This incredible essay by James LaVeck and its images are originally from
humanemyth.org
Visit
humanemyth.org to view the companion four-part video presentation by James LaVeck and to learn more about animal agriculture and the myth of humane farming.
What the British anti-slavery movement can teach animal advocates about overcoming the politics of pessimism
Several prominent animal advocacy organizations have
convinced large numbers of their members, including some experienced
activists and community educators, that as "realists," we should direct
the bulk of our available resources and energy towards achieving
whatever small improvements we can in
the treatment of the
billions of animals humans use and kill each year. "We will not see
major progress toward the elimination of animal exploitation in our
lifetimes," they say. "After all, most people are not ready, willing or
able to grasp that the exploitation of animals is a question of
justice."
Largely on the basis of such presumptions, these
organizations have also convinced their supporters that even such
compromised goals can often only be accomplished by forming coalitions
with various segments of the animal-using industry and by developing and
promoting alternative "humane" animal products. As a result, the
question of justice, "Do we have the
right to use and kill animals?", is being methodically displaced by the question of regulation, "What is the
right way for us to use and kill animals?"
1
Against All Odds
A remarkable essay titled "
Against All Odds," by Adam Hochschild, co-founder of
Mother Jones magazine,
is a must-read for anyone who believes that today's injustices are so
entrenched that we might as well give up on achieving significant change
in our lifetimes or that the efforts of a few people can't possibly
impact a global problem. In it, Mr. Hochschild tells how the grassroots
movement to end the practice of slavery in the British Empire was the
first justice movement in human history that was joined by large numbers
of people who were not themselves victims of the injustice being
challenged. As he deftly illustrates, those of us working for justice
today owe an incalculable debt to our forebears in the anti-slavery
movement:
Though born in the age of swords, wigs, and stagecoaches, the
British anti-slavery movement leaves us an extraordinary legacy. Every
day activists use the tools it helped pioneer: consumer boycotts,
newsletters, petitions, political posters and buttons, national
campaigns with local committees, and much more. But far more important
is the boldness of its vision. Look at the problems that confront the
world today: global warming; the vast gap between rich and poor nations;
the
relentless spread of nuclear weapons; the poisoning of the earth's
soil, air, and water; the habit of war. To solve almost any one of
these, a realist might say, is surely the work of centuries; to think
otherwise is naive. But many a hardheaded realist could -- and did --
say exactly the same thing to those who first proposed to end slavery.
After all, was it not in one form or another woven into the economy of
most of the world? Had it not existed for millennia? Was it not older,
even, than money and the written word? Surely anyone expecting to change
all of that was a dreamer. But the realists turned out to be wrong.
To read of the courage and vision of those who gave decades of
their lives to abolish slavery when it seemed all but impossible is to
rediscover the power of altruism, and to be witness to the true
potential of the human spirit. Mr. Hochschild goes on to offer a vivid
snapshot of just how monumental the challenge really was:
…
picture
the world as it existed in 1787. Well over three-quarters of the people
on earth are in bondage of one land or another. In parts of the
Americas, slaves far outnumber free people. African slaves are also
scattered widely through much of the Islamic world. Slavery is routine
in most of Africa itself. In India and other parts of Asia, some people
are outright slaves, others in debt bondage that ties them to a
particular landlord as harshly as any slave to a Southern plantation
owner. In Russia the majority of the population are serfs. Nowhere is
slavery more firmly rooted than in Britain's overseas empire, where some
half-million slaves are being systematically worked to an early death
growing West Indian sugar... One of the most prosperous sugar
plantations on Barbados is owned by the Church of England. Furthermore,
Britain's ships dominate the slave trade, delivering tens of thousands
of chained captives each year to French, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese
colonies as well as to its own.
…If you had proposed, in the London of early 1787, to change all of
this, nine out of ten people would have laughed you off as a crackpot.
The 10th might have admitted that slavery was unpleasant but said that
to end it would wreck the British Empire's economy.
…Looking back, however, what is even more surprising than slavery's
scope is how swiftly it died. By the end of the 19th century, slavery
was, at least on paper, outlawed almost everywhere.
Consider how massive a societal shift the abolitionists were
fighting for, and how unachievable it must have seemed to nearly
everyone even a few decades before it actually happened. And, amazingly,
this monumental change was wrought by the power of conscience awakening
in the lives of large numbers of individual people who, in different
ways, became conscientious objectors to the evils of slavery. What
became an unstoppable wave of change was sparked by the efforts of a
small number of visionary activists (some of whom were former slaves),
educators and political leaders, using methods that are still familiar
to us today.
