The Fabulous - and fun - Introduction Video for Vegan Ireland.

The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation?

Two preeminent thinkers working on a key debate in the study of the moral status of animals. The Animal Rights Debate Abolition or Regulation? Gary L. Francione and Robert Garner "Do animals deserve to be treated well while we use them to satisfy our needs and desires, or do animals deserve not to be used to satisfy human desires at all? This is a subject of extremely heated debate in animal studies and society at large, and Gary L. Francione and Robert Garner address it as no others can." - Gary Steiner, Bucknell University Read the Table of Contents. | Read more reviews. Gary L. Francione is a law professor and leading philosopher of animal rights theory. Robert Garner is a political theorist specializing in the philosophy and politics of animal protection. Francione maintains that we have no moral justification for using nonhumans and argues that because animals are property-or economic commodities-laws or industry practices requiring "humane" treatment will, as a general matter, fail to provide any meaningful level of protection. Garner favors a version of animal rights that focuses on eliminating animal suffering and adopts a protectionist approach, maintaining that although the traditional animal-welfare ethic is philosophically flawed, it can contribute strategically to the achievement of animal-rights ends. Order Your Copy Now and Save 30%! We'd like to offer you 30% off orders of The Animal Rights Debate. To save 30%, add the book to your shopping cart, and enter code FRATH in the "Redeem Coupon" field at check out. Click on the "redeem coupon" button and your savings will be calculated. ORDER THE BOOK $24.50 $17.15 (with the discount code) / £17.00   paper  288 pages For more titles in: Animal Studies Ethics Philosophy

An Act of Love and Respect.

An open rescue by Ingualdad Animal.

Rescate Abierto de gallinas || Igualdad Animal from Igualdad Animal on Vimeo.

Easygoing Speciesism

I recently received a link to an article entitled, "Are animal abusers properly punished?" in The Saratogian. Leaving aside that the headline raises an issue Gary Fracione has mentioned on numerous occasions, just who are the "animal abusers" in deeply speciesist societies, I was stuck by the use of language employed by the journalist, Katie Nowak.

For example, the piece begins talking about "Buster," who Nowak describes as "it" and yet, just down the page, she describes a dog named "Daisy" as a "her."

The article prompted me to write the following comment:-

"It is difficult to envision any fundamental change for nonhuman animals so long as people regard them as things - as "its." This article is typical of the tradition to reduce animals to thing-like status, as can be seen in the first paragraph when "Buster" is referred to as "it."

Interestingly, a little later, the dog named "Daisy" is referred to as "her" and twice. I suggest readers consider this alternative first paragraph: "Chester Williamson was 16 when it killed Buster, an 18-month-old tabby cat, by dousing the animal with kerosene and lighting him on fire in Schenectady in 1997. Williamson received three years probation and court-ordered psychiatric counseling, a punishment that many felt did not match the severity of its crime."

This construction seems decidedly odd - but from an animal rights perspective, so does calling a nonhuman individual "it," especially when the gender of the animal is known.

Dr. Roger Yates,
Sociology,
UCD,
Dublin,
Ireland. "

This seems clearly to be another example of easygoing speciesism which prevails in society - and something most people would not even register, either at all, or as a problem.  However, from the point of view of animal rights advocacy, this is a central issue.

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.”

"I'm Thankful I'm Not a Turkey!"

Philosopher David Degrazia suggests that negating early socialised lessons may take a certain independence of mind.  It may be further appreciated from a sociological point of view that any development of such independence of thinking is subject to control and mediation by forces of social interaction and conditioned by socially-constructed understandings on any given issue. 

Sociologists Berger & Berger provide an interesting perspective on this sort of social experience.  For example, they state that, “society is our experience with other people around us,” and that means that other social actors constantly mediate and modify human understandings of the social world, systematically imposing and reinforcing many of the norms and values of prevailing society. 

A number of years ago, there was a lengthy discussion on a nonhuman advocacy email network about issues arising from the annual North American “Thanksgiving” celebration.  A non flesh-eater had written in saying she was negotiating with family members about how the day should go.  Particularly, what was to be done about the traditional “Thanksgiving turkey.”  Not wanting to spoil the occasion for others, the animal advocate was considering allowing her mother to have her way and visit brandishing a specially pre-cooked turkey. 

Her email was an apparent reflection of her anxiety about compromising her principles; but it also seemed to reveal her recognition, and even partial acceptance, of the cultural importance of a turkey dinner on this particular social occasion. There is the suggestion that pro-animal views in this case had the clear potential to disrupt and upset a hitherto not-especially-thought-about aspect of Thanksgiving: that is, the plight of the millions of turkeys killed for it. 

This appears to be a case in which some awareness truly had the ability to ‘spoil’ a dinner.  An awareness of the emailer’s views had made her relatives, perhaps for the first time, think about turkeys at Thanksgiving, rather than simply think about Thanksgiving Turkey.  When Julian Groves investigated the role of ‘emotions’ in social movement activity about human-nonhuman relations, he found a similar situation.  He found that animal activists were often accused of ‘spoiling’ happy celebrations and occasions, and it is clear that this generally means that the philosophy of animal rights had made people directly think about certain aspects of their relations with other animals.  For example, one activist told Groves that friends, aware of his and his partner’s position on human-nonhuman relations, stated before a meal: “We’re not going to say anything about food in front of our kids.”  If a child comes up and mentions something about animal flesh, the activist says of his friends, “they’ll all look at us like ‘don’t start him thinking!’” 

Groves also recounts how a North American female activist had caused her mother to be very angry when she did talk about the plight of turkeys during Thanksgiving.  Her mother’s rage was at least partly prompted by the presence of the activist’s aunt and the potential of a spoilt meal following the campaigner’s comments.  The activist states that she was told by her mother: “’This is supposed to be a happy occasion.  It’s Thanksgiving.  You’re supposed to be thankful’.  I said ‘I am thankful.  I’m thankful I’m not a turkey!’”