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The Movement: The African American Struggle for Civil Rights 1st Edition Thomas C. Holt
Along with Civil Rights and Women’s liberation, Animal Rights became one of leading social moments of the twentieth century. This book critically reviews all principal contributions to the American animal rights debate by activists, campaigners, academics, and lawyers, while placing animal rights in context with other related and competing movements.
Rethinking the American Animal Rights Movement examines the strategies employed within the movement to advance its goals, which ranged from public advocacy and legal reforms to civil disobedience, vigilantism, anarchism, and even “terrorism”. It summarizes key theoretical and legal frameworks that inspired those strategies, as well as the ideological motivations of the movement. It highlights the irreconcilable tension between moral and legal rights verses “humane treatment of animals” as prescribed by advocates of animal welfarism. The book also looks back to the nineteenth century origins of the movement, examining its appeal to a sentimentalist conception of rights standing in marked contrast with twentieth century rights theory. After providing an extensive social history of the twentieth century movement, the book subsequently offers a diagnosis of why it stalled at the turn of millennium in its various efforts to advance the cause of nonhuman animals. This diagnosis emphasizes the often-contradictory goals and strategies adopted by the movement in its different phases and manifestations across three centuries.
The book is unique in presenting students, activists, and scholars with a history and critical discussion of its accomplishments, failures, and ongoing complexities faced by the American animal rights movement.
Emily Patterson-Kane is a New Zealand-born psychologist with a focus on animal welfare and human-animal interactions. She has published research on
diverse topics including Animal abuse, assistance animals, and environmental enrichment.
Michael Allen is a Professor of philosophy at East Tennessee State University. He has published extensively on civil disobedience and crimes of dissent in a variety of contexts from mass illegal human migrations to the illegal hunting of wildlife. His research concerns the tensions between illegal political action and nonviolence philosophy.
Jennifer Eadie lives and works on Kaurna Country in South Australia. She is a teaching academic at the University of South Australia and a Doctoral Candidate at Flinders University, South Australia. Her research is situated in the Environmental Humanities and Critical Legal Studies.
RETHINKING THE AMERICAN ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Emily Patterson-Kane, Michael P. Allen, and Jennifer Eadie
The right of Emily Patterson-Kane, Michael P. Allen, and Jennifer Eadie to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Title: Rethinking the American animal rights movement / Emily Patterson-Kane, Michael P. Allen, and Jennifer Eadie.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. | Series: American social and political movements of the 20th century | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021046949 (print) | LCCN 2021046950 (ebook) |
Subjects: LCSH: Animal rights movement--United States--History. | Animal rights--United States. | Animal welfare--United States.
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021046949
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021046950
ISBN: 978-1-138-91509-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-91510-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-69042-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781315690421
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Animal Rights 11 Rights in Practice 12 The Case Against Animal Rights 14
Legislative Reforms 34
Boycotts and Alternatives 35
Meatless Meat 36
Religion 39
The Role of Violence/Nonviolence in Animal Rights Strategies 41
Nonviolence and “Forcing the Choices” of Animal Abusers 41
Vigilantism and “Enforcing New Norms” of Interspecies
Community 43
Conclusion 45
3 Origins of the Movement: Empathy and Emancipation from Cruelty (pre-1900) 48
The Middle Passage of Turtles as Silent or Dumb Slaves 51
A Horse Autobiography, Evangelizing Suffering, and Reactionary
Trap Shooters 54
Conclusion 57
4 Early Twentieth Century (1900–1970)
An Overall Summary of the 1900–2000 Period 60
Prehistory and Inactivity 1900–1955 62
The Leadership of Socially Elite Women 62
Caroline Earle White 63
Inactivity, 1922–195567
Competing Issues in Public Health and Social Justice 67
Children’s Literature and Humane Education 68
Animal Farm 70
Animals in the Entertainment Industry 71
Anna C. Briggs 73
Opposition to Trapping 74
Recognition of Animal Minds 76
Conservative Opposition to Recognizing Animal Continuity with Humans 78
Transition, 1955–1970 78
Incubation for the Movement 78
Growing Tension between Activism and Science 78
Animal Welfare Institute 79
Challenging the Agriculture Industry 80
Growing Public Interest in Wildlife and the Environment 81
Increasing Public Opposition to Animal Research 82
Helen Jones 83
60
5 Twentieth Century History (1970–2000) 86
New Social Movements 86
1970–1980: Emergence 88
Academia, Masculinism, and the Influence of Singer’s Animal Liberation 88
The Difficulty of Declarations 90
Toxicity Testing on Animals, and the Alternatives 93
The Issue of Companion Animals 94
Radicalized Environmentalism 96
Professionalization of the Movement 97
Bureaucratization and the Three Rs 99
Eleanor Seiling 100
Henry Spira 100
Peak Phase, 1981–2000 102
The Peak 102
Protests and Days of Abstinence 104
“No Kill” Sheltering 104
Animal Welfare Science 106
Feminism and the Duty of Care 107
Intersectionality and the Minority Deficit 108
Growing Movement Factionalism 109
Repression of Animal Rights Extremism as Terrorism 110
Post Peak Movement 112
Conclusion 113
6 Twentieth Century Junctions and Roadblocks 118
Anarchism 120
Fascism 121
Marxism 123
Conservationism 124
Environmentalism 125
Multiculturalism 127
Intersectionalism 129
Conclusion 131
7 Legacy: Overcoming Confusion and Fatigue, Finding New Directions (2000-) 133
Conflicting Theories 134
Theory Fatigue 136
Animals and National Citizenship 137
The Animal Standpoint and Total Liberation 139
Animal Resistors 141
Conclusion 143
Discussion: A Movement Constantly Rethinking Itself 147
Rethinking at the Origins of the Movement 147
Rethinking Rights as Welfare 147
Rethinking Rights as Distinct from Welfare 148
Rethinking Animal Rights as Political and as Historical 148
Rethinking Animals as Co-Participants in the Movement 149
Rethinking the “Adversaries” of the Movement 149
Perplexities Concerning the Movement’s Future 149
References 151 Index 163
SERIES EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the American Social and Political Movements of the 20th Century series at Routledge. This collection of works by top historians from around the nation and world introduces students to the myriad movements that came together in the United States during the twentieth century to expand democracy, to reshape the political economy, and to increase social justice.