Within
a few years, another tactic arose from the grassroots. Throughout the
length and breadth of the British Isles, people stopped eating the major
product harvested by British slaves: sugar. Clarkson was delighted to
find a "remedy, which the people were taking into their own hands...
Rich and poor, churchmen and dissenters... By the best computation I was
able to make from notes taken down in my journey, no fewer than three
hundred thousand persons had abandoned the use of sugar."
…Then, as now, the full workings of a globalized economy were largely
invisible. The boycott caught people's imagination because it brought
these hidden ties to light. The poet Robert Southey spoke of tea as "the
blood-sweetened beverage."
...Slavery advocates were horrified. One rushed out a
counterpamphlet claiming that "sugar is not a luxury; but... a necessary
of life; and great injury have many persons done to their constitutions
by totally abstaining from it."
In spite of all that has changed in the last several hundred years, the
privilege of domination -- the socially-sanctioned and often even
legally-validated prerogative of one group to exert arbitrary control
over members of another group -- still drives the same kind of
manipulative defenses outlined by Hochschild. We can see this today with
the ceaseless efforts of the meat, dairy and egg industries to convince
the public that a diet based on animal products is the foundation of
health and long life, when in fact it has been scientifically proven to
be a major contributor to heart disease, cancer, diabetes and many other
chronic illnesses our country spends billions to mitigate.
But Mr. Hochschild's essay reminds us that hundreds of years ago, such
pernicious industry deceptions did not carry the day, and that people of
modest means and limited formal education grasped that they had
inadvertently become complicit in the systematic enslavement and
exploitation of millions of others. Many simply chose to opt out, even
when doing so went against their own economic interests:
Uprisings of the oppressed have erupted throughout history, but the
anti-slavery movement in England was the first sustained mass campaign
anywhere on behalf of someone else's rights. Sometimes Britons even
seemed to be organizing against their own self-interest. From Sheffield,
famous for making scissors, scythes, knives, razors, and the like, 769
metalworkers petitioned Parliament in 1789. Because their wares were
sold to ship captains for use as currency to buy slaves, the Sheffield
cutlers wrote, they might be expected to favor the slave trade. But they
vigorously opposed it: "Your petitioners ...consider the case of the
nations of Africa as their own." …Consider the Africans' case as their
own? Stephen Fuller, London agent for the Jamaican planters and a key
figure in the pro-slavery lobby, wrote in bewilderment that the
petitions flooding into Parliament were "stating no grievance or injury
of any land or sort, affecting the Petitioners themselves." He was right
to be startled. This was something new in human history.
What could be more inspiring and instructive to those working for justice today?
A Cautionary Tale
Also folded within Mr. Hochschild's inspirational historical
survey is a cautionary tale. As the excerpts below vividly illustrate,
just as the grassroots methods pioneered by anti-slavery activists are
still in use today, so are the many methods of co-option, distortion and
delay that were used by those determined to maintain their privilege of
domination over Africans who had been kidnapped and forced to endure
the pain and degradation of lifelong servitude:
Pro-slavery
forces now launched counterattacks. They bought copies of a pro-slavery
book for distribution "particularly at Cambridge" (college towns leaned
left even then) and printed 8,000 copies of a pamphlet about how each
happy slave family had "a snug little house and garden, and plenty of
pigs and poultry." They sponsored a London musical, The Benevolent
Planters, in which two black lovers, separated in Africa, end up living
on adjoining plantations in the West Indies and are reunited by their
kindly owners.
…They considered other P.R. techniques as well. "The vulgar are
influenced by names and titles," suggested one pro-slavery writer in
1789. "Instead of SLAVES, let the Negroes be called ASSISTANT-PLANTERS;
and we shall not then hear such violent outcries against the
slave-trade."
…In Parliament, slavery's most colorful spokesman was the Duke of
Clarence, one of the many dissolute sons of King George III. …In his
maiden speech before fellow members of the House of Lords in their red
and ermine robes, he called himself "an attentive observer of the state
of the negroes," who found them well cared for and "in a state of humble
happiness." On another occasion, he warned that Britain's abolishing
the trade would mean the slaves would be transported by foreigners, "who
would not use them with such tenderness and care."
