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Messin' with the Mainstream

12/7/2016

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One of my talks/workshops at Vegfest Scotland 2016 was entitled “Mainstream Vegan Blues: A Whiter (and Shallower) Shade of Pale.” My aim was to explore the following ideas
 
  • Are we making a huge strategic error?
  • Who are our “best” audience(s)?
  • Why are we so obsessed with what we perceive to be the “mainstream”?
  • Do we alienate our “natural allies” by going after the mainstream?
 
I built on a short clip from a talk given by pattrice jones in 2012 entitled “Commonalities of Oppression.” This talk is about intersectionality and jones’ frustration that the animal movement were not getting it back then.
 
This is the clip I showed




From this clip, I picked out three elements – Intersectionality, Numbers, and Alienation. The argument is straightforward: we need to embrace intersectionality to make alliances with other social justice movements because, in Steve Best’s words, the animal movement is too small and too marginalised to make fundamental changes. We need numbers to win this fight but the good news is that we don’t need everyone – just enough people to drive social change.*
 
The “best” people – meaning those most receptive to an argument based on justice and rights – are not to be found in the mainstream in significant numbers – but the good news on that is that the mainstream is not the majority. When we say the word “mainstream,” it seems to imply “the most.” However, as pattrice jones suggests, the majority are all those peoples found outside of the mainstream. More good news: these peoples are already politicised and fighting for change on a wide variety of issues.
 
The “mainstream,” conversely, are probably the hardest people for us to reach with our radical vegan animal rights message. Indeed, it is from among the mainstream that the UKIP and Trump supporters arise. There are deeply conservative elements in the mainstream.
 
This begs a huge question for the animal advocacy movement – why the heck do we target the hardest people to reach? To make matter worse, however, is the fact that, by targeting the mainstream, and by getting behind reducetarian vegetarians like Tobias Leenaert, who says his position is “all about mainstreamness,” we alienate those people in other social justice movements, or who are oppressed by the prevailing system.
 
Why would we do this?
 
My next slides contained a content warning – for they featured the sexism, racism, and ableism in the animal movement, especially but not exclusively by the likes of PeTA.
 
Here are some of those slides.
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PeTA not long after Obama was elected
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PeTA's "Nation's Undress"
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PeTA's latest outrage
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PeTA's body shaming
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PeTA female body policing
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PeTA's lack of imagination in Ireland
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ARAN in Dublin - of course it is a female-identified person bound and chained
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PeTA in England. Beaten and bruised females a common theme
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Two Days Later.
 
That talk took place on the 4th of December. Imagine my shock and disappointment that, on the 6th of December, PeTA repeated a publicity stunt in Dublin city centre featuring an almost nude, slim, white, female-presenting person laid on a large plate on the pavement. In other words, a classic devoid of imagination PeTA stunt involving the sexual commodification of females.
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Not surprising, the mass media and social media coverage has been generally bad to appalling. If PeTA think that this sexist rubbish is an educational tool, they are more deluded than ever. It is counterproductive, counter-revolutionary, and anti-intersectional.

The sooner national group dinosaurs like PeTA are closed the better - certainly all the better for the grassroots. Grassroots groups such as the Vegan Information Project, Vegan Education on the Go, Earthlings Experience Dublin, and the National Animal Rights Association, who are out on the street regularly, will probably have to field the backlash from this juvenile sexist stunt.

​As ever, this is yet another nail in the coffin of making meaning connections and alliances with other social justice movements - those who already share many of our values and yet we alienate them at every turn.


* there seems to be different estimate of the numbers needed to forge real change but all the estimates are well below 50%.
​

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Google It

6/3/2016

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In 1982, sociologist K.J. Tierney noted that, “In less than ten years, wife beating has been transformed from a subject of private shame and misery to an object of public concern.”[1] Indeed it has, and we are now quite familiar with the presentation of the so-called “battered wife defence” in domestic violence and murder trials.
 
Ten years after Tierney, criminologists Hester & Eglin asked
 
  • Given that in, say, 1970 there were no shelters for battered women, no programmes, no organisations, no news stories, no public concern, in short, no “problem,” and given further that there is no real basis for claiming that there has been any significant change in the incidence of wife beating in the following 10 years, what, then, accounts for the existence of all these things in 1980?
 
What had altered the situation in those ten years was claims-making and discussion of the issue, not least by feminist social movement organisations. This marks the significance of social movements in civil society: they are claims makers.
 