Each book in this series explores a particular movement’s origins, its central goals, its leading as well as grassroots figures, its actions as well as ideas, and its most important accomplishments as well as serious missteps.
With this series of concise yet synthetic overviews and reassessments, students not only will gain a richer understanding of the many human rights and civil liberties that they take for granted today, but they will also newly appreciate how recent, how deeply contested, and thus how inherently fragile, are these same elements of American citizenship.
Heather Ann
Thompson University of Michigan
INTRODUCTION
This book will provide a critical overview of the animal rights movement in the United States of America, with a focus on the twentieth century.1 It will address the movement’s origin, key figures, and strategies, its strengths and weaknesses, and its impact on the present-day situation.
Leading up to 1900, the newly colonized American nation saw the growth of many groups that concerned themselves with the plight of the suffering and oppressed, both human and nonhuman animals.2 However, their sentimentbased appeals were increasingly overshadowed by industries that used animals to provide people with transport, food, fiber, scientific advances, education, and entertainment. After World War II, these industries only required a fraction of the population to be directly involved as skilled and manual labor, which in turn lowered the use of animals as labor but saw an increase in their use as food and pets. There was a distinct shift in the American relationship with animals. In the move away from working alongside animals, the relationship became characterized by objectification: Americans ate “meat”, owned “pets”, and appreciated “wildlife”. In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a groundswell of new social movements promoting causes such as civil rights and environmentalism, creating opportunities for change in the fundamental character of the nation. This larger desire for change fostered the development of two increasingly distinct animal advocacy movements: one seeking to regulate animal use to make it humane (animal welfare) and one to abolish animal use by humans altogether (animal rights).
The animal rights movement had no single leader but rather highly influential figures such as Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Ingrid E. Newkirk, and Henry Spira who inspired through theory and activism alike, speaking in terms of
speciesism, rights, and sentiency. While obviously aligned with civil rights and anti-racist movements, this resurgent animal rights effort focused on curtailing human use of animals, with a specific focus on uses that caused extreme or unnecessary suffering. This new approach to animal rights enjoyed a rapid increase in public support and led to the founding of influential animal rights groups such as the US branch of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals (PeTA), and strongly influencing groups with broader missions such as the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).
The animal rights movement was met by powerful opposition that actively defended and promoted animal use as economically beneficial and culturally acceptable. Organizations formed or mobilized to promote, for example, biomedical research in developing medications (e.g., the National Association for Biomedical Research that formed in 1985), or the benefits of hunting and trapping (e.g., US Sportsmen’s Alliance that formed in 1977). These groups were founded not so much to promote these activities as to counter the attacks on them from the activities of PeTA and HSUS as they chipped away at animal users’ status and freedom to operate. 3 A number of consultants developed programs to assist companies defending against activists, some of them promoting an alarmist view villainizing animal rights, and others promoting some degree of mutual understanding and respect – but all with an awareness of how the public views and observable responses to animal rights-based protest and provocation.
Attempts to elevate the fundamental standing of animals under the law were largely unsuccessful, as the edifice of the law was not constructed with the goal of serving animal interests. There were nonetheless a wealth of publications produced by activists, academics, and legal professionals that, on one hand, sought to reveal how animal welfare law was human-centric and on the other hand, argued for a reimagining of how animals can be recognized by the law.
In the face of seemingly immovable obstacles, the animal rights movement developed a range of innovative strategies ranging from attention grabbing marketing and media campaigns, to infiltration and video capture of shocking practices, and even illegal attacks on facilities and their workers. Over time animal rights also gained a foothold within academic and professional sectors, with societies formed to represent animal rights supporters within the professions of law, psychology, medicine, and veterinary medicine. The fields of animal law and animal studies proliferated globally over the decade, including the emergence of left-leaning and anarchist forms that seek to blend theory and activism, such as Critical Animal Studies.
