What if animal welfare campaigns were not necessary? By welfare campaigns, I mean those that attempt to make cages bigger, or “push” the animal user industries to kill nonhuman animals in a way other than the traditional way, not the day-to-day activities of welfare organisations such as the RSPCA whose officers assist the police in breaking up dog fights and who rescue emaciated animals from fields and houses.
What if it turns out that clearly advocating the case for animal rights, veganism, and the total abolition of animal use, brought in its wake various welfare reforms? What if this means that no substantial monies or effort is needed in this area from those who say they stand for the abolition of animal use - and then the funds and energy could be devoted to campaigns against the real structural problem facing animal advocates, cultural speciesism.
Sociologist Richard Gale has looked at the complex and ever-changing relations that exist between social movement organisations (SMO) and countermovement organisations (CMO), and the connections that each has with the state or with state agencies. In terms of animal use, CMOs typically represent the industries perceiving themselves to be under pressure from the animal advocacy movement. The countermovement, this “counterforce,” to use Harold Guither’s terminology, is well funded and very powerful. For example, in the USA, an umbrella organisation such as the Animal Industry Foundation, “works to educate consumers about how modern livestock and poultry producers operate and the importance of their service to the American public.” This group represents the interests of numerous “producer groups, agribusiness associations, and agribusiness companies” such as the National Cattleman’s Association, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the American Feed Industry Association, the National Milk Producers Federation and United Egg Producers.
Likewise, the Farm Animal Welfare Coalition (FAWC) was created to represent 45 industry groups and therefore was, “alarmed by the premises of animal activists, the criticisms of modern confinement livestock and poultry production, and the promotion of vegetarianism,” and worried (in public utterances at least) to the extent that it sees, “the animal rights movement as destructive to consumer choice and the farm economy.”
Gale points out that there may or may not be direct communication between social movement organisations and their countermovement mobilisations but both will tend to attempt to gain access to, and have influence over, state agencies. Therefore, since it is nearly impossible to conceive of any major social movement activity that does not involve the state to some degree, adequate social movement analysis must be alive to “the social movement-countermovement-state triad.” What this means is that developments and discourse in civil society created by social movement activity, in this case animal advocacy, will create dialogue between state agencies and industry representatives acting as a counterforce mobilisation. Apart from close links that exist between governments and user industries, the latter often enjoying what political scientist Robert Garner calls “insider status”, when governments consult on animal issues, they invite submissions from user industry representatives, academics, and the most respectable of the traditional animal welfare organizations. There is no need for any animal rights input in such proceedings since animal welfare is the only criteria ever applied, be it in investigations into the regulation of the use of animals in circuses, on farms, in laboratories, or any other use setting.
However, the impact of animal rights campaigning on public attitudes, and the amount of media attention given to animal rights advocacy, can and probably will become constituent parts of these deliberations. The efforts of the animal rights advocate, then, remains best expended at the civil society level, for example, in attempts to shift the way society thinks about nonhuman animals. Success in this sphere will inevitably result in welfare reforms along the way without the need for direct advocacy of it by animal advocates with aspirations beyond that of traditional animal welfarism.
Typically, of course, the animal user industries themselves respond to criticism from - or perceived to be from - an animal rights perspective with claims about animal welfare. The history of single-issue campaigning about animals enslaved in circuses is a classic example, although little of the claims-making is rights-based and is more in line with neo-welfarist orientations. While individual circus proprietors respond to demonstrations and claims-making about animal use with welfare statements, for example, here, here, and here, the circus industry, in consultation with government regulators, welcome - and advocate themselves - the regulation of circuses using animals. They do this because they know nothing beyond the notion of animal welfarism will enter into such deliberations. Therefore, while state-countermovement dialogue occurs on this level, both are likely to part-fund research about the pros and cons different use systems. In other words, if they are to address animal use at all, they inevitably review it within the dominant paradigm of orthodox animal welfarism. This is what society does – it “understands” animal welfare because animal welfare suggests that “non-cruel use” is both feasible and desirable provided enough use regulation is set in place. Essentially, state regulators and countermovements are searching for welfare reforms that seems to satisfy prevailing public attitudes and also meet their primary objective of animal user industries not suffering economically.