While the experience of each individual and each group that has
endured oppression and injustice is unique and must be recognized and
respected as such, the mindset of those benefiting from the exploitation
of others remains remarkably consistent across culture and context, and
across the centuries. Pro-slavery advocates systematically worked to
manipulate the public into focusing on the manner of treatment, rather
than the injustice of the enslavement itself. The parallels with today's
struggle for justice for other-than-human animals are stunning, with
industry lies and manipulations shifting the emphasis towards "humane"
treatment rather than questioning the privilege of domination itself.
Nowhere was this more painfully evident than at the
2007 Taking Action for Animals conference,
sponsored by numerous animal advocacy organizations and attended by
nearly a thousand animal advocates and community educators. At one
controversial presentation, rancher
Nicolette Hahn Niman
showed picturesque photos of animals bred into existence on her ranch
to be killed after only two years of life, repeatedly attesting to her
respect and affection for them as individuals, many of whom she claimed
to know by name. Ms. Niman received particular praise from a
representative of the Animal Welfare Institute, a conference sponsor,
who said to the audience of animal advocates:
The reason that we actually first began working with
[Niman Ranch] was that they instituted a practice I'd never seen before,
which is that the stock man and woman who work with the cattle out on
the range actually go with the animals to the slaughterhouse. They clear
everyone else, all the strangers, out of the slaughterhouses and walk
with the animal to the staging area to its death, so that that animal
has the comfort of a familiar face. And the only stranger is -- there's
only one stranger for that animal in the entire process, once it's off
the truck. [i.e., the person who takes the animal's life] [
Listen]
Butchering Our Language
An unforgettable scene from the documentary "Food, Inc."
depicts an employee of Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm cutting the throats
of fully conscious chickens while others in nearby cages are forced to
witness the killing and hear the gurgling death cries of those who go
before them. Meanwhile, Farmer Salatin looks on, cheerfully
disemboweling a chicken carcass as he declares, "We have allowed
ourselves to become so disconnected and ignorant about something that is
as intimate as the food we eat. What a difference it is to be out here
in the fresh air and sunshine, birds singing in the trees."
Mr. Salatin betrays no hint of irony when
quoted
in the media as saying he is in "the healing industry" and that his
farm, where countless animals are raised and slaughtered for profit, is
in fact like a "sanctuary." The appropriation of the identity of social
justice activists by those benefiting from mass exploitation is nothing
new. From the anti-slavery era to the present, they have concocted
clever ways to warp the language of justice for their own selfish
purposes. Mr. Hochschild offers us the instructive example of Henry
Dundas, a skillful politician who used anti-slavery rhetoric in an
attempt to hold back the anti-slavery movement.
…When Henry Dundas, the politically powerful Home Secretary who
controlled a large block of Scottish votes, rose to speak, no one knew
where he stood. Dundas began by declaring himself in favor of abolition,
at which those in the gallery must have felt their spirits rise. He
then went even further, and declared himself in favor of emancipation of
the slaves... but far in the future, he added quickly, and after much
preparation and education. Then, to the abolitionists' dismay, he
introduced an amendment that inserted the word "gradually" in
Wilberforce's motion to abolish the slave trade. This signaled the
moment that comes in every political crusade, when the other side is
forced to adopt the crusaders' rhetoric: The factory farm labels its
produce "natural"; the oil company declares itself environmentalist.
Dundas had called himself an abolitionist, but he asked that abolition
be postponed.
The
role played by Dundas was not unlike that of John Mackey of Whole
Foods, who was publicly lauded as a "vegan" by numerous leaders of
well-known animal advocacy organizations, though he was at the time, and
still is, CEO of one of the largest meat retailers in the US. From the
time of its first usage in the 1940's by Englishman
Donald Watson, the term "
vegan"
has had a very specific meaning. It refers to those individuals who,
for reasons of conscience, refuse to participate in the exploitation and
killing of other animals by refraining from eating, wearing or using
animal products. It goes without saying that, whatever his personal
dietary habits may be, Mr. Mackey, in his professional life,
participates in and profits from the exploitation and killing of animals
at a level of vastness equaled by few.
At an animal rights conference in 2005, Gene Bauston (now Gene Baur),
president of Farm Sanctuary, the largest farm animal refuge in the US,
introduced Mr. Mackey, who was given the honor of keynote speaker, with
these words:
Our next speaker is one powerful fella. He is one of the most
influential people in the food business in this country. He also happens
to be an outspoken vegan. He's spoken out publicly to major media like
The New York Times
, Newsweek
, about being vegan. I've
also had the opportunity to be in meetings with him where he is
speaking with folks who are not vegan about the benefits of being vegan.
