Oh, No: Another Woman Does What Everyone Else Does
First, there was Melissa Bachman who became an object of hatred for shooting lions in South Africa. And now: Blond and perky Kendall Jones has caused an uproar with Facebook photos of her smiling alongside dead lions, leopards, zebras and rhinos. (Daily News) Teen’s big-game hunting photos spark outrage AOL News) And everyone is upset […]
A Moment of Silence for Donald Watson, Founder of The Vegan Society
Donald Watson, together with some others, founded The Vegan Society in 1944. Here my entry on Watson from the Cultural Encyclopedia of Vegetarianism: WATSON, DONALD (1910–2005) Born September 2, 1910, in Mexborough, South Yorkshire, England, Donald Watson coined the term “vegan” to describe individuals who abstain from the consumption and use of animal products and […]
Monday: Your Choice
or We keep hearing welfarists say that most people who go vegan went vegetarian first, so we should promote going vegetarian. We keep hearing welfarists say that if we promote “happy” meat and other “happy” animal products, that will lead people to go vegan eventually. This is all nonsense. There is no empirical evidence that […]
Interview on Brian Oxman Show
On Wednesday, June 25, 2014, I was a guest on the Brian Oxman Show. You can listen here. ********** 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 […]
Message to The Vegan Society: It’s About Justice
The Vegan Society has obviously gotten a significant critical reaction to its explicit rejection of veganism as a baseline moral principle as represented in its “You don’t have to be vegan” campaign. The Vegan Society has been going in the wrong direction for a while now. In 2011, the Society banned me for promoting veganism […]
The Economics of Animal Welfare: Some Brief Comments
Some welfarists say that welfare reform will help animals because reform causes a price increase and that decreases demand. This position shows that welfarists do not understand the economics of animal agriculture or of welfare reform. Since most welfare reform campaigns address inefficiencies in the production process, many welfare reforms increase production efficiency so production […]
“But it took me 10 years to go vegan.” So What?
I never cease to be amazed by those people who say that we should not promote veganism as a moral imperative because they took a long time to go vegan. What is the relevance of how long it took someone to see that going vegan was the right thing to do? Answer: it has no […]
What? The Humane Slaughter Act is Not Being Enforced?
Farm Sanctuary has done a Freedom of Information Act request and has discovered that the United States Department of Agriculture is not doing a good job enforcing the Humane Slaughter Act and the problem is apparently particularly bad in Des Moines, Iowa. WHAT? The USDA not enforcing the Humane Slaughter Act? Come on, Farm Sanctuary. […]
“Kicking Animals is WRONG.” So Is Killing Them.
Animal welfare charity Mercy for Animals (MFA) has a new “undercover” video. Guess what? They have discovered that animals are kicked and otherwise treated badly at livestock markets. Imagine that. MFA is outraged: Sure it is. But MFA, here’s some news: using animals for food–whether they are kicked or not–is WRONG. MFA urges: “SPEAK OUT […]
EAT LIKE YOU CARE–IN SPANISH!
EAT LIKE YOU CARE: An Examination of the Morality of Eating Animals is now available in Spanish. COME CON CONCIENCIA: Un análisis sobre la moralidad del consumo de animales is now available on all Amazon sites: U.S.; Spain; Mexico; Brazil; Canada‘ U.K.; Germany; Italy; Japan; India; Australia You do NOT need a Kindle device to […]
The Kapparos Campaign: A Good Example of What’s Wrong with Single-Issue Campaigns
On June 12, 2014, I spoke on a panel at the New York City Bar Association as part of a panel on Kapparos, which involves ritual use of chickens. An animal advocate, Karen Davis of United Poultry Concerns, gave a presentation in which she showed photos of the various abuses of chickens used in the […]
Commentary: Vegan Education/Advocacy, “Forcing” Others to Go Vegan, and Animal Ethics as Involving Obligation and Not Choice
In this Commentary, Anna Charlton and I discuss educating yourself so that you can educate others and the importance of doing education/advocacy in your community; the idea that vegan advocacy represents an attempt to “force” people to go vegan; and the idea that animal ethics is a matter of “choice” and not moral obligation. It’s […]
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“Eat Like You Care” at Temple University
Here is a video of our presentation on Eat Like You Care at Temple University on March 10, 2014: ***** 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 […]
Debating Eating Animals at MoMA
On Thursday evening, April 17, I had the pleasure to participate in a program at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City in which we discussed the following proposition: “Design can allow us to humanely include animal products in our diet.” Nicola Twilley argued in favor; I argued against. You can watch […]
On “Journeys”
If many people said, “I did not reject racism overnight; it took me a long time to stop being a racist,” would we say that rejecting racism is a matter of a personal “journey”? Would we say that we should not take the position that racism is unequivocally and absolutely wrong? Would we say that […]
Animal Ethics: Abolition, Regulation, or Citizenship?
Despite 200 years of animal welfare laws, which require “humane” treatment and prohibit the imposition of “unnecessary” suffering, animal exploitation is occurring in more horrific ways than at any time in human history. On Friday, April 11, 2014, Rutgers School of Law–Newark will host a conference on “Animal Ethics: Abolition, Regulation or Citizenship” at which […]
New York Times Debate on Carriage Horses
The New York Times Room for Debate examined the issue of carriage horses in New York City in light of Mayor de Blasio’s pledge to ban them. The abolitionist perspective was represented. You can read the debate in it’s entirety here. Gary L. Francione Professor, Rutgers University
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 […]