ARZone's Tom Regan Week (2)

[Sunkanrags]

http://arzone.ning.com/forum/topics/arz ... regan-on-1

If Tom Regan can be an Animal Advocate, anyone can – and Looking at Others as Mirrors.



In Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights, you suggested that some Animal Rights Advocates are DaVincians, many are Damascans, and most are Muddlers. Could you explain what you mean by those fascinating terms and would you tell us what journey you took to transform from a one-time butcher into an ARA “Muddler”?


Professor Tom Regan:

I’ve met three different types of Animal Rights Advocates—people who are working for true animal liberation. Some are born that way. They don’t need to be convinced; they’re not asking for some sort of proof; it’s just the way they are. That was true of Leonardo, which is why I call these ARAs DiVincians. Others (who I call Damascans) have a life-altering experience, comparable to what happened to Saul on the road to Damascus. They see something, or read something, or hear something and, in the blink of an eye, they are transformed into an ARA. Lastly, there are those I call Muddlers. These are people who grow into an expansive animal consciousness a step at a time. They aren’t born that way. They don’t have a single life-transforming experience. They’re looking for some sort of “proof” to convince them. In other words, they just “muddle along.”



That’s certainly how my wife Nancy and I became ARAs. When it’s appropriate I remind people that (as you mentioned) I once worked as a butcher, bought Nancy a stylish mink hat, and wrote (in a letter to her) that elephants are “things.” So, yes, I was a Muddler most certainly. Increasing my animal consciousness was a journey for me. However, for all Muddlers who complete the journey—and I am speaking from personal experience—a day comes when we look in the mirror and to our surprise we see an ARA looking back at us. That’s what happened to me, a son of the working class. As I often say, if Tom Regan can become an ARA, anyone can become an ARA.



That’s why I dedicate Empty Cages “To Muddlers, everywhere!” I know these folks. I’m one of them. They’re my audience, always. I mean, DaVincians don’t need anything from me: they already have an expansive animal consciousness. And as for Damascans: I’m realistic about my power to change a person into an ARA, in the blink of an eye, because of something I write or say. I’m not in the business of mass conversions. No, I’m in the muck with the Muddlers, trying to encourage them to move forward, to take another step.



As for how I got from where I was to where I am: Let me mention two different occurrences that plodded me along. Here I excerpt portions of an interview conducted by Carol Gigliotti forthcoming later this year in Antennae.



First: Nancy and I were active in the anti-war movement back in the days of the Vietnam War. As a philosopher, I thought I should contribute something philosophical to the effort. The problem was, I had never read any of the relevant literature. So there I was, wandering through the stacks of the NC State library. And I remember, as clearly as if it happened yesterday, I took a book off a shelf. It was called An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. I had never heard of it, but I had come across the author’s name now and then. The author? Mohandes K. Gandhi. What a fateful choice! Not only did Gandhi help me craft “something philosophical” for the anti-war sentiments so many of us shared. He also opened my (and, of course, Nancy’s) eyes to a new way of seeing our world. Because, of course, Gandhi helped us realize that the fork can be a weapon of violence. And it is a weapon of violence anytime we sit down and eat the dead flesh of a once living being. It is no exaggeration to say that reading Gandhi helped change our life. He was the paramount “intellectual motivation” for us.



Second: As is true of so many newly married couples, our first “child” was a companion animal, in our case a miniature poodle. We named him Gleco, which was the abbreviation for a small business (Gleason and Company) we passed everyday, driving from the country, where we lived, into Charlottesville, where Nancy was teaching special education classes (as they were then called) and I was doing graduate work at the University of Virginia. We had been vacationing and left Gleco with what we thought was a responsible caretaker. Shortly before we arrived home, running free, Gleco was hit by a car and killed. We spent a lot of time grieving over our loss. We had so much emotion invested in Gleco—just that one dog, the one we knew so well. It’s hard to explain how much emotion was banging around in our hearts. Had it been another dog we had known and loved, we would have reacted the same. Or a cat, as we would learn. Or a calf. Or a hen. Or . . . fill-in the blanks. Not that we embraced every aspect of animal rights as a consequence. For example, we lived for several years as lacto-ovo vegetarians. Still, it is no exaggeration to say that Gleco’s death helped change our life. Facing the powerful emotions associated with his death was the paramount “personal motivation” for us.



Fortunately for me, in 1972 I received a Summer Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities; it freed me up from having to teach that summer. That was when I began to try to make a “philosophical contribution” to the vegetarian movement. The research done during that time came to fruition with the publication of “The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism,” which appeared in the October 1975 issue of The Canadian Journal of Philosophy.