As it approached the year 2000, the animal rights movement’s influence was plateauing and fractures were becoming more evident. This included differences between the utilitarian approach of Peter Singer and “subject of a life”
criteria applied by Tom Regan. Perhaps more acutely felt was the sharp redefinition of rights from welfare as spearheaded by Gary Francione. Francione rejected any efforts seeking just to reduce suffering, and called for the movement to strive exclusively for the complete cessation of animal use by humans.
At this time, it also became more problematic that the animal rights movement had drawn justification from comparisons with human exploitation but largely not sought to contribute to addressing these problems. Indeed, PeTA was well known for using objectified human bodies to promote their cause. Both at the beginning, and at the end, or the twentieth century the leadership of the movement was dominated by people who were white and relatively affluent. First featuring mainly upper-class women, and later prominent academic and professional men. In a new cultural and economic environment, the animal rights movement struggles to find new approaches to make dramatic advances as it loses momentum.
In this critical time, where the movement must regather and reimagine itself, there is little in the way of descriptive history texts. Written history being one important way to foster an appreciation of how the movement developed and promote further progress. Indeed, the number of historical accounts of the American animal rights movement is surprisingly low. Publications of relevance include Lawrence and Susan Finsen’s The Animal Rights Movement in America: From Compassion to Respect (1994), Diane Beer’s For the Prevention of Cruelty: The History and Legacy of Animal Rights Activism in the United States (2006), and Paul Waldau’s Animal Rights: What Everyone Needs to Know (2011).
On the other hand, publications that focus on the ideological or philosophical grounding of the movement and its historical origins in the United Kingdom proliferate. This imbalance risks obscure the central and distinct role of the animal rights movement as it emerged in the United States and North America generally. For this reason, this book will shed light on the dynamic twentieth century period of the American movement. This is the period that witnessed the beginning of many aspects of society that are now firmly established such as the “Not Tested on Animals” accreditation, humane slaughter legislation, the protection of endangered species, and no-kill animal shelters. Drawing on archives, qualitative research, and existing scholarship, it will provide a short and accessible overview of the movement.
Now that we are able to take a retrospective view of the dynamic twentieth century period, it is clear that the American movement is not simply an importation and extension of earlier European traditions. The American movement’s early character sprang from a rapid divergence from animal protection societies. Unlike the United Kingdom, this occurred in the absence of a national animal protection infrastructure with secure patronage. American culture also provided a greater willingness to imagine new kinds of societies that deliberately contrasted with the precedents provided by this former colonial power.
The American wilderness loomed large in American culture in which the formerly heroic figure of the hunter and conqueror quickly took on the role of villain persecuting the animal hero from Bambi to Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron. Meanwhile, American science and industry excelled beyond all others in creating what came to be known as factory farms and other intensive animal industries, creating a uniquely sharp division between animals as commodities, and animal ideals as symbols of the wild or faithful companions. Finally, bracketed by atrocities experienced by first nations and enslaved peoples, American culture struggled with the implications of abolition across species. Specifically, how do we confidently envisage liberating animals from human exploitation while struggling to truly do the same for “we the people”.
In the following chapters about the ideas, strategies, history, and current state of the American animal rights movement, keep in mind these themes of the uniquely American experience of pursuing progress while idealizing nature and excelling through capitalism while opposing exploitation. What vision of animal rights can be embraced by a wide proportion of American culture now living in this settled and unevenly affluent society?
Notes
1 Hereafter “America” refers to the United States of America unless otherwise specified.
2 Hereafter referred to simply as “animals”, without an implication that homo sapiens is not also a species of animal.
3 Gorski, “US Sportsmen’s Alliance”.
1 THE ANIMAL RIGHTS DEBATE
As an object of inquiry, animal rights are problematic because the concept is simultaneously oversaturated and ambiguous: what animal? Moral, natural, or legal rights? Moreover, the fact that nonhuman animals are deemed property in the eyes of law undermines the phrase from the outset.1 The property status assigned to animals enables them to be sold, experimented on, used as entertainment, processed as food products, and kept in captivity against their will. Moreover, this status undermines the complexity and difference found across the living beings who are otherwise categorized as pets, exhibits, livestock, or scientific tools. This objectification, which has the capacity to normalize the suffering of animals, is what has led theorists, lawyers, and activists alike toward rights discourse – differing sharply from animal welfare advocates who petition for legislative protection and regulation of animals as property. This chapter will first provide a brief contextualization of what a “subject of rights” looked like during the 20th century and then explore some of the influential philosophical and legal frameworks that informed the American animal rights movement.
The Subject of Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948 has since informed the basis of rights activism, law, and political discourse in the West. For Duncan Ivison, human rights can be understood as “providing a boundary around the individual, or at least around certain crucial aspects of her freedom”. 2 The idea of a boundary references the relational character of rights, whereby the legal border has the capacity to both inhibit and enable action between two right-bearers, or a right-bearer and the court. Ivison is quick to remind us, however, that such boundaries
are produced and maintained by “a particular set of moral claims”. 3 Indeed, for legal scholar Duncan Kennedy, the notion that rights claims are characterized as enabling rounded judgements risks forgetting that the “balancing” of competing claims and rights between parties will inevitably be shaped by current normative values.4 Human rights understood in this way “orients us in the direction of power”.5 The frameworks being presented here by Ivison and Kennedy acknowledge rights as political constructs that have the capacity to respond to social and cultural change – they are not static. It is undoubtedly with this tension in mind that American Professor of Law David S Favre claims “our legal system can and should do what it always has done: balance the interests of competing individuals in a public policy context, always seeking to strike an ethically appropriate balance”.6 Here, Favre is considering how the American legal system could respond to claims for nonhuman animals. More specifically, claims for protection against harm inflicted by humans.7 Favre’s comment forefronts an important starting point for this chapter: the law must be able to recognize a legal person (human or otherwise) as bearing interests before it can recognize harm being done to those interests.
