Vegetarians - who'd have 'em?

The latest comments by Morrissey have rattled a few cages. The "vegetarian singer," or less than 20 words later, "The 52-year-old vegan" (see, social change can be well rapid) is reported to have said, "We all live in a murderous world, as the events in Norway have shown, with 97 [sic] dead. Though that is nothing compared to what happens in McDonald's and Kentucky Fried shit every day."


Hmmm - so why the "sic" inserted into that quote I hear you wondering. I think the "journalist" Caroline Davies is suggesting that Morrissey means - or should have said - "97 incredibly important human beings." We don't like human beings reduced to numbers, do we? No - too livestock that is.


I suppose Morrissey should have known that his comments would make waves, even if he did utter them immediately before singing the title track of The Smiths' number one album "Meat Is Murder."


So, why the title of this blog entry (I hear you wondering). Well, according to Caroline Davies [sic], an outraged Twitter tweeter tweeted: "I've been veggy for 22 years. Today Morrissey's made me want to start eating meat."


Really? The commitment to vegetarianism is that pathetically shallow is it? Now, not for a minute would I suggest that this comment - if accurately reported by Caroline Sic - is representative of all or even most vegetarians but, come on now, someone would resume eating the flesh of tortured beings just because of what a singer said? What is all that about, a fear of guilt by association?

Let's Not Give Up Before We Even Get Started

Let's Not Give Up Before We Get Started, Part 1 of 4 from Tribe of Heart on Vimeo.



Let's Not Give Up Before We Get Started, Part 2 of 4 from Tribe of Heart on Vimeo.


Let's Not Give Up Before We Get Started, Part 3 of 4 from Tribe of Heart on Vimeo.


Let's Not Give Up Before We Even Get Started, Part 4 of 4 from Tribe of Heart on Vimeo.

Easygoing Speciesism. Calf Food.

Do you remember the fuss earlier this year when ice cream made from human milk was put on sale (see here)?

Some people were “disgusted” by the idea of consuming human baby food. Odd, isn’t it, the strength of a cultural norm that results in people being appalled by the very idea of ice cream made from milk from a human volunteer while milk taken by force from an abused cow who is repeatedly inseminated only to have her offspring taken from her is deemed “normal” and “natural.”

I was reminded of this news story today. Having marmalised both Boris Becker and Andy Roddick on Grand Slam Tennis (as one does), I was sat in the “victory bath” a little later listening to a BBC Radio 4 programme called Sarah Millican’s Support Group. During the show, the presenter asked audience members whether they had ever gotten the upper hand over a workplace bully.

One person said that she had on the grounds that she made a cup of “milky coffee” for a bullying nightshift supervisor. He drank the coffee and declared it good. She then told him the terrible secret; that the “milk” had run out, so she had used her initiative and substituted human breast milk.

She was asked how the man responded and she said he vomited, cue much merriment from the general audience. 

Heard the News? Welfarists Do Welfare. Big Wow!

A scene from Shakespeare’s 1602 play wot I just wrote.[1]

An inn in Scotland.

Donald: Angus!

Angus: Donald! Have ye had y’tea?

Donald: I have!

Angus: Good news my man, good news. Now did ye hear the latest scandal?

Donald: Tell me more, I don’t think I have.

Angus: Well you know that there animal welfarist organisation?

Donald: The one down the road a wee bit?

Angus: Aye, that’s the one.

Donald: What of it Angus my lad?

Angus: Well, you know that they support animal welfare don’t you?

Donald: Aye, I do. And they’re no for being vegan, I've heard that!

Angus: Aye, they’re no for vegan the noo. Well, ye’ll never guess what else.

Donald: What?

Angus: Well, we’ve just found out that this animal welfare organisation does animal welfare.

Donald: They do not!

Angus: I’m telling ye that they do! To be sure, those animal welfarists actually do animal welfare.

Donald: Welfarists do welfare. Well I never!

