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| ISBN-13: | 9781785354038 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hunt, John Publishing |
| Publication date: | 07/29/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 184 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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A Vegan Ethic
Embracing a Life of Compassion Toward All
By Mark Hawthorne
John Hunt Publishing Ltd.
Copyright © 2016 Mark HawthorneAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78535-403-8
CHAPTER 1
On Animal Rights
The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.
— Ida B. Wells-Barnett
As I sat high in the stands of Pamplona's bullring and recovered from my run with the bulls, I felt a troubling call of my conscience. It was more of a whisper, really, but it was unwelcome and at first I ignored it. Below me, several young bulls were running loose in the arena, which was filled with scores of revelers like me who had just participated in the city's famed sprint through cobblestone streets. The hooligans were now engaged in what is known in Spain as a vaquilla — a spectacle that traditionally follows the bull run and apparently calls for the fiesta-goers to taunt smaller bulls and smack them with rolled-up newspapers.
Suddenly a nimble young bull scooped up a runner with his horns and tossed him over his back. That's when my conscience whispered to me again. It dawned on me that these animals — and the bulls I'd run with, who would die later that day in the bullring — deserve mercy, not misery. It was July of 1992, and up to that time, I'd never given much thought to the dignity or needs of animals. But that whisper was the voice of integrity tugging at my sleeve, and I couldn't shake it. A few months later, after an enlightening face-to-face encounter with a cow in India, I put the meat-eating phase of my life behind me and went vegetarian. It took another decade for me to go vegan, but when I did, the plight of animals became part of my world in a way that I never would have imagined possible. Now I'm the one tugging on sleeves.
Today, as an activist and ethical vegan, I look back on my experience in Pamplona with a combination of shame and gratitude. I am certainly not proud to have supported the blood "sport" of bullfighting. But being so close to bulls one moment and then confronting the horror of their fate the next helped me understand that we have an obligation to look out for the vulnerable, regardless of their species. It awakened something in me. Many of us have experiences like this. For some, it takes only one such moment to recognize our collective responsibility. For most of us, though, it's a more gradual process through which we decide what role compassion will play in our lives.
Our Moral Contradictions
The essential quandary of the animal rights movement might be summed up in this question: Why do humans love some animals and eat (or otherwise abuse) others? According to the Humane Society of the United States, 47 percent of all households in the country have at least one dog and 46 percent have at least one cat — and other homes have many more — resulting in a population of some 83 million dogs and 95 million cats living with humans. Other countries, notably Australia, Canada, and England, have a similar affection for these animals. In Japan, many people prefer pets to parenthood, with dogs and cats far outnumbering children younger than 15. On top of this worldwide affinity for felines and canines are millions more rabbits, hamsters, rats, mice, birds, horses, and other pets. Most of these animals are treated like members of the family, often receiving birthday and holiday presents. They are carried about like infants. Some have social media accounts. They are outfitted in designer fashions and included in family portraits. We spend about US$60 billion a year feeding them and keeping them healthy, and we mourn their deaths — frequently with the same profound grief we experience over the loss of our dearest human loved ones. The status of pets has increased so much in our society that many animal lovers have taken to referring to them as companion animals.
On the other end of the spectrum are animals our culture eats. Needless to say, these chickens, fishes, pigs, cows, sheep, goats, turkeys, ducks, and geese are treated quite differently than the dogs and cats. Yet, imagine if our beloved companion animals were abused like animals in a farm: crammed into windowless sheds, lying in their own excrement, denied many of their natural instincts, their bodies mutilated, fed a toxic concoction of feed and pharmaceuticals to keep them alive, and then, finally, hauled for many miles to a slaughterhouse, where they witness the terrifying deaths of their fellows before they themselves are killed. These animals receive no love, let alone a special treat on their birthdays. Indeed, most of them are still babies when they are slaughtered.
Our relationship with other species is inconsistent, to say the least. But if our moral contradictions are troubling, relatively few people let on. Instead, they sleep under the dome of cognitive dissonance — a fancy term for the subtle discomfort we experience (often just a whisper) when holding two incompatible thoughts, or cognitions, at the same time. For example, millions of people smoke tobacco, despite knowing that smoking is bad for them. In the case of animals, people can alleviate cognitive dissonance by according animals moral status and going vegan, but only a small percentage of people have taken that course (so far).
The answer to our question, I think, as to why we as a society are able to love some animals and eat others, is that most people don't usually think of meat as coming from an animal — at least, they don't consciously process it that way. To them, meat is something you buy in the grocery store, sterile and removed from the violence of the animal's death, or order at a restaurant. I doubt they could live with themselves if they put pigs on the same level as dogs; in fact, that's why many omnivores (those who eat animal- and plant-based foods, which is to say most people) are so resistant to the animal rights message: it threatens to either remove animals from their diet (an old habit) or make them feel guilty for eating them.
