Vegetarianism and Animal Rights? No Can Do!
by Guest
What did one ovo-lacto-vegetarian (consumes eggs and milk but no flesh) animal rights activist (OLV ARA) say to the other? Give up? Nothing, because they don’t exist!
That’s right, there are no ovo-lacto-vegetarian animal rights activists in existence today. Who is to blame for this? Did your “carbon footprint” stamp out their habitat?
No. There never were any in the first place, there aren’t any now, and there never will be any.
The two personas – the ovo-lacto-vegetarian (OLV) and the animal rights activist (ARA) -- are so in contradiction to each other that they cannot co-exist in the same person.
The odd thing is that not many people are aware of this dichotomy. Most people imagine that “animal rights activists” are people who protest against factory farming and seal hunting, and that many of these people are OLVs. In fact, there are huge organizations full of self-professed OLV “ARAs,” such as the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
To their credit, both HSUS & PETA advocate veganism. PETA even speaks out strongly, using the language of “rights,” against the use of animals “for food, clothing, entertainment, experimentation, or any other purpose.”
However, both organizations campaign extensively for “less cruel” methods of intensively confining and killing animals, to the point of actively promoting the industries involved. For instance, PETA awarded its 2004 “Visionary of the Year” Award to Temple Grandin, a beef industry consultant who designed “more humane” slaughterhouses. McDonalds, which now uses Grandin’s slaughterhouse auditing guidelines, is effectively immune to further PETA protests.
HSUS has been campaigning against sow gestation crates. Breeding sows are always in either gestation crates or farrowing crates, which are just long and wide enough for a sow to stand up and lie down, but not turn around. In a farrowing crate, a sow gives birth and nurses her piglets, but she still lacks enough room even to reach around to nuzzle at them. Once her piglets are weaned, she returns to the gestation crate. HSUS proposes that pork producers use group housing of sows instead, pointing out that such methods can be more efficient, more marketable, and therefore more profitable.
“Animal rights activists” who participate in these campaigns are negotiating only for better welfare, not at all for the recognition of any rights. They need not abstain from any type of animal use, although many are vegetarians who consume milk and eggs. To avoid confusion, these folks should be called “animal welfare activists.”
Animal welfare has been championed by utilitarians such as Jeremy Bentham (early 19th c) and, currently, Peter Singer. These theorists seek to minimize the amount of suffering endured by animals, arguing that their interests in not suffering should be included in the calculus of “the greatest good for the greatest number.” This inclusion is based on the fact that non-human animals are sentient beings, capable of suffering.
In 1789, Bentham wrote, “The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes… when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.”
These utilitarians grant animals standing in the community, although not on par with human beings. They certainly do not recognize rights, for these philosophers do not accord innate rights even to human beings. Peter Singer refrains from eating animals simply because it engenders suffering to the animals that is greater than the pleasure consuming them creates for him. No rights are being violated or protected.
Welfare reforms are extremely controversial within what I shall call the animal protection community. Do they represent any true progress, or are they a waste of resources? Welfare advocates must decide whether such campaigns improve welfare. What is clear, however, is that welfare reforms do nothing for animal rights.
So let’s look at animal rights.
Animal rights is a movement that recognizes inherent value in other animals, and claims that using them instrumentally, for our own purposes, violates their rights. As such, animal rights condemns the use of animal for meat, milk, eggs, even honey. Leather, fur, silk, wool are also no-nos, as are animal testing and animals in entertainment.
Animal rights activists demand that human beings stop breeding, using, and then killing other animals.
In The Case for Animal Rights (1983), Tom Regan introduced the idea that non-human animals have rights. He described them as “subjects-of-a-life,’ with interests in having their lives “go well for them.” As “moral patients” (similar to infant or mentally-disabled humans) if not moral agents, they deserve to have their rights considered.
This means that less-cruel treatment of animals is still unacceptable, such use violates the fundamental rights of these animals. “Empty cages, not bigger cages” means that not only should they not be in small cages, they shouldn’t be in cages at all!
According to University of Maryland Animal Science professor W. Ray Stricklin, most egg-laying hens are kept in spaces roughly the size of a folded-over sheet of notebook paper (therefore approximately 8.5”x 5.5”) As chicks they have the nerve-rich tips of their beaks seared off so that they don’t cannibalize one another in cramped quarters (beak-trimming). They may be starved for weeks at a time to restart an egg-laying cycle (forced molting).
