-Oppression and Animal Rights
Jan 18th
How is anti-oppression different from animal rights? During the discussion of Steven’s post On Suffering and “Unnecessary Harm”, chernavsky wrote:
As far as I can tell, the philosophy promoted on this site is entirely compatible with the views of Gary Francione — and I’m actually surprised that he’s not mentioned anywhere. Here’s an excerpt from a lecture he gave:
“The foundational premise of the abolitionist perspective is veganism. As far as I’m concerned, veganism is the single most important form of social activism that anybody can engage in. And it’s not a lifestyle thing. It has to do with a commitment to non-violence, and it has to do with a commitment to the respect for persons, whether they are human persons or non-human persons.”
http://www.gary-francione.com/francione-rochester-lecture.html
I think there is an important distinction. Since this diverges somewhat from Steven’s original topic and because this may be of general interest, I thought I’d respond in this new thread. These comments are, for the most part, not specific to Francione’s formulation and also apply to the difference between anti-oppression and animal welfare.
An understanding of power (and the resulting privilege), which I think is central to the anti-oppression view of veganism, is something I have not seen in animal rights (or animal welfare) formulations. Stephen noted this as well. I know for myself I’ve had difficulty writing about power, so perhaps Francione’s view seems similar because we haven’t explained this point clearly enough.
My experience is that recognizing power comes naturally to oppressed groups. In the realm of confronting racism, people of color very often speak directly about power and privilege. I don’t think this is an accident. When one is in the oppressed group, I think it’s obvious that power imbalance is a huge problem. For those in the role of oppressor (as I am, among other ways, as a male), it may be more difficult to recognize: because I am in the power position, I don’t receive any push-back when exercising that power. Because privilege is so often invisible to the oppressor, if I don’t explicitly think in terms of power and privilege, I very likely will remain unaware of the true grip of sexism over my thoughts and actions and therefore be unable to disengage myself from participating in and perpetuating that system.
Similarly, when confronting speciesism, I am in the role of oppressor as a human animal with human animal privilege that is often invisible to me. By thinking directly in terms of power and privilege, I can start to disentangle myself from the sway of speciesist oppression, which necessarily also means working to end the broader systems supporting that oppression.
The anti-oppression view of veganism encompases both animal and human animal oppression. Power and privilege provide a common basis for understanding each of these oppressions. For many people, including myself, experience with multiple forms of oppression reveals patterns of interaction and behavior, all centered around power difference and privilege, common to all forms of oppression. For myself, it is difficult to speak in detail about any form of oppression without referring to power.
As a practical matter, I’m not sure how the abolition of animal use can be effected without addressing the issue of our power over animals. I imagine one might be able to say property status (a la Francione) is a way of exercising power over another, but that seems a step removed to me and therefore obscuring what seems to me to be the main point.