ARCO's Abolitionists - A Vegan Forum

(moderator's note: this post has deliberately not been deleted, so that anybody who is interested can have a discussion about why such a development cannot further animal rights.)


I got forwarded an email about proposed legislation that could help many livestock animals in California.

California residents can make this happen by voting "yes" on proposition #2 and reading this site for more information:
http://www.humanecalifornia.org/

Residents of other states can consider making a contribution to efforts to make sure that this legislation passes:
https://secure.hsus.org/01/chf_2020?qp_source=chf005

I did not read all of the details in the forwarded email, so before you spend money or vote please check out the details for yourself.

Just curiosity,
If this proposal becomes law,how much are HSUS,FS and other welfare orgs
assets affected?

beforewisdom wrote:Residents of other states can consider making a contribution to efforts to make sure that this legislation passes:
https://secure.hsus.org/01/chf_2020?qp_source=chf005

I did not read all of the details in the forwarded email, so before you spend money or vote please check out the details for yourself.

This is a joke, right? I mean, the website has "HSUS" right in the url. It would be pretty funny if a donation got to HSUS from an abolitionist website!

panthera wrote:It would be pretty funny if a donation got to HSUS from an abolitionist website!

Hmm... not really.

In order to determine what constitutes 'humane' treatment, the law often looks to those who engage
in the animal use because we assume that animal users are rational economic actors who would not
impose more pain and suffering than is required for a paticular use.
This however, reduces animal welfare laws to directives not to treat animals in ways that that do not
comply with industry or customary standards.
Animal welfare laws generally require only that we act as rational property owners and prohibit only those
actions that reduce the value of animal property or that have no economic benefit for humans.
Just as a rational person would not smash her car with a hammer, a rational farmers would not impose
more suffering than necessary on her caw, as both are valuable pieces of property.
But as long as pain and suffering are regarded as providing economic benefits to humans and cccur within
generally recognized institutions of animal use, animal welfare laws usually are silent.
Animal exploiters offer token opposition to welfare legislation and initiatives but ultimately support
such regulation because they have little or nothing to lose and everything to gain; indeed, their
support is usually required for these measures to be successful.
If all animal users were perfectly rational and had full information about how paticular practices
affected animal productivity, we would probably not even need animal welfare laws because rational
users would not impose more suffering than needed for a particular purpose.

Animals as Persons pg.8

Inteligibly and eloquently written, a must read book!

I received an invitation letter from 'Orange County People for Animals' ,
a local animal welfare group yesterday.
The letter says,

OCPA Summer Fundraising Event, A Cage Free Affair

A Cage Free Affair is to help promote the upcoming ballot proposition,
The Farm Animal Cruelty Prevention Act which would require confined
farm animals be allowed to fully extend their limbs or wings, lie down,
stand up and turn around. This would benefit calves raised for veal,
egg-laying hens, and pregnant pigs. It provides for misdemeanor pen-
alties and fines and/or imprisonment for up to 180 days for violators.
Although these rights seems so small, without such a measure passing,
thousands upon thousands of California farm animals will continue to
live without these basic rights.

How quickly OCPA takes advantage of this chance to fundrise !
I bet other welfare orgs also jump on HSUS' bandwagon, so here comes,
humanely made animal corpse and eggs are marching on!
I firmly believe more than before that welfare reforms are beneficial
only to animal exploiters and traditional/new welfarists.

hummingbird wrote:I firmly believe more than before that welfare reforms are beneficial
only to animal exploiters and traditional/new welfarists.

Yes, hummingbird. This is correct. The "reforms" are effectively rules that help ensure that animals are used in a maximally economically efficient way. Hence welfarist corporations, when they promote welfarist regulation, are effectively cheerleading for the self-regulation of industry. Take PeTA's CAK campaign. There are at least 4 major things wrong with this campaign: (1) CAK is a more efficient way of killing chickens; hence industry probably would have instituted it anyway, that is, independently of PeTA's campaign; (2) if this is true (which it is) then all the time and money PeTA spent on CAK could, without any loss any to chickens, have been spent on something else, such as vegan outreach, which would help animals; (3) CAK will increase the efficiency of animal use and, thereby, further entrench the economic position of industry; and (4) when a self-proclaimed "animal rights group" praises KFC it inevitably makes the public feel better about eating at places like KFC.

Welfarists often reply that if it is true that welfare regulation militates for industry's efficiency and profitability, then there should be no need to reform industry; and since industry does reform, this proves the abolitionist claim to be false. But this falsely assumes that industry initially had perfect knowledge regarding the best (i.e. most efficient) ways of exploiting animals. But it obviously did not. Take factory farming. Industry thought that this form of exploitation would be the most efficient. But it is now realizing that if animals are given a little bit more room this reduces stress, and this in turn means industry can save money on, for example, antibiotics. So the welfarist changes (e.g., group housing for sows, which was a campaign promoted by HSUS) do not reflect the fact that welfarists are incrementally abolishing animal use; on the contrary, they reflect the fact that industry is finding more efficient ways of exploiting animals. Yet these regulations are ideologically portrayed by welfarist corporations as both (1) significantly reducing animal suffering, and (2) incrementally leading us toward abolition. These claims are, of course, false.

What a great analysis!

Indeed welfarist's priority is money.
They are always looking for campaigns. If certain campaigh is suitable for
their fainancial benefit, then they jump on it.
If they think it's not for fainancial benefit to them then they simply ignore
it, especialy if it is vegan education.

Welfarists claim that welfarism creates vegans.
Some point it is true, but it is not their credit.
Welfare orgs do not educate veganism seriously or intentionally, yet some people
become vegan, because they are more sensitive and serious than welfare orgs
expected, so they choose to to be vegan rather than being " conscietious omni-
vore"
If welfare orgs use all their power for vegan outreach and forget about reforms,
then there would be more vegans in the world.

hummingbird wrote:Welfarists claim that welfarism creates vegans.
Some point it is true, but it is not their credit.
Welfare orgs do not educate veganism seriously or intentionally, yet some people
become vegan, because they are more sensitive and serious than welfare orgs
expected, so they choose to to be vegan rather than being " conscietious omni-
vore"
If welfare orgs use all their power for vegan outreach and forget about reforms,
then there would be more vegans in the world.

That is a good point, hummingbird. People often refuse to ctiticize PeTA on the grounds that PeTA has convinced some people to go vegan. That is true; but it is a very bad argument. For it ignores the fact that we would have even more vegans if we only supported groups that engage in clear and unequivocal vegan outreach. For example, imagine if 20 million dollars every year was donated not to PeTA, but to Peace Prairie? At any rate, it is difficult to understand what could seriously be meant by saying that we should support PeTA because PeTA has convinced some people to go vegan, even though there would be more vegans if we only supported groups that engage in abolitionist outreach.

Since groups like PeTA, with their false liberatory ideology (i.e. new welfarism), starve vegan outreach of resources, it follows that there are in fact fewer vegans because of them, not more.

(The welfarist argument is, I think, informed by the idea that we should support anything that is claimed to be conducive to abolition. That is problematic because some things are more conducive to abolition than others: for example vegan outreach is more conducive to abolition than welfarist outreach (assuming for the sake of argument that welfarism is conducive to abolition). Surely, we should only support those things that are maximally conducive to abolition, such as vegan outreach.

Also, people often characterize our position negatively, as being, for example, "anti-PeTA". We are not anti-PeTA. We are pro-abolition.)

James wrote:Also, people often characterize our position negatively, as being, for example, "anti-PeTA". We are not anti-PeTA. We are pro-abolition.)

I like it!