Kai Nielsen was the editor of CJP in those days. I remember him telling me that when he read the title of my paper he put it in the “reject” pile, not reading another word. Then (thinking ill of himself for being so judgmental) he began to read it. “Hmm,” he said after a few pages. “Hmmm,” he said after reading a few more. “I’m not sure I agree with this guy,” he told the members of the editorial board, “but it’s damn good philosophy!” So it’s with the publication of that paper, in the same year that Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation was published, that I began to try to make a “philosophical contribution.” Not that my paper had anything like the public influence Singer’s book did. I may be a former butcher but I’m not crazy. Still, I think my paper was among the first cracks (small though it was) in the door of academic resistance to taking animal rights seriously. In fact, Kai told me (and he was a man who was extremely well informed about such matters) that to the best of his knowledge “The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism” was the very first paper on animal rights published in a peer-reviewed journal in philosophy.



Earlier I confessed to being an optimistic person, and it’s here that I want to share a reason for my optimism. For one thing definitely has changed for the better in the past forty years. Back in the early 70s there was not a single course at America’s four thousand or so colleges and universities that discussed animal rights. Not one. Today I don’t think you can find a single college or university where animal rights is not discussed. And as for philosophy: philosophers have written more on the topic in the past thirty years than our predecessors had written in the previous three thousand. That hasn’t made America a nation of ARAs. But it has made a contribution to the seriousness with which this once “crazy idea,” animal rights, is taken. The way I would put it is: Back then, in the early 70s, we were loitering outside the moat; today we are inside the castle.



In any event, in my 1975 paper I make the case for vegetarianism using what I call a “rights based” approach. I invoke and defend two rights in particular: the right of nonhumans to be spared gratuitous (unnecessary) pain, and their right to life. “What we can see . . .,” I write near the end, “is that the undeserved pain animals feel is not the only morally relevant consideration; that they are killed must also be taken into account.” So, yes, pain/suffering are important; but so are death/destruction.



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In your experience, is it necessary to talk to people about “rights” in order to talk with them about what is wrong when it comes to how other animals fare in the world? In other words, is a philosophical discussion necessary in common intercourse or should vegans appeal to non-vegans in some other way?



Professor Tom Regan:

Different people respond to different opportunities. Over the years I’ve received letters from total strangers who tell me that reading something I’ve written “changed their life.” I’ve also received a like number of messages from people who think I’m a total nut case. So my experience has been: some people respond favourably to philosophical arguments; others do not. My advice? Let other people be our guide. Listen to them, to find out where they are in their life. Maybe they think they “have to eat meat.” Maybe they think “God gave animals to us.” Maybe they think “watching performing animals is great family fun.” Go with their flow. Be patient. Be genuine.



Did I say “be patient?” Nancy recently reminded me of something that happened it now must be twenty years ago at least. We were attending a professional meeting and a student stopped us. “What about plants?” he asked, to which a third person who was with us (raising her voice) said, “That is the stupidest question I’ve ever heard in my life! What do you have, mush for brains?” Then she stormed-off, in a huff. Later that evening, when our paths crossed, she said, “Honest, Tom and Nancy, I swear, people have asked me that question a thousand times! I can’t take it anymore.” To which Nancy and I replied, “Yes, but that was the first time that young man asked us that question.”



The last thing other animals need is another reason not to care about them. How we act towards other people can provide just such a reason. Being rude or judgmental doesn’t help any nonhuman. A coping technique I use (to quell my impatience, when I feel it bubbling-up in my throat) is to think of the people who ask questions I’ve been asked hundreds of times as mirrors. Yes, I think of them as mirrors. When I look at them, in other words, what I see is a reflection of who I used to be.



Like them, there was a time when I didn’t know how other animals were being treated.

Like them, there was a time when I knew but didn’t care.

Like them, there was a time when I knew and cared but not enough to change how I was living.

Like them, there was a time when I was . . . them!



That’s what I try to remind myself. I don’t want to come across as self-righteous or arrogant. That would give the questioner another reason not to care about other animals, and I don’t want to do that—I don’t want to be that reason.



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[Sunkanrags]

Tom Regan on Violence, The Culture & Animals Foundation, and on Sentience, Self-Awareness and the Right to Life.



In your speech in support of the Bill of Rights for other animals at the Royal Institute of Great Britain in 1989, which I regard as one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard, you characterise the perception many in the general public have as one of animal advocates standing against justice and for violence. As you went on to articulate in this same speech, the opposite is true: The philosophy of animal rights does, in fact, stand for peace and against violence. What is your opinion in regard to those who believe it may be possible to end the violence inflicted on other animals by employing violence against humans or their property?


Professor Tom Regan:

Thanks for your kind words about my talk. It’s hard to remember being as young as I was when I gave it. Obviously, questions relating to violence are complicated. One question asks what violence is; a second asks whether it can ever be justified. I’ll address both questions here excerpting from Chapter 11 of Empty Cages as well as from my contribution to Terrorists or Freedom Fighters: Reflections on the Liberation of Animals, edited by Steve Best and Anthony Nocella II.


