Professor Francione Delivers Keynote Speech at the 2013 DePaul University College of Law Event, “Animals as Food: The Legal Treatment of Animals in Contemporary Agribusiness and Factory Farming”/October 30, 2013

Abolitionist Animal Rights/Abolitionist Veganism: in a Nutshell

The term “abolitionism” applied in the context of animal ethics is largely meaningless because there are people who describe themselves as “abolitionists” who want to see all animal use abolished, those who want to see some but not all animal use abolished, and those who simply want to end some of the “worst abuses” of animal exploitation but have no inherent objection to animal use. Therefore, there is no generally agreed-upon meaning as to what those who describe themselves as “abolitionists” want to abolish or how they propose to abolish whatever it is that they want to abolish. In this sense, “abolition,” standing on its own, does not describe any particular position any more than does the term “animal rights,” which has now become so meaningless that it is used by animal exploiters who claim to believe in “animal rights.”

This essay describes a particular abolitionist theory, known as the abolitionist theory of animal rights, which was developed as an alternative to the position developed by Australian philosopher Peter Singer. Singer embraces a form of preference utilitarianism, which promotes actions that maximize the satisfaction of the interests or preferences of those beings involved or affected. He gives priority to beings who have human-like self-awareness and can actively contemplate the future. Although he accepts that nonhuman great apes, dolphins, and elephants are self-aware in this way, he expresses doubt about other animals and regards many of the animals we exploit as living in a sort of eternal present. They have an interest in not suffering pain or distress, but they do not have an interest in continuing to live, or, at least, they do not have an interest that leads Singer to accord them the default presumption against use as replaceable resources that he accords to “normal” humans and nonhumans who have human-like self-awareness.

Singer focuses primarily on issues of treatment rather than use and he advocates for welfare reform. For example, in 2005, Singer spearheaded an effort, joined by most large animal organizations, including The Humane Society of the United States, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Farm Sanctuary, Mercy For Animals, Vegan Outreach, and Compassion Over Killing, to publicly praise a U.S. based supermarket chain, Whole Foods Market, for adopting what could be called a “happy exploitation” labeling program. Singer might well be described as the primary figure of the “happy exploitation” movement that promotes the “compassionate” consumption of “higher welfare” meat and other animal products as normatively desirable and, along with welfare reforms generally, as the proper subjects of animal advocacy. This “happy exploitation” movement is now the dominant faction of the modern animal movement in North and South America, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

The abolitionist approach rejects Singer’s approach and incorporates a deontological element that is characteristic of rights views, such as that of Tom Regan, but has several distinct elements and emphases:

First, the abolitionist approach rejects all animal use. The doctrinal basis for this rejection is that all humans, irrespective of their particular characteristics, have a fundamental, pre-legal moral right not to be treated exclusively as the resources of others. It is this right that rules out the chattel slavery of humans. To have moral worth entails the rejection of status as chattel property that allows the life and fundamental interests of a human to be valued at zero by the slave owner. We cannot justify failing to extend this one right to nonhumans unless we arbitrarily declare that animals have no moral value whatsoever, a position that most people reject. Therefore, if animals matter morally, we cannot treat them exclusively as resources and recognizing the right not to be property would rule out all institutionalized exploitation of animals. Abolitionists (as I use the term) reject domestication and maintain that nonhumans ought not to be brought into existence for human use, however “humanely.”

There is a sense in which we can arrive at largely the same conclusion without invoking the notion of rights. We share a moral intuition that we should not impose “unnecessary” suffering and death on sentient beings; that other things being equal, the fact that an act causes or results directly in the suffering of a sentient being is something that counts against that act as a moral matter. There is, of course, a great deal of disagreement when it comes to what satisfies the necessity element here, but we generally agree that we cannot characterize pleasure, amusement, or convenience alone as involving any necessity or compelling reason. This is why most of us object to, for example, dog fighting or bull fighting, or “crush” videos, which are intended to eroticize the crushing of small animals by a woman’s foot.

