Dear Colleagues:

The Vegan, the magazine of the The Vegan Society (U.K.), is about to release its Spring 2010 issue. In that issue, I have an essay, Vegetarianism First?, which discusses the notion that we should promote vegetarianism as a “gateway” to veganism and proposes that this is an error on both a theoretical and practical level. I have addressed that issue in other blogs essays on this site (see 1, 2, 3, 4) as well as in my books and articles.

The Vegan Society will be providing me with a higher resolution PDF that I will make available as soon as I can. I hope that this will be useful to you in your advocacy efforts as you engage in creative, nonviolent vegan education.

Also, ROROTOKO is a respected site that selects certain books and interviews authors. My book, Animal as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation, published in 2008 by Columbia University Press, was chosen as the cover interview of the February 1, 2010 issue of ROROTOKO.

THE WORLD IS VEGAN! If you want it.

Gary L. Francione
©2010 Gary L. Francione

Dear Colleagues:

At least five times a week, I get some version of the following question:

In arguing for veganism, should we stay with just the moral argument and is it somehow “wrong” or “selling out” to rely on the arguments based on human health and the environment?

I am going to do a podcast on this in the near future but I wanted to make one point clear now: the lines between these arguments is not as bright as you might think in that health and environmental arguments have moral dimensions.

When I talk about animal rights, I emphasize the moral argument based on a reinterpretation of the western philosophical tradition. I also discuss the spiritual component of Ahimsa or nonviolence which, for me, has been an important part of my veganism for the past 28 years. The spiritual component is certainly not necessary to get to an abolitionist conclusion; I do not rely on it, for instance, in the philosophical argument that I make in Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog?. But my commitment to nonviolence is a significant part of my thinking.

I also talk about health and the environment as part of the moral/spiritual analysis.

We have a moral obligation that we owe to ourselves to be healthy; ingesting products that cause us harm is a form of violence we inflict on ourselves. The empirical evidence becomes stronger each day that animal products are not only not needed for health; they actually cause harm to our bodies in all sorts of ways. Even small amounts of animal products can be harmful. Just as we have a moral obligation not to smoke cigarettes (even a “few”), we have an obligation to make sure that the things we put in and on our bodies (remember that what you put on your skin gets into your body!) do not cause harm. We owe this obligation not only to ourselves, but to the humans and nonhumans who love us and who depend on us.

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Dear Colleagues:

In response to my comments (1,2) about the Johnny Weir matter and to my general comment on single-issue campaigns, some have suggested that if the Johnny Weir matter is a single-issue campaign, then all campaigns, including efforts to promote adoption/rescue, sanctuaries, and even veganism are single issue-campaigns.

This suggestion reveals a profound lack of understanding of the nature of a single-issue campaign.

A single-issue campaign involves identifying some particular use of animals or some form of treatment and making that the object of a campaign to end the use or modify the treatment. The problem of a single-issue campaign is that it presents some particular use or treatment as morally distinguishable from other forms of use or treatment and by doing so explicitly or implicitly suggests that other forms of exploitation are morally less problematic.

The Weir matter presents a classic example of the problem. An Open Letter was written to Weir complaining about his use of fur on the shoulder of his costume. It was not an Open Letter written to the whole team concerning the use of animal skins, including their leather skates or any wool or silk garments. The Open Letter focused on a single animal product being used by a single person in a single instance.

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Dar Colleagues:

From an article, The Rise of Dog Identity Politics, in New York Magazine

For Singer, and for Newkirk, bestiality is not, in all circumstances, prohibited. “If it isn’t exploitation and abuse, it may not be wrong,” she has said.

Singer, you will recall, argued a few years back that there can be mutually satisfying sexual activities between humans and nonhumans.

But I am puzzled by Newkirk’s statement. When is sex with a nonhuman not exploitation and abuse?

The New York Magazine article article also states:

Although PETA’s mission statement includes language suggesting that each animal life is intrinsically valuable, the organization’s actions describe a more nuanced picture. PETA kills a surprising number of the animals it takes in. In the decade beginning with 1998, PETA euthanized 17,000 animals—85 percent of those it rescued.

Perhaps the answer to my question is that sex with a nonhuman is not exploitation and abuse after the “rescued” animal is killed (by an “animal rights” group) but is still warm.

Gary L. Francione
©2010 Gary L. Francione

Dear Colleagues:

Last evening, I received the following email in response to my blog posts about single-issue campaigns:

Prof. Francione:

If single issue campaigns are not good, then does that mean that we should not support efforts to assist the suffering in Haiti because we’re not assisting the suffering everywhere else? Doesn’t that lead to doing nothing?

[name]

This is a good question. I have addressed it before but in light of my recent postings, it’s a good thing to address again.

When we assist the efforts to help in Haiti, we are not making any statement that the suffering somewhere else is good. We all recognize that the suffering of innocent humans is a bad thing wherever it occurs. The fact that we choose to help in Haiti does not mean that we think that the suffering of humans in, say, Darfur, is good or that those in Darfur matter less. Similarly, the fact that we choose to work on issues of child abuse does not mean that we think rape is acceptable or is morally less objectionable.

In sum, if X, Y, and Z are all viewed as morally undesirable, the choice to work on X does not convey the message that Y and Z are morally acceptable.

When it comes to animals, the analysis is different. Most people think that eating meat, dairy, and all other animal products, or wearing or using animal products, is as natural as drinking water or breathing air. So when we single out one form of animal exploitation, we necessarily distinguish it for moral purposes.

That is, if most people think that eating meat and dairy and eggs is “natural” and raises no moral problem, focusing on meat necessarily conveys the idea that dairy and eggs are different and that their use is morally acceptable or, at least, morally distinguishable.

In sum, if X, Y, and Z are all viewed as morally acceptable and you single out X as morally problematic, you implicitly say to the public that Y and Z are different from X and that they are not morally unacceptable, or are at least morally distinguishable from X.

We see this problem every day: people think that fur is morally different from leather, wool, or silk; they think that meat is morally different from other animal products.

This is the problem of single-issue campaigns in the context of animal exploitation. The same problem does not exist where human issues are concerned.

And we do not need single-issue campaigns in order to engage in incremental activism. There is something that each of us can do every day: be vegan and engage in creative, nonviolent vegan education.

If you want to engage in single-issue campaigning, please at least make sure the message of “no exploitation” is clear: If a circus comes to town and you want to protest that event, at least be sure (in addition to being peaceful and nonviolent in your protest) to be explicit in including in your literature and in all of your discussions with people that circuses are merely representative of the problem of animal exploitation as a general matter and that we ought to stop eating, wearing, and using animals altogether. Use the circus as a “discussion point” but do not portray it as morally distinguishable from other forms of animal exploitation.

THE WORLD IS VEGAN! If you want it.

Gary L. Francione
©2010 Gary L. Francione