What ‘violence’ means

Some ARAs think violence is restricted to causing physical harm to a sentient being, human or otherwise. I personally disagree with ARAs who think this way, and I don’t think I am alone. Ask any English speaking member of the general public whether fire-bombing an empty synagogue involves violence. Ask any lawyer whether arson is a violent crime (whether or not anyone is hurt). Ask either of these questions to the people I have described and the answer will be, “Am I missing something? Of course these acts are violent.” The plain fact is, our language is not tortured or stretched when we speak of the “violent destruction of property.” We do not need to hurt someone in order to do violence to some thing.



Gandhi agrees. “Sabotage [destroying property for political purposes, without hurting anyone in the process] is a form of violence,” he writes. Martin Luther King, Jr. sees things the same way. Among the many relevant examples: In March of 1968, shortly before his death, King was leading a march in Memphis on behalf of the city’s sanitation workers. “At the back of the line,” King’s biographer, Stephen B. Oates observes, “black teenagers were smashing windows and looting stores . . . King signalled to [James] Lawson [the local march coordinator] . . . ‘I will never lead a violent march,’ King said, ‘so please call it off.’ While Lawson yelled in his bullhorn for everybody to return to the church, King . . . climbed into a car [and sped away].” No one was hurt that day in Memphis, but some serious violence was done.

Or consider what Nelson Mandela said at his trial for violence and sabotage in October 1963. He admitted quite freely that he was guilty of what he was accused of. "I do not deny that I planned sabotage," he told the court. "I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness, nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation. Without violence [against property] there would be no way open to the African people to succeed in their struggle."



ARAs who think that arson and other forms of destruction of property are forms of “non-violent direct action” are free to think what they will. Certainly nothing I say can make them change their minds. I will only observe that, in my opinion, unless or until these advocates accept the fact that some ARAs use violence in the name of animal rights (for example, when they firebomb empty research labs), the general public will turn a deaf ear when their spokespersons attempt to justify such actions.



So the real question, I believe, is not whether some ARAs use violence. The real question is whether they are justified in doing so. Here are the main outlines of a possible justification.



Can violence be justified?

Despite the influence Gandhi had on my moral and philosophical development, I am not a pacifist in the sense in which he understands this idea, at least as I understand his position. He thinks the use of violence is wrong in all circumstances—that it is always wrong. For my part, I believe violence sometimes can be justified. Here is an example that illustrates my point of view.



Suppose a deranged father has kidnapped his children. He is armed and is threatening to shoot them. If the police kill the father before talking to him, their use of violence can be faulted because non-violent alternatives were not explored; they shot first and asked questions later. Moreover, if they used a gun to kill the father when a tazer, say, would have been sufficient, the authorities can be faulted for using excessive violence; they used more when less violence would have been enough.



What could go wrong in this example suggests what makes violence acceptable when it is. (1) Violence should be used to defend the innocent only after nonviolent alternatives have been exhausted, as the circumstances permit. And (2) the amount of violence used should be “proportionate” to the threat of the harm faced by those who are innocent. For example, we should not take a person’s life because they have stolen our pencil. It will be useful to give a name to the principle expressed when (1) and (2) are combined. I will call it the violent defense principle.



Except for uncompromising pacifists like Gandhi, the violent defense principle commands universal assent. Assuming the requirement of proportionality is met, ask yourself this: If the use of violence is necessary to defend your innocent friends or loved ones who (let us suppose) are at the mercy of a sadistic neighbour, would you rise to insist that no violence be used? I don’t think so. I know I wouldn’t. Well, all that the violent defense principle does is generalize on our judgments. The innocents who are threatened need not be your friends or loved ones, or my friends or loved ones; they can be anybody. And the person threatening the harm need not be a neighbour; that person could be anyone.



Is the violence done by the A.L.F. justified? Given the violent defense principle, it can be justified only if animals are innocent, which they unquestionably are. For example, the mink imprisoned in fur mills and the mice used in toxicity tests have done no wrong that could possibly justify denying them their freedom, injuring their bodies, or taking their very life. So, yes, these animals are innocent.



Proportionality also is required. More violence should not be used when less will suffice. Can A.L.F. actions meet this requirement? Who can deny that they can, not necessarily all of the time but certainly some of the time.



The situation is different when we apply the final requirement embodied in the violent defense principle. We ask, “Have nonviolent alternatives been exhausted, as circumstances permit? Have ARAs in general, the A.L.F. in particular, done all we (realistically) can do, using nonviolent means, to empty the cages?” I honestly do not think that we have. In fact, I think we have done very little in comparison to what we need to do. We haven’t even been able to stop toxicity tests on “animal models,” for heaven’s sakes. No, from my perspective, the A.L.F.’s use of violence is unjustified. ARAs have not exhausted nonviolent alternatives.



