Saturday, November 28, 2015

The principle of no-animal-use

1555: 

Here in our wealthy countries, many years ago, if a child came from a poor family that child would be sent to work to help feed the family.  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 nothing more than slaves.  And that’s how it is for all domesticated animals.

Animals will continue to be slaves until people stand up for their right not to be.  Those who say they are ‘fighting for the animals’ are likely to be leading the way, setting the example, enough to fight for their true liberation and not just for better conditions.

What ‘no-animal-use’ means is doing without hundreds of commercial products, making ethical choices mainly about food, but including many other animal-derived products and 'services'.  The avoidance list is a long one, since it 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 any animal from that list.

The most difficult problem facing any animal rights group is a loss of financial support from its members.  If any group promotes a comprehensive no-use-animal policy, they’d be in danger of alienating their core support, simply because supporters would be unable to justify their own, albeit small, use of animals.  So these groups end up watering down their policies to satisfy the majority of their supporters, who anyway only represent a small fraction of the community in general.

Groups favour pragmatism.  By using the smoke screen of targeting the worst abuses, they can leave open the idea of non-use-of-animals.  They want to be seen to be doing something worthwhile, whilst not seeming to be total abolitionists.  And that, I suggest, is how easily and how dangerously 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.  It’s difficult to imagine humans legislating to leave animals alone.  It would be hard enough, for example, for any of us to give up using paper to save the forests from being pulped, and that’s just paper.  When it comes to food and clothing it would be that much more difficult, since being vegan would seem to deny us so many conveniences.

So, it really boils down to lifestyle (the life we’re used to) being more important than establishing an ethical principle.  Moving towards liberating animals would be inconvenient, but freeing children from labouring or freeing slaves from their masters, is no different from liberating animals from humans - but it seems that 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 and manipulated 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 starting line, after which we can workout the logistical details.  If we trim the concept to make it more acceptable, there won’t be nearly enough momentum to achieve any sort of rights for animals, and inevitably the whole sorry business will only continue and get worse.


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