Rights theorists argue that welfare legislation not only normalizes and regulates animal suffering but misses an important ethical point: our treatment of other species should not be one of ownership, commodification, or regulation. It is in this sense that rights approaches are arguing against “speciesism”, i.e., the privileging of a species (humans) over another (nonhuman animals).8 Peter Singer popularized the notion of speciesism in his book Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals first published in 1975. In response to Singer’s book, a wave of theoretical and legal conceptualizations of what respecting the autonomy of nonhuman animals might look like was proposed by American academics and lawyers throughout the 1980s and 1990s – of which this chapter will provide a snapshot. It is worth highlighting that these frameworks are products of specific disciplines (analytical philosophy and law), which methodologically favor theoretical approaches that benefit a majority who is characterized by shared identity or need. One only needs to look at human rights legislation, models of democracy, or utilitarianism as examples of this. Broadly speaking, animal rights theories that emerged in America during the 20th century claim that our objectification of nonhuman animals is falsely justified by species difference that is akin to other modes of discrimination such as sexism or racism. Despite misrepresentation by the media, the theories did not argue that nonhuman animals must be granted every human right nor for the same rights to be granted across all species. Rather, the frameworks were interested in moving away from the demand that a right bearer must have the capacity to bear duties in order to enter the realm of autonomy in the eyes of the law. In this sense, the approaches build on notions of equal consideration and recognize in legal discourse the capacity to respond to changing social and political values. Where approaches differ is in regard to which animals
count, what interests should be protected, and what legislative form that protection should take. Such a shift would require a re-imagining of entrenched socio-cultural and political norms – namely, who and what constitute a community and to whom we owe responsibility within that community.9
Equal Consideration of Interests: Peter Singer
“Animal Liberation forever changed the conversation about our treatment of animals. It made people – myself included – change what we ate, what we wore, and how we perceived animals” – Ingrid E. Newkirk, the founder and president of American animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA).10
Peter Albert David Singer (b. 1946) is Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. In 2009, he was included in Time magazine’s list of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World.” Singer’s academic work is grounded in the Anglo-American tradition of utilitarianism. The Australian-born Jewish philosopher became internationally well-known after the publication of Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals and has maintained global attention since in his controversial proposals concerning applied ethics and applications of morality to practical problems. More recently, Singer has theorized and advocated for “effective altruism”, which he argues “is built on the simple but unsettling idea that living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good one can”.11
Animal Liberation has been acknowledged as “the bible of the animal rights movement” in America and abroad.12 The text was a provocative catalyst for a new generation of Americans to reconsider their relationship with nonhuman animals. Singer is quick to tell his readers that he is not especially interested in nonhuman animals nor is he an animal-lover: the book is not premised on sentimentality. In this statement, Singer is carefully situating his theoretical framework as ideologically disparate to the existing animal welfare movement, best epitomized by the British and American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Graphically detailing the existence of animals in factory farming and scientific testing, Singer did not ask his readers to sympathize with the suffering of animals but rather consider the capacity of those fellow beings to have interests. He writes that the central argument of the book is the “claim that to discriminate against beings solely on account of their species is a form a prejudice, immoral and indefensible in the same way that discrimination on the basis of race is immoral and indefensible”.13 Moreover, he argues that the human capacity to recognize interests in others inevitably situates us as “moral agents” who therefore have a duty to respond. It is in this sense that Singer’s proposal can be understood as requesting an extension of the moral community as opposed to a legal framework. Animal Liberation’s success was no doubt due to its unique structure of philosophical reflection alongside case
study and practical advice (for example, there is a chapter on how to become vegetarian). The following section will explore the text and its impact on the rights movement in further detail.
So, what would an “ethical response” look like if the boundary of who counts as a subject of moral concern is extended to include nonhuman animals? In Animal Liberation , Singer aims to demonstrate how the principle of equal consideration provides a framework that enables us to enact an extension of the moral community. Citing philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham, Singer proposes that if a sentient human or nonhuman is suffering there is no “moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration”.14
Despite the book being a central catalyst for the American animal rights movement throughout the 20th century, its proposition did not necessarily translate as legal recognition for nonhuman animals.15 Rather, it demanded an equal consideration of interests – whereby the interests of all beings involved are treated with equal respect. This consideration, Singer argued, enables us to make a choice that facilitates minimization of suffering. It is worth clarifying that Singer does not necessarily propose that minimization of suffering means protection of animals in the sympathetic sense that characterized 19th century animal rights activism. Rather, he is asking we recognize them as fellow sentient beings and treat them as such. It is here he introduces the notion of speciesism: “a position that is irredeemably speciesist is the one that tried to make the boundary of our own species”.16 Put another way – if we justify such violence against nonhuman animals based on a species difference then that exclusion is unjustifiably based on prejudice, we are assigning privilege to our own species over others.