Of course, the opposite conclusion can be reached by ARAs who believe enough already has been done by way of non-violent activism. And it is here, not whether members of the A.L.F. are “domestic terrorists,” that we find the heart of the matter, the place where ARAs have sincere and often deep disagreements. In any event, in my opinion, people do not cease to be ARAs depending on what position they take on this divisive issue. I don’t agree with the A.L.F.’s means. But do I think they are trying to free other animals from the clutches of human tyranny? Yes, I do.



One other thing.

In the ‘80s I supported the A.L.F. and other activists who were breaking into labs and other dungeons of animal abuse, to document how horribly animals were being treated and to liberate the prisoners. With videos and photos in hand, no one could deny the truth. Personally, in retrospect, I think these actions would have been even stronger if the rescues had been open rescues. That said, A.L.F. actions back then, in addition to liberating prisoners, performed a vitally important educational purpose.



Somewhere along the way, between then and now, A.L.F. actions (in my opinion) took a violent turn. When buildings are torched today the story the media tells is about “domestic terrorists,” not the dungeons of animal abuse. The vital educational purpose has been lost—in the ashes, so to speak. I have more to say about this in Chapter One of Empty Cages.



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Can you explain what you regard as the importance and the accomplishments of your Culture and Animals Foundation http://www.cultureandanimals.org/ ?



Professor Tom Regan:

Permit me to start with a bit of history. I had returned home after teaching (this was back in 1985) and Nancy said, “I just heard the most interesting story on NPR. It was about this performance artist, Rachel Rosenthal, who does a production called ‘The Others’ that raises consciousness about the plight of animals. And, get this: there are animals, more than twenty of them, who perform with her. Not ‘trained’ animals. Just tame animals from here and yonder.”



“Really?” I said.

“We should bring her here,” Nancy said.

“You mean (gulp) here, as in Raleigh?”

“Yes.”

More “gulping” on my part.



So, how was CAF born? It was born when, with Nancy in the lead, we decided to bring Rachel and “The Others” to Raleigh, North Carolina. Bringing her here (what a story there is to tell!) also served as the inspiration of the CAF mantra, so to speak: “We’d rather be inside the theatre performing than outside the theatre protesting.”



After that decision was made, we were off and running. If we had hosted a performance art production, why not some music (Paul Winter) and comedy (The Montana Logging and Ballet Company)? Why not an art exhibition? We sponsored several, including a major exhibition by Sue Coe, another by Robert Raushenberg. What about Pulitzer Prize winning poets? We invited Maxine Kumin, and Galway Kinnell. What about . . . ? Legal theorists? Sociologists? Anthropologists? Historians? Political scientists? Biographers? Novelists? Fill-in the blanks. Our annual International Compassionate Living Festival became an energizing focus of our life as ARAs.



Amidst and amongst these wonderful people, we invited others who were critical of animal rights. Yes, CAF in our mind is synonymous with cultural activism for animals. But we never lost sight of the need to provide ARAs with an opportunity to learn about where those who opposed our thinking were coming from. Some of the best presentations were given by “the enemy.”



In the last few years of ICLF, CAF collaborated with the Animals and Society Institute, the scale of the event having grown beyond CAF’s all-volunteer-capacity to organize. Ours was a pleasant, rewarding collaboration, and we take this opportunity to thank ASI and everyone else who made ICLF possible, for all those many years, including CAF’s current board members (not counting the two of us) Marion Bolz and Mylan Engel.



Today, CAF focuses mainly on our grant program. We are not a wealthy organization. Far from it. That said, we are able to make ten to fifteen grants per year, and while the money is not huge, the grants are helpful to those who receive them. Just this past year we received applications from Chile, Spain, Australia, France, Canada, Finland, England, Italy and, of course, the United States. Obviously, there are creative, inquiring ARAs all over the world committing their time and talent—their life--to the struggle for animal rights. We only wish CAF had the funds to help more.



Carol Gigliotti recently has written that the conferences CAF sponsored and the grants we have awarded “planted the seeds of human-animal studies in the arts and humanities.” That might be true. We certainly were in a different line of business than any other organization. So, if that’s true—if we truly planted the seeds—that would have to rank as CAF’s most important accomplishment.

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In ‘The Case’ (esp. chaps. 2-4) and elsewhere it is indicated that you consider that the ability to feel pain does not imply self awareness, in the sense of one having a notion of psychological continuity over time. I therefore believe you must have at least one example of an individual of some species who is sentient but not a subject of a life (even though I still find it difficult to understand such an occurrence from an evolutionary perspective). Who could this individual be?