According to Spector & Kitsuse, [2] claims-making activities include
 
  • demanding services, filling out forms, lodging complaints, filing lawsuits, calling press conferences, writing letters of protest, passing resolutions, publishing exposes, placing ads in newspapers, supporting or opposing some governmental practice or policy, setting up picket lines or boycotts.
 
Much of that will sound familiar to members of the animal advocacy movement, as will their list of claims makers
 
  • Protest groups or moral crusaders who make demands and complaints; the officials or agencies to whom such complaints are directed; members of the media who publicise and disseminate news about such activities (as well as participating in them); commissions of inquiry; legislative bodies and executive or administrative agencies that respond to claims-making constituents; members of the helping professions, such as physicians, psychiatrists, social workers, and sometimes, social scientists who contribute to the definition and development of social problems.

Some of that is rather twee, to be sure, and many may struggle to place social workers and psychiatrists as part of the “helping professions,” but the general thrust is relevant to at least some of the main activities of the animal movement.
 
Perhaps what we need to distil in our minds, however, is summed up by Brian Lowe thus
 
  • Social movements and other subcultures that intend to alter certain cultural perceptions within their host culture often attempt to do so through adding moral claims to previously unquestioned cultural practices.
 
I regularly note that, sociologically, social movements like the animal advocacy movement are claims-making enterprises. I have also pointed toward the problems created - for those who want to take rights seriously - by the claims-making of the prevailing animal movement.
 
This is because, despite being persistently labelled (often self-labelled) the “animal rights movement,” most claims within the movement are not rights-based claims and rarely have been. When I say rights-based claims, I mean the claims of the sort made by the human rights movement and human rights organisations. I suggest that, if one were to ask a range of people what the human rights movement is concerned about, what it is against, it would not be long before the notions of rights abuses and rights violations would feature in the answers. 

Such answers would reflect how human rights organisations often describe themselves and spell out their aspirations. It would reflect some of their main claims-making. For example, from Amnesty International
 
  • DUBLIN, 26th May 2016 - Amnesty International is today publishing its policy on protecting sex workers from human rights violations and abuses, along with four research reports on these issues in Papua New Guinea, Hong Kong, Norway and Argentina. “Sex workers are at heightened risk of a whole host of human rights abuses including rape, violence, extortion and discrimination…” said Tawanda Mutasah, Amnesty International’s Senior Director for Law and Policy.
 
 Similarly, Human Rights Watch says
 
  • Human Rights Watch began in 1978 with the creation of Helsinki Watch, designed to support the citizens groups formed throughout the Soviet bloc to monitor government compliance with the 1975 Helsinki Accords. Helsinki Watch adopted a methodology of publicly “naming and shaming” abusive governments through media coverage and through direct exchanges with policymakers. By shining the international spotlight on human rights violations in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Helsinki Watch contributed to the dramatic democratic transformations of the late 1980s.

In contrast, ask what concerns the “animal rights movement” – what is it against - and I suggest that respondents will rarely if ever cite rights violations and rights abuses. They are much more likely to talk about a preoccupation with levels of “animal cruelty” and “animal suffering.” For example, the US branch of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA) says this
 
  • People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), with more than 5 million members and supporters, is the largest animal rights organization in the world. PETA focuses its attention on the four areas in which the largest numbers of animals suffer the most intensely for the longest periods of time: on factory farms, in laboratories, in the clothing trade, and in the entertainment industry. We also work on a variety of other issues, including the cruel killing of beavers, birds and other “pests,” and the abuse of backyard dogs. PETA works through public education, cruelty investigations, research, animal rescue, legislation, special events, celebrity involvement, and protest campaigns.
 
This is what British national organisation Animal Aid says
 
  • Animal Aid is the UK’s largest animal rights group and one of the longest established in the world, having been founded in 1977. We campaign peacefully against all forms of animal abuse and promote a cruelty-free lifestyle. We investigate and expose animal cruelty, and our undercover investigations and other evidence are often used by the media, bringing these issues to public attention.
 
The “animal rights” claims are markedly different from the human rights claims, aren’t they? No substantive claims about right-holding, no mention of a fundamental concern with animal rights abuses and/or animal rights violations. And from the “largest animal rights organisation in the world” and one of the “longest established in the world.” These are animal welfare claims dressed up as animal rights.
 