This is where scientific disciplines such as animal welfare science play a vital role. Clive Phillips’ 2008 book, The Welfare of Animals: The Silent Majority, outlines the situation well. For example, Phillips recognises that a rapid intensification of animal agriculture occurred in the latter half of the twentieth century. At the expense of “family businesses” a new corporate enterprise emerged in “a new industrial farming sector,” bringing with it a fresh emphasis on economic imperatives. Phillips points out that there is “no universal truism that intensive systems are associated with low welfare and extensive systems with high.” Therefore, research is required into animal use systems.
The adoption of welfare modifications are considered where appropriate and especially when they do not impact on profits. The result, according to Phillips, is that in most “developed countries,” industry funds research to meet two objectives. The first is to increase profits, “for example by control of diseases or an economically viable increase in productivity due to alleviation of stress,” and the second is in response to demands by the animal advocacy movement.
In the latter case, industry insists that “such changes cannot be made without scientific evaluations of welfare impacts” and this research usually takes about ten years to complete. While Phillips points out that industry is reluctant to fund welfare research or implement changes if profits are threatened, there is one important proviso to this: “Of course even if profit is reduced in the short terms, in the long term a better market may be accessible if welfare is improved, such as to consumers paying more to purchase products from animals kept in high welfare systems.”
Clearly those who profit from the use of animals are carefully and constantly monitoring their own business, as all successful businesses do. They are quite prepared to pay for research to keep them ahead of the game and profitable, and if that means employing experts such as Temple Grandin, they will. However, they also monitor the general discourse about the use of animals created by animal advocacy and, as ever, in league with their political allies, they will respond to rights-based claims-making to abolish animal use with suggestions and implementations of welfare reform. Since they always respond to animal rights with animal welfare, there is no need for specific welfare reforms to be advocated: industry experts and paid consultants will do that regardless. Such reforms will arise in the normal cut and thrust of social movement and countermovement exchanges, media reportage, and as a result of countermovement and state-level dialogue.
Not only may it be the case that animal advocates who seek abolition of animal use need never advocate for particular welfare reforms, and stick to challenging the power of cultural speciesism, it is also likely that some welfare reforms are delayed by animal advocates demanding them, especially, as PETA did recently in relation to KFC and CAK, when advocates always loudly announce that they are successfully “pushing” business into making changes against business wishes (whether that is factually true or not). As in all political negotiations, none of the parties want others to claim “victory!” at their expense, leaving them vulnerable to the recriminations from within their own community, some of whom are likely to have had their interests damaged, leaving them feeling betrayed and dissatisfied.
As suggested, the overarching sociological reality that must be acknowledged is that animal welfarism is the dominant paradigm when it comes to assessments of the human use of other animals. The ideology of animal welfare, at least in terms of the “western world,” is deeply embedded into the structure of society and the psychology of its citizens. Generation after generation socialize their children to care about the welfare of animals while they use them, and generation after generation internalize these social lessons that amounts to animal use is not the issue. This is why all animal users virtually without exception claim to have the welfare of their animal property at heart; that they “love” the animals they use and commodify; and they are also just as critical as anyone else of cases that violate the basic principles of animal welfare. For example, those in the animal user industries are undoubtedly equally outraged about what Michael Vick did to dogs, and just as opposed to teenagers shoving kittens in microwaves, or people slashing horses in fields and stables as any animal advocate. However, they need not think outside of the principles of animal welfare to hold such views and, therefore, they need not think contextually about Vick’s diet or lifestyle, or consider a kitten-killer’s leather clothing, or a “horse ripper’s” love of ice cream and milk shakes made from the stolen baby food of mammal mothers.
