Pete Bethune, Sea Shepherd, Veganism and Animal Rights.

I have written several blog entries about the difficulties caused when animal advocates who do not take a rights-based position on human-nonhuman relation nevertheless insist on the labels “ARA” or “animal rights” to describe themselves or their organisations.

Such people and organisations appear to like the label “animal rights” but they generally reject the extensive philosophical writings of the animal rights philosophers such as Gary L. Francione and Tom Regan.  Indeed, not only do they disfavour animal rights theory, they often as not adopt, follow, and promote Peter Singer’s position and Singer says that he does not regard rights as a proper foundation to talk about the treatment of animals. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA), for example, deliberately mislead the public and members of the animal advocacy movement when they characterise Animal Liberation as a work of animal rights philosophy. They go as far as saying that, if someone is only going to read “one animal rights” book, it should be this one. This is a deliberate act of distortion and cannot be seen in any other light, especially since Singer has repeatedly stated that his position is not based on nonhuman animals having rights. Still others in the movement, based on anarchic or ecofeminist reasoning, do not take a rights-based position on human-nonhuman relations either.

In recent weeks, the philosophical position of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) has been under scrutiny, and similar issues have arisen.  For reasons of their eye-catching activism, SSCS seems to be generally seen in a positive light in the animal advocacy community, although its single-issue-ism causes some debate. In the 1980’s I took part in several SSCS actions, gave talks at schools, colleges, and political party meetings about how Paul Watson was expelled from Greenpeace International and founded Sea Shepherd. The Boy’s Own aspect of SSCS is alluring to be sure. At around the same time as I was on the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection’s executive committee in 1982 with Sea Shepherd’s then European Director, Dave McColl, I was involved in a SSCS action in the Orkney Islands, north of the Scottish mainland.[1] The Scotsman newspaper reported our daring-do, saying that while the ex-Greenpeace sailors where skilled boatpersons, “Roger Yates was learning fast.” So, in relation to Sea Shepherd, I’ve done that and sold the T-shirts.

The go-getting appeal of SSCS has apparently resulted in them being regarded as an animal rights organisation by some. This is an act of wishful thinking since Paul Watson states openly that it is not an animal rights operation.[2] However, some have argued that Watson is a vegan, so, er, what’s the problem? I was even told that SSCS is an animal rights organisation and it does not matter that its founder says it isn’t![3] As everyone in the world and his mum knows, Sea Shepherd’s Captain Pete Bethune was recently jailed for 5 months in a Japanese prison, and rather fewer seem to be aware – or care – that he tucked into an eye-fillet steak on his flight back to New Zealand. It was fortuitous timing, therefore, when Bethune agreed to do an ARZone “chat” at the end of July 2010, not long after he had been released. As many of you may know, I’m a member of the Board of Dictators of Animal Rights Zone (ARZone), which is a web site dedicated to inspiring rational debate about issues in the animal advocacy movement (see the new ARZone Q&A, Words to Inspire, site here). We at ARZone saw the event as the useful opportunity to clear up for people the position of SSCS with regard to veganism and animal rights.

As the transcript verifies, Pete Bethune confirmed the Sea Shepherd crews must be vegan during voyages and this may encourage them to become vegan – or vegetarian – at other times. He makes it clear that veganism is regarded as a diet and not as a philosophy in the manner in which an animal rights advocate would regard it. When asked about animal rights, Bethune said:

Paul [Watson] makes it very clear; we are about conservation, not animal rights… I consider myself a conservationist more than anything. It is not just about whales. It is about our carbon footprint, our clothes, cars, transport, consumption, food, energy, houses – these all play a role.

He suggests Sea Shepherd’s not standing for animal rights is a matter of acceptance; Sea Shepherd wants “to have the average bloke or lady on the street support them;” that, since “animal rights people” are often regarded as extremists, SSCS is wary of being associated with the idea.

On ARZone I asked if the “eye fillet” story was genuine. Was it really the case that the first thing he did on release was to eat animal flesh, and I added, “if it is, what’s the point of eating one and saving another?” Bethune answered

Yes, I did eat eye fillet. I am not perfect. And, I ate three meals on the flight home. I couldn't help myself. Since then, I have gone back to vegetarian. But, it is not an absolute for me.