So he does not shy away from who he is in speaking about what he is
passionate about. He also seeks to incorporate his personal values, and
desire for a more humane, more compassionate world, in the business
world. [
Listen]
In this moment, the meaning of the word vegan was degraded, stripped of
any connotation of what makes it a noble ideal, the commitment not to
participate in exploitation for reasons of conscience. However intended,
the unfortunate choice of Mr. Baur and several other well-known animal
advocacy leadership figures to publicly validate Mr. Mackey's "veganism"
facilitated his appropriating the moral authority of the animal
advocacy movement for his own purposes.
Selling the Sell-out
Like Henry Dundas before him, John Mackey understood exactly
what to do. When he began to speak, surely the heart of every animal
advocate in the room surged with hope. Here was a major corporate
executive who saw the tragedy of it all, the injustice, who
understood.
…Gene
said something very important today when he got up to speak at lunch,
and we saw those moving films about what the Humane Society of the US is
doing, and all the different things they were doing to help the animal
victims in Katrina. But the thing that got me was when he said, yeah,
over 6 million farm animals died. You know, for every cat and dog we
saved, there were 6 million farm animals that died. That's a lot of
senseless death. And, God, in America, we kill — if you count the farmed
catfish, I read it in a book it's up to over 11 billion animals a year.
I mean it's incredible, the slaughter that's going on. [
Listen]
Some of the more experienced attendees of this event have
reported that their feelings of optimism evaporated as Mr. Mackey went
on to explain that the only way he could stay in a position to help
animals would be to continue maximizing profits through offering
whatever products the public demanded. He then went on to explain in
great detail his "solution," how with the assistance of numerous animal
advocacy organizations, his suppliers could learn how to use and kill
millions of animals with a level of compassion never before achieved at
an institutional level. Hence, the genesis of Whole Foods' "Animal
Compassionate Standards."
…This process is a multi-stakeholder process. And the way it works is,
we brought in all these activist groups that you see down here, AWI
[Animal Welfare Institute], VIVA USA, PETA, HSUS, ARI [Peter Singer's
Animal Rights International] and Farm Sanctuary have all participated. [
Listen]
In
this context, Mr. Mackey's use of the word "participated" takes on
considerable significance, as it shows just how directly and deeply the
values associated with veganism and animal rights were being violated.
This newly anointed "vegan" visionary was not only a participant in the
use and killing of animals at an unimaginable scale, but he had now
created a context where many of the organizations and individuals
identified in the mind of the public as the standard bearers of animal
advocacy would actively join him in developing and endorsing "new and
improved" methods of using and killing animals.
…We also have the producers come in. And there's a — a species at a
time, …then we have Whole Foods people that are there. We have animal
experts, …they're all animal experts who care deeply about animals.
…So we're all together in this room and we basically kind of, point by
point, we sort of go through it. And we're getting better at it. Boy, it
took a long time to do ducks, but we're getting a lot faster with it
now 'cause we've got enough species that we're beginning to learn what
works and what doesn't work.
Later
in Mr. Mackey's speech, it became clear just how deep the damage was
going to be. Not only had he succeeded in being publicly validated as an
enlightened "vegan" meat seller and won the participation and
endorsement of major animal advocacy leaders. Most valuable of all, he'd
figured out how to redirect the efforts of sincerely motivated animal
advocates away from awakening the public to the inherent injustice of
using and killing animals, and instead, toward doing the job of building
the "animal-friendly" reputation of Whole Foods -- at the expense of
his competitors, no less.
…we like to say we're creating the gold standard of
standards. These standards are all going to be on our web site. We want
you to use those standards to go bash our competition. We want you to
take those standards and pressure Safeway and Kroger and Albertsons, who
say this can't be done. We want you to say, well, but Whole Foods is
doing it.
During the question-and-answer portion of his presentation,
when a concerned audience member asked about veal, Mr. Mackey could not
help but reveal the underlying truth of the situation, the reality of
the business he is in, no matter how cleverly it was marketed to animal
advocates and the general public:
Whole Foods' veal is very humanely raised. It's not
tethered. It's not anemic. It's -- it's humanely raised as any cow is
humanely raised. So we don't see that it's -- if it's a crime to kill an
adult cow, it's a crime to kill a baby calf. I mean, the same argument
can be made for lamb or anything else. I mean, Whole Foods is a grocery
store and our customers want to -- they want to buy dead animals, and
I've already made -- I've already answered this. If we stop selling
that, we're going to go out of business and -- it can't happen 'cause we
can't -- I can't stop it. That's the bottom line. [
Listen]
What did these standards, developed through the collaboration
of animal exploiters, sanctuaries, and animal rights advocates, actually
consist of? Here's an excerpt from the
Whole Foods Market Natural Meat Program and Animal Compassionate Standards for Pigs:
If
an illness or injury is serious enough for the animal to be killed, the
animal must be promptly and humanely euthanized on the farm. Although
at this time there are few alternatives to blunt trauma for piglets,
there is research being conducted to develop more humane euthanasia
possibilities for neonates.
