October
2006
Animal
Rights and Wrongs
The Satya Interview with Lee
Hall
|
 |
In Capers in the Churchyard: Animal Rights Advocacy
in the Age of Terror (Nectar Bat Press, 2006), author Lee
Hall critically
examines strategies
and tactics used in the animal rights movement. Since 2002, Hall has
served as the legal director for Friends of Animals, and writer of
their column, “Movement Watch.” Friends of Animals, established
in 1957, works to cultivate a respectful view of nonhuman animals and
free them from cruelty and institutionalized exploitation.
Hall’s analysis of the movement notices two major trends dominating animal
activism—militancy and welfare advocacy—neither of which Hall feels
leads to animal rights.
The title of the book refers to a campaign in the UK, where activists targeted
a family farm supplying guinea pigs to the vivisection giant Huntingdon Life
Sciences. They stole graveyard remains of the family’s relative to blackmail
them into terminating their relationship with HLS. Hall analyzes this case, as
well as others involving fear and intimidation, and feels that “those who
have right on their side should keep it there.”
Both militancy and welfare stem from a sense of urgency, but Hall shows these
approaches to be divisive and detrimental to our cause.
“Welfare societies
not only work to forge what they call win-win situations with government and
industry; they also work to convince animal-rights activists to join in the effort.
To the extent that they succeed (a phenomenal extent so far), they render the
movement too timid—or as they might prefer to say, pragmatic—to ask
for what it wants.” Hall asserts, “the animal-welfare concept, which
seeks to ameliorate the worst conditions of use rather than question a culture
of dominion, plays an integrated maintenance function in the established social
order.”
At a time when animal groups are actively working on farm animal welfare standards
and six members of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA are facing prison sentences,
Sangamithra Iyer had a chance to ask Lee Hall about animal advocacy today.
Your book Capers in the Churchyard examines two major trends you see in the animal
rights movement: militant action and intimidation on one end, and animal welfare
reform on the other. Why do you find this problematic?
From an industry manager’s perspective, you’ll see two major ways
in which animal users keep activists under control. The traditional way entails
being prepared to negotiate a few animal welfare concessions with activists.
The animals, of course, aren’t polled.
The other management method involves portraying activists as dangerous.
Let’s look at the first. Adjustments in commercial husbandry practices
may be touted as victories, but over the years they’ve done very little,
except to give the impression industries have “taken a bite out of their
worst cruelties.” Such assurances don’t empower us or other animals,
so why do they occupy so many advocates? It’s the seductive but largely
illusory view that things can’t change overnight, so we should relieve
suffering now. The thing is, now just keeps going on and on, while industries
expand to meet new profit opportunities. In the age of cloning and genetic modification,
activists are so accustomed to rubber-stamping that the American Anti-Vivisection
Society actually campaigned to get cloning regulated under the federal Animal
Welfare Act. Imagine a group claiming to be anti-vivisection asking for cloning
to have the blessing of codification in a federal law.
Militancy is relatively immediate, often concerned with the worst scenarios,
trying a few rescues and getting as much publicity for them as they can, sometimes
involving mainstream organizations to prosecute a campaign against a certain
business and rarely stepping back to ask where the roots of the troubles lie.
Campaigns seeming edgy on the surface may lead back to arguing with industry
about such things as the disrepair of the cages. Rescuing animals from institutional
settings can help at an individual level, but it rarely empowers the animals.
And the laws protecting industries may become stricter in response.
Spokespeople in militant and traditional welfare circles may urge us to “just
do something!” Doing all sorts of things, which often means contradictory
things, is not the same as advocacy that envisions and commits to root-level
change.
What are your thoughts about the increasing association of animal rights groups
with animal welfare, for example, endorsing Whole Foods and helping create its
Animal Compassionate standards or advocating switching to cage-free eggs?
This is the influence not of animal rights, but of Peter Singer, the Humane Society
of the U.S., and others who promoted that alliance. Notably, Donald Watson, who
founded the Vegan Society in 1944, called the family farm “death row.” No
farming respects the animals on whom it’s imposed. Vegan advocacy has nothing
whatsoever to do with making animal products look attractive.
So forget egg reform. Let’s start commending veganism—without hedging.
Animal rights activism is not exemplified by those who present a smorgasbord
of choices, who sometimes advocate veganism and sometimes promote humane animal
farming.