At the slaughterhouse, they are shackled upside down while their heads are dragged through an electrified bath to immobilize them, then their necks are slit and their bodies scalded. Audits regularly find evidence of premature scalding (“red birds,” which were alive when they reached the scalding tank) as well as broken limbs from rough handling, as documented by Temple Grandin.
Whereas an animal welfare activist might work for better conditions for laying hens, she might not necessarily give up eating eggs herself, particularly cage-free eggs. She might want to a farm’s conditions actually satisfy her standards of welfare, though. Investigations have shown that even many free-range hens cannot gain access to the outdoors. Sometimes there is only a small doorway at one of end of a large, crowded barn, and it is blocked by other hens’ bodies (sometimes dead or otherwise unable to move out of the way). They may not be able physically to get there due to broken legs and wings, extremely weak hearts, or having their feet stuck in the layers of guano.
On the other hand, the animal rights activist wants no eggs. He wants no eggs for everyone, please. The real ARA sees the chicken as an individual who has autonomy over her own body. To breed her and her siblings, to throw away all her brothers, to confine her and all her sisters intensively, to manipulate their bodies, and finally to kill them all – these he sees as rights violations. No, an animal rights activist cannot eat eggs.
Neither can he drink milk. These issues are interesting from a feminist perspective, as well as from welfare and rights perspectives.
In both of these cases, humans want something that is made during the reproductive cycle. We need females for these industries. Males are mostly extraneous, draining precious resources. Only a small number of genetically superior males are retained for breeding purposes.
In the case of egg-laying chickens, male chicks are simply discarded. Because their sisters are bred to convert calories into eggs, rather than into meat, these chicks would not gain weight quickly enough justify the expense of feeding them as broiler chickens. They are either smothered and crushed in large plastic bags in the dumpster, or fed through a chipper/grinder machine.
In the case of male dairy calves, a few genetically superior ones are retained for breeding purposes, but the remainder must go. Since their sisters have been bred to convert calories into milk, rather than into meat, these calves would not gain weight as efficiently as beef cattle. They are sold at auction, usually to veal farms, where they are fed special diets and kept in confined quarters for a few months, and then slaughtered.
Whatever the sex of the calf, all newborn dairy cows must be separated from their mothers. Whether it is done within the first day or within the first hour, this is the pivotal step. We human beings demand the milk that a mother cow’s body has manufactured for her young. It is essential that we intercept that milk before the calf nurses and consumes it for herself.
Many readers are aware of the immunity-enhancing colostrum that a newborn receives within its first hours of suckling. Humans don’t want this type of milk, so it is given to the calf. Depending on the dairy farm, the calf might nurse for long enough to get it herself, or the colostrum may be collected by the farmer and hand-fed to the calf. She will subsequently be given formula while her mother’s milk is sold for human consumption.
This can be a difficult topic to discuss, because of the varying levels of sympathy people feel for cows. Some people think that cows are not aware of what is going on around them, or that they do not care. Still others believe that it doesn’t matter whether the cows care or not, what matters is only what people want. Personally, I cannot imagine that this is not a horrific experience for at least some of the cows involved.
You might say I have no way of knowing. After all, I have not ever given birth, and I am not a cow.
It is true that I have no way of really knowing, but I do have two ways of guessing. First, I look at the physiological picture. A cow carries her baby for 284 days, about 9.5 months. When it’s time for her to give birth, her posterior pituitary gland releases oxytocin, a hormone that stimulates uterine contractions, initiates milk let-down, and promotes bonding. I would surmise that removing her baby at this point would create enormous stress.
After all, for 9.5 months, her entire being has centered on creating another body inside her own. When she gives birth, her entire system is flooded with hormones that promote bonding and all the other maternal behaviors that ensure the survival of her child. For every other animal, people discuss the mothering instinct and its formidable power. Why is it different for a dairy cow? She’s even lactating for most of her life!
Secondly, I ask dairy farmers themselves, whom I take to be honest and decent people.
Tony B. (northern MD) concedes that, although they take the calves away within 12 hours in order to make the process easier, some of the cows are still unhappy. Diane M. (also northern MD) says, “Some mothers are decidedly more 'broody' or protective than others. … Most are concerned with getting back to the feed bunk and rejoining the herd. We have to be careful not to place human emotion on their bond. Yes dairy cows can be protective of their baby, but some of that temperament has been bred out of them as a result of working so closely with people.”