In the day-to-day world of animal agribusiness, which is
ultimately governed by the laws of economics, this lofty-sounding
language could be translated roughly as follows: "If an animal gets
sick, and treating her will cost more than her cash value, we will kill
her in the nicest way we can, as long as it doesn't cost too much. In
the case of baby pigs, this means bashing them in the head with a club
or hammer. But we're looking for a nicer way to do it."
This is just one example of what John Mackey described in his
speech as "the gold standard of standards." Ironically, despite their
endorsement by 17 animal advocacy organizations including two
nationally-known farm animal sanctuaries, and despite the chorus of
accolades Whole Foods received in the major media, cementing this
corporation's reputation as being "animal friendly," these "Animal
Compassionate" standards were never even implemented.
Global Animal Movement Co-option
Now, several years later, Mr. Mackey has launched a "new and
improved" standards initiative, one that confuses the public and
entangles advocacy organizations even more profoundly than before. This
time around, he's chosen to omit the word "compassion" from the title,
perhaps after finding that even he couldn't quite sell the concept of
"animal compassionate veal" to either animal advocates or the public.
The conspicuously trademarked title for the new program is a more
technical-sounding, yet equally misleading, PR concoction: "
Global Animal Partnership's 5-Step™ Animal Welfare Rating Standards."
The Global Animal Partnership, the organization formerly known
as Whole Foods' Animal Compassion Foundation, is headed up by Miyun
Park, who not long ago was widely admired by many animal advocates,
including this one, for her role in bringing "
open rescue"
to the US, a method of investigating and exposing the realities of
animal exploitation that was pioneered (and is still being practiced) in
Australia by
Patty Mark of Animal Liberation Victoria.
Moving from
grassroots role model
to a position as Vice President of HSUS, Ms. Park offers the Global
Animal Partnership a potent combination of activist credibility and
corporate savvy. Now, as executive director of an organization whose
work will undoubtedly enhance shareholder value for Whole Foods, one of
the largest retailers of animal products in America, her unlikely
journey validates industry efforts to convince their customers that
purchasing the "right kind" of animal products is a form of socially
responsible activism.
The success of this admittedly brilliant strategy is
illustrated by the slew of media stories in recent years about vegans
and vegetarians going back to eating meat, many of them describing this
choice as a form of activism (
here's just one example). There have even been stories about "vegan" and vegetarian butchers (see
here and
here). This parallels, and reinforces, the demoralizing impact on animal advocates of sanctuaries
endorsing
"humane" farming legislative coalitions, reinforcing the myth that
consuming "humane" animal products is somehow an act of social justice.
The 5th Step™ of the standards Mr. Mackey and his team at the
Global Animal Partnership have created is described thusly:
Animal
centered; all physical alterations prohibited. Animals get to live their
whole lives with all the body parts they were born with.
This
can be likened to the work of a skilled magician, who dangles a shiny
bauble in front of his audience with his right hand in order to distract
from what he does with his left. In this case, Mr. Mackey, himself
anointed a "vegan" visionary by a virtual Who's Who of animal advocates,
dangles in front of us the arresting image of former undercover
investigator Miyun Park collaborating with the most "forward-thinking"
people in the animal industry. Together, they have at last created a
methodology for using and killing millions of animals that the public
can feel good about. At Step 5™, the animals "get to live their whole
lives with all the body parts they were born with" (
magician's right hand). But (
furtive left hand),
when their economic value reaches its peak, typically in the animals'
early adolescence, they will be killed and their bodies unceremoniously
dismembered, the parts wrapped up in attractive packages and sold off
one by one to well-meaning customers at a premium price.
And so this brings us full circle, because now, the elusive
logic of Mr. Salatin's outrageous likening of his farm to a sanctuary
for the animals he kills becomes more apparent. Just as numerous animal
organizations and sanctuaries are stepping forward to publicly validate
the concept of "humane" farming in the context of statewide legislative
initiatives, the Global Animal Partnership unveils an approach to using
and killing animals that can be touted to farmers as more profitable
and, to the buying public, as healthier, sustainable and more kind.