He also said he was in transition and believed he would turn vegan sometime in the future. He explained the difficulty being vegan as related to growing up in a situation in which family members were not vegan. While these points seemed perfectly acceptable to the SSCS supporters present at the ARZone chat, what Bethune said was understandably disconcerting for the animal rights advocates who take veganism to be their moral baseline position and something we owe nonhuman animals: something we do first and not last.

Jose Valle of Animal Equality was particularly animated at this stage, understandably since a number of the Sea Shepherd fans were and had been taunting the vegans and the whole idea of veganism, something they continue to do regularly on FB. Jose tried to get these people to respect the fact that they were being hosted on Animal Rights Zone but many did not seem particularly interested in that, nor in his argument about animal rights and conservation being based on different ideals which are often incompatible.

All-in-all I think those involved with ARZone believed that the Pete Bethune chat had usefully added to the discourse in the animal advocacy movement, and that ARZone had given a prominent member of Sea Shepherd the opportunity to explain why the organisation is not based on the philosophy of animal rights.  A few weeks later, ARZone founder Carolyn Bailey and I wrote to Bethune to see how his transition toward veganism was going. He did not answer, at least he did not answer me on FB.

Flash forward to October 1^st, 2010, when Pete Bethune appears as a guest on the WAAR (Women’s Army for Animal Rights) site.  WAAR is pro-direct action (which would explain why they were keen to talk to Bethune) but many of its members, along with some of those who run the site, appear to be among a tiny band of present-day animal advocates who are pro-violence toward fellow humans and who, for example, advocate “armed resistance” against those they perceive as “animal exploiters.”

Against my better judgment, I decided to check out the WAAR “chat.” Knowing what WAAR stood for, I did have some preconceptions. Surely, I thought, these self-styled militants would present a sustained critique to Bethune about his continuing disregard of the importance of veganism, especially when this group of animal advocates are the ones most likely to assume and assert that Sea Shepherd is an animal rights mobilisation. I thought they would be glad Bethune says he’s moving toward veganism but, in the circumstances, and considering their militancy, they were sure, I thought, to regard Pete Bethune as an animal exploiter and on the simple grounds that he is one: despite his actions “for the whales,” surely they would subscribe to the view I expressed in the ARZone chat with Bethune, what is the point of eating one and saving another? Not a place, then - one may think, where a non-vegan would escape some serious and critical questioning.

Not a bit of it.

The WAAR “chat” took the form of a Sea Shepherd fan club meeting in which the whale warrior could do little wrong. Yes, he’s veggie now, he said, yep - still thinking about veganism – ask me again in a year’s time. These points I had expected him to make since I know SSCS is not an animal rights group. It would be instructive, I thought, for WAAR members to hear it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

I had expected Bethune to repeat the line that, it is clear, Sea Shepherd “are about conservation and not animal rights,” as he had in the ARZone chat. However, Bethune started playing to his uncritical audience, blatantly suggesting that Sea Shepherd is just as much about animal rights as it is about conservation, a flat-out contradiction of what he had said just a few weeks earlier, and a contradiction of what Paul Watson, the founder and current prime mover in SSCS, says on the subject.  

But…Does it Matter?

Why am I bothering to write this blog entry – is it really so important what Sea Shepherd stands for, or what its leading members say about issues like veganism and animal rights? I think it is.

If PeTA, due to their influence and media and web presence, can distort the meaning of animal rights, then Sea Shepherd certainly can do the same.  Sociologists regard social movements as important – crucial – claims-makers in civil society. Social movements make claims about problems they identify and they have to give reasons for why their claims are valid. Those who accept the philosophy of animal rights as articulated by the animal rights theorists claim that sentient nonhuman animals are rights bearers and that human use of other animals amounts to rights violations. Look at the majority of “AR” websites, at the leaflets and other publications put out by the animal advocacy movement, and see that talking about rights violations and rights bearers is not the way most animal advocates approach the issue.

Most animal advocates talk about the issue of causing cruelty to nonhuman animals; for most it is about the treatment of animals rather than the use of them. By talking this way, they can often avoid the “tricky” issues of pets and the notion that veganism is the logical implication of a belief in animal rights. For many animal advocates, vegetarianism and veganism are terms that can be used interchangeably as though they mean the same thing – and some use that hideous hybrid “veg*n” to further muddy the waters.