Thomas M. of Stornaway Jerseys reflects, “I think most of the objections of the animal rightists are about fairly universal practices in the dairy business. You mention removing calves from their mothers shortly after birth as one, and I agree that it is an unpleasant practice. Nonetheless, I do it. There are several reasons for doing it, including the health of the calf, but the biggest reason, I think, is that to have the calves running with the cows would be chaos. It would require huge amounts of labor to maintain cleanliness and to accomplish the tasks that go into feeding and milking dairy cows. It would make milk very expensive, and farmers pride themselves on producing food that even the poorest among us can afford.”
He goes on to explain that the stress of separation is short-lived. As pointed out by other dairy farmers as well, the calves bond to whoever feeds them, and the cows are free to go about the rest of their business. (I’m not sure what the rest of their business was supposed to be, now that I think of it.)
But the most important point for an animal rights advocate is not a question of deciding on an acceptable level of discomfort for animal and human. Using an animal for our own purposes is not wrong because of the suffering it causes her. Using an animal is wrong because it violates her right to live her own life. In fact, it inevitably violates her right to life itself.
A dairy cow spends all of her life either pregnant or lactating, and usually both. The toll this takes on her body partially accounts for why she’s not worth much as meat. After a few years, there’s just not a lot of meat on her for us to tear off and consume. So then, does she “go out to pasture” when she retires? Well, she goes to the same “pasture” as every other farm animal, the one spelled “s-l-a-u-g-h-t-e-r-h-o-u-s-e.” According to Dr. Stricklin, the modern dairy cow completes an average of two lactation cycles before being slaughtered.
There is no way for someone who consumes egg (ovo) or dairy (lacto) products to believe in animal rights, let alone advocate for them. The fundamental premise of animal rights is that animals are not property, and cannot be used as such. In order to extract eggs or milk from their bodies, we manipulate them in various ways that violate their rights. This is the animal rights view.
It was Gary Francione who first elaborated on this idea in Animals, Property, and the Law (1995). He pointed out that animals are legally considered property, and as such they have no rights. Those who own them, on the other hand, do have rights, including property rights. In considering potential welfare reforms, food animal producers will encounter the following types of choices:
good for business, good for animal welfare;
good for business, bad for animal welfare;
bad for business, good for animal welfare;
bad for business, bad for animal welfare.
Francione claims that reforms of type 1 (not his terminology) will be accepted, those of type 4 will be rejected, and the those of types 2 and 3 will always be decided according to the producers’ right to maximize profits. Their property rights always trump any and all claims for animal welfare.
Even reforms of type 1 (good for business, good for welfare) are problematic, since they make exploitation more profitable and thus increase the scope of the industry. An example is the Humane Slaughter Act of 1958, which requires that cows be rendered insensible before they are their throats are slit. This is good for the cows, but also for the industry, because it decreases the risk injury to slaughterhouse workers from large animals flailing around in panic while the workers approach them with sharp knives. This means that greater numbers of cows can be processed in a facility in a given amount of time.
No such requirements exist for chickens, who can safely be shackled upside down and slaughtered without physical danger to the workers. They are also stunned (by an electrified bath) but this only immobilizes them so that the subsequent throat-slitting and feather-plucking go smoothly and quickly. Recent research by Dr. Mohan Raj, of the University of Bristol, indicates that the procedure could be extremely painful for the chickens. As such, it is an example of reform type 2 (good for business, bad for welfare).
Other examples of reform type 2 abound, from chaining calves in tiny veal crates to mutilation of body parts without anesthesia such as face branding, beak trimming, de-horning, tail/toe/ear-cropping, and castration.
Francione launched a scathing criticism of welfare reform in Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement (1996). “Welfarism,” as he calls it, claims that animal activists can demand reforms of type 3, those that might be bad for business, but are good for animal welfare. They wish to mandate better welfare even if it cuts into profits. However the dairy and meat industries are extraordinarily powerful, as was shown when they easily won permanent exemption from the Animal Welfare Act of 1966.
The schism between animal welfare and animal rights is seen in the current controversy over whether the “compassionate consumption” movement has helped or hurt animal welfare. PETA and HSUS support this movement as improvement in the short term while working for the end of animal use in the long term. This is the mantra of what Francione calls “new welfarism.”