As educator and former-farmer
Harold Brown has pointed out, these very talking points -- healthier,
sustainable,
and more kind -- are some of the key benefits legitimately ascribed to a
diet free of animal products. Their use in an animal farming context
maximizes public confusion and greatly facilitates the conversion of
animal activists into advocates for "humane" agriculture. They merely
have to be convinced that the most effective way to "decrease suffering"
is to transfer some of the same arguments they once made to discourage
the consumption of animal products into the promotion of "humane"
animal products such as "cage-free" eggs. That doing so involves
deliberately
misleading the public
about the injustices inherent in the production of such products is
simply never addressed. Nor is the fact that suffering is an internal
subjective experience, whose increase or decrease can no more be
rationally quantified than the increase or decrease of love or sadness.
More or less, the authority figure who most convincingly states which
course of action "decreases suffering the most" gains the ability to
violate basic principles of public integrity, and to righteously exhort
countless well-meaning animal advocates to do the same.
Doing the Wrong Thing the "Right" Way
The image Mr. Salatin is constructing for himself actually goes beyond
his merely meeting the demand for "natural," "wholesome" and "humane"
animal products. It even includes his providing customers with a sense
of meaning, with the feeling of being a part of making the world whole
again. By characterizing himself as a "healer" offering "sanctuary" to
animals whom he has in fact bred into existence only to butcher for the
sake of profit, Mr. Salatin makes it possible for the purchase and
consumption of the products of exploitation to be experienced by his
customers as an expression of self-care, environmental sanity,
compassion, and even activism.
Master marketer John Mackey, by making this experience available on a
mass scale, will no doubt gain a legion of eager and enthusiastic
customers. At a recent event at a Whole Foods store in central Florida, a
large display was set up in front of the meat cases to publicize the
rollout of the new 5 Step™ standards. Cattleman Will Harris was observed
handing out meatballs on toothpicks to passing shoppers, inviting them,
in his charming Southern drawl, to "come on and try a bite of one of my
happy cows." When asked by a skeptical customer if the cows were happy
to die, he simply turned away.
An
infomercial
being used to promote Whole Foods' new program offers idealized images
of cows, pigs and chickens in sunny green pastures with cheerful music
under upbeat narration by
GAP executive director Miyun Park,
Whole Foods staffers, and a number of farmers. In many different ways,
the message is sent that people working with Whole Foods are doing
everything possible to make things better for the animals they use and
kill by the millions on the public's behalf, and that their new program
is ushering in a new era of enlightenment and ever-expanding progress.
Those who appear in the video communicate boundless confidence and
optimism, and most of all, an in-depth knowledge of, and concern for,
the well being of animals. Impressive claims are made about an abiding
interest in helping the animals
thrive, in letting them live as they were meant to live.
No acknowledgement whatsoever is made of the fact that all of these
animals will be killed long before they even reach full maturity, and
that before that final and inescapable injustice, their bodies will have
been forcibly mutilated in various ways, their reproduction controlled,
their relationship to family members subsumed to the brutal dictates of
economics, which typically means that offspring are prematurely taken
away, or even immediately sent off and killed when their existence
presents an unwanted drain on profits.
But these are all things absent from the video, and being absent, will
not trouble the conscience of nearly all who view it. In so many ways,
this engaging and impressively persuasive production brings home just
how far Mr. Mackey's efforts have progressed. His former "animal
compassionate" standards program was aimed at making his customers
believe they were being good, kind and "socially responsible" by buying
animal products from him. But his new, more intricately constructed
program speaks to something even more primal, and perhaps irresistible.
The message now being sent by Mr. Mackey and all the animal
advocacy organizations collaborating with him could not be more clear.
When we purchase and consume animal products from Whole Foods Market, we
are not participating in the exploitation of others, we are not
ingesting the products of injustice. Rather, we are eating
happiness.
The animals are happy. Our buying and eating them supports the system
that makes them happy. And the delightful, wholesome, guilt-free taste
of their flesh and by-products makes us happy in turn. It is no mistake
that so much of the footage depicting the lives of animals on farms
associated with Whole Foods bears a striking resemblance to the kind of
footage animal sanctuaries show to illustrate their commitment to
offering a measure of safety, and yes, happiness to those few lucky
enough to have escaped the voracious system of exploitation that
consumes the lives of their kind by the billions. As time passes, it is
harder and harder for the public to distinguish animal advocates from
animal exploiters, and incredibly, animal sanctuaries from farms where
countless animals are brought into existence and methodically killed.