Singer suggests that to avoid speciesism we must consider nonhuman animals who are similar to humans as eligible to “a similar right to life.”17 As such, species membership no longer becomes a defining criterion for access to moral or legal rights. However, when Singer moves to provide examples of how this theoretical framework would be realized, complexities appear. He provides an example of killing a mouse verses a human, with the former in Singer’s view, possessing more meaningful characteristics compared to the mouse. This ambiguity has been the focus of thorough critique in the 21st century but for the purposes of this chapter, we want to remind the reader how revolutionary Singer’s proposal was for its time. In the socio-cultural climate of America in the late 1970s, to argue all humans were equal was a radical and destabilizing proposition in and of itself. Minority groups (women, people of color, the LGBT community) were proactively attempting to reconfigure their position from one of exclusion to recognition by the socio-political-legal sphere of the human subject. Singer clarifies that a “position that is irredeemably speciesist is the one that tried to make the boundary of our own species”.18 Importantly, this is where we can start to see Singer’s influence on the late 20th century activists such as PeTA or Animal Liberation Front, who took this theoretical stance as a starting point to argue there was fundamentally no justification
9 for the harms inflicted on nonhuman species by humans. In contrast to the 19th century movement that saw protestors focus on garnering support from a sentimental public, Singer’s equal consideration enabled activists to place the burden on those who deny consideration to nonhuman animals in the shift away from sympathy toward action.
Vegetarianism became the epitome of translating “theory into practice” for the movement. Singer convincingly argued that it was “a highly practical and effective step one can take towards ending both the killing of nonhuman animals and the infliction of suffering upon them”.19 Singer bluntly reminds his reader that “practically and psychologically it is impossible to be consistent in ones’ concern for nonhuman animals while continuing to dine on them”. 20 Singer is quick to note how even smaller scale farming also lends itself to suffering not limited to: “castration, separation of mother and young, breaking up of social groups, branding, transportation to slaughterhouse, and finally slaughter itself”. 21 Importantly, for the animal rights movement, vegetarianism offered an influential form of protest that directly affected the supply chain that normalized the intensive rearing and killing of animals. Vegetarianism, for Singer and rights advocates, was not understood as simply altering the past (i.e., preventing an animal from being killed) but equally about preventing the conditions such as factory farming from continuing into the future. In this sense, vegetarianism successfully worked as both boycott and protest.
Move from Equal Consideration to a Right to Life: Tom Regan
Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, filmmaker and animal rights activist, Tom Regan (1938–2017) was interested in translating theory into action when he proposed the “total abolition of the use of animals in science; the total dissolution of commercial animal agriculture; the total elimination of commercial and sport hunting and trapping”. 22 In his writing and activism Regan argued that animal rights should be based on an unassailable right not to be exploited by others rather than a calculus of what type of use is justifiable. Following Regan, the late 20th century saw branches of animal rights activists, such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), move to argue for the abolishment of the human use other animals. 23 Paradoxically, many of the ALF violent acts of protest sit uncomfortably next to Regan’s original philosophical reference point: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. When asked in an interview why he became an animal rights activist, Regan cited Gandhi:
My path began to change for a reason that had nothing directly to do with animals (…) There is no question in my mind: reading Gandhi’s autobiography changed my life. Put another way, if I had not read this book, Tom Regan would not have become an ARA. Why not? Because I would not have been challenged in the way that Gandhi challenged. 24
The influence of Gandhi can be seen in Regan’s iconic 1983 publication, The Case for Animal Rights, where he begins with the premise that nonhuman animals possess the same intrinsic worth and consequential “right to life” that humans do because both have “a life that matters”. 25 This right is accompanied by the right not to be exploited by others for their own ends and purposes. Regan did continue to differentiate between levels of sentience in those with a right to life; proposing that some individuals, often animals, have only “preference autonomy” – the capacity to know what one wants but whose desires or goals remain basic. 26 Whereas others, often humans, have “control autonomy” – the ability to understand and choose what one wants to achieve coupled with the capacity to pursue this goal. 27 However, there is not a perfect association between these categories and species, so assessment on an individual level enables inclusion of some animals and some humans. The nuances in Regan’s position often rest uneasily beside its application to champion an uncompromising rights-based movement. For example, a prominent philosopher of animal rights, Mark Rowlands, critiques Regan’s tendency to accord different moral standing to various animals. Rowlands considered that terminology sub-dividing levels of sentience are unsound “controversial metaphysical assumptions” whose assumptions about inherent value are “mysterious, ad hoc and, ultimately, unnecessary”. 28 The matter of necessity comes down to whether sacrificing some individuals to save others may ever be considered, even under extreme conditions where the only alternative is the death of all of the individuals. Here, Rowland is referencing a hypothetical example presented by Regan, whereby there is a lifeboat, and on that lifeboat are several humans and a dog, and unfortunately, one individual has to be thrown overboard if everyone else is to survive. Here, Regan claims that the death of the dog, despite being a harm, is not comparable to the harm associated with the death of a human. 29 Regan argues that this “exceptional” case cannot be extrapolated to institutional settings such as using animals in biomedical research. While Regan is willing to entertain a hypothetical and make a trade-off, others who followed in this tradition within animal rights philosophy have been unwilling to agree to sacrifice a hypothetical life, or agree that the dog should be chosen. In this light, the contrasting model of an ethics of care proposed by feminist writers provided a more inclusive model of holistic living that did not translate directly to legal rights either but certainly aimed to inform socio-cultural norms, which in turn can and will enable legal shifts to occur over time.