Abolitionism, on the other hand, refuses to support anything but the end of all animal use. Abolitionist animal rights claims that supporting welfare reforms is unacceptable, because it condones rights violations while purporting to condemn them. Practically speaking, welfare reforms make animal use more acceptable to the general populace. We hear of longtime vegetarians going back to eating meat, in spite of growing evidence that “humane” farming claims are often meaningless. Sanctuaries that take in rescued farm animals often cannot distinguish between free-range and battery-caged hens.
Abolitionists maintain that vegan advocacy is the only acceptable strategy towards the end of animal exploitation (see James Crump’s blog at http://abolitionistanimalrights.blogspot.com, and that this advocacy must be based on a rights argument (see Roger Yates’s blog at http://human-nonhuman.blogspot.com). Arguments by utility such as improving the environment (eliminating factory farming) or human health (benefits of plant-based diet) or helping with global poverty (freeing up grain to feed people instead of livestock) may lead to the same conclusion, but are not necessary.
Welfarists and abolitionists argue stridently about whether abolitionism “betrays the animals” in rejecting developments that might alleviate suffering, if they are not won on the basis of rights. Welfarism seeks to alleviate suffering by the most likely means. Sometimes this involves cajoling and titillating.
Abolitionism claims that for effectiveness and consistency, the integrity of the arguments is paramount. As stated in an online abolitionist forum, “the ‘unnecessary suffering’ of domesticated animals can only end when we identify the source of the fundamental wrong. That fundamental wrong is the idea of ‘ownership’ of other animals. To end that suffering, we must change the paradigm.”
The abolitionist community is very accessible; it is primarily found online. As a nascent movement, its adherents are sparsely distributed around the globe. However, growing numbers of animal welfare advocates are jumping ship, some after decades of toiling and little to show for their troubles. New vegans quite often make the leap right away, after researching the issues on the web. I slid into it after a few months of animal welfare and veganism, and I feel unexpectedly peaceful. It’s rather nice not killing in order to eat.
If you are interested in checking out animal rights, I highly recommend visiting Animal Rights Community Online at www.animalsuffering.com/forum. If you do, say hello to panthera, that’s me. And be ready for some excitement.
That’s right, there are no ovo-lacto-vegetarian animal rights activists in existence today. Who is to blame for this? Did your “carbon footprint” stamp out their habitat?
No. There never were any in the first place, there aren’t any now, and there never will be any.
The two personas – the ovo-lacto-vegetarian (OLV) and the animal rights activist (ARA) -- are so in contradiction to each other that they cannot co-exist in the same person.
The odd thing is that not many people are aware of this dichotomy. Most people imagine that “animal rights activists” are people who protest against factory farming and seal hunting, and that many of these people are OLVs. In fact, there are huge organizations full of self-professed OLV “ARAs,” such as the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
To their credit, both HSUS & PETA advocate veganism. PETA even speaks out strongly, using the language of “rights,” against the use of animals “for food, clothing, entertainment, experimentation, or any other purpose.”
However, both organizations campaign extensively for “less cruel” methods of intensively confining and killing animals, to the point of actively promoting the industries involved. For instance, PETA awarded its 2004 “Visionary of the Year” Award to Temple Grandin, a beef industry consultant who designed “more humane” slaughterhouses. McDonalds, which now uses Grandin’s slaughterhouse auditing guidelines, is effectively immune to further PETA protests.
HSUS has been campaigning against sow gestation crates. Breeding sows are always in either gestation crates or farrowing crates, which are just long and wide enough for a sow to stand up and lie down, but not turn around. In a farrowing crate, a sow gives birth and nurses her piglets, but she still lacks enough room even to reach around to nuzzle at them. Once her piglets are weaned, she returns to the gestation crate. HSUS proposes that pork producers use group housing of sows instead, pointing out that such methods can be more efficient, more marketable, and therefore more profitable.
“Animal rights activists” who participate in these campaigns are negotiating only for better welfare, not at all for the recognition of any rights. They need not abstain from any type of animal use, although many are vegetarians who consume milk and eggs. To avoid confusion, these folks should be called “animal welfare activists.”