Such is the hidden power of the modern public relations industry.
As
the promotional video comes to its conclusion, Jerry Koert of Humane
Hog Family Farm rhapsodizes on what he appears to believe is the near
paradise he's created for the pigs he has bred into existence, and will
soon kill:
With the pigs outside, it's unbelievable. They are running
around, they are enjoying the sunlight. You'll see them rooting -- I
mean, their natural behavior! You can't get any nicer than that!
…They're playing, they are running around in a manner -- I'd have to
say… they're happy!
It is impossible to deny the disquieting similarity of this
deceptive hyperbole to the pro-slavery propaganda Mr. Hochschild brings
us from the distant past:
…before Parliament could act, there were lengthy hearings.
Witnesses like James Penny, a former captain, made the slaves on the
middle passage sound almost like cruise passengers: "If the Weather is
sultry, and there appears the least Perspiration upon their Skins, when
they come upon Deck, there are Two Men attending with Cloths to rub them
perfectly dry, and another to give them a little Cordial... They are
then supplied with Pipes and Tobacco.... They are amused with
Instruments of Music peculiar to their own country... and when tired of
Music and Dancing, they then go to Games of Chance."
That
those profiting from animal exploitation would concoct an elaborate
façade to obscure the true nature of their horrific activities is
inevitable. Such PR methods go back hundreds of years in the traditions
of mass exploitation. The tragedy in all this is that so many animal
advocacy organizations and former animal rights activists are needlessly
participating in a charade that the industry would quite
enthusiastically carry out on its own. As it is, the Global Animal
Partnership's
Board of Directors includes, along with Mr. Mackey and a number of other meat industry executives, the
CEO of HSUS, the
CEO of The World Society for the Protection of Animals, the
Chair of Compassion in World Farming, and a
consultant for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
One can hardly imagine a more ringing endorsement of the products of
exploitation and killing, or a more compelling cause of confusion
amongst those many members of the public who have genuine concern for
the well being of animals. The problem traces back not just to a
philosophical contradiction, or even a strategic blunder, but rather, a
widespread breakdown in the practice of public integrity. Are these
participating animal advocacy organizations telling the public the
truth? In my opinion, they are not.
A Failure of Imagination
What if anti-slavery leaders had, instead of focusing their
energies on helping the public understand the inescapable injustice of
slavery, held up as visionaries those who designed new and improved
slave ships with better ventilation and "stacking densities" low enough
that captives could turn around as they lay chained below decks? What if
they had publicly partnered with "progressive" slaveholders to develop
standards for "humane" slavery and encouraged members of the public
concerned about the well-being of enslaved people to purchase sugar from
"humane" plantations where the use of rubber-coated whips prevented
permanent scarring? As misguided as such activities may seem to us now,
are they that different from the kinds of campaigns now being carried
out by some of today's most well-funded animal advocacy organizations?
Vast
numbers of ordinary folk in 18th and 19th century England were capable
of understanding why enslaving other humans was wrong, and of taking
action to stop it for reasons of conscience. Why, then, do the leaders
and spokespeople of today's dominant animal advocacy organizations
actively promote the idea that most people are so incapable of
understanding, so devoid of compassion and respect for justice, that a
widespread movement of non-participation in animal exploitation is
neither possible nor practical?
In a 2009
conference presentation,
author and former HSUS staffer Norm Phelps argued that historical
anti-slavery activists had many powerful advantages on their side that
today's animal advocates simply do not, including the ability to
directly collaborate with formerly enslaved people who could offer
compelling firsthand testimony of the injustices they both endured and
witnessed. Yet today, those of us who wish to awaken public
understanding about the plight of other-than-human animals have the
advantage of access to technologies that can be used to organize our
efforts and to produce and disseminate complex print and video messages
on a massive scale, such tools now available to people of ordinary means
that even the most privileged justice advocates of previous generations
could not imagine, much less hope to possess. The ready availability of
these powerful tools has brought with it an emerging global activist
culture, which offers the potential to distribute life-changing
information to millions of people.
Further, unique to our times and this particular justice cause, animal agriculture is one of the single greatest
contributors
to the processes now widely understood to be destroying our ecosystem:
global warming, overconsumption and pollution of fresh water, soil
erosion and deforestation, to name a few. It is projected that by the
end of this century, half of the species now alive will vanish forever.
On the way to this dismal future, the lives of uncountable individuals,
human and other-than-human alike, will be thrust into misery and brought
to a premature end. This is the single greatest wake-up call in human
history, a four-alarm fire consuming our collective future at an
ever-increasing rate.