Despite widespread controversy and criticism of Regan’s abolition approach, his work was recognized as important, with his publications The Case for Animal Rights and Bloomsbury’s Prophet: G. E. Moore and The Development of his Moral Philosophy (1986) were recommended by his publisher for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. Regan received many awards during his career as an academic, including the William Quarles Holliday Medal, Excellence
in Undergraduate and Graduate Teaching awards, and University Alumni Distinguished Professor award. When Regan retired, the North Carolina State University Library established the Tom Regan Animal Rights Archive.
Feminist and Animal Rights
Female activists were a central force of the animal rights movement both before and during the 20th century; however, it was not until the late 1980s and early 1990s, the idea of care-based approaches, through the lens of feminist theory, was taken seriously in activist and academic fields. In 1988 Marjorie Speigel published The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery, a comprehensive comparison of oppression of humans and animals and their connections and parallels, specifically America’s legacy of slavery. 30 Receiving great critical acclaim, this book signaled a shift in the otherwise male dominated field of animal rights theory and approach. Speigel argued that “parallels between the enslavement of animals and humans are innumerable and exist on many levels; they are built around the same basic relationship between oppressor and oppressed, master and slave”. 31 This shift toward considering both animal and human suffering saw American scholar of comparative literature, Josephine Donovan (b.1941) convincingly argue the notion that caring for another was not an inferior approach to the application of rights when it comes to remedying the suffering of animals. During the 1990s, Donovan and fellow academic, Carol J. Adams (b.1951) co-edited two important texts that put the dialogue between feminism and animal rights onto the national and global stage, publishing Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations in 1995 and Beyond Animal Rights: A Feminist Caring Ethic for the Treatment of Animals the following year. Carol J. Adams is feminist vegan activist, author, and independent scholar whose work addresses human relationships with other animals, feminism, intersectionality, and care theory. Adams completed a BA at the University of Rochester in 1972 and a Master of Divinity at Yale University in 1976. Adam’s book The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theor y (1990), which recently had its 25th anniversary edition published, is a striking presentation of the deep ties between the sexual objectification of women and the consumerist objectification of animals as meat. 32 In the 21st century Adams has focused specifically on the animal rights cause via education: demystifying and clarifying myths around vegan diets, in particular, concerning protein intake.
Feminist theorists revived a historically pervasive idea that the support of animal rights can spring from an enactment of care premised on empathy and interconnection. Importantly, this offered the movement a compelling paradigm alongside the existing legal and moral approaches. Moreover, Diane Antonio has noted how these approaches enabled a much-needed conversation about how we might respect diversity and difference across all animals just as
we do with people. 33 As will be explored in the later chapters of this book, feminism through the lens of intersectionality, offered a dynamic response to the challenge of discrimination that both drew and built on the progressive era over a hundred years before.
Rights in Practice
Despite a groundswell of grassroots activism and theory emerging, it was still early days for the legal sector in articulating what rights for nonhuman animals could look like in practice – this is not necessarily surprising considering the slow, careful pace of law reform. That is, aside from the formidable figure of Professor Steven M. Wise. Lawyer and academic, Wise has been pursuing legal recognition of nonhuman animals both in theory and practice from the early 1980s. When surveying his publications during his time as President of the Animal Legal Defense Fund from 1985 to 1995, it becomes evident that Wise was laying the groundwork for a nuanced legal approach that would inform his current endeavor as president and head lawyer of The Nonhuman Rights Project – the only civil rights organization in the United States dedicated solely to securing rights for nonhuman animals. 34 In the publications, one can see how Wise was on one hand demonstrating the limitations of current legal protections and then on the other hand, drawing on the capacity of common law to provide an alternative opportunity for legal recognition and protection of nonhumans, via the category of “legal personhood”.
Over the latter half of the 20th century, Wise meticulously demonstrated through his teaching, publication, and legal that existing laws for animals were not enabling legal justice for those nonhuman beings. In a 1986 article “Of Farm Animals and Justice”, he outlined how vague language combined with negligible penalties for offenders enabled America’s anti-cruelty statutes to “provide virtually no real protection for the modern farm animal”. 35 Moreover, he joined fellow animal rights academics in arguing that once we acknowledge animals are not a means-to-an-end, we can acknowledge how these inconsistencies in the law are nothing less than an injustice, and he reminds his readers: “a sense of justice plays a powerful, and possibly determinative role, in how the law ultimately comes to treat animals”. 36
The following decade saw Wise publish several influential articles proposing legal rights for great apes, along with a joint presentation to the Senior Lawyers Division of the American Bar Association with Dr. Jane Goodall. 37 At the same time these seminal papers were published, Wise established the Center for the Expansion of Fundamental Rights in 1996, which would be renamed The Nonhuman Rights Project in 2012. Through litigation, advocacy, education, and campaigning, the project aims to change the legal status of animals from “thing” to beings who are recognized as “legal persons” under common law. To be classified as “legal person” under law enables
fundamental rights such as bodily integrity and bodily liberty to be recognized and protected.