Animal welfare has been championed by utilitarians such as Jeremy Bentham (early 19th c) and, currently, Peter Singer. These theorists seek to minimize the amount of suffering endured by animals, arguing that their interests in not suffering should be included in the calculus of “the greatest good for the greatest number.” This inclusion is based on the fact that non-human animals are sentient beings, capable of suffering.
In 1789, Bentham wrote, “The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes… when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.”
These utilitarians grant animals standing in the community, although not on par with human beings. They certainly do not recognize rights, for these philosophers do not accord innate rights even to human beings. Peter Singer refrains from eating animals simply because it engenders suffering to the animals that is greater than the pleasure consuming them creates for him. No rights are being violated or protected.
Welfare reforms are extremely controversial within what I shall call the animal protection community. Do they represent any true progress, or are they a waste of resources? Welfare advocates must decide whether such campaigns improve welfare. What is clear, however, is that welfare reforms do nothing for animal rights.
So let’s look at animal rights.
Animal rights is a movement that recognizes inherent value in other animals, and claims that using them instrumentally, for our own purposes, violates their rights. As such, animal rights condemns the use of animal for meat, milk, eggs, even honey. Leather, fur, silk, wool are also no-nos, as are animal testing and animals in entertainment.
Animal rights activists demand that human beings stop breeding, using, and then killing other animals.
In The Case for Animal Rights (1983), Tom Regan introduced the idea that non-human animals have rights. He described them as “subjects-of-a-life,’ with interests in having their lives “go well for them.” As “moral patients” (similar to infant or mentally-disabled humans) if not moral agents, they deserve to have their rights considered.
This means that less-cruel treatment of animals is still unacceptable, such use violates the fundamental rights of these animals. “Empty cages, not bigger cages” means that not only should they not be in small cages, they shouldn’t be in cages at all!
According to University of Maryland Animal Science professor W. Ray Stricklin, most egg-laying hens are kept in spaces roughly the size of a folded-over sheet of notebook paper (therefore approximately 8.5”x 5.5”) As chicks they have the nerve-rich tips of their beaks seared off so that they don’t cannibalize one another in cramped quarters (beak-trimming). They may be starved for weeks at a time to restart an egg-laying cycle (forced molting).
At the slaughterhouse, they are shackled upside down while their heads are dragged through an electrified bath to immobilize them, then their necks are slit and their bodies scalded. Audits regularly find evidence of premature scalding (“red birds,” which were alive when they reached the scalding tank) as well as broken limbs from rough handling, as documented by Temple Grandin.
Whereas an animal welfare activist might work for better conditions for laying hens, she might not necessarily give up eating eggs herself, particularly cage-free eggs. She might want to a farm’s conditions actually satisfy her standards of welfare, though. Investigations have shown that even many free-range hens cannot gain access to the outdoors. Sometimes there is only a small doorway at one of end of a large, crowded barn, and it is blocked by other hens’ bodies (sometimes dead or otherwise unable to move out of the way). They may not be able physically to get there due to broken legs and wings, extremely weak hearts, or having their feet stuck in the layers of guano.
On the other hand, the animal rights activist wants no eggs. He wants no eggs for everyone, please. The real ARA sees the chicken as an individual who has autonomy over her own body. To breed her and her siblings, to throw away all her brothers, to confine her and all her sisters intensively, to manipulate their bodies, and finally to kill them all – these he sees as rights violations. No, an animal rights activist cannot eat eggs.
Neither can he drink milk. These issues are interesting from a feminist perspective, as well as from welfare and rights perspectives.
In both of these cases, humans want something that is made during the reproductive cycle. We need females for these industries. Males are mostly extraneous, draining precious resources. Only a small number of genetically superior males are retained for breeding purposes.
In the case of egg-laying chickens, male chicks are simply discarded. Because their sisters are bred to convert calories into eggs, rather than into meat, these chicks would not gain weight quickly enough justify the expense of feeding them as broiler chickens. They are either smothered and crushed in large plastic bags in the dumpster, or fed through a chipper/grinder machine.
In the case of male dairy calves, a few genetically superior ones are retained for breeding purposes, but the remainder must go. Since their sisters have been bred to convert calories into milk, rather than into meat, these calves would not gain weight as efficiently as beef cattle. They are sold at auction, usually to veal farms, where they are fed special diets and kept in confined quarters for a few months, and then slaughtered.