The fact that animal welfarism is so deeply entrenched in the value system of society is also reflected in the general public response to animal rights. Those who grew up learning the tenets of animal welfarism and, believing the generalised welfarist promise of “non-cruel use,” can have a hard time understanding the claim that a rights-based approach to the human use of animals is necessary or desirable. Therefore, taken out of their comfort zone within the welfarist view, the general public also will respond to rights-based claims with thoughts about animal welfare. Likewise, “celebrity chefs” will do exactly the same. Such TV personalities, for example, Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, have taken steps to improve the welfare of battery chickens and other “food animals.”
However, since many animal advocates accept that only a paradigm shift in human consciousness about animals will bring about any meaningful benefits for them, and since many accept that the general societal reaction to animal rights is informed by the ideology and practice of animal welfarism, animal advocates who engage in animal welfare are merely working within the status quo - moving the pieces around the board - rather than encouraging the adoption of a brand new game. In the words of Donald Watson, vegan animal rights advocates must “ripen up” the population to the idea of animal rights, rather than expending time, money and energy on identifying “low-hanging fruit” which does little or nothing to challenge the property status of nonhuman animals. This conventional view of animals – that they are items of property – “its” to be owned - is, after all, a major problem that prevents their rights being respected. Engaging in welfarism inevitably strengthens the view that animals are items of property and does little to weaken prevailing attitudes.
Although many animal advocates claim to agree that no animal use can be justified, they claim that they must campaign for welfare reform as it is the only thing that it realistic at the present time. However, given the sociology and indeed the economics of welfare responses to rights-based claims-making, there are important reasons why making rights claims is the only rational response to animal exploitation. Let the users worry about the welfare of their captives, we have to win respect for the rights of nonhuman animals and convince people that use is a rights violation. The more successful we are in doing that, the more welfare reforms will flow from the ongoing relationships within the social movement-countermovement-state triad.
[I would like to extend my thanks to Professor Gary Francione who provided valuable ideas and feedback to an earlier draft of this piece, which was originally intend to be part of a joint paper.]
30.8.10
18.8.10
The Meatgrinder.
Keith Tester (1997: 88) asserts that due to their strategies of war, the North American army in Vietnam became ‘little more than a giant killing machine’. If one were to claim that, in many senses, a modern-day slaughterhouse is nothing less than this, a killing machine, critical responses stating that the two case are ‘entirely separate’ could well be expected, just as analogies between nonhuman slaughter and genocide are often heavily criticised.
Yet, the US army in Vietnam had a specific organised strategy to encourage the killing of more enemy soldiers than could be replaced from North Vietnam. This strategy was known as ‘the meatgrinder’ and, according to the Pentagon Papers of 1971, it was the idea of General Westmoreland. Tester explains that, ‘The goal of the meatgrinder was the maximisation of the body count of the number of Vietcong killed during a mission’ (1997: 88). As a calculated ‘index of success’, practical rewards and powerful incentives such as increased leave became attached to the increasingly brutal practice of ‘meatgrinding’, resulting in large numbers of Vietnamese civilians being deliberately counted as enemy soldiers to increase kill statistics. In language reminiscent of that in Gail Eisnitz’s ethnographic investigation of slaughterhouses in the USA, Westmoreland’s ‘meatgrinder strategy’ became involved in calculating its ‘kills’, ‘the production of corpses’, ‘body counts’ and ‘kill rates’.
In 1987, Colonel David H. Hackworth co-wrote a book about his wartime experiences. The most decorated officer in the US army at the time of his retirement in 1971, Hackworth candidly described battle as being like ‘working in a slaughterhouse’. Again analogous with sections of Eisnitz’s account of nonhuman slaughter regimes, Hackworth states: ‘At first the blood, the gore, gets to you. But after a while you don’t see it, you don’t smell it, you don’t feel it’ (quoted in Joanna Bourke 1999: 355). Similarly, in a book written much earlier in 1943, soldier Richard Tregaskis said there is eventually ‘no horror’ in seeing death. Whereas the first corpse may be shocking, the rest becomes mere ‘repetition’ (1999: 355).