Professor Tom Regan:

A tough question but here’s my best shot. Sentiency usually is defined as capable of experiencing pleasure and pain, while self-awareness, as I understand the idea, involves more than being aware of something, including pleasure or pain. It involves being aware that I-am-the-one-who-is-aware-of (in this case) pleasure or pain. Without this higher order/unifying awareness, there is no self-awareness.



Second trimester human fetuses, I believe, are not self-aware in this way. Can they be sentient? Yes, I believe they can be. But are they self-aware? Are they aware-that I-am-the-one-who-is-aware-of-these-stimuli? I don’t think so. Indeed, I don’t think that newly born human infants are aware of themselves, as selves.



There is a concept some philosophers and psychologists explore called the specious present. Roughly speaking, and in this context, it refers to discrete moments of experience that are not united, not held together, by a self. We might think of this sort of mental life as being like a series of disconnected bubbles, each of which lasts only an instant before popping. One bubble, followed by another bubble, followed by another bubble, and so on. In this picture there is no unifying mind or self that carries the memory of the first bubble to the second, then to the third, etc. There is just the series of evanescent, disconnected bubbles, each lasting a moment before popping, none connected to the others.



Could these be the mental states of sentient beings? Could one of the bubbles be pleasant, another painful? Why not? Without self-awareness? Again, why not? Indeed, if we follow this logic, there would be as many discrete sentient beings as there are discrete pleasant and painful bubbles.



Which is why I have never understood how the right to life could be derivable from sentiency. Sentiency, again, means capable of experiencing pleasure and pain. Self-awareness, someone might believe, is not necessary for sentiency. But what sort of mental life would this leave us with? We have one bubble (pain), followed by another bubble (pleasure), followed by another bubble (pain), etc. However, without an enduring self, there isn’t anybody who can have a right to life because there isn’t anybody to have one. There is just one bubble, followed by another bubble, etc., etc.



So, do all sentient beings have a right to life, just because they are sentient? Not that I can see. Not that I can understand.



Of course, this situation would run counter to evolution if this was the permanent state of developing human and nonhuman life. So at some point in the course of development, a unifying mental order must emerge, a self that carries the memory of the one bubble to the occurrence of the second, and so on. But when, and precisely how this happens: well, I don’t think anyone truly knows the answers to these questions.

[Sunkanrags]

Tom Regan on Achieving Abolitionist Goals.

Hi Professor Regan, great to get the opportunity to quiz you! I think your work is fantastic and so important. I wonder what your opinion is on animal welfare. As a vegan obviously I don't agree with the use or abuse of any sentient being for any reason. I wonder do you feel that only a move to abolish any use or abuse of animals is sufficient, or do you feel that ensuring better welfare for animals that are used by humans, such as farm animals, is a part of the journey to adequate animal rights? Is a push for better animal welfare a way of helping society take the logical next step in not using or abusing other animals or does this, as some think, make the use and abuse of other animals acceptable to some? Thank you so much for your time.


Professor Tom Regan:
Thank you for your kind words about my work and for your provocative question, which I know divides people who think of themselves as ARAs. In any event, my own thinking hasn’t changed over the years. For example, back in 1986, I wrote a small booklet entitled “The Philosophy of Animal Rights” which begins with a short summary of ‘The Animal Rights Position.’ More recently I wrote a short essay entitled “How to Prolong Injustice.” The best I can do by way of answering your question is (slightly edited in some places) to start with the summary, give examples of winnable abolitionist campaigns, and reproduce the essay. Then I’d like to add another essay of mine, “Animal Rights and the Myth of ‘Humane’ Treatment,” for anyone who would like to read something on that topic.

‘The Animal Rights Position.’

The other animals humans eat, use in science, hunt, trap, and exploit in a variety of ways, have a life of their own that is of importance to them apart from their utility to us. They are not only in the world, they are aware of it. What happens to them matters to them. Each has a life that fares better or worse for the one whose life it is.

That life includes a variety of biological, individual, and social needs. The satisfaction of these needs is a source of pleasure, their frustration or abuse, a source of pain. In these fundamental ways the nonhuman animals in labs and on farms , for example, are the same as human beings. And so it is that the ethics of our dealings with them, and with one another, must acknowledge the same fundamental moral principles.

At its deepest level, human ethics is based on the independent value of the individual. The moral worth of any human being is not to be measured by how useful that person is in advancing the interests of other human beings. To treat human beings in ways that do not honor their independent value is to violate that most basic of human rights: the right of each person to be treated with respect.

The philosophy of animal rights demands only that logic be respected. For any argument that plausibly explains the independent value of human beings implies that other animals have this same value, and have it equally. And any argument that plausibly explains the right of humans to be treated with respect also implies that these other animals have this same right, and have it equally, too.