Whatever the sex of the calf, all newborn dairy cows must be separated from their mothers. Whether it is done within the first day or within the first hour, this is the pivotal step. We human beings demand the milk that a mother cow’s body has manufactured for her young. It is essential that we intercept that milk before the calf nurses and consumes it for herself.
Many readers are aware of the immunity-enhancing colostrum that a newborn receives within its first hours of suckling. Humans don’t want this type of milk, so it is given to the calf. Depending on the dairy farm, the calf might nurse for long enough to get it herself, or the colostrum may be collected by the farmer and hand-fed to the calf. She will subsequently be given formula while her mother’s milk is sold for human consumption.
This can be a difficult topic to discuss, because of the varying levels of sympathy people feel for cows. Some people think that cows are not aware of what is going on around them, or that they do not care. Still others believe that it doesn’t matter whether the cows care or not, what matters is only what people want. Personally, I cannot imagine that this is not a horrific experience for at least some of the cows involved.
You might say I have no way of knowing. After all, I have not ever given birth, and I am not a cow.
It is true that I have no way of really knowing, but I do have two ways of guessing. First, I look at the physiological picture. A cow carries her baby for 284 days, about 9.5 months. When it’s time for her to give birth, her posterior pituitary gland releases oxytocin, a hormone that stimulates uterine contractions, initiates milk let-down, and promotes bonding. I would surmise that removing her baby at this point would create enormous stress.
After all, for 9.5 months, her entire being has centered on creating another body inside her own. When she gives birth, her entire system is flooded with hormones that promote bonding and all the other maternal behaviors that ensure the survival of her child. For every other animal, people discuss the mothering instinct and its formidable power. Why is it different for a dairy cow? She’s even lactating for most of her life!
Secondly, I ask dairy farmers themselves, whom I take to be honest and decent people.
Tony B. (northern MD) concedes that, although they take the calves away within 12 hours in order to make the process easier, some of the cows are still unhappy. Diane M. (also northern MD) says, “Some mothers are decidedly more 'broody' or protective than others. … Most are concerned with getting back to the feed bunk and rejoining the herd. We have to be careful not to place human emotion on their bond. Yes dairy cows can be protective of their baby, but some of that temperament has been bred out of them as a result of working so closely with people.”
Thomas M. of Stornaway Jerseys reflects, “I think most of the objections of the animal rightists are about fairly universal practices in the dairy business. You mention removing calves from their mothers shortly after birth as one, and I agree that it is an unpleasant practice. Nonetheless, I do it. There are several reasons for doing it, including the health of the calf, but the biggest reason, I think, is that to have the calves running with the cows would be chaos. It would require huge amounts of labor to maintain cleanliness and to accomplish the tasks that go into feeding and milking dairy cows. It would make milk very expensive, and farmers pride themselves on producing food that even the poorest among us can afford.”
He goes on to explain that the stress of separation is short-lived. As pointed out by other dairy farmers as well, the calves bond to whoever feeds them, and the cows are free to go about the rest of their business. (I’m not sure what the rest of their business was supposed to be, now that I think of it.)
But the most important point for an animal rights advocate is not a question of deciding on an acceptable level of discomfort for animal and human. Using an animal for our own purposes is not wrong because of the suffering it causes her. Using an animal is wrong because it violates her right to live her own life. In fact, it inevitably violates her right to life itself.
A dairy cow spends all of her life either pregnant or lactating, and usually both. The toll this takes on her body partially accounts for why she’s not worth much as meat. After a few years, there’s just not a lot of meat on her for us to tear off and consume. So then, does she “go out to pasture” when she retires? Well, she goes to the same “pasture” as every other farm animal, the one spelled “s-l-a-u-g-h-t-e-r-h-o-u-s-e.” According to Dr. Stricklin, the modern dairy cow completes an average of two lactation cycles before being slaughtered.
There is no way for someone who consumes egg (ovo) or dairy (lacto) products to believe in animal rights, let alone advocate for them. The fundamental premise of animal rights is that animals are not property, and cannot be used as such. In order to extract eggs or milk from their bodies, we manipulate them in various ways that violate their rights. This is the animal rights view.
It was Gary Francione who first elaborated on this idea in Animals, Property, and the Law (1995). He pointed out that animals are legally considered property, and as such they have no rights. Those who own them, on the other hand, do have rights, including property rights. In considering potential welfare reforms, food animal producers will encounter the following types of choices:
good for business, good for animal welfare;
good for business, bad for animal welfare;
bad for business, good for animal welfare;
bad for business, bad for animal welfare.
