Speak Out! Reflections on the speech and actions of Animal Rights supporters
Read our guest editorial from the Autumn 2008 issue of Youth Rage, written by 14-year-old Jordan. Would you like to respond, or write your own editorial? We want to hear from you!
Animal rights activists all over the world are on a mission to rid the world of animal cruelty. They promote vegetarianism, fight to get veal, battery cages and fur banned, make free-range and cage-free mainstream and protest at fast food companies until they adopt minimal welfare standards for the billions of animals they use every year. It sounds good. But is it?
Most, if not all, of the ongoing campaigns are focused on the treatment of animals. To improve conditions; to make the miserable and saddening life the animals are forced to endure a tiny bit better. With hundreds of animals being murdered every second, it’s easy to be overwhelmed, and believe the best thing we can do is to get rid of the worst excesses. For instance, to ban the infamous battery farm system and encourage people, if they’re going to eat eggs, to eat free-range ones. But this kind of approach is misguided, and doesn’t help non-human animals in the long run. If we want to end forever the cruelties animals endure daily, we must take a firm, logical stance against animal exploitation. This stance is Animal Rights.
In our day-to-day lives we must live it. And to do this, we must go vegan. And promote veganism. If we truly want to abolish exploitation, we cannot support it by what we eat, drink, wear, buy or say and do. To go vegan is to send a clear message to the world that you do not believe it is right for human beings to use animals for our own gain. This compassionate and simple message is the foundation of animal rights, but it is frequently not the foundation of most animal rights activism.
Campaigning against just fur instead of all clothing made by murdering animals, or against the conditions in factory farms, battery farms, laboratories, or the cruelty of foie gras etc blurs our message, and in many cases sends out a radically different one: if you’re going to use animals, we’d like you to do it nicely. There’s no nice or humane way to end someone’s life, or tear a baby from her mother, or imprison a living, feeling being with emotions just as real as those of the person reading this. But even if there were, using another sentient being for our own gain is morally unacceptable. Even if the slave isn’t killed, or abused, even if she enjoys her life, she is still a slave and enslaving her is still wrong.
This is the rights approach, whereas the welfare approach says that it’s acceptable to enslave her, providing she is well looked after and her minimal needs (such as access to adequate shelter and space) are satisfied. So, retrospectively, welfarist campaigns tend to focus solely on treatment and conditions, instead of the ethics of exploiting animals.
The humane option is not to give the prisoners a little more space, or give the slaves minimal protection from abuse; the humane option is to free them. If we are to be successful in spreading our message of peace and species equality, we must be as consistent as our theory is logical. We must shun all forms of animal exploitation on the basis that all sentient beings deserve equal consideration and their basic right – to not be treated as property – should be respected. Animal liberation begins at home, in the hearts, minds and stomachs of compassionate people. Spread the word. Free the enslaved.
For more information regarding Abolitionism, and the problems of animal welfare visit Gary Francione’s http://www.abolitionistapproach.com.