PeTA state that it is concerned by intense suffering for long periods. They are opposed to “cruel killing,” and presumably adopt their philosopher Peter Singer’s view that non-cruel killing is morally acceptable. Animal Aid’s declaration, again emphasising cruelty, is a little better; but there is still no mention of animal rights and animal rights violations. To their credit, and unlike PeTA, Animal Aid do stock an animal rights book in their online store.[3]

However, this is pretty poor fare at the end of the day from a declared rights movement – one does not expect or find Amnesty International implying it’s only the “cruel killing” of human beings that bothers them – they are opposed to all killing of human beings, and why? – because they regard human beings as right holders and, thus, killing is a rights violation. Not versed in the language of rights, the “animal rights movement” reverts to animal welfare claims about cruelty.

A Simple Survey

I decided to conduct a simple survey, using the internet, trying to gain some information about the prevalence of rights-based claims in the human rights and “animal rights” movements. In turn, then, I googled the following terms: “rights violations,” “human rights violations,” and “animal rights violations.” Try it: see if you get similar results… 

The “rights violations” search resulted in 84 million results. However, I found not one single mention of the rights of animals other than those of human animals – none in any entry on the first 10 pages, nor on pp. 15, 20, 25, 30, and 35. No mention of animal rights, only human rights.
 
I then searched “human rights violations” and looked at the first four pages of results. This search revealed consistent references to human rights, human rights violations, and human rights organisations. Finally, I searched “animal rights violations” and, again, examined the first four pages. The results can, at best, be called “mixed.”

Indeed, the results brought up as many if not more references to “animal cruelty” and “animal welfare violations” as it did for “animal rights,” even though, in this case, the key words used were “animal rights violations.”
 
The very first entry refers to a group called Animal Freedom. Turns out, however, that their idea of “animal rights violations” is reduced to the RSPCA’s “five freedoms” – in other words, to the regulation of animal property use, or animal welfarism. This approach seems to be common in the animal advocacy movement. Since animal welfarism is so dominant in its thinking, the notion of rights are limited to the notion of rights-to-welfare, or some version of “treatment rights” for other animals while they are being exploited. 

There was one link toward the bottom of a page worthy of a visit I thought. Journalist Indrani Dutta seems to have written in references to “rights violations” in a report about PeTA. Dutta, however, also writes, “PETA, which was founded in 1980, has been campaigning for some time now against what it describes as cruelty meted out to animals in the country during transportation for slaughter.” She also notes that PeTA sources suggested that, “We have had talks with other animal rights activists in India, like People for Animals and Blue Cross, and we are confident that we can launch a campaign against the leather sector any time we want.” Given the idea that People for Animals and the Blue Cross of India are characterised as “animal rights activists,” this article seems to be crying out for a little deconstruction from linguist Mary Martin Loder.

I make no claim that these findings are particularly rigorous or overwhelmingly significant – but they are indicative and follow a distinct pattern. We are drawn back – once again – to Donald Watson’s notion of ripening the public to new ideas. It is somewhat ironic, isn’t it, that decades of campaigning by an “animal rights movement” has apparently done little or nothing to help the public to seriously consider the claims that other animals are rights bearers and what happens to them are rights violations. A major theoretical fault line remains at the heart of the global “animal rights movement.”




[1] Tierney, K.J. (1982) ‘The battered women movement and the creation of the wife beating problem’, Social Problems 29(3): 207-220.

[2] Spector, M. & Kitsuse, JI. (1987) Constructing Social Problems. Chicago: Aldine.

[3] however, I had to request that they stock a Gary Francione book and justify the reasons why they should.






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An Accepted Good

8/17/2015

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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?

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Thoughts on Whether Animal Welfare Campaigns - and Many Welfare Organisations - are Even Needed. 

5/30/2015

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What if animal welfare campaigns were not necessary? By welfare campaigns, I mean those that attempt to make cages bigger, or “push” the animal user industries to kill nonhuman animals in a way other than the traditional way, not the day-to-day activities of welfare organisations such as the RSPCA whose officers assist the police in breaking up dog fights and who rescue emaciated animals from fields and houses.

What if it turns out that clearly advocating the case for animal rights, veganism, and the total abolition of animal use, brought in its wake various welfare reforms? What if this means that no substantial monies or effort is needed in this area from those who say they stand for the abolition of animal use - and then the funds and energy could be devoted to campaigns against the real structural problem facing animal advocates, cultural speciesism.