Animal-consumers continue their habits with a clear conscience by rejecting the notion that animals are anything but mindless, emotionless creatures. It's difficult to eat someone when you accept that she or he has a personality, experiences pain, and wants to live. It makes it even harder to maintain moral ambivalence when you learn these same animals are good mothers who grieve the loss of their babies or that they become terrified when they see other animals being killed — it's not at all uncommon for frightened cows and pigs to escape a slaughterhouse and literally run for their lives, though sadly very few end up in the safety of a sanctuary. Animal sentience is the most inconvenient truth of all.
Our cognitive dissonance extends beyond farmed animals to include those used for testing, fur, and entertainment. Many polls reflect the public's growing concern about animal welfare, yet most consumers don't see — or refuse to admit — that their behavior contributes to animal suffering. A 2013 poll by Faunalytics (formerly the Humane Research Council) found that 73 percent of adults surveyed believe people have an obligation to avoid harming all animals. So why aren't 73 percent of adults vegan? One reason may be that they haven't fully considered the issue of animal rights.
What Are Animal Rights?
"Animal rights" can be viewed in two ways. The first is animal rights as a social movement to protect animals — even intervene and liberate them — from exploitation and abuse. The second is the idea that nonhuman animals, like human animals, have the right to be treated with respect as individuals with inherent value. Every animal is someone, not something, and they have the right to live free from humans inflicting pain and suffering on them. To deny this is to be guilty of speciesism, which is the idea that humans have been imbued with a set of exceptional attributes (such as speech, self-awareness, cognitive abilities, and a soul) that are unique to our species and thus give us moral priority over others. The animal rights philosophy does not place nonhuman animals above humans, but gives them equal consideration. This equal consideration means we should grant nonhuman animals the right to not be treated as objects — the same right we grant humans, at least in principle (more on that point in Chapter 3).
Of the many hurdles to affording animals rights, perhaps the trickiest is that animals are considered property, a legal status that does everything to ensure that the rights of the animal's "owner" are protected and next to nothing to protect the animal. Instead, the law presumes that owners of animals — farmed animals, animals used in research, animals used in entertainment, etc. — will recognize that it is in their economic interest to provide for their animals' welfare. So archaic is the concept of what constitutes animal welfare that the Model Penal Code, a statutory text drafted by the American Law Institute in 1962, defines the primary role of anticruelty laws as being to "prevent outrage to the sensibilities of the community," with the animal-cruelty provision categorized under "Offenses Against Public Order and Decency." Sounds like something from the eighteenth century.
Animal advocates are working to change that, but it's like turning a cruise ship. Actually, it's more like turning a cruise ship during a storm while it's capsizing amid a flotilla of battleships, each skippered by a captain with a vested interest in watching you sink. Fortunately for the animals, there are many determined people dedicated to righting the ship and moving it in the ethical direction.
Animal Law
Because the law classifies nonhuman animals as property — commodities who can be bought and sold — they can be treated pretty much as their "owners" see fit. Even some of the most egregious examples of institutionalized animal abuse are tolerated under the law. Yes, we have animal protection laws, but they are notoriously weak and filled with loopholes. Under the Common Farming Exemptions that are enacted state by state in the US, for instance, it is at present perfectly legal for the egg industry to grind up live male chicks soon after they are hatched because it's considered the most expedient way to rid farmers of animals who are of no value to them, since they don't lay eggs. How can any reasonable person think this is humane treatment?
In light of such an impoverished ethos, some reformers work to advance the interests of animals through the legal system. Among these activists are attorneys specializing in animal law, a field of legal practice that emerged in the 1970s as a large-scale, organized movement in the United States and continues to make strides on behalf of animals. Numerous victories — from liberating a lonely bear from years of captivity in a roadside zoo to legislation affecting millions of farmed animals — are directly linked to the efforts of animal lawyers who participate in animal law programs at major universities. As the nonprofit Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), one of the founders of the animal law movement, puts it, "We may be the only lawyers on Earth whose clients are all innocent." ALDF and advocates like it file lawsuits to protect animals and establish the concept of their legal rights, regardless of the species or the ownership interest of humans. They use courtrooms to challenge institutionalized forms of animal abuse and oppression. Animal rights cases have even been argued in the US Supreme Court.
Legal Personhood
One way to gain protections for animals is to extend the definition (and rights) of personhood to certain species. This is not to say that animals would be considered human. That's a biological term that describes our species, while to call someone a person is to characterize what they inherently are: conscious and sentient.
Many people agree these traits apply to great apes — bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans — and it's an important argument made by the Great Ape Project (GAP). Founded in 1993 by philosopher Paola Cavalieri and ethicist Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation, GAP has been campaigning for the United Nations to adopt its Declaration on Great Apes, which extends to nonhuman apes the protection of three basic interests: the right to life, the protection of individual liberty, and the prohibition of torture. Once these rights are established, GAP would demand the release of great apes from captivity around the world.