Francione claims that reforms of type 1 (not his terminology) will be accepted, those of type 4 will be rejected, and the those of types 2 and 3 will always be decided according to the producers’ right to maximize profits. Their property rights always trump any and all claims for animal welfare.
Even reforms of type 1 (good for business, good for welfare) are problematic, since they make exploitation more profitable and thus increase the scope of the industry. An example is the Humane Slaughter Act of 1958, which requires that cows be rendered insensible before they are their throats are slit. This is good for the cows, but also for the industry, because it decreases the risk injury to slaughterhouse workers from large animals flailing around in panic while the workers approach them with sharp knives. This means that greater numbers of cows can be processed in a facility in a given amount of time.
No such requirements exist for chickens, who can safely be shackled upside down and slaughtered without physical danger to the workers. They are also stunned (by an electrified bath) but this only immobilizes them so that the subsequent throat-slitting and feather-plucking go smoothly and quickly. Recent research by Dr. Mohan Raj, of the University of Bristol, indicates that the procedure could be extremely painful for the chickens. As such, it is an example of reform type 2 (good for business, bad for welfare).
Other examples of reform type 2 abound, from chaining calves in tiny veal crates to mutilation of body parts without anesthesia such as face branding, beak trimming, de-horning, tail/toe/ear-cropping, and castration.
Francione launched a scathing criticism of welfare reform in Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement (1996). “Welfarism,” as he calls it, claims that animal activists can demand reforms of type 3, those that might be bad for business, but are good for animal welfare. They wish to mandate better welfare even if it cuts into profits. However the dairy and meat industries are extraordinarily powerful, as was shown when they easily won permanent exemption from the Animal Welfare Act of 1966.
The schism between animal welfare and animal rights is seen in the current controversy over whether the “compassionate consumption” movement has helped or hurt animal welfare. PETA and HSUS support this movement as improvement in the short term while working for the end of animal use in the long term. This is the mantra of what Francione calls “new welfarism.”
Abolitionism, on the other hand, refuses to support anything but the end of all animal use. Abolitionist animal rights claims that supporting welfare reforms is unacceptable, because it condones rights violations while purporting to condemn them. Practically speaking, welfare reforms make animal use more acceptable to the general populace. We hear of longtime vegetarians going back to eating meat, in spite of growing evidence that “humane” farming claims are often meaningless. Sanctuaries that take in rescued farm animals often cannot distinguish between free-range and battery-caged hens.
Abolitionists maintain that vegan advocacy is the only acceptable strategy towards the end of animal exploitation (see James Crump’s blog at http://abolitionistanimalrights.blogspot.com, and that this advocacy must be based on a rights argument (see Roger Yates’s blog at http://human-nonhuman.blogspot.com). Arguments by utility such as improving the environment (eliminating factory farming) or human health (benefits of plant-based diet) or helping with global poverty (freeing up grain to feed people instead of livestock) may lead to the same conclusion, but are not necessary.
Welfarists and abolitionists argue stridently about whether abolitionism “betrays the animals” in rejecting developments that might alleviate suffering, if they are not won on the basis of rights. Welfarism seeks to alleviate suffering by the most likely means. Sometimes this involves cajoling and titillating.
Abolitionism claims that for effectiveness and consistency, the integrity of the arguments is paramount. As stated in an online abolitionist forum, “the ‘unnecessary suffering’ of domesticated animals can only end when we identify the source of the fundamental wrong. That fundamental wrong is the idea of ‘ownership’ of other animals. To end that suffering, we must change the paradigm.”
The abolitionist community is very accessible; it is primarily found online. As a nascent movement, its adherents are sparsely distributed around the globe. However, growing numbers of animal welfare advocates are jumping ship, some after decades of toiling and little to show for their troubles. New vegans quite often make the leap right away, after researching the issues on the web. I slid into it after a few months of animal welfare and veganism, and I feel unexpectedly peaceful. It’s rather nice not killing in order to eat.
If you are interested in checking out animal rights, I highly recommend visiting Animal Rights Community Online at www.animalsuffering.com/forum. If you do, say hello to panthera, that’s me. And be ready for some excitement.
http://www.animalsuffering.com/resources/articles/Vegetarianism_and_Animal_Rights___No_Can_Do/