The Nonhuman Rights Project use of common law is notable not for its shift away from human rights discourse but for its important connection to the slave liberation movement in the previous centuries. In his seminal text, Rattling the Cage: Towards Legal Rights for Animals (2000), Wise identifies how abolitionists in the 18th and 19th centuries used the legal concept of habeas corpus (the means by which a court can assess the lawfulness of imprisonment or detention) to gain legal status for human slaves. Wise cites the 1772 case of Somerset v. Steuart as an example – whereby the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales granted the writ to the slave, which transformed him from a legal thing to a legal person in the eyes of the court. 38 Here, one can see the applicability of this common law writ to nonhumans, as it allows lawyers to petition on behalf of their client. At the time of this publication, Wise and his team had filed their first case on behalf of captive chimpanzees.
Wise’s argument concerning rights for great apes was not made in isolation, in fact this was one of the few instances during the 20th century whereby individuals from various fields came together on a stance concerning the legal status of a nonhuman – in this case, great apes. Building on Animal Liberation , Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri published the edited collection The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity (1993), which rejects the widely held argument that humans do not have direct duties to animals because they cannot partake in the social or legal contract; arguing that to take this seriously would mean we have no direct duties to infants, mentally incompetent, or future generations. 39 The collaborative text proposed “A Declaration on Great Apes” that was accompanied by supporting essays ranging from anthropological accounts, ethnographic studies, ethical frameworks, and critical engagements. The essays focused on the similarities between apes and humans – an example of this is Jane Goodall’s description of gestures and experiences that both humans and chimpanzees share: sickness, care for another, hugging, kissing, holding hands, tickling, or patting another’s back.40
The project was premised on the claim that there is ambient evidence regarding the neurological, cognitive, and emotional constitution of great apes “to make it clear that the moral boundary we draw between us and them is indefensible”.41 The project proposes a notion of equality that “will embrace not only our own species, but also the species that are our closest relatives and that most resemble us in their capacities and their ways of living”.42 The declaration states:
The Declaration on Great Apes reads as follows:
“We demand the extension of the community of equals to include all great apes: human beings, chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans. ‘The community of equals’ is the moral community within which we accept
certain basic moral principles or rights as governing our relations with each other and enforceable at law. Among these principles or rights are the following:
1. The Right to Life
The lives of members of the community of equals are to be protected. Members of the community of equals may not be killed except in very strictly defined circumstances, for example, self-defence.
2. The Protection of Individual Liberty
Members of the community of equals are not to be arbitrarily deprived of their liberty; if they should be imprisoned without due legal process, they have the right to immediate release. The detention of those who have not been convicted of any crime, or of those who are not criminally liable, should be allowed only where it can be shown to be for their own good, or necessary to protect the public from a member of the community who would clearly be a danger to others if at liberty. In such cases, members of the community of equals must have the right to appeal, either directly or, if they lack the relevant capacity, through an advocate, to a judicial tribunal.
3. The Prohibition of Torture
The deliberate infliction of severe pain on a member of the community of equals, either wantonly or for alleged benefit to others, is regarded as torture, and is wrong”.43
Singer and Cavalieri argue that if we were to take seriously the logic of arguments against the project goal, which cite certain intelligence or communication capabilities as justification for the objectification of animals, we would have to concede that many nonhumans would be vulnerable to such objectification too. The project does not seek to integrate great apes into the “human kingdom” but rather provide them access to three human rights. In this regard, the authors are claiming that once the community of equals is inclusive of great apes it “will mean the recognition that the limits of our moral community should not run parallel to the boundary of our species” but rather, whether an individual possesses certain interests. In this sense, it is evident that the Great Ape Project understood moral equality as interchangeable with rights eligibility.
The Case Against Animal Rights
The case for animal rights has been made primarily by moral philosophers such as Singer and Regan. However, some moral philosophers have directly challenged them by arguing the case against animal rights. Jan Narveson presents one such influential case to the contrary by first challenging Regan’s
distinction between moral agents and moral patients. On the one hand, moral agents are those who are capable of acting in light of moral requirements and considerations. On the other hand, moral patients are those who are affected by the actions of moral agents responding to such considerations, and so conforming to the requirements of morality. Most humans are moral agents, and almost all animals are moral patients. Narveson asks what duties do moral agents have to moral patients, including “marginal humans”, such as “infants and the very feeble minded”, as well as animals? Narveson answers his own question by appealing to a conception of the “essence of morality” as rulefollowing: morality is a set of rules for everyone in the moral community and imposed by everyone. This immediately restricts the moral community to moral agents. Moral agents must be able to judge the rules of the moral community mutually beneficial so that they are all motivated to impose or enforce the rules, even if rule following proves inconvenient at times. In other words, rules must be acceptable to all moral agents by way of being mutually beneficial to them. By contrast, the rules need not also be “acceptable” to moral patients by way of being any “benefit” to them.