Groups such as the HSUS, to be fair and accurate, do not claim to be committed
to the animal rights mission. Friends of Animals had a very different take on
the debut of Whole Foods Market’s Animal Compassion Foundation: We picketed.
As we see it, advocacy involving systematic pain management makes activists into
industry adjuncts.
Assuring the public that activism can and will reduce suffering says a lot about
human tendency to control. It’s applicable to domestic or captive animals—a
husbandry matter. Animal rights isn’t reducing suffering, but giving up
our dominion over others.
In efforts for farm animal welfare and “free-range” farming,
one
thing you point out that is notably absent is the impact on free-living animals.
Can you talk about this?
Not only do six billion humans take up a lot of space; we’re also accompanied
by our vast entourage of domesticated animals. Meanwhile, as precious time
passes, the other animals of the world—those who might have a chance to
keep their territory and their freedom—are pushed to the margins of the
land.
So from both an animal rights and an environmental perspective, space for animal
agribusiness doesn’t need to be expanded; it needs to be phased out.
We’re seeing the biggest set of extinctions and the most ominous climate
indicators in modern history. Negotiating with industries is fiddling as Rome
burns. We should be very busy learning a different way to think about other animals
and the earth.
I like how you say veganism is “direct action.” Can you expand
upon
that?
To actually achieve the animal rights ideal, humans would withdraw from the profoundly
unjust custom of dominating others. A word for that change is veganism.
The cages won’t disappear, nor will the killing of free-living animals
cease, because we “just do” anything. Transforming society is an
ambitious task, but it’s possible by taking one well-directed step at a
time, focusing our efforts on creating fundamental change.
As individuals, we can model respect and fairness immediately, simply by committing
to vegan living. What we do individually sooner or later becomes collective action.
The vegan sunflower label, like the word itself, has crossed the oceans, and
we can now find like-minded people most anywhere we go. But lately we find numerous,
concerted efforts to trivialize committed veganism, even by people who call themselves
vegans! Yet taking veganism seriously should be the central priority for animal
rights advocates.
Six members of SHAC were sentenced last month. You describe the economic sabotage
they carried out in getting individuals and businesses to discontinue their association
with HLS. Can you explain why you think this was not a successful campaign?
Prison disables people. A prison sentence means a body is handed over to an ever-expanding
system of cages.
It’s important to point out that the authorities see SHAC as an international
campaign, and they’re sharing enforcement expertise internationally. The
campaign to shut Huntingdon Life Sciences began in Britain, where support for
vivisection has risen to about 70 percent, if you believe this year’s widely
published YouGov poll [for The Daily Telegraph]. Previous surveys had reported
figures around 50 percent. This year, several people have entered guilty pleas
in connection with the removal of human remains from a churchyard for leverage
against a family business that supplied guinea pigs to companies including Huntingdon.
And this year, vivisection in Britain reached its highest level in 14 years.
We’re seeing a pattern, a grand lawmaking experiment that singles out animal-use
industries for special protection, corresponding to extra penalties for activists.
We’re seeing the authorities threaten people with grotesque sentences,
pressing individuals to turn against each other. We’re seeing the heavy
use of conspiracy charges just to nab somebody—oddly mirroring the way
some militant campaigns are expanding outward, channeling anger to someone’s
child or the construction worker rather than those authorizing the experiments.
It all has become an escalating battle between the activists and one company,
and, of course, law enforcement. I don’t think the animal rights viewpoint
can be forced on anyone, when the animal rights worldview is about transcending
force.
Your book offers an in-depth criticism of many things ailing the animal rights
movement and the shortcomings of the noted victories. Yet there seemed to be
a shortage of positive examples of animal advocacy. Can you give some examples
of strategies/campaigns that you think are doing it right?
The Captive Animals’ Protection Society, based in England but working globally,
organizes local opposition to the building of sites meant to display living individuals.
Without silly gimmicks, they work to prevent captivity in the first place. They
link their critiques of capture and commerce with the positive value of a free
life in a healthy aquatic community. They sharply debunk aquatic zoos’ advertising—for
example, by noting that a cafeteria at the aquarium sells the cod and other animals
it claims to protect. This activism helps people transcend a cage-minded culture,
and I think making the connection to the lunch menu is a good idea.
Pennsylvania-based Responsible Policies for Animals shows how university “animal
science” serves private interests of the flesh, milk and egg industries,
as well as commerce in pharmaceuticals, feed crops, petroleum and fast food.