I was very pleased to hear Gary Francione’s interview on the recent Go Vegan with Bob Linden show. They were talking about a new agreement between the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the North American egg industry to phase in enriched battery cages over 18 years – yes, you heard it, 18 years, since we all know that animal welfarism is all about “helping the animals NOW.”

I was so glad to hear what Gary Francione said because I recall an episode of Bob Linden’s show (from Sept 2009 – you can hear it in the archive) when Steve Best was the guest and when things were very different. In the 2009 show, both Linden and Best were tearing their hair out about the HSUS not standing up for animal rights and for not advocating veganism. In contrast, what Francione said was, in effect, “well, what do you expect, Bob, they are the HSUS.”

Some of Francione’s claims were, however, quite puzzling I thought. What Bob Linden wanted to know most of all was this: “Who elected the HSUS to represent chickens or the animal rights movement?” Francione replied saying that the question was “complicated,” and he said that there were two parts to the answer.

1. The HSUS are an animal welfare organisation and always have been. They do not stand for animal rights and never have done. They do not promote veganism and they never have done. He summed it up by saying, “What can one expect from the Humane Society?”

2. Some “animal rights people” have welcomed with open arms what the HSUS have done and see it as step forward.

That does not seem complicated to me. Yes, welfarists do welfare and yes, some people mischaracterise animal welfare groups as animal rights groups. None of this should be news in 2011.

Point One I fully understand, and have been saying this for years – welfarists do welfare. Big wow, what do we expect? We don’t expect them to advocate for veganism and we certainly do not expect them to take anything like a rights-based view of human-nonhuman relations.

In relation to Point Two, we need to dig a little deeper, for just who are these “animal rights people” who have so warmly welcomed what the HSUS have done with their 18-year phase-in of nothing very much? It is not clear who Francione is talking about at this stage because he immediately begins to cite the large animal advocacy groups which he and I, and everyone else who take an abolitionist approach to animal rights, regard as animal welfarist mobilisations.

He says, quite rightly, that the HSUS is “not an animal rights organisation;” they are pretty open about that themselves but he also says that most existing animal advocacy groups are welfarist anyway. Francione does sometimes talk as though there are homogeneous blocs of people out there who all behave and think in the same way. So, who are these “animal rights people” welcoming the HSUS’ latest move?

Perhaps what’s being said here is that many animal welfare advocates call themselves animal rights campaigners. Well, that’s true in my experience. It certainly is the case that most people who call themselves animal rights advocates do not adhere to – and most have never read – the rights-based literature about human-nonhuman relations.

However, if this is what Francione means, he means that some people who regard themselves as “animal rights people” - those who support animal rights in a rhetorical sense but not philosophically - may have welcomed this HSUS initiative. If this is the case, it is odd that Francione even uses the term “animal rights people” because he refuses to see such people as animal rightists, and calls them New Welfarists instead, meaning those people who want to abolish animal use by using the methodology of animal welfarism.[2]

This should mean that, for Francione, no animal rights people welcomed this egg agreement for all those who have are either traditional or new welfarists.

I have long argued that the animal advocacy movement remains philosophically messy at the best of times. This is not helped by the fact that many animal advocates do not read philosophy books – and I think this is where ARZone does a valuable job, for example, when it organised a “Tom Regan Week” through which animal advocates were given a flavour of Regan’s rights-based position on human-nonhuman relations. It is rather disturbing, however, that anyone needs to go onto the Bob Linden show in 2011 and explain that the HSUS is not an animal rights organisation.

Some readers may think, ah, yes, but does that mean that Francione gets to say who is and who is not an animal rights advocate? It is a fair point for who can impose meaning on a term like “animal rights advocate.” However, it seems reasonable to me that the lead voices in this should be the philosophers and theorists who have written and thought about it for years. In this day-and-age, Tom Regan, Gary Francione and Joan Dunayer are important rights-based thinkers on human-nonhuman relations. They do not agree on everything, as one would expect, if fact they disagree on quite a lot - but they do agree that nonhuman animals are rights bearers and what we do to them when we use them are rights violations. They all want to abolish animal use and not regulate it, and they all champion veganism.