It is true, therefore, that women do not exist to serve men, Blacks to serve whites, the poor to serve the rich, or the weak to serve the strong. The philosophy of animal rights not only accepts these truths, it insists upon and justifies them. But this philosophy goes further. By insisting upon and justifying the independent value and rights of animals, it gives scientifically informed and morally impartial reasons for denying that these animals exist to serve us.

Once this truth is acknowledged, it is easy to understand why the philosophy of animal rights is uncompromising in its response to each and every injustice other animals are made to suffer. It is not larger, cleaner cages that justice demands in the case of animals used in science, for example, but empty cages; not “traditional” animal agriculture, but a complete end to all commerce in the flesh of dead animals; not “more humane” hunting and trapping, but the total eradication of these barbarous practices.

For when an injustice is absolute, one must oppose it absolutely. It was not “reformed” slavery that justice demanded, not “reformed” child labor, not “reformed” subjugation of women. In each of these cases, abolition was the only moral answer. Merely to reform absolute injustice is to prolong injustice.

The philosophy of animal rights demands this same answer--abolition—in response to the unjust exploitation of other animals. It is not the details of unjust exploitation that must be changed. It is the unjust exploitation itself that must be ended, whether on the farm, in the lab, or among the wild, for example. The philosophy of animal rights asks for nothing more, but neither will it be satisfied with anything less.

But how can we achieve our abolitionist goals? One path (the one I favor) invites ARAs to give our time and energy to trying to make incremental abolitionist changes. I listed a few examples in Empty Cages.

The elimination of elephants and other performing animals from circuses
The liberation of dolphins currently imprisoned by the captive dolphin industry
The total cessation of canned hunts
The total demise of the greyhound racing industry
An end to seal slaughter
A ban on compulsory dissection
No more dog labs, anywhere
An end to pound seizure
The total elimination of Class B dealers
Whaling . . . Going! Going! Gone!

Other examples are given in an essay I co-authored with Gary Francione (Animals Agenda, January/February 1992, p. 42):

An end to the use of animals in product testing
An end to the use of animals in maternal deprivation, military, and drug addiction experiments
An end to the killing of elephants, rhinos, and other “big game”
An end to the commerce in fur

To my way of thinking, these are achievable goals. I’m not saying they are easy. Not at all. I’m just saying they are achievable. The main thing standing in the way of their realization is a lack of cooperation and collaboration among major national and grass-roots organizations. “Many hands on many oars,” is the way I would put it. That’s what is needed. Personally, I am not a political organizer. I am not someone who can run campaigns. I wish I could but I can’t. What’s clear as a bell to me, as I’ve said, is that these achievable goals will not be realized unless or until ARAs cooperate and collaborate. Here’s how I picture our situation. Sunlight passes through a window. We feel some warmth. If that same sunlight passes through a magnifying glass, it can start a fire. Today, the Animal Rights Movement is like sunlight passing through a window. It has some effect, certainly. But think about how much more powerful the movement would be if that sunlight was really focused. If there was cooperation and collaboration between major national and grassroots organizations. If our separate efforts passed through a magnifying glass, so to speak.

So, paradoxically, our first, our basic challenge does not involve animals. It involves us.

“How to Prolong Injustice”

Others (many of whom think of themselves as ARAs) think abolitionist goals can be achieved by taking a different path. In the case of animal agriculture, for example, people who favor U (I’ll call it) think that the best way to realize abolitionist goals is to reform current practices, based on animal interests. For example, if decreasing density in battery cages is implicitly to count the hens' interest in having more space, this is a reform we should support.

The same is true of reforms in transportation and slaughter techniques. Any time we can increase the number of animal interests that are taken into account, and any time we can have their interests counted equitably, U calls upon us to press for these reforms.

Suppose these reforms are implemented throughout animal agriculture. What would be the result?

Well, arguably things would have changed quite a lot. In place of the factory farms that scar the rural countryside today, we can imagine a plethora of farms modelled after Old McDonald’s. In this gentle new word, it is true, there are vastly fewer farmed animals than there are today, but the quality of their life is vastly better too. Who can be dissatisfied with so idyllic a world?

ARAs, for one. Thousands of Old McDonald’s farms inhabited by millions of happy animals is not the end we seek. The end we seek is the end of raising animals for their flesh and other products. Why, then, should ARAs work for the sorts of reforms I have described?

Considered superficially, the answers seem obvious. Since the animals are much better off because of the reforms, and since ARAs genuinely care about how animals are treated, surely ARAs should support and help implement the reforms.

Things are not this simple. From an ARA’s perspective, animal agriculture violates the rights of farmed animals; it treats them as our resources—indeed, as renewable resources. This unjust practice cannot be brought to an end by continuing to treat farmed animals in this way, which is how they will be treated if the system of their exploitation has been reformed in the ways we have imagined. No, to reform injustice is to prolong injustice.

