Newsletter Oct-Nov 2007 3.1

Did you start out with a vegetarian diet or become vegan from scratch?

An interesting thread started in January of this year has some recent replies you should check out. It would also be cool if you would add your own vegetarian swith to veganism story.



sunkanrags wrote:
To help with another thread [The audience for AR], could people say whether they were vegetarian before becoming vegan, for how long, and what prompted the switch to veganism? Has your philosophical position on human-nonhuman relations altered too?
Thanks



Rags.



Read the thread at Vegetarian then Vegan?
Connected threads: The listening audience for AR; For how long are you living as a vegan?; Going vegan in the new year!; Raw food veganism

Should we promote Free Range Farming?

Erik Marcus defends free range farming. Should we follow him or make it clear that free range is just as bad as any other way of farming...



activistathand wrote:
After listening to the debate between Francione and Marcus, I think Francione was more informed on the issues discussed and offered better solutions. I’m not convinced that animal welfare reform attempts are worth the resources being spent and, in fact, I think they have a divisive result within the animal abolition-rights movement. I learned quite a lot from Francione in this debate and after visiting his website: http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/?p=107.



I think Francione is absolutely correct in viewing animal welfare as being ridden with fundamental inconsistencies in attempts to achieve animal abolition-rights and by advocating the diversion of resources from animal welfare reform attempts to an abolition-rights approach. One way Francione scrupulously defends his position is by noting that there has been an animal welfare movement in the U.S. for over 200 hundred years which is laden with questionable results. As Francione points out, animal welfare steps often benefits the exploiter and perpetuates exploitation.



People are led to think they can pay more money and somehow that makes it ok to eat an animal that has lived, for instance, 'cage free'. To cite ‘cage free’ as an option is inconsistent with an abolition-rights agenda; the psychological inference for some people will invariably be that eating animals is all right. These people often miss the ultimate principle we so badly want them to understand - that it’s morally unjustifiable to exploit and murder animals for any reason or through any means.



Marcus desires animal abolition-rights, yet he is advocating working with groups who are promoting animal welfare. I can understand a desire to rejoice in the smallest 'victory' made for animals because most people who are genuinely concerned for animals have deep seated sadness and a real need to see any progress being made. What I see are animals still being imprisoned, tortured and murdered. I can not ignore the call to heed an abolition-rights approach that Francione, and to a further extent Joan Dunayer, has defined - consolidate the movement and use the resources to send the message that using animals in any form is unacceptable. Shouldn't we express, to our fullest ability, exactly what we stand for?



Using animal welfare as a harbinger to animal abolition-rights is obviously not achieving abolition-rights at the desired rate. With limited resources, we - more importantly the animals on the chopping block - can not afford to send messages to consumers asking for miniscule changes in the way animals are treated while yearning for abolition-rights. This is, at best, confusing. At worst, it is a primary channel to divert or prolong the main goal which should be abolition-rights. For instance, why are some individuals who are in favor of animal abolition-rights supporting groups like the ASPCA and the RSPCA who clearly support animal agriculture?



Read the thread at Let's All Send This to Erik Marcus
Connected threads: Gary Francionne's use of "Happy Meat"; Gary Francione On Singer In His New Blog; Francione Comments on Animal Rights International

Should we give welfarism another chance?

Sheepdog makes a compelling argument on the difference between necessary and unnecessary harm. Explaining we should give animal welfare some slack or as he says it "The struggle for animal rights should never compromise the struggle to relieve suffering."



panthera wrote:

-Dave_81 wrote: As such as long as welfarism is the dominant oppositional response to animal exploitation, animal exploitation will remain more or less in its present form. There may be changes made; but these will be based on economic considerations, not on considerations about animals for their own sakes. So one of the most damaging things about welfarism is that it encourages the idea welfarism is an appropriate response to animal use, whereas in fact it is not. On the contrary, the only thing that bothers the animal use industries is the idea of a movement that rejects their ownership of animals -- that rejects animals' property status.

This, along with Ray P's points about the role of welfarism in abetting the exploitation of non-human animals, is what makes me realize that animal rights cannot advocate for better treatment of animals. So what do you all think of my assertions? In all honesty, I really do hope CAK is instituted everywhere that poultry is slaughtered. It seems vastly less torturous and certainly, I would much rather have all of those sentient beings be spared the alternative that they presently face in a completely unjust system.



However I cannot advocate for such a thing; no animal rights individual or organization can. I leave it to the animal agriculture industry, along with the animal welfare arm of meat-eating consumers, to spend their own money in such campaigns. Everyone who wants to have this replace the current system: please don't think you have to ask for it, much less spend your precious time & energy advertising it! The underlying pool of compassion that non-vegans do tap into will take care of it, and as a positive development for meat-eating, the industry will institute it.



Our business is, as Dave_81 tells us again and again, is to show that a REAL alternative exists, which is veganism.



Read the thread at Necessary Harm
Connected thread: What I hate about animal protection orgs... ("Can't we all just get...

Speciesism used to reject animal rights arguments

When compairing the holocaust and modern factory farming with non-ARists most of the time the discussion ends there. How can we make this argument more valid?



nazarov wrote:

Relentless wrote: When ARists discuss amongst themselves issues related to animal exploitation we may at times refer to slavery, torture, or even the Halocaust as comparisons.



However, I have found that if I use any of those examples with a non ARist in debate, their immediate defense is indignance. Sure, phylosophy majors or professors in phylosophy can tackle those comparisons with reason head on if they do not agree with them, but then again those are not the minds I or most people probably usually encounter in day to day discussion when we approach some on the issues of AR.



My questions are two:



1) Why do you think the average person takes such insult to such comparisons that they shut down the conversation with indignance or dismissive ridicule?



2) What is the best strategy to deal with indignance? I usually point out that there is no refuge from reason in indignance. But admittedly, that usually doesn't stop them from continuing on with it. How do you handle it? Do you continue the conversation or just end it there?



Does anyone have any great quote from a respected person of history on the matter of indignance not being a defense in the face of reason either for or against something?

This is very common situtation. I will try to paraphrase Epictetus, ancient philosopher, so my thesis would be that in your situation it is not the comparision of two events that happened in the past that disturbed those poeople, but the perspective they take when they compare these two events. If we are very precise, philosophically precise - and without this precision the result is indignance - when we compare holocaust with modern agricultural industry we do not compare the victims but crime. And this is big difference. People usually say, how can you compare Jews, people with animals bla bla bla... But hey, we are not comparing Jews and other victims of holocaust with animals, this comparision is stupid as is stupid comparing victims of Vietnam war with victims of Second world war. The only thing we could compare are numbers, and numbers are just abstraction, so we are comparing the crime which produced all these victims. So, not holocaust versus agricultural industry, but sistematicly and cruel killing of degraded sentient beings which fuel itself from the same source, human arogance, illusion of superiority, greed and so on.
Charles Patterson with help of Isaac B. Singer showed this very well in Eternal Treblinka.





Read the thread at Indignance to comparisons of Animals to Human History...

Some posts you shouldn't miss!

Vegan (ARA?) Dennis Kucinich for US President '08
What are your views on Abortion
Lab-Grown fur?
I'd like you to meet the ratties that share my home
No-Nonsense Guide on pets
Korean-language articles about vegetarianism
Muscular Vegan? Yeah right!
Euthanization
Proverbs 23:20
Arkangel Article: Animal Rights - Eco Action
Your food experience while in the hospital
Isnt milk natural?
Making A Killing by Bob Torres



Don't forget to also check out our Petitions and Activism and Animals in the News board!