In 1995, Julian McAllister Groves published an article in The Sociological Review entitled Learning To Feel: The Neglected Sociology of Social Movements in which he found that animal advocates are often accused of "spoiling" family celebrations or other social gatherings due to their philosophies on human-nonhuman relations and their diet.

One activist respondent told Groves that friends invited him and his wife to their home but they were keen on the child of the household remaining ignorant about what "meat" was. The friends said to the activist, "We're not going to say anything about food" - and essentially they seemed extremely worried that information about the "meat" in the boy's meal may "start him thinking."

Couldn't have that, of course.

I was reminded of the article when I helped run an information stall in a Dublin district. The location for a good spot to catch passing shoppers happened to be outside one of the doors of a small McDonald's restaurant which is part of a shopping complex.

We set up with our vegan leaflets, recipe books, etc., and soon noticed the McDonald's manager staring at us while talking into a mobile phone. He was spelling out the dread word: "V-E-G-A-N."  Oh no, the vegans have landed! Of course fearing for the well-being of all of humanity, the manager rang for the Guardians of the Peace of Ireland.

Two police officers duly arrived - not a lot of domestic violence and banking fraud on this day apparently - but they did not even get out of their car, looked at us for about 30 seconds, and sped off, no doubt having got the important message that the doughnuts had arrived at the station.

There was nothing for it but for the intrepid McDonald's manager to approach the vegan table.

Positioning himself in such a way that he would not read the terrible mind-boggling vegan literature on the table, he asked us to move on. When we requested why we should, he said that our presence outside the fast food emporium was not welcome, mainly because it "reminded" his customers about what they were eating.

We asked if he thought his customers so unknowing that they were not aware that McDonald's served dairy and flesh products. We said he thought they probably were aware of that, yes, but he nevertheless did not want them "reminded" of the fact (and despite the fact that the table has no graphic pictures or posters on display). He said that customers had been firing anxious glances over at the vegan table - we were clearly in danger of starting them thinking.

Couldn't have that, of course.

We declined his offer to do him a favour and move on and so, a few minutes later, the heavy mob arrived in the shape of the regional supervisor who hailed from London, England. This guy is so ambitious that he's worked for McDonald's for more than 10 years at this stage and "loves it." He gave us a much more aggressive version of the "please move along" routine. We also declined his kind offer.

After that he arranged for his staff members to parade in front of the information table trying to block its view. He also attempted to place a sign advertising McDeath's meals immediately in front of the table.

At all costs, it seems, his customers must not begin to think.

This blog entry is designed to further explore sociological understandings of human-nonhuman relations. Its focus, once more, is on the powerful societal role played by institutionalised animal welfarism. 

Essentially, animal welfarism serves to regulate and control the human use and systematic exploitation of other animals while rarely attempting to totally end such use and exploitation. This is certainly true of orthodox forms of animal welfarism, while post-1970s "new welfarism" (law professor Gary Francione's controversial term) insists that step-by-step reform of exploitative practices may eventually abolish use, an ideological assertion disputed by abolitionist animal rightists. 

From a sociological point of view, animal welfarism cannot be solely regarded as simply a set of legislative interventions enacted from the beginning of the nineteenth century to control, regulate and enforce the “humane use” of other animals. Orthodox animal welfarism undoubtedly seeks to perform its regulatory function: it regulates exploitation, while user industries can cope with welfare reforms if profits are not seriously dented - and yet animal welfarism appears to do far more than this. For example, it operates as a firmly entrenched institutionalised ideology that effectively helps to promote and maintain the value of “kindness to animals,” and an ethos of “caring for” or “loving” nonhuman animals, while at the same time justifying routine harmful practices and time-honoured social attitudes. 

As for user industries, it does them no real harm to be seen to respond to welfarist considerations – after all, they routinely claim the status of concerned welfarists, and they routinely reply to rights-based claims with animal welfare assurances. Typically, when animal welfare modifications are afoot, they spend a small proportion of their vast fortune initially opposing all reform attempts. Some fights they win, a few others they lose. However, aware of the transient nature of public attention, even in the latter cases, user industries can subsequently gain promotional benefits by characterising themselves as “animal welfare friendly” or “humane” - and all the better if they can secure ringing endorsements from former opponents in the national animal welfare corporations, which seem to come ever more frequently. 

The apparent transience of public attention is matched by its failure to fully focus on precise detail. This is one major reason why modern-day politics is based on short ~and oft repeated~ sound bites. Likewise, public inattention also helps to explain why Francione, talking to Vegan Freaks Radio a few years ago, that his university colleagues assumed, due to PeTA’s promotion of McDonald’s limited welfare reforms, that the whole of McDonald’s range was to be considered “humanely produced.” 


They even thought that Francione himself would be eating there. 

Sociologists who study the mass media warn that there is an important issue of the encoding and the decoding of messages and – even in the age of the internet, the mass media are still the source of most people’s knowledge of the news. In other words, while PeTA may believe they clearly highlighted the limitations of the McReforms, that in itself does little or nothing to guarantee that audiences will receive the message “as sent.” 

