ARCO's Abolitionists - A Vegan Forum

Hi!

Wich facts and assumptions do you think is the ground for abolitionist animal rights strategy?

I ask this becauce of my commission as a board member in Animal Rights Sweden ("Djurens Rätt" in swedish). Last weekend we hade a meeting with the board where we had some pretty good discusssion about strategy. I talked about my ideas about changing our strategy to an abolitionist one, and all the other board members disagreed about my views. To next meeting I will write a document trying to describe the abolitionist strategy more clear. I will do this using a model for strategy work wich ask questions as how to describe the history and present situation, how to describe the future and wich facts and assumptions is supporting the strategy one is proposing.

I have some ideas of what I think is the facts and assumptions behind my abolitionist view, but I would think it will be intresting to hear yours! First hand I search for facts because I have a lot of assumptions but maybe not so much facts.

If there is another thread about this issue, pleace let me know!

Hi Malte,

Here are some facts and assumptions:

Fact 1: Animal welfare reform has been going on for 200 years in the UK and the US (and probably Sweden, too) while we’ve watched per capital meat consumption in these places rise annually for decades. Of that 200 years, the past 30 years of reform efforts have been put forward by vegans who say they ultimately want to see the end of animal exploitation.

Granted, much of that increase can be attributed to lower prices due to efficiencies in production, but it’s also because the moral issue has not been presented primarily as one questioning our use/consumption of animals (the abolitionist approach), but only or primarily presented as one of treatment (the new welfarist approach).

We have gone nowhere and we desperately need to change our approach.

Fact 2: Welfare reform, as an empirical matter, has always appealed to the cost savings gained by animal exploiters. HSUS and PETA, for example, always present welfare measures to animal exploiters in terms of the exploiters’ economic interests. The elimination of battery cages is presented in terms of the price inelasticity of eggs, correctly saying that the production costs of eliminating cages can be passed onto consumers without affecting producer profitability. It’s the same with gestation crates. Gary Francione’s blog has the details and links to HSUS and PETA’s proposals that include these economic benefits.

Theoretically, it is highly improbable (to the point of impossible) that welfare measures could EVER go beyond making exploitation more efficient. As long as animals are property and commodities, economic pressure and the law will always treat them as such. If people care enough about animals to consider them morally important as individuals, they will go vegan. Until then, animals will always be commodities and will be treated accordingly.

Fact 3: Nothing ever improved for human slaves in 19th century America until slaves were legally not considered property. The arguments of welfare reform versus abolition that are being made regarding nonhuman beings today are PRECISELY the same arguments that were made regarding human slavery in 19th century America. We are repeating history. If there were no abolitionists, slavery would still be occurring today. For animals to be treated decently, they must not be property. For animals not to be considered property, the vast majority of people must be vegan. Vegan education is, therefore, the ONLY road to justice.

Fact 4: Demand is the primary driver of supply. That is why businesses think in terms of what their customers want when designing or selling a product. The customer is always the boss. If people want animal products, there will be suppliers to meet that demand and nothing we say to suppliers will stop them from supplying. We need to change the moral views of the consumer regarding animals. The moral views of customers are the only thing powerful enough to change their economic behavior. Moral views are the only thing more psychologically powerful than price and gustatory preferences. Welfare reformists work on the suppler side of the economic equation and therefore do very little to change moral attitudes. Abolitionists work on the demand side of the economic equation and, if there are enough of us, we will change things drastically.

That’s a brief overview, with Fact 4 being my personal contribution. The other facts have been presented by Gary Francione for about 12 years now. I highly recommend Gary Francione’s groundbreaking book, Rain Without Thunder, if you want to become well-informed on the abolitionist approach. Following Gary’s blog will also help.

I think the Controlled Atmosphere Killing fiasco is a good example to use in illustrating how welfare reform backfires. Here you have what seems to be a really significant improvement in the welfare of chickens. Instead of being shackled upside down, painfully electrocuted and paralyzed, having their throats cut, they are "put to sleep." Welfarism campaigned heavily for it. When it was instituted, look what happened.

Poultry plants reported "a pounds-per-man-hour improvement of almost 50%," an increase of 30,000 broilers per day, a 75% reduction in time required to make a "tender product," "improved fillet color and texture," reduction of hemorrhages and bone fractures resulting in increased yield.
all quoted in PETA and KFC: “no differences of opinion about how animals should be treated”


So now we have an animal advocacy org endorsing a massive slaughter operation. Peta is actually providing advertising to KFC, for a reform that actually made their business more efficient and therefore profitable. In fact, one of their staff got married in front of a KFC and served their veggie sandwich at the wedding reception.