The campaign has a global following. In 2007, the Balearic Islands, an autonomous part of Spain, passed the world's first legislation granting legal personhood rights to great apes. The concept is gaining traction elsewhere, including Argentina, India, Spain, Switzerland, and the US, the last of which is where animal law attorney Steven Wise has founded the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP). The NhRP argues that nonhuman animals who are scientifically proven to be self-aware, autonomous beings — such as great apes, elephants, dolphins, whales, and African gray parrots — should be recognized as legal persons under US common law, with the fundamental right to bodily liberty (the right not to be imprisoned in zoos, research labs, roadside menageries, etc.).
Wise's campaign for animal personhood is a response to his frustration with welfare laws and regulations that have failed to keep animals out of abusive environments. Animals, he points out, currently have no more rights than a table or a toaster, so it's little wonder the law does nothing to protect them. "The example I give is that I can take a baseball bat and smash the window of your car, and I'll be charged with something," Wise said during a 2013 talk at George Washington University. "But the car or the windshield doesn't have legal rights. It's not a person. Essentially, a nonhuman animal is a kind of animate windshield. If I'm cruel to her, I can go to jail, but the nonhuman animal is a complete bystander to this. She doesn't have any rights."
Wise and his colleagues at the NhRP have filed numerous lawsuits on behalf of chimpanzees in captivity, arguing that personhood derives from cognitive and emotional qualities that these animals, like humans, possess in abundance. Chimps are extraordinarily complex, self-aware, and autonomous beings, says Wise, and they deserve their freedom. The NhRP is operating under the common law because they consider it more flexible than statutory law. Common law judges are supposed to take into account changing public morality and scientific understanding and align laws to reflect them. As of this writing, none of the NhRP's suits has resulted in legal personhood for great apes, but it's only a start. And as more courts declare that nonhuman animals have autonomous lives to live, such groundbreaking institutional change will herald a major shift in public attitudes.
In the US, corporations have the same legal protections as humans — so why not animals? Probably because doing so would threaten the many ways we use our fellow creatures.
Animals Used for Food
Of all the ways that humans take from other animals, turning them into food ingredients is likely the oldest — and laden with the most baggage. For most people, the act of eating meat, eggs, and dairy foods is their only contact with farmed animals, and it is often accompanied by a host of dining traditions and habits that make consuming them a comforting experience. This is what I mean by baggage. One of the principal reasons we cling to that habit of meat-eating is that it's a group ritual filled with emotional potency — transporting us back to a wonderful childhood memory in Grandma's kitchen, for example, barbecues with Dad, or enjoying a holiday meal in which a dead animal has always been the centerpiece. There are moments when I'm walking near a restaurant, smell a combination of black pepper, onion, rosemary, and sage, and am instantly carried back 40 years to Christmas dinners with my family. It's a powerful feeling.
It can be difficult to imagine a meal without animals. But that doesn't mean we have to eat them. Indeed, while demand for animal products is growing worldwide, in the United States, overall consumption of meat from cows, chickens, and fishes dropped 10 percent between 2004 and 2012, the most recent year for which the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has data. (The agency says US Americans are eating 25 percent less red meat.)
Being killed for food comprises many more cruelties than what awaits chickens, cows, pigs, and other animals at the slaughterhouse, and as we consider their rights, and a vegan ethic, it's important to at least briefly examine the relentless abuses animals suffer when they are literally born to become "food." This won't by any means be an exhaustive overview, but some of the common reasons activists agitate for farmed animals.
Hens
Enter a typical egg-producing facility, as I have, and you'll find a windowless warehouse framing long rows of wire cages, often stacked five high. Some dim lightbulbs dangle from above, and you can see that each of these "battery" cages is occupied by six to eight gaunt-looking hens, each of whom has had the tip of her beak cut off so she can't peck her cage-mates. This painful mutilation also makes eating very difficult. The birds are packed so tightly into the cages that they can't even spread their wings. Other natural instincts, such as dust bathing and nesting, are but frustrating genetic memories for them. A huge pool below the cages collects chicken waste, and the ammonia from urine and the stench of manure burns your eyes and lungs. You can only imagine what the animals who pass their brief lives in this filth must suffer. Each hen has a tiny bit of wire area on which to stand, sleep, and lay her eggs. It's what she'll do day and night, producing at least six eggs a week for human consumption, until after about two years, her body depleted, she'll be pulled from the cage and killed, either at a "spent hen" slaughterhouse or by being gassed with carbon dioxide.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Vegan Ethic by Mark Hawthorne. Copyright © 2016 Mark Hawthorne. Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd..
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Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements,Introduction,
Chapter 1 — On Animal Rights,
Chapter 2 — On Veganism,
Chapter 3 — On Human Rights,
Chapter 4 — On the Environment,
Chapter 5 — On a More Compassionate World,
Chapter 6 — Q & A,
Appendix A: Ten Ways You Can Help Animals,
Appendix B: Ten Ways to Make Veganism Easier,
Appendix C: Ten Ways You Can Encourage Someone Else to Go Vegan,
Appendix D: Ten Ways You Can Help Humanity,
Appendix E: Twelve Famous (and Not-So-Famous) Quotations,
Appendix F: Resources,
Notes,
About the Author,
Other Changemakers Books by Mark Hawthorne,