In general terms, animal welfarism is the accepted societal lens through which moral issues raised by the treatment of other animals are made sense of. Animal welfare opinion is so commonplace, and so firmly sedimented in the public consciousness, that regarding human-nonhuman relationships in any other way is most unusual and exceptionally difficult, even for “pro-animal organisations” and individual campaigners in the nonhuman advocacy movement. Therefore, ideological animal welfare has not only served to regulate exploitation but has also, for generation after generation, been a central support system justifying and excusing what humans have done ~and continue to do~ in the name of science, agriculture, and entertainment. 

Conventional animal welfarism - the very name implies as much - is generally seen in a positive light. It is so firmly entrenched in the modern cultural imagination that it is regarded, according to research fellow at the University of Sydney, Barbara Noske, as “an accepted good in Western society.” Furthermore, as stated, effective animal welfare legislation and “good welfare practice” has always been claimed, increasingly so in recent years, as the most serious concern - often the number one interest - of those who themselves wish to actively exploit nonhumans as a commercial or “sporting” resource. In other words, it is fairly rare to find even animal users who do not regularly articulate fervent support for the concept of orthodox forms of animal welfarism. 

Since the emergence of animal rights philosophy represents both a radical rejection of the human use of other animals and also a fundamental challenge to its regulatory mechanisms, conventional animal welfarism responds to rights-based claims ideologically. It responds with a generalised charge that rights-based approaches are “unwarranted interferences,” “extreme opinions” and, most of all, “unnecessary ideas.” New welfarism reacts in a similar but not exactly the same way. 

Thinking about rights and welfarist approaches to human-nonhuman relations means thinking about very different approaches to the subject, whereas traditional and new welfarists simply locate themselves in different places on a continuum that starts at least with regulating use. Essentially, traditional animal welfarism suggests that any desire to go beyond its own established precepts makes no sense, and serves no positive function, not even for nonhuman animals. New welfarists join in with pejorative claims about “utopianism” and “impracticality,” while having abolition as their end game. Not only does animal welfarism stand like a monolith to inform the vast majority of discussions about human-nonhuman relations, fundamental and historical social conventions, and routine practices, gives succour to mainstream, society-wide, views that firmly state that:-

(1) human beings are entirely justified by many religious and philosophical canons in their use of other animals for their own purposes and 

(2) this exploitative use, precisely because it is thought to be strictly controlled and regulated, can be properly regarded as ethically acceptable since the animals so used do not actually suffer in the course of their usage.



Fundamental social “truths” concerning human-nonhuman relationships are thought to be ~and repeatedly asserted as~ so self-evident that the norms and values which support mainstream views about other animals are unconsciously, and without controversy, transmitted on a daily basis at every level of primary, secondary and adult socialisation. 

Put simply and directly, human beings in western societies are socialised to become animal harming animal lovers. 

Since the “normal,” “justified,” and “proper” use of other animals is a central feature of western cultures, the apparent self-evident character ~and the unequivocal “correctness”~ of these embedded social attitudes means that any challenge to them can almost automatically be regarded as unneeded, beyond the pale, unreasonable, invalid, irrational and even “dangerous.” 

Claims from animal rights positions state that society is so prejudiced on the basis of species membership that, fuelled by notions of “human chauvinism,” most people quite unproblematically instil speciesist ideology into children day after day, week after week, year upon year. They do this through routine discourse and everyday social practices - most obviously, at every mealtime (although the majority of speciesist parents do not appear to go out of their way to tell their children what ~i.e., who~ they are eating). 

Similarly, speciesist sentiments are culturally transmitted in common stories told to children, and can be seen reflected beyond food choices, for example in clothing, social rituals, forms of entertainment and social gatherings. In terms of what children learn about human orientations toward other animals, the vast majority of youngsters are effectively socialised as speciesists well before they can be regarded as ethically aware individuals. In other words, most children are encouraged to participate in organised animal-harming activities (again, for example, at every mealtime) prior to developing the ability to morally evaluate what they are brought up to do with nonhuman property and animal produce. 

Furthermore, they are routinely exposed to, and enticed to believe, the justifying ideology that accompanies the human exploitation of nonhuman “resources” – yet again, well before they know for themselves what their own and others’ conduct entails for the lives (and, of course, the deaths) of other sentient beings. Indeed, in effect, adults may feel pressure to mislead their own children, or just lie to them, about the starkest realities of many human-nonhuman relationships. 

This suggests that many parents may feel the need to obscure many of the details (if they know them) of what happens to the animals their children consume, especially those animals consumed as food. After all, who really wants to know the ins and outs of what humans do to other animals when they exploit them? Ironically, an average vegan is likely to know much more about how a piece of an animal’s muscle arrived on a flesh eater’s plate than most meat eaters.

The danger of the new welfarist approach to human-nonhuman relations is that it misleads the public into thinking that caring about nonhuman animals amounts to picking and choosing between different animal production systems. Pay a little extra, and look out for our endorsements, new welfarism seems to say, and then it points the public to animal produce they should eat and to those products they should not. Surely, openly advocating veganism as the baseline position of animal rights is much better ~and even simpler~ than getting our feet wet in such muddied waters?