Sociologist Richard Gale has looked at the complex and ever-changing relations that exist between social movement organisations (SMO) and countermovement organisations (CMO), and the connections that each has with the state or with state agencies. In terms of animal use, CMOs typically represent the industries perceiving themselves to be under pressure from the animal advocacy movement. The countermovement, this “counterforce,” to use Harold Guither’sterminology, is well funded and very powerful. For example, in the USA, an umbrella organisation such as the Animal Industry Foundation, “works to educate consumers about how modern livestock and poultry producers operate and the importance of their service to the American public.” This group represents the interests of numerous “producer groups, agribusiness associations, and agribusiness companies” such as the National Cattleman’s Association, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the American Feed Industry Association, the National Milk Producers Federation and United Egg Producers. 

Likewise, the Farm Animal Welfare Coalition (FAWC) was created to represent 45 industry groups and therefore was, “alarmed by the premises of animal activists, the criticisms of modern confinement livestock and poultry production, and the promotion of vegetarianism,” and worried (in public utterances at least) to the extent that it sees, “the animal rights movement as destructive to consumer choice and the farm economy.” 

Gale points out that there may or may not be direct communication between social movement organisations and their countermovement mobilisations but both will tend to attempt to gain access to, and have influence over, state agencies. Therefore, since it is nearly impossible to conceive of any major social movement activity that does not involve the state to some degree, adequate social movement analysis must be alive to “the social movement-countermovement-state triad.” What this means is that developments and discourse in civil society created by social movement activity, in this case animal advocacy, will create dialogue between state agencies and industry representatives acting as a counterforce mobilisation. Apart from close links that exist between governments and user industries, the latter often enjoying what political scientist Robert Garner calls “insider status”, when governments consult on animal issues, they invite submissions from user industry representatives, academics, and the most respectable of the traditional animal welfare organizations. There is no need for any animal rights input in such proceedings since animal welfare is the only criteria ever applied, be it in investigations into the regulation of the use of animals in circuses, on farms, in laboratories, or any other use setting. 

However, the impact of animal rights campaigning on public attitudes, and the amount of media attention given to animal rights advocacy, can and probably will become constituent parts of these deliberations. The efforts of the animal rights advocate, then, remains best expended at the civil society level, for example, in attempts to shift the way society thinks about nonhuman animals. Success in this sphere will inevitably result in welfare reforms along the way without the need for direct advocacy of it by animal advocates with aspirations beyond that of traditional animal welfarism.

Typically, of course, the animal user industries themselves respond to criticism from - or perceived to be from - an animal rights perspective with claims about animal welfare. The history of single-issue campaigning about animals enslaved in circuses is a classic example, although little of the claims-making is rights-based and is more in line with neo-welfarist orientations. While individual circus proprietors respond to demonstrations and claims-making about animal use with welfare statements, for example, here, here, and here, the circus industry, in consultation with government regulators, welcome - and advocate themselves - the regulation of circuses using animals. They do this because they know nothing beyond the notion of animal welfarism will enter into such deliberations. Therefore, while state-countermovement dialogue occurs on this level, both are likely to part-fund research about the pros and cons of different use systems. In other words, if they are to address animal use at all, they inevitably review it within the dominant paradigm of orthodox animal welfarism. This is what society does – it “understands” animal welfare because animal welfare suggests that “non-cruel use” is both feasible and desirable provided enough use regulation is set in place. Essentially, state regulators and countermovements are searching for welfare reforms that seems to satisfy prevailing public attitudes and also meet their primary objective of animal user industries not suffering economically.

This is where scientific disciplines such as animal welfare science play a vital role. Clive Phillips’ 2008 book, The Welfare of Animals: The Silent Majority, outlines the situation well. For example, Phillips recognises that a rapid intensification of animal agriculture occurred in the latter half of the twentieth century. At the expense of “family businesses” a new corporate enterprise emerged in “a new industrial farming sector,” bringing with it a fresh emphasis on economic imperatives. Phillips points out that there is “no universal truism that intensive systems are associated with low welfare and extensive systems with high.” Therefore, research is required into animal use systems. 

The adoption of welfare modifications are considered where appropriate and especially when they do not impact on profits. The result, according to Phillips, is that in most “developed countries,” industry funds research to meet two objectives. The first is to increase profits, “for example by control of diseases or an economically viable increase in productivity due to alleviation of stress,” and the second is in response to demands by the animal advocacy movement. 

In the latter case, industry insists that “such changes cannot be made without scientific evaluations of welfare impacts” and this research usually takes about ten years to complete. While Phillips points out that industry is reluctant to fund welfare research or implement changes if profits are threatened, there is one important proviso to this: “Of course even if profit is reduced in the short terms, in the long term a better market may be accessible if welfare is improved, such as to consumers paying more to purchase products from animals kept in high welfare systems.” 