An element present even in such repetitious killing is the understanding that it could be ‘you’ rather than ‘them’ to be killed. It is perhaps not immediately obvious that an extremely similar cognisance is also present in animal slaughterhouses. For example, according to Eisnitz’s interviewees, processing speed means that many nonhuman animals on slaughter lines are frequently not stunned adequately - or not rendered unconscious at all due to error or sloppy practice - and this leaves them terrified. Many animals are often in pain from repeated attempts to stun them, they thrash about as they hang by their legs on a moving shackle line as they are propelled toward ‘operatives’ whose job is to kill them (by ‘bleeding them out’) with a knife. They then move on to other workers who must cut various body parts off or remove skin.
In these chaotic circumstances injuries to the human operatives, some serious and even life-threatening, may occur. Slaughter staff are constantly wary of the dangers around them and often have weapons, such as baseball bats, to hand in case the larger animals fall from the slaughter line. As a consequence of all of this, as with many soldiers, a defensive ‘get them before they get us’ mentality can emerge.
As Bourke shows in the detail of human warfare, it appears to be the case that, when any form of killing becomes regarded as routine activity, the act itself can become almost forgotten. In such circumstances, other objectives, such as simply ‘getting the job done quickly’, may emerge as the chief priority. For example, a slaughterer called Tice told Eisnitz that what ‘pisses [him] off’ were cases in which animals would not ‘accept’ that they were ‘due’ to be killed. Tice believes a pig should accept that ‘it is in the stick pit’ and ‘you are going to kill it’ (quoted in Eisnitz 1997: 93, emphasis in original).
Without such ‘co-operative acceptance’ - or in actual nonhuman escape attempts judged to break the routine and thereby threaten throughput and thus wages - individual pigs may be regarded simply as ‘troublemakers’ (for resisting their own deaths) and may be severely punished for it.
Tice, whose job was to ‘stick’ pigs says he once was left with a ‘live hog’ running around his work area because she had fallen off the shackle line. As one of these uncooperative ‘troublemakers’, thus an ‘enemy’ of smooth operational efficiency, the unfortunate pig, like all enemies in the battlefield, found herself due no sympathy: ‘It would be just looking up at me and I’d be sticking, and I would just take my knife and -errk- cut its eye out while it was just sitting there. And this hog would just scream’. He goes on:
One time I took my knife - it’s sharp enough - and sliced off the end of a hog’s nose, just like a piece of bologna. The hog went crazy for a few seconds. Then it just sat there looking kind of stupid. So I took a handful of salt brine and ground it into his nose. Now the hog really went nuts, pushing its nose all over the place. I still had a bunch of salt left on my hand - I was wearing rubber gloves - and I stuck the salt right up the hog’s ass. The poor hog didn’t know whether to shit or go blind (1997: 93).
Several studies, in disciplines such as sociology, history and psychology, have attempted to make estimations of the ‘brutalisation’ effect of involvement in harm causing. For example, in the sociology of crime, many studies have investigated whether the experience of military service revealed itself at some later point in, say, crime or suicide statistics (see Bourke 1999: 356-59, 495). Similarly, there has been a good deal of recent research conducted to evaluate the assumed causal link between nonhuman abuse and the later abuse of human beings. To some extent, these latter endeavours are based on the Kantian notion of ‘indirect duties’; that is, that there should be a prohibition against overt cruelty to animals due to its effect on the people doing it and on human society in general.
Thus Kant said: ‘He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealing with men’. On the other hand, ‘tender feelings towards dumb animals develop humane feelings towards mankind’ (Immanuel Kant, quoted in Tom Regan 2001: 12). Interestingly, it may be argued that one of the main justifications for institutionalised animal welfarism is based on such an idea. After all, animal welfarism does not prevent the human instrumental use of other animals. Neither does it necessarily save nonhuman lives. Yet it does apparently serve to convince whole populations that such exploitation can be seen as entirely justified, largely unproblematic and effectively policed and regulated.
The Dehumanisation Effect in War (an Intimate History of Killing).
A short extract from my chapter, Dehumanisation: "Using" the Species Barrier.
One method of dehumanising enemies is to say that they behave ‘like animals’ and therefore this allows that the target person or population can be treated as such. As ever, linguistic classification is crucial, and language is revealed as a powerful social institution in the construction of culturally transmitted attitudes.
