The principle of no-animal-use

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Many years ago if a child came from a poor family that child would be sent to work to help the family eat. Protest groups were set up to protect working children, but they didn’t necessarily argue that no kids should be put to work, because that would mean families would starve. This exact same problem still exists in many parts of the world today, where kids are working as little more than slaves. That’s how it is for domesticated animals. Animals will continue to be slaves until people stand up to their right not to be. It’s reasonable to expect those who say they are ‘fighting for the animals’ to be leading the way, setting the example and respecting them enough to fight for their true liberation and not just for better conditions.
What does ‘no-animal-use’ mean? To most people it means doing without hundreds of commercial products, making ethical choices mainly about the food they eat. The avoidance list is a long one and includes everything from horse racing and zoos to meat and cheese and tins of cat food. That’s one huge shift away from today’s norms, but imagine the suffering we cause with even one decision to exclude anything from that list.
If any group promotes a comprehensive avoidance policy they’d reckon on alienating just about everybody and end up without support from their members or the community in general. So they favour being pragmatic. They target instead the worst abuses and leave ‘the preposterous idea’ of no-use-of-animals well alone. They want to be seen to be doing something worthwhile whilst not being radical abolitionists. How easily we lose sight of ideals when we engage in ‘sensible compromise’.
Our faith in our own abilities to transform Society is low, whilst our need for recognition from one another is high. Whether we are liberationists or not, we don’t really show very much interest in the concept of true animal rights. If indeed animals did have rights, the first ‘right’ would prevent their being used by humans ... in any way whatsoever. Can you imagine humans legislating that we leave animals alone? How many of us could give up using paper to save the forests from being pulped ... and that’s just paper? When it comes to food and clothing it’s a mighty strong principle one would be espousing, one that would deny us so many conveniences.
It really boils down to lifestyle (what we’ve got used to) - it’s so dear to our hearts that it’s always more important than principle. Moving towards liberating animals would be inconvenient, but freeing children from labouring or slaves from their masters is no different from liberating animals from humans. But we have a horror of the former but not of the latter.
Having said that, I acknowledge the danger of our being overrun by animals - we’ve bred vast herds and flocks of creatures, and for our own protection we would have to curtail their breeding until numbers substantially diminished. Then there’s a question of their safety. These mutated creatures would have to be protected from exposure to Nature and predation, against which they’d have no means of protecting themselves - they couldn’t survive in the wild.
But bearing that in mind, Animal Rights is a concept which animal advocates need to vigorously promote. It’s the principle of the thing. If we trim it to make it more acceptable there won’t be nearly enough momentum to achieve any sort of rights for animals ... and the whole horror will only continue or get worse.