Proponents of U might reply by saying that, over time, as first one, then another reform is implemented, the quality of farmed animal life is improved and people will begin to change how they think about animals. Once the general public understands that animals have interests, and once they have supported the call to have their interests counted fairly, people will move away from their meat-eating ways. On this view, a day will dawn when, because of the reforms made as well as the general public’s support of making them, we all awake to a vegan world.

This is a lovely story, but hardly credible. Why would human beings forego a leg of lamb or a brisket of beef if all the relevant reforms have been implemented? After all, with the reforms in place, farmed animals could not have a better quality of life than the one they enjoy.

Moreover (and this is hardly unimportant) surely the general public, accustomed to and supportive of the reforms, will want to help make this same happy life available to the next generation of cows and pigs, chickens and ducks. And the next generation after that one, a demand that, in the nature of the case, can only be met if the members of one generation are slaughtered “humanely,” to be replaced by others of their kind, and so on into the indefinite future.

Truth be told, it is wishful thinking to believe that the successful implementation of reforms will abolish animal agriculture. It is far more likely that great numbers of people will continue to eat animal flesh, only now with a clear conscience, a gift, paradoxically, given to them by the well-intentioned reformers.

So, to pose your specific question again: “Is a push for better animal welfare a way of helping society take the next logical step in not using and abusing other animals or does this, as some think, make the use and abuse of other animals acceptable to some?”

I don’t think ARAs should be working for improved welfare for the prisoners exploited by the animal industrial complex. To make such improvements will only make their exploitation more socially acceptable and, as a result, perpetuate the very evils we oppose. To my way of thinking, as I wrote twenty-five years ago, “to reform absolute injustice is to prolong injustice.”

That said, I do not want to deny the importance that learning about animal suffering has in people’s lives. Remember my previous observations about meeting people who ask me questions I’ve answered hundreds of times? Remember how, when I looked at them, it was like looking in a mirror.

Like them, there was a time when I didn’t know how nonhumans were being treated.
Like them, there was a time when I knew but didn’t care.
Like them, there was a time when I knew and cared but not enough to change how I was living.
Like them, there was a time when I was . . . them!

I don’t think ARAs who, like me, are Muddlers should ever forget how in-the-dark we once were. Or how important it was for us in our individual journey to despair over how horribly animals are treated. I know that I would not have become the person I am today if my mind and heart had not opened to find a place for me to acknowledge their suffering and needless death. It’s natural at this stage of Muddler development to want to make the cages bigger, hoping thereby to lessen the pain. Those were among the first steps I took; it was only later that I came to believe the cages did not need to become larger; they needed to become empty.

ANIMAL RIGHTS AND THE MYTH OF “HUMANE” TREATMENT

To outsiders, animal rights advocates look to be a strange lot. We don’t eat meat, avoid cosmetics tested on animals, and boycott Ringling Brothers. Drape ourselves in fur? Forget it. ARAs don’t even wear leather or wool.

Many people view ARAs as certifiable, grade-A, top of the class nut cases. Reduced to its essentials, however, what we believe is just plain common sense.


What ARAs Believe

We believe the animals killed for food, trapped for fur, used in laboratories, or trained to jump through hoops are unique somebodies, not generic somethings. We believe what happens to them matters to them. Why? Because what happens to them makes a difference to the quality and duration of their life.

In these respects, ARAs believe humans and these animals are the same, are equal. And so it is that all ARAs share a common moral outlook: We should not do to them what we would not have done to us. Not eat them. Not wear them. Not experiment on them. Not train them to jump through hoops. “Not larger cages,” we say, “empty cages.”

“Humane treatment” is the law

Comparatively speaking, few people are ARAs. Why? Part of the answer concerns our disparate beliefs about how often animals are treated badly. ARAs believe this is a tragedy of incalculable proportions. Non-ARAs believe mistreatment occurs hardly at all.

That non-ARAs think this way seems eminently reasonable. Afterall, we have laws governing how animals may be treated and a cadre of government inspectors who make sure these laws are obeyed.

What do our laws require? In the language of our most important federal legislation, the Animal Welfare Act, animals must receive “humane care and treatment.” In other words, animals must be treated with sympathy and kindness, with mercy and compassion, the very meaning of the word ‘humane’. It says so in any standard dictionary.

If things were as bad as ARAs say they are, there should be an enormous amount of inhumane treatment brought to light by government inspectors. Yet this is precisely what government inspectors do not find.

For fiscal year 2001, the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service conducted 12,000 inspections. Of that total, only 140 sites were reported for possible violations because of improper handling of animals. That works out to a compliance rate of almost 99%.

No wonder the general public believes that, with rare exceptions, animals are treated with mercy and kindness, with sympathy and compassion.

APHIS inspections and the myth of “humane care and treatment”

Tragically, the public’s trust in the adequacy of government inspections is misplaced. What APHIS inspectors count as humane undermines the inspections before they are conducted. Consider some examples of what happens to animals in research laboratories.