Nice work. Vegan organic growing is revolutionizing the way people think about
food. And every vegetarian society expressly defining vegetarianism as a totally
plant-based diet is doing it right.
You offer criticism of militancy and welfare regarding vivisection and farm animals.
Is Friends of Animals currently working on campaigns focused on lab and farm
animals?
We do educational projects addressing vivisection, cloning, and genetic modification.
We’ve collaborated with Primates for Primates in Australia, bringing animal
rights advocacy directly into initiatives designed to prevent proposed cloning
research entirely. Note, though, that the spread of veganism is important if
we’re going to get a critical mass to renounce vivisection. In fact, without
animal agribusiness, we wouldn’t have a lot of today’s scientific
absurdities. The first cloned cat was introduced at the Texas Agriculture Experiment
Station.
FoA generally focuses mostly on wild animals rather than on those in captivity,
why is that?
We know that animal rights won’t be found on the farm. Commodified animals
will always be rightless. That’s what it means to be property.
So an animal rights movement isn’t advanced by combining and confusing
vegan education with campaigns that negotiate with animal agribusiness. We could
all become experts on animal farming, but veganism is about opting out of that
system.
You might not be able to see or touch the absence of exploitation, but it’s
real. By being vegan, you’ll spare more animals from a commodified life
than most any sanctuary in the world. The key word is “spare” because
you aren’t rescuing animals; you’re working at the root, sparing
them from ever needing to depend on rescuers in the first place, and respecting
the habitat of those who live empowered lives.
Our central focus is on free-living animals, yes, because as long as they live,
the animal rights movement has hope. The bulk of today’s animal advocacy is
primarily concerned about how to treat the domesticated animals. But what would
abolishing property status do if there were no free animals—if no habitat
remained where animals could actually benefit from that achievement? Animal rights
is only a viable idea as long as there is an animal world at liberty to avoid
such interactions.
What has the response been from other animal activists and groups regarding your
book? Are they open to criticism, when Friends of Animals tends not to work with
them on campaigns?
Mainstream groups, even some smaller groups, have promoted decidedly non-vegan
campaigns, and you might say they’re opting not to work with us. It’s
all a matter of perspective! Actually I think we’ve stayed right at the
core of animal rights thinking; and if humanity is to survive and progress, it
won’t be due to roomier egg production or temporary boycotts of the flesh
of one kind of animal to save another.
The day that animals are taken seriously, the day they are credited with a claim
to their territory and freedom, that’ll be the day corporate polluters
and pillagers meet their true challenge.
I think it’s beginning to dawn on a growing number of activists that professionalized
welfare advocacy, for all its talk about victories and advances and political
clout, has comfortably settled into the role of an industry gatekeeper, and the
attempts to form husbandry-rights hybrids are vulnerable to that same hydraulic
pull. I don’t expect the critique in my book to be gratefully received
by the leaders of such groups; their ways are now quite entrenched. But we’ve
had positive and really energizing input from activists who’ve read the
book. And the response from environmentalists and people in other social movements
is really encouraging us.
A key point in Capers in the Churchyard is striving for advocacy that changes
and challenges the existing power structure. How do we do that?
Pause, think, envision. The dominant method of professionalized advocacy conditions
activists to seek one-click solutions, but really challenging the status quo
will be quite a different matter.
The main work of the book is an exploration of reasons why activists do things
that deter or delay the most important goal of the movement. I think it does
this. But detailed guidelines could contradict a key intention of the book: to
question the paradigm of creating experts (you’ve heard it: “No one
has done more for the animals than So-and-So” or “No group has had
more legislative victories than Such-and-Such”). More valuable is the ability
of people to think for ourselves.
That said, supporting what veganism stands for is, in my view, essential. It’s
a perfect example of people power.
As for dissolving hierarchical thinking, first, it’s important to note
that animal advocates can be as invested in hierarchy as the rest of society.
It is imperative that we actively work for a movement that seeks to end hierarchies
based on errors such as sexism, racism and xenophobia, and have the guts to interrogate
the assumptions that enable humans to exert dominion over others. If we put our
energy where our vision is, reasonable people can consider the message and
act accordingly. Each vegan represents a revolutionary change, and it’s
a matter of plain sanity to start a revolution that arrives at respect for other
beings and our global commons.
For more information visit www.friendsofanimals.org.
| |
|
|
© STEALTH TECHNOLOGIES INC. |
|