In the “animal rights movement,” groups like PeTA, for example, have successfully had the label “animal rights” applied to them. Sociologically, this meaning has been socially constructed. However, that immediately raises questions about which voices should carry more “weight” than others, and so that brings me back to my point about the philosophers and theorists. Any fair assessment of PeTA’s claims to be an animal rights organisation will fail, in my view, whereas it is clear that Gary Francione is a rights-based animal advocate standing up for animal rights with veganism as its moral baseline.

Perhaps we need to look forward to the day when the majority of animal advocates, on hearing the latest from the HSUS will, instead of getting into a flap over it, simply say either, welfarist do welfare or what does one expect from the Humane Society?

In the Friday Feature for his show, Bob Linden said, “Hey, hey, ho ho, the HSUS has got to go.” Well, no Bob, they do not, so long as people who are interested in animal rights do not support them. They are separate from animal rights and probably do some good work from an animal welfare point of view. Gary Francione always makes the point that all the money given to animal welfare groups would be better spent on animal rights advocacy. He predicts that, if this were the case, then there would be more ethical vegans in many societies, and there would be more people thinking seriously about the case for animal rights. This seems reasonable to me, although some point out that people “go vegan” for reasons other than someone or some group directly telling them to. I think that there is something in that, and investigation of the point would be useful, although my own view is that we should be honest with people and clearly state our position in which veganism is an integral part.

The sooner we can clear up the philosophical mess in the animal advocacy movement, the easier it should be for people to give their time, effort, and money to causes they support the most and, hopefully, we can never again get into a position in which the HSUS, of all groups, can be mistaken for animal rights advocacy. However, animal rightists be warned: the dominant paradigm is animal welfarism, so people are likely to support it as something they both understand and approve of. In fact, sociologically, we are almost trained to do just that.

[1] With apologies to Ernie Wise.

[2] As Francione points out in Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation (and a recent podcast with vegan educator, Elizabeth Collins), his thinking about new welfarism has evolved since the concept appeared in his 1996 book, Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement. He now argues that only some new welfarists want to abolish animal use and thinks that others are content for some forms of use to continue.

Podcast 15... Talking to Animal Welfarists.

In this podcast, I'm happy to be joined by Carolyn Bailey of Animal Rights Zone (ARZone) and Jordan Wyatt of Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals Podcast.

The task we set ourself was to explore the idea that those who take an abolitionist approach to animal rights have more difficulty talking to animal welfarists than they have in speaking to members of the public. Both Carolyn and Jordan have had recent experience of interacting with a range of people concerned about live exports from Australia and Indonesia. They have exchanged views on Facebook with meat eaters who have set up anti-live exports pages and with people who regard themselves as animal advocates.


The topic of the podcast was prompted by a subject raised in an ARZone Podcast about who we talk to as animal advocates.





or LISTEN HERE.

or HERE.

David Nibert in Dublin.

David Nibert, author of Animal Rights Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation was a welcome visitor to Ireland last week.

A few animal advocates met up with him, his partner and son, in Dublin and spent the evening discussing animal rights, human rights, the "entanglement" thesis, capitalism, and socialism.

A good and instructive time was had by all - thanks David and Julie.

ARZone Podcast 4. ARZone Tour & Animal Equality.

In this podcast, the ARZone team provide a tour around the Animal Rights Zone (ARZone) website, explaining it uses and features and then they discuss an ARZone guest answer by Animal Equality's Jose Valle about a particular style of demonstration made popular in Spain when animal advocates quietly and respectfully hold the dead bodies of the nonhuman animals they have found on Spanish farms, making the usually invisible visible again.

FOLLOW THIS LINK.

ARZone Podcast 3. Communications

In this podcast, the ARZone team talk about talking to those we disagree with - and those we agree with, taking our lead from a clip from Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's Vegetarian Food for Thought podcast.

FOLLOW THIS LINK.