Clearly those who profit from the use of animals are carefully and constantly monitoring their own business, as all successful businesses do. They are quite prepared to pay for research to keep them ahead of the game and profitable, and if that means employing experts such as Temple Grandin, they will. However, they also monitor the general discourse about the use of animals created by animal advocacy and, as ever, in league with their political allies, they will respond to rights-based claims-making to abolish animal use with suggestions and implementations of welfare reform. Since they always respond to animal rights with animal welfare, there is no need for specific welfare reforms to be advocated: industry experts and paid consultants will do that regardless. Such reforms will arise in the normal cut and thrust of social movement and countermovement exchanges, media reportage, and as a result of countermovement and state-level dialogue. 

Not only may it be the case that animal advocates who seek abolition of animal use need never advocate for particular welfare reforms, and stick to challenging the power of cultural speciesism, it is also likely that some welfare reforms are delayed by animal advocates demanding them, especially, as PETA did recently in relation to KFC and CAK, when advocates always loudly announce that they are successfully “pushing” business into making changes against business wishes (whether that is factually true or not). As in all political negotiations, none of the parties want others to claim “victory!” at their expense, leaving them vulnerable to the recriminations from within their own community, some of whom are likely to have had their interests damaged, leaving them feeling betrayed and dissatisfied.

As suggested, the overarching sociological reality that must be acknowledged is that animal welfarism is the dominant paradigm when it comes to assessments of the human use of other animals. The ideology of animal welfare, at least in terms of the “western world,” is deeply embedded into the structure of society and the psychology of its citizens. Generation after generation socialize their children to care about the welfare of animals while they use them, and generation after generation internalize these social lessons that amounts to animal use is not the issue. This is why all animal users virtually without exception claim to have the welfare of their animal property at heart; that they “love” the animals they use and commodify; and they are also just as critical as anyone else of cases that violate the basic principles of animal welfare. For example, those in the animal user industries are undoubtedly equally outraged about what Michael Vick did to dogs, and just as opposed to teenagers shoving kittens in microwaves, or people slashing horses in fields and stables as any animal advocate. However, they need not think outside of the principles of animal welfare to hold such views and, therefore, they need not think contextually about Vick’s diet or lifestyle, or consider a kitten-killer’s leather clothing, or a “horse ripper’s” love of ice cream and milk shakes made from the stolen baby food of mammal mothers.

The fact that animal welfarism is so deeply entrenched in the value system of society is also reflected in the general public response to animal rights. Those who grew up learning the tenets of animal welfarism and, believing the generalised welfarist promise of “non-cruel use,” can have a hard time understanding the claim that a rights-based approach to the human use of animals is necessary or desirable. Therefore, taken out of their comfort zone within the welfarist view, the general public also will respond to rights-based claims with thoughts about animal welfare. Likewise, “celebrity chefs” will do exactly the same. Such TV personalities, for example, Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, have taken steps to improve the welfare of battery chickens and other “food animals.” 

However, since many animal advocates accept that only a paradigm shift in human consciousness about animals will bring about any meaningful benefits for them, and since many accept that the general societal reaction to animal rights is informed by the ideology and practice of animal welfarism, animal advocates who engage in animal welfare are merely working within the status quo - moving the pieces around the board - rather than encouraging the adoption of a brand new game. In the words of Donald Watson, vegan animal rights advocates must “ripen up” the population to the idea of animal rights, rather than expending time, money and energy on identifying “low-hanging fruit” which does little or nothing to challenge the property status of nonhuman animals. This conventional view of animals – that they are items of property – “its” to be owned - is, after all, a major problem that prevents their rights being respected. Engaging in welfarism inevitably strengthens the view that animals are items of property and does little to weaken prevailing attitudes.

Although many animal advocates claim to agree that no animal use can be justified, they claim that they must campaign for welfare reform as it is the only thing that it realistic at the present time. However, given the sociology and indeed the economics of welfare
 responses to rights-based claims-making, there are important reasons why making rights claims is the only rational response to animal exploitation. Let the users worry about the welfare of their captives, we have to win respect for the rights of nonhuman animals and convince people that use is a rights violation. The more successful we are in doing that, the more welfare reforms will flow from the ongoing relationships within the social movement-countermovement-state triad.

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    Roger Yates

    Dr. Roger Yates is a rights advocate and sociologist

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