For animal rights advocates, however; those who have read the books on animal rights philosophy and agree with a rights-based approach to human-nonhuman relations, they want to persuade people that nonhuman animals are right holders, that we commit rights violations when we use them; that vegan is the logical baseline position for anyone who takes animal rights seriously; that veganism is a constellation of principles and not merely a diet; that we must end our use of animal property, challenge the property status of nonhuman animals, and we must call for the abolition of animal abuse rather than the prevention of the “worst abuses” perpetrated by “animal exploiters” such as vivisectors, circus workers and slaughterhouse staff.

Animal rights advocates do not believe that we can discharge our moral duties to nonhuman animals by being vegetarian, and especially not if that means increased dairy consumption, that we must think critically about this relentless mantra that has been chanted by so many for so many years, “vegetarian first, veganism sometime in the future, vegetarian first, veganism is too extreme,” and that we must think critically about the view that we can topple or damage the ideology of cultural speciesism with single-issue campaigns that seem to construct a hierarchy of importance among different types of animals.

In terms of clarity of claims-making, animal rights advocates who accept the philosophy of animal rights, are aided if people understand that some people – many – most actually – in the animal advocacy community do not present a rights-based approach and if rights are mentioned at all, they are mentioned as part of group names, or as a rhetorical slogan, as an empty – anything-counts-as-animal-rights – label. There is a lot of talk about divisions in social movements and the animal advocacy movement is no different. In my view, there is little that can be more divisive than when advocates insist on being known as something to which they have little or no allegiance to. This is precisely what happens in the animal movement when people call themselves animal rights advocates without any commitment to reading the philosophy of animal rights which grounds the movement’s claims-making.

It might be argued that “animal rights” should merely mean what the majority says it means: the League Against Cruel Sports – animal rights, come on down!, HSUS – animal rights, come on down!, CIWF – animal rights, come on down!, PeTA – animal rights, come on down! But does that stand to reason? Or does that simply regard animal rights as some receptacle into which any old theory on human-nonhuman relations, including those that actually oppose the idea that human and nonhuman animals are rights bearers, can be thrown in.  Chuck it all in, stir, and bedamned that there is no consistency of thought or position, which, incidentally, leaves the animal advocacy countermovements free to lie and bluster about the meaning of animal rights. There must be a limit to what is or can be considered “animal rights,” just as there must be a limit to what we can regard as Marxism, feminism, or environmentalism.

For the sake of clarity of claims making, it is good that Paul Watson acknowledges that Sea Shepherd is not an animal rights organisation. It is good that he explain that, for him, veganism is also not about animal rights but is about how the animal flesh industries are destroying huge numbers of fishes (see video of Watson in this subject here). These things are good because they clearly identify the values upon which SSCS operates. It is very bad, however, for Pete Bethune to play along with a gullible audience by stating that Sea Shepherd is as much about animal rights as it is about conservation.

[1]. They do not club seals in the Orkneys, they shoot them, so our tactics involved a group of people surrounding a seal killer in order to keep batting his gun into the air preventing him pointing the weapon down at the seal pups. McColl and I were involved in numerous discussions on the BUAV committee about the Brown Dog statute. There was endless debate among those funding the project about whether the dog should be depicted lying down, standing, sitting, etc. Dave eventually lost his temper with all of this and declared that he did not mind if the bloody dog was “p****ing, having a s**t, or rogering someone’s leg” if it meant that we could move on to more important issues. On reflection, Dave McColl may not have been a “committee person”!

[2] The price we pay for this is to be accused by other conservation organizations of being animal rights. Like it's a bad word. They say it with the same disdain that Americans used to utter the word communist in the Fifties.The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is not an animal rights organization. We are exclusively involved in interventions against illegal activities that threaten and exploit marine wildlife and habitat. We are involved in ocean wildlife conservation activities. Reference.

[3] In a book chapter in 2007, I reported a similar episode in which someone insisted that Peter Singer is an animal rights advocate. After being presented with numerous examples of Singer himself, including this, saying that he wasn’t one, she declared, “Okay, let me see if I have this right. Peter Singer says he is NOT an ARA so that means he’s not.”