Also, in order to make shareholder proposals demanding welfare reform, Peta has bought stock in ConAgra, Kroger, Wal-Mart, Wendy's, and KFC.

Surely we can do better than to profit by, and make more profitable, egregious animal exploitation and suffering!


PS: This entry is also a really great one.
Animal Rights: the Abolitionist Approach, The Four Problems with Animal Welfare: In a Nutshell You didn't think you'd get away without people linking to this blog, did you?

Thanks for your answers!

I have read them and some links to Franciones blog and there is som useful arguments for me to use in my paper to the board.

Mountainvegan, you write about the slavery moment. I think this comparison is very intresting. Do you have som links or references about this? Was it a similar debate about reformism vs abolitionism in the slavery moment? Was it some people campaigning for reforms of slavery? If so, how big was the reformist movement compared to the abolitionist movement? How to lead in evidence that it was the abolitionist slavery momevement who lead to the abolishion of slavery?

I am very intrested in this history!

panthera wrote:In fact, one of their staff got married in front of a KFC and served their veggie sandwich at the wedding reception

I think Jack Norris's wedding at KFC symbolizes the total moral, political and intellectual disintegration of the new welfarist industry. I think that this "movement's" support for this bizarre spectacle is an expression of its radical imperviousness to commonsense (it is prepared to support anything so long as it is claimed to be "for the animals"), its dangerously deadened moral sensibility (its forgetfulness of the animals who continued to be exploited by KFC is astonishing), and its political myopia.

Malte,

In his book, Introduction to Animal Rights, Gary Francione goes into some of the details of attempting to gain protection of slaves through various welfare laws and “quasi-person status” (i.e. at one time slaves were legally considered “3/5ths of a person”). None of these efforts worked to bring meaningful protection to slaves until they were freed of property status. Alan Watson, who is a leading scholar on the history American slavery, wrote the forward to Francione’s book, fully endorsing the comparisons made between American slavery (including the efforts at slave welfare laws) and modern animal property status (including the efforts at animal welfare laws). I highly recommend reading Francione’s Introduction to AR for more information on the comparison.

This is a very interesting and fruitful topic. In addition to what Francione covers in his book, I think more scholarship and study of this comparison should be done. I’ve been meaning to look into this in much more detail myself, but have put it off for lack of time/priority. I think I’ll try to make it a priority in the coming year to gain more resources, facts, and knowledge of this area. Specifically, I want to look into the numbers and efforts of slave welfarists (which I believe were very strong, as they are with animal welfarists) versus the numbers and efforts of abolitionists (which I believe, despite their great efforts, were outnumbered, although had a significantly larger percentage of support than current abolitionists).

Meanwhile, below is some info I gathered in a quick Internet search on slavery and slave laws. We have to remember that while these statutes were on the books, the laws were routinely violated just as our current laws are violated. As a matter of legal theory and fact, property has virtually no standing against its property owner. Property owners have RIGHTS. Their property does NOT have any rights. This should be laughably obvious to anyone who knows anything whatsoever about the law, but astoundingly, so many people (welfarists) “play dumb” to this obviously heavily biased and one-way relationship.

http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/geograp ... aws_NJ.htm

From the link above:

Cruelty 1786 Statute Any person convicted of "inhumanly treating and abusing" his slave might be indicted by the grand jury, and on conviction could be fined.

Punishment 1788 Statute All criminal offenses committed by enslaved persons were to be punished in the same manner as the criminal offenses of freemen.

Education 1788 Statute All enslaved blacks and servants, born after the passage of this act, were to be taught to read before they reached the age of 21. Owners who failed to comply with this act were to be fined 5 pounds.

Punishment 1796 Statute Court had the right to determine punishment for slaves convicted of a crime not punishable by death. In place of the usual punishment imposed on freemen, the court could prescribe corporal punishment for any offense not punishable by death.

Terms of enslavement 1798 Statute Every enslaved black, indian or mulatto slave was enslaved for life unless set free in a manner prescribed by the law.

Welfare of slaves 1798 Statute Persons could be indicted for cruel treatment of those enslaved. Penalty: $40.

Welfare of slaves 1798 Statute Enslaved persons not manumitted according to law were to remain under the protection of their owners. If owners were unable to maintain their slaves, the township would be responsible.

Begging 1798 Statute Prohibited owners from allowing enslaved blacks to beg for food, clothing, money or other necessities. Penalty: $8 to be split between informer and overseers of the poor of the township.

The following link shows just how little slave property mattered under the law, and how the owners could do virtually whatever they wanted:

http://www.bowdoin.edu/~prael/projects/ ... page3.html