Francione claims that there has never been proper vegan campaigning, in contrast, that animal welfare reforms have been around for 200 years, and that shows they do not work. I have answered this in my essay already. In brief: there has been, and still is, a lot of vegan campaigning. In Austria since 130 years. It is obviously never enough, but it has been done, for a very long time, and still it did not have any results on a global scale. I personally, for example, have co-founded the Austrian vegan society (
http://www.vegan.at) and have been investing a lot of time in vegan outreach. Consumption of animal products per head is still at an all time high.
Consumption of animal products is at an all time high in the context of
welfarism’s being the dominant response to the problem of animal exploitation. Balluch claims that the burden of proof is on abolitionists to show that these two things – welfarist campaigns and the consumption of animal products – are related. But clearly, it is wildly counterintuitive to suppose that if you tell someone that animal exploitation is being conducted “humanely,” or if you tell them that they can be “conscientious omnivores,” then this will
not make them feel better about their consumption of animal products and, thereby, facilitate contained animal exploitation. Clearly, since their claim is prima facie extremely intuitive and plausible the burden of proof is not an abolitionists. It is, rather, on welfarists, whose claim – that welfarism does not facilitate continued exploitation – is prima facie extremely implausible.
Second: I don't see the sense in doing surveys to investigate things that are extremely counterintuitive, especially since resources are very limited.
Third: I think Bob Torres, who is a sociologist, said that it would be pointless to do empirical surveys as you could basically frame them in such a way as to come up with any answer you want.
Fourth: it is simply empirically false to claim that vegan outreach has always been central to the “animal rights” movement’s campaigning. It has always marginalized veganism in favor of welfarist campaigns; the former has always been adulterated by the latter. Since, as an empirical matter, the new welfarist movement has never made vegan outreach its primary mode of campaigning, it is difficult to see how Balluch can intelligibly claim that, as an empirical matter, vegan outreach has failed.
Fifth: welfarists characterize veganism in pejorative terms, saying that it’s “fanatical,” etc. Do we also need to do empirical studies to see whether a movement which claims that veganism is “fanatical,” whereas “conscientious omnivorism” is achievable by everyone and is, in fact, all we need to do to discharge our moral obligations to animals, conditions unresponsiveness to veganism and, thereby, facilitates continued exploitation? Anyone who claims that we do is claiming something that is extremely counterintuitive and, as such, the burden is on them to prove their claim. At any rate, the burden is not on abolitionists.
Imagine the anti-slavery movement as doing nothing but trying to persuade one slave owner after the other through friendly talk to voluntarily stop using slaves. What a ludicrous idea!
Ironically, by not making veganism a moral imperative – an obligation binding on everyone – it is in fact the new welfarist movement that makes the abolition of animal slavery something voluntary. Veganism is, for welfarists, merely one way of reducing suffering among others.
Second: no disagrees that we have to eradicate animal slavery both from our lives individually (veganism) and from society as a general, socio-political matter. But it is idle to try to do the latter in the absence if the former – in the absence of a critical mass of vegans that would make our demands powerful – for there is no intelligible possibility that we could do so. Why would the government ban something that is central to the economy in the absence of mass popular calls for it and, conversely, in the teeth of mass popular opposition to it? Why would the government accede to the demands of a movement that, because of the lack of vegans, is merely an eccentric voice crying into the wind? I can think of no intelligble reason how we could ban the consumption of animal products in the absence of a social paradigm shift toward abolition. The latter is, in short, a necessary precondition of the former.
But Francione further overlooks the fact that if those rich animal welfare societies with their donations were to use that money for other purposes than it has been given to them for, they would soon loose all support.
So we should do what doesn’t work because the public supports what doesn’t work?
Francione claims that it is unclear how anyone should move ideologically from welfare to rights, since those ideas are so fundamentally different. I have dealt with that question in detail in my essay. Philosophically, yes, there is a big gulf between the two, but psychologically there is a continuum.
Some thoughts on the idea that there is a continuum between welfare and rights:
Why would rightists not say that welfarists' compassion for animals is genuine? It is because welfarists do not treat animals as constituting a distinctive kind of limit to their wills.
Why would rightists say that their compassion for animals is genuine? It is because rightists do treat animals as constituting a distinctive kind of limit to their wills.
Therefore, rightists sympathies for animals are morally-conditioned -- they are conditioned by the (moral) idea that animals constitute a distinctive kind of limit to their wills -- whereas welfarists' sympathies are not morally-conditioned.
Therefore, since we cannot get to a morally-conditioned disposition by extending a disposition that is not morally-conditioned, we cannot get to rights merely by extending welfarist sympathies for animals.