For example, Joanna Bourke (1999: 229) relates the story of the 1939-45 radio broadcasts made by Sir Robert Vansittart. Apparently Vansittart suggested to his wartime listeners that the German public were undergoing a dramatic process of ‘reverse evolution’ which emphasised three alleged traits of the German psyche: envy, self-pity and cruelty. German nationals were characterised as ‘butcher birds’ who ‘felt no compunction about committing the most vile atrocities’ (1999: 229). It was also claimed by Vansittart that German soldiers liked to machine-gun children to death and, if they could not find children, they would turn their machine guns onto cows.
In the Vietnamese war in the 1960’s, the alleged war activities of the Viet Cong perhaps appeared even more shocking due to advances in photography and the production of catalogues of ‘atrocities’ which were distributed to the press by the South Vietnamese Embassy. It was clearly and regularly suggested that the Viet Cong soldiers of North Vietnam behaved ‘no better than animals’, with pictures of them killing, torturing and mutilating large numbers of South Vietnamese people.
Bourke describes photographs that depicted ‘beheaded women, men hacked to death with machetes, a baby whose body was ‘riddled’ with submachine-gunfire; the bodies of priests... breasts sliced off a nurse; the corpse of a tortured teacher; and a dead mother complete with nursing baby’ (1999: 229). Bourke found that combat soldiers who took part in several different conflicts had their ‘eagerness to fight’ heightened by such stories and clearly many came to believe that they were dealing with sub or nonhuman enemies. One soldier, appalled by one of the earliest uses of gas on the Western Front, said he grew ‘black with a deadlier hate’ which made him want to ‘kill and kill and kill’. After that, he said, he ‘butchered savagely’ (1999: 230). For another soldier, all Germans became ‘monsters’ when he learned of the concentration camps.
Scott Camil, a soldier in Vietnam, said that a feeling of terror ran through the troops when they were told of the atrocities of their enemy. In these circumstances, he said, ‘all laws of civilisation were suspended’. Therefore, because the Vietnamese did not act like human beings, ‘then they did not have to be treated as such...And when you shot someone you didn’t think you were shooting a human’ (1999: 230-31). Another veteran said he told himself he was just killing ‘commies’. He goes on: ‘Oh, maybe the first time I saw a dead North Vietnamese I flinched a bit but after that they just became dead animals. It was either he’d shoot me or I’d shoot him and I wasn’t shooting at a person’ (Simon Cole, in 1999: 232).
Further ways of justifying killing ‘the enemy’ was to characterise what was happening as socially accepted forms of ‘hunting’. This could be ‘big game’ hunting or foxhunting, or through seeing oneself as ‘a poacher’, and viewing dead enemy soldiers as part of the sporting ‘bag’ or the booty. Tank warfare was similarly equated with hunting animals and, ironically, given the size and noise of these machines of war, tracking people in a tank was sometimes regarded as a form of ‘stalking’. Even warfare at sea was characterised at times as hunting ‘prey’ and as catching the ‘quarry’ (1999: 233-34).
One method of dehumanising enemies is to say that they behave ‘like animals’ and therefore this allows that the target person or population can be treated as such. As ever, linguistic classification is crucial, and language is revealed as a powerful social institution in the construction of culturally transmitted attitudes.
For example, Joanna Bourke (1999: 229) relates the story of the 1939-45 radio broadcasts made by Sir Robert Vansittart. Apparently Vansittart suggested to his wartime listeners that the German public were undergoing a dramatic process of ‘reverse evolution’ which emphasised three alleged traits of the German psyche: envy, self-pity and cruelty. German nationals were characterised as ‘butcher birds’ who ‘felt no compunction about committing the most vile atrocities’ (1999: 229). It was also claimed by Vansittart that German soldiers liked to machine-gun children to death and, if they could not find children, they would turn their machine guns onto cows.