The abolitionist perspective is that the overwhelming amount of animal use involves only pleasure, amusement, or convenience. The most significant animal use both in terms of numbers of animals involved and in terms of cultural importance is the use of animals for food. We kill an estimated 58 billion land animals, and an unknown, but certainly not smaller number of aquatic animals, annually for food. Eating animal foods has generally been justified, at least in part, on grounds of human health and sound nutrition. Those grounds have, however, largely been discredited and it is now recognized that a vegan diet is sufficient for health. Moreover, an increasing number of mainstream health-care professionals are claiming that animal foods are detrimental to human health. And there can no longer be any serious question whether animal agriculture is an ecological disaster. The best justification for the staggering amount of suffering and death involved in the use of animals for food is that they taste good, we are used to eating animal foods, and they are convenient. Indeed, 99% of our animal use is transparently frivolous and contravenes a fundamental moral principle that we claim to accept.

Our only use of animals that is not transparently frivolous, and analysis of which requires rights language, involves the use of animals to cure serious human illnesses. Putting aside that there are serious issues about the benefits for human health that are supposedly obtained from vivisection, we cannot morally justify using animals in experiments where we would not be able to justify using similarly situated humans. We regard humans as having a fundamental right not to be used exclusively as resources. We cannot justify failing to extend this right to nonhumans. Continue reading →

Some Thoughts on Melissa Bachman and the Lion

Melissa Bachman, who is the host of a hunting show called Deadly Passion, announced on her Facebook page on November 1 that she had killed a lion in South Africa and she posted this picture:

The response was remarkable. According to one story, “Bachman found herself the target of vicious death wishes and obscenity-laced insults on Monday as critics on Twitter, YouTube and other social networks blasted the Minnesotan for her boastful hunting escapades.” According to another story, “More than 250,000 people have signed an online petition demanding that South Africa deny future entry to Melissa Bachman, a big game hunter whose smiling photo with a dead lion has sparked considerable outrage.”

And, to no one’s surprise, the large animal welfare charities are rushing to create a fundraising campaign with a petition to have lions listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (U.S.)

I posted something about this on my Facebook page, and I had to delete the comments and close the thread because of the horribly misogynist and violent comments that were being made.

People are angry that Bachman killed the lion unnecessarily. There was no need, no compulsion for her to do so. She did not kill the lion in self defense. She killed the lion because she enjoys killing animals.

And most of us think that that’s terrible; we don’t think that we should make animals suffer and die just because we derive some pleasure from it.

Or do we?

We kill and eat about 56 billion land animals not counting fish. There is no necessity; no compulsion. We do not need to eat animals to be optimally healthy and animal agriculture is an ecological disaster.

The best justification we have for imposing suffering and death on those billions of animals, many of whom have had lives far more hideous than the lion Bachman slaughtered, is that they taste good.

So how exactly does this distinguish those of us who consume animals from Bachman?

That’s a rhetorical question: there is no coherent moral distinction between her and most of us. The fact that Bachman kills “charismatic species” and the rest of us just kill chickens, pigs, cows, and fish is completely irrelevant.

The Bachman matter is no different from the moral schizophrenia that we saw in the matters of Michael Vick, Mitt Romney, and Kisha Curtis.

On the positive side, every time one of these cases erupts, we reaffirm our belief in the widely shared moral intuition that it’s morally wrong to impose suffering on or kill animals without a good reason. Ironically, we already believe everything we need to believe to reject animal exploitation altogether. It’s just a matter of coming to see there is no morally relevant difference between shooting a lion for fun or eating a steak because you enjoy it. In both cases, we have taken a life for no good reason.

Let us hope that these episodes of moral schizophrenia cause the light to go on at least for some who make the decision to put their morals where their mouth is and go vegan.

Gary L. Francione
Professor, Rutgers University

Do you Eat Like You Care?

Some people claim that it is “extreme” to be vegan. In our new book, Eat Like You Care, we explain why not being vegan is “extreme.”