As
this catastrophic reality impinges on our lives in increasingly obvious
ways, the potent combination of conscience and the drive for
self-preservation is leading more and more of us to overcome the
psychological and social barriers to moral awakening and empowered
action, opening the door to what could fairly be called one of the
teachable moments of the century. As most recently validated in a
Worldwatch Institute report titled
Livestock and Climate Change and a
United Nations report titled
Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production,
one of the only courses of action that could conceivably turn the
global situation around in time to bring our ecosystem back into balance
is the widespread adoption of a diet free of animal products. Yet is it
an accident that so few people worldwide are even aware of this
potentially ecosystem-saving truth? Have those who have collected the
greatest amount of funding and cultivated the most media attention in
the name of animal advocacy been drawn into a deadly dance with the
animal-exploiting industry, their influence and potential co-opted in
service of creating a new and highly profitable market for "humane"
animal products, while our ecosystem moves toward collapse before our
very eyes?
Given the urgency of our planetary situation, do we really have the time
and resources to spend decades on husbandry reform campaigns built
around coalitions with animal-exploiting corporations, collaborations
that compromise the integrity of animal advocates and confuse the
public? Given the blatant injustice experienced by each individual
animal who is brought into existence by the industry -- every aspect of
his or her life controlled -- and then killed, can any sincere advocate
continue to justify promoting to the public alternative "humane" animal
products that they themselves would not consume for reasons of ethics?
A Noble Tradition
Why can't we start conceiving of ourselves, and start acting,
as advocates working in the social justice tradition rather than as
"customers" of advocacy conglomerates whose programs are so often
optimized to maximize fundraising potential with little evident concern
for the damage done to the foundations of fundamental change? Why not
resolve today to walk away from what is so clearly a corporatized
advocacy model broken beyond all hope of repair, and instead, apply our
time and resources to building a solid foundation for the end of this
unjust and ecologically self-destructive way of relating to our fellow
beings?
Helping animals now and in the future does not require
collaborating with the animal-exploiting industry, misleading the
public, promoting "humane" animal products, or otherwise violating our
values and trading away the foundations of long-term change. There are
far better ways to work for change that we can be confident will help,
and not hurt. For example:
- We can start by helping as many people as possible
understand who animals are, why it is morally wrong to use and kill
them, and how the solution to numerous public health, social, economic
and environmental problems of catastrophic proportions is the widespread
adoption of a diet free of animal products.
- We can work toward bringing an end to the use of animals
for food, clothing, research and entertainment, and support the
development and widespread adoption of animal-free alternatives to these
products and practices.
- We can relentlessly expose the injustices committed by the
animal-using industry and the misleading tactics used by those who
enable it.
- We can rescue and offer sanctuary to animals enduring neglect, abuse, exploitation, or facing premature death.
- We can oppose the exotic pet trade and the breeding of companion animals, and support the "No Kill" movement.
- We can protect and restore the habitat of free-living animals and stand up for their right to exist on their own terms.
- We can be positive role models by striving to live ever more free of participation in the exploitation of others.
- We can support the efforts of those leading other movements for justice and environmental sanity.
- We can share with other people uncompromised versions of the same truths that inspire our own efforts to work for change.
Such life-affirming activities speak to what is best in human
potential, and are inherently more difficult for those in the
animal-exploiting industry to derail, discredit, or co-opt in service of
their destructive agenda.
In every era, there have been those who intuitively grasped
that oppressing and exploiting others was neither right nor necessary,
and that we as human beings can choose another way to be in the world.
Both the modern women's movement and some of the initial efforts to
advocate for animals were advanced by those first inspired by the
anti-slavery movement. Today’s animal advocates face monumental
challenges in bringing about the end of socially-sanctioned and
legally-protected exploitation and killing. The ills of prejudice, abuse
and subjugation run deep in our collective psyche, and overcoming them
is never ending work. Yet consider what might be possible if we strive
to follow the example of a handful of people whose courage, integrity
and vision sparked a global shift in consciousness, inspiring millions
to join the effort to bring a terrible injustice to an end, against all
odds.
Let's not give up before we even get started.
About the Author
James LaVeck is a documentary producer and co-founder of
Tribe of Heart,
a non-profit organization that produces award-winning, life-changing
films about the journey of awakening conscience, including
The Wtiness and
Peaceable Kingdom: The Journey Home.
He is also a public speaker on issues of critical thinking, social
justice, and the essential role of grassroots activism and independent
media in maintaining a healthy democracy.