In the Vietnamese war in the 1960’s, the alleged war activities of the Viet Cong perhaps appeared even more shocking due to advances in photography and the production of catalogues of ‘atrocities’ which were distributed to the press by the South Vietnamese Embassy. It was clearly and regularly suggested that the Viet Cong soldiers of North Vietnam behaved ‘no better than animals’, with pictures of them killing, torturing and mutilating large numbers of South Vietnamese people.
Bourke describes photographs that depicted ‘beheaded women, men hacked to death with machetes, a baby whose body was ‘riddled’ with submachine-gunfire; the bodies of priests... breasts sliced off a nurse; the corpse of a tortured teacher; and a dead mother complete with nursing baby’ (1999: 229). Bourke found that combat soldiers who took part in several different conflicts had their ‘eagerness to fight’ heightened by such stories and clearly many came to believe that they were dealing with sub or nonhuman enemies. One soldier, appalled by one of the earliest uses of gas on the Western Front, said he grew ‘black with a deadlier hate’ which made him want to ‘kill and kill and kill’. After that, he said, he ‘butchered savagely’ (1999: 230). For another soldier, all Germans became ‘monsters’ when he learned of the concentration camps.
Scott Camil, a soldier in Vietnam, said that a feeling of terror ran through the troops when they were told of the atrocities of their enemy. In these circumstances, he said, ‘all laws of civilisation were suspended’. Therefore, because the Vietnamese did not act like human beings, ‘then they did not have to be treated as such...And when you shot someone you didn’t think you were shooting a human’ (1999: 230-31). Another veteran said he told himself he was just killing ‘commies’. He goes on: ‘Oh, maybe the first time I saw a dead North Vietnamese I flinched a bit but after that they just became dead animals. It was either he’d shoot me or I’d shoot him and I wasn’t shooting at a person’ (Simon Cole, in 1999: 232).
Further ways of justifying killing ‘the enemy’ was to characterise what was happening as socially accepted forms of ‘hunting’. This could be ‘big game’ hunting or foxhunting, or through seeing oneself as ‘a poacher’, and viewing dead enemy soldiers as part of the sporting ‘bag’ or the booty. Tank warfare was similarly equated with hunting animals and, ironically, given the size and noise of these machines of war, tracking people in a tank was sometimes regarded as a form of ‘stalking’. Even warfare at sea was characterised at times as hunting ‘prey’ and as catching the ‘quarry’ (1999: 233-34).
1.8.10
Podcast No.11 with special guest, Elizabeth Collins.
For Podcast 11, I was very happy to be joined by the mighty Elizabeth Collins, vegan animal rights advocate, abolitionist animal rights stall holder, and host of the popular NZ Vegan Podcast.
I invited Elizabeth on my show to help me explore some aspects of the poverty of ambition that is prevalent in the contemporary animal advocacy movement. Elizabeth and I discuss, among other things, the issue of social movements "saying what they mean," and we take a critical look at the notion of "vegetarian first," the commonly-held belief that vegetarianism must be a precurser to veganism, and the false impression given that vegetarianism and veganism mean similar things in terms of the exploitative use of nonhuman animals and have similar philosophies.
This podcast was recorded via Skype, so the audio does momentarily drop out (only) a couple of times, but the general quality is good.
I hope you enjoy PC11 and the contribution of my first ever guest, Elizabeth Collins, who I'd like to thank for giving me some of her valuable time.
LISTEN | 43 mins | ENGLISH
I invited Elizabeth on my show to help me explore some aspects of the poverty of ambition that is prevalent in the contemporary animal advocacy movement. Elizabeth and I discuss, among other things, the issue of social movements "saying what they mean," and we take a critical look at the notion of "vegetarian first," the commonly-held belief that vegetarianism must be a precurser to veganism, and the false impression given that vegetarianism and veganism mean similar things in terms of the exploitative use of nonhuman animals and have similar philosophies.
This podcast was recorded via Skype, so the audio does momentarily drop out (only) a couple of times, but the general quality is good.
I hope you enjoy PC11 and the contribution of my first ever guest, Elizabeth Collins, who I'd like to thank for giving me some of her valuable time.
LISTEN | 43 mins | ENGLISH
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