Direct link to the paperback format: https://www.createspace.com/4423398

Direct link to the ebook format on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Eat-Like-You-Care-Examination-ebook/dp/B00DLTN43C

*****

If you are not vegan, please go vegan. Veganism is about nonviolence. First and foremost, it’s about nonviolence to other sentient beings. But it’s also about nonviolence to the earth and nonviolence to yourself.

The World is Vegan! If you want it.

Gary L. Francione
Professor, Rutgers University

The “Happy Exploitation” Partnership

Here is the Bell and Evans website. Bell and Evens is a chicken producer. Bell and Evans advertises that HSUS, PETA, and the Global Animal partnership support it.

Please don’t tell me that the major animal groups aren’t partners with the institutional exploiters of animals.

Please.

Click the picture so that you can read the statements praising “happy exploitation.”

*****

The World is Vegan! If you want it.

Gary L. Francione
Professor, Rutgers University

“Eat Like You Care” Now in Paperback!

You wanted it. We did it. Eat Like You Care is finally in paperback!

Direct link to buy paperback book at our Amazon Create Space Store

Book website

Facebook page

*****

The World is Vegan! If you want it.

Gary L. Francione
Professor, Rutgers University

On Violence as “Entertainment”

Grand Theft Auto 5, which involves cyber participation in all sorts of violence against humans, including homicide, torture, and rape (but maybe it’s “just” cannibalism), as well as nonhumans, has apparently become the fastest selling entertainment product in history.

When I made a Facebook comment criticizing the game, I had a horde of gamers become apoplectic at the mere suggestion that these sorts of “games” were encouraging us to become numb to violence. They insisted that we can separate the “game” from reality.

The violent imagery that we think of as “entertainment” may not be causing people in any direct sense to act in ways that they wouldn’t act otherwise, but it is, without doubt, causing a general coarsening of society; it is distorting our moral perception. It is making violent imagery something that no longer repulses us. And that is unquestionably significant.

Do you want to know why many “good” people did not object to race-based slavery in the U.S.? One reason is that they were surrounded by many others who supported slavery and regarded the ownership of Africans to be “normal.” They were numb to the violence of slavery because it surrounded them. It did not repulse them because it was part of the moral reality that they saw. When we are surrounded by, and wallow in, a culture of violence, we similarly become numb to violence. To deny that is beyond absurd. And that is why we stand around and record a violent episode we see on the street on our smartphones rather than intervene to help.

Years ago, the late feminist Andrea Dworkin argued that pornography depicting violence against women resulted in sexual assaults against women. Whether she was right about any causal link is beside the point; even if eroticizing violence against women cannot be linked directly with the sexual assault of a particular woman, that sort of “entertainment” necessarily makes us as a society more numb to violence against women. And that is, perhaps, what accounts for the epidemic of violence against women that currently exists.

So can we in one sense separate the “entertainment” from reality? Sure. But can we deny that by treating violent imagery involving humans and nonhumans as “entertainment” that we are numbing ourselves morally? No, we can’t. And it strains credulity to say otherwise.

I agree with those who say that our entertainment has always been violent. But is just silly to say that there is not a qualitative difference between Bela Lugosi’s “Dracula,” and films like “Saw” and “Hostel” and these video games that involve extreme, and, in the case of the games, “participatory” violence, against humans and animals.

One of the things that animated opposition to the war in Vietnam was the imagery of children being burned by napalm. After Vietnam, reporters were “embedded” so that they could no longer show that sort of imagery. But it would not matter anyway. We are so used to seeing things that make napalming look like a picnic that the image of an actual suffering child may trouble us but no longer has the emotional force it once had and it can no longer compel us to raise our voices in sustained protest.

Please understand: I am not arguing in favor of government censorship of films, video games, or anything else. Governments have a bad track record here. And I am not disputing that we can, on one level, separate the “entertainment” from reality in that not everyone who finds violence to be entertaining engages in violence.

I am, however, in favor of our asking ourselves why we find images of extreme violence against humans and nonhumans to not be repulsive and, indeed, to be entertaining.

*****

The World is Vegan! If you want it.

Gary L. Francione
Professor, Rutgers University