It is a very rare occasion that a person becomes vegan after hearing theoretical animal rights philosophical arguments. Its suffering and the feeling of compassion that moves people, i.e. animal welfare, to turn to animal rights. That’s because humans are social and rather not rational animals.
This is clearly a false dichotomy.
one more reason why the boycott aspect of veganism is negligible: any one person turning vegan does not change the amount of animals being used and killed at all
It hardly follows, from the fact one person’s becoming may not affect the numbers of animals being used and killed, that veganism as such is useless. It isn’t even intelligble to claim that if there was no demand for animal products (i.e. if we lived in a vegan world) we would still have institutionalized and industrial-scale animal exploitation, as there would be nothing to would sustain it.
The animal farming lobby is politically unbelievably powerful. When avian flue reduced the amount of chicken meat being bought by a large percentage, it was governments, who just bought the meat and burned it, until the food scare was over.
There are many examples of when animal industries were gone, consumer “demand” was gone, like with the ban on wild animal circuses, or when pate fois gras or rabbit meat was taken from the shelves in all supermarkets, or when battery eggs or fur was not being sold anymore. Animal industries cannot change to other products. They can only go bankrupt. The trade on the other hand can change, they do not care what they sell, and politicians can change, if they feel being driven towards that. But for animal industries, fighting the animal rights movement is like fighting for survival. And these industries have much more financial power to advertise for their products and create demands, than the animal rights movement could counter that with vegan propaganda. So, at first animal industries have to be killed, then the change to veganism and animal rights will come by itself.
For it to be plausible that demand would for disappear in the way that Balluch describes it would have to be the case that the
only reason people consumed animal products was because of the way the animal industries try to manufacture demand for them (through advertising, etc.) But although it is true that people may buy more animal products that they actually need to satisfy their hunger, or that they may pay too much for animal products, because of the animal industries advertising etc., it is hardly the case that this is the
only reason people want to consume animal products. When I was nonvegan I liked cheese. I may have sometimes paid too much for cheese or bought too much of it, and that no doubt was the result of the animal industries advertising, etc. But I did not eat cheese only because of the animal use industries advertising. I also liked cheese. Balluch’s claim is a bit like saying that, if we abolished the washing machine industry, people would no longer want to wash their clothes. The general point is that there are reasons why people want to consume animal products that are intelligible independently of the way the animal industries try to manufacture and sustain demand. If this is true then we have to address, not only the animal use industries, but also the public's desire to consume animal products, which is, as I said, intelligible independently of the way the animal industries manufacture demand for animal products. And the only way to do that is through vegan outreach.
Second: Balluch's reductive analysis of human behavior seriously misunderstands the cultural significance of food. For example, it is wildy implausible to suppose that people's desire to eat turkey at Christmas would simply disappear if the government decreed that the animal use industries were not allowed to exploit turkeys. His reductive analysis is, I think, just plain wrong as a general matter. Many of the things we do, we do simply because of the sense they make for us. The fact that we bury our dead (for example) is not underwritten by anything in our biology. We do it simply because of the sense it makes for us. But on Balluch's analysis, if the government levied a tax on coffins that made them prohibitively expensive, our desire to bury our dead would presumably just disappear.
Miscellaneous
Francione also claims that a hen in a free range rearing system fares no better in her individual life quality than a hen in a battery cage. Firstly, I say very clearly that I find free range farming animal abuse for many reasons, and I do not endorse it. I think veganism is the only ethical option. But having said that, it is rather ludicrous to suggest that a hen in a free range system suffers equally to a hen in a battery cage. While it is true that the killing of male chicks and the transport of spent hens to the slaughterhouse and the slaughter itself are no different between the two production systems, there are very significant differences as well. At least in Austria, a free range hen is not debeaked, not force molted, has much more space to move in the barn than in a cage, has a nest for herself with nesting material, a pole high up to roost on, natural floor to scratch and dust bathe in, and a roof covered outside area during snow cover. Free range hens in Austria have often unlimited access to outside pastures. They do not get their wings clipped, hence they can fly off if they like as far as they want to, sit in the sun or sit on a tree. And sometimes they do. And come back in the evening. There is no cannibalism in free range hen systems in Austria. It is frankly quite ridiculous to compare this situation for the individual hen with being crammed 5 to a bare, tiny wire cage in a stuffy, windowless shed.
The point is surely that if animal exploitation cannot be morally justified irrespective if how “humane” it is, then it is idle to claim that some forms of exploitation are more “humane,” or “better”, than others.