Cats, dogs, nonhuman primates, and other animals are drowned, suffocated, and starved to death.
They are burned, subjected to radiation, and used as “guinea pigs” in military research.
Their eyes are surgically removed and their hearing is destroyed.
They have their limbs severed and organs crushed.
Invasive means are used to give them heart attacks, ulcers, and seizures.
They are deprived of sleep, subjected to electric shock, and exposed to extremes of heat and cold.


Everyone of these procedures and outcomes complies with the Animal Welfare Act. Each conforms with what APHIS inspectors count as “humane care and treatment.”

It only gets worse

Per annum, the number of animals used in research laboratories subject to APHIS inspections is estimated to be twenty million. This figure, though large, is dwarfed by the ten billion animals annually slaughtered to be eaten, just in the United States.

Remarkably, farmed animals are explicitly excluded from the legal protection provided the Animal Welfare Act. Here is what the AWA says:

“[In the Animal Welfare Act] the term ‘animal’. . . excludes horses not used for research purposes and other farm animals, such as, but not limited to, livestock or poultry, used or intended for food or fiber . . .”

But if not our government, who decides what humane care and treatment means for farmed animals? In the realpolitik of American animal agriculture, it’s the farmed animal industries who get to write the rules.

And what treatment might the rules allow? Here are some examples.

“Veal” calves spend their entire life individually confined to narrow stalls too narrow for them to turn around in.
Laying hens live a year or more in cages the size of a filing drawer, seven or more per cage, after which they routinely are starved for two weeks to encourage another laying cycle.
Female hogs are housed for four or five years in individual barred enclosures (“gestation stalls”), barely wider than their bodies, where they are forced to birth litter after litter.


Until the recent “Mad Cow” scare, beef and dairy cattle too weak to stand (“downers”) were dragged or pushed to their slaughter.

Geese and ducks are force-fed the human equivalent of thirty pounds of food per day to enlarge their liver, the better to meet the demand for Foie gras.


All these conditions and procedures demonstrate the relevant industry’s commitment to mercy and kindness, compassion and sympathy.

Don’t forget the fiber

In the newspeak of the Animal Welfare Act, more than “food” animals fail to qualify as animals. The same is true of any whatcha-ma-call-it “used or intended for fiber.” For leather, for example. Or wool. Or fur. This is fact, not fiction. Fur bearing animals, whether trapped in the wild or raised on fur mills, are exempt from the legal protection, scant though it is, provided by the AWA. As is true of animal agriculture, the fur industry gets to set its own rules and regulations of “humane care.”.

And what might “humane” fur farming or trapping permit? Here are some examples.

On fur mills, mink, chinchilla, raccoon, lynx, foxes and other fur bearing animals are confined in wire-mesh cages for the duration of their life.
Waking hours are spent pacing back and forth, or rolling their heads, or jumping up the sides of their cages, or mutilating themselves, or cannibalizing their cage mates.
Death is caused by breaking their necks, or by asphyxiation (using carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide), or by shoving electric rods up their anus to “fry” them from the inside out.
Animals trapped in the wild take fifteen hours on average to die.
Trapped fur-bearers frequently chew themselves apart in a futile attempt to save their life.


All perfectly legal; every bit of it in keeping with industry standards for kindness and mercy, sympathy and compassion.

Time to get mad

Those of us of a certain age remember the immortal words of the television announcer Howard Beale, in the film Network. Things are crazy, Beale says. The world is a mess. People need to get mad. Real mad. “I want all of you to get up out of your chairs,” Beale says to his viewers, “go to the window, open it, stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’”

People who trust what industry spokespersons and government inspectors tell them about the “humane care and treatment” of animals need to follow Howard Beale’s admonition. They need to get mad as hell, and this, for two reasons.

First, they need to get mad as hell because of how they have been abused. The plain fact is, they haven’t been told the truth. Instead, they’ve been misled and manipulated by industry and government spokespersons. “Not to worry, John and Jane Q. Public. Trust us: All is well at the lab, on the farm, in the wild. Animals are being treated humanely.” Trust us? Not any more, one hopes.

Second, people need to get mad as hell because of how animals are being abused. When the organs of animals are crushed and their limbs are severed; when they are made sick by the food they are forced to eat and spend their entire life alone, in isolation; when they are gassed to death or have their neck broken: no propaganda machine in the world can turn these appalling facts into something they are not.

If the day comes when the general public does get mad as hell, the ranks of animal rights advocates will begin to grow in unprecedented numbers. When this day comes, but not until this day comes, our shared hope for a world in which animals truly are treated humanely finally will have realistic legs to stand on.

So, does their freedom rank above our paternalistic care? As I said, I think it varies, from one situation to another.