According to Narveson, rights are not based on the inherent value of individuals, whether human and animal, as Regan claimed. Instead, rights are functions of mutually beneficial transactions between moral agents. As moral patients, however, animals therefore have no rights. The transactions of most humans with almost all animals are “in a fundamental sense one way”.44 Not only is there insufficient communication with animals for mutual rulefollowing, but also “they may not have enough to offer us to make it a good deal from our point of view to modify our antecedent line of behaviour with respect to them” – say harvesting them for their meat. Hence, humans require some reason to modify such behavior. Narveson next contends human have a great but not vital interest in continuing using animals for food. At this point, however, he turns from his challenge to Regan to his challenge to Singer.
According to Singer, humans must demonstrate that they have a greater interest than the animals losing their lives in meat-production. Narveson denies this is so, given the one-sidedness of human transactions with animals. At most, humans have sentimental reasons to refrain from harvesting animals for their meat. In this respect, he appeals to a disanalogy with sentiment concerning marginal humans. He might find sentimental reasons to care for his own infant or imbecile, and he might find reason to conform with rules for refraining from harming the infants and imbeciles of other moral agents in the moral community of rule followers.
However, sentimental reasoning does not extend to cows, pigs, and swordfish. Neither is there any equivalent reason to conform with refraining from harvesting these animals demanded by the principle of mutual benefit between moral agents. At most, animals are owed considerations of welfare, ruling out wanton cruelty and sheer sadism toward them. This is a function of
“psychological transference” creating feelings of sympathy for their unnecessary suffering. Nevertheless, such transference is no basis for rights conceived by Narveson as mutually beneficial rule following restricted to human moral agents. Narveson’s case leaves some dangling questions: What about orphaned infants and imbeciles to whom no moral agents are sentimentally attached? Can they be harvested for their meat in the manner of Jonathan Swift’s satirical Modest Proposal? Even so, Narveson has proven influential in shaping opposition to animal rights.
Summary
This chapter has explored the potential and complexity of animal rights approaches as they were formed in 20th century America. Eligibility into the human “community of equals” is made available when an animal is deemed to have similar qualities to the “we” recognized by liberal humanist discourses and the restrictive criterion of who counts as a privileged subject (of rights, of humanity) remains intact. Contradictory grey zones were more common than not in theory and legal proposals alike, leading to confusion and distrust in the public arena while laying the animal rights movement open to an easy attack by critics.
Notes
1 When discussing law in this book, we are referring specifically to law in the United States from 1900 to 2000.
2 Ivison, Rights,1.
3 Ibid., 1.
4 Kennedy, “The Critique of Rights in Critical Legal Studies”.
5 Ivison, Rights, 1.
6 Favre, “Judicial Recognition of the Interests of Animals – a New Tort”, 334.
7 Ibid., 334.
8 Richard Ryder coined the term in DOI: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/ aug/06/animalwelfare
9 See Chapter 7 for how this shift has indeed begun to occur in the current century –particularly in the domains of political theory and the environmental humanities.
12 Jasper and Nelkin. The Animal Rights Crusade: the Growth of a Moral Protest, 177.
13 Singer, Animal Liberation, 243.
14 Ibid., 8.
15 However, his later work on The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity (discussed later in this chapter) certainly ventures into rights discourse.
16 Singer, Animal Liberation, 19.
17 Ibid., 19.
18 Ibid., 19.
19 Ibid., 161.
20 Ibid., 159.
21 Ibid., 160.
22 Regan, “The Case for Animal Rights”, 13.
23 Munro, “The Animal Rights Movement in Theory and Practice: A Review of the Sociological Literature”, 172.
24 See https://eugeneveg.org/pdf/Interviews/Interview-Tom_Regan.pdf
25 Regan, The Case for Animal Rights
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 Rowlands, Animal Rights, 118–119.
29 Regan, The Case for Animal Rights.
30 Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison.
31 Spiegel, “The Dreaded Comparison: Slavery and the Oppression of Animals Grew From the Same Unhealthy Root”, 1.
32 Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat.
33 Antonio, “Of Wolves and Women”.
34 See: https://www.nonhumanrights.org/
35 Wise, “Of Farm Animals and Justice”, 206.
36 Ibid., 35.
37 Goodall and Wise, “Why Chimpanzees are Entitled to Fundamental Legal Rights”.
38 Wise, Rattling the Cage: 49–51.
39 Cavalieri and Singer, “Preface”, 1–3.
40 Goodall, “Chimpanzees – Bridging the Gap”, 10–18.
41 Cavalieri and Singer, “Preface”, 1.
42 Ibid., 1.
43 Cavalieri and Singer, “A Declaration on Great Apes”, 4.
44 Narveson, Jan. “A Case Against Animal Rights”, 201.
2 STRATEGIES
Introduction
The goal of any social movement is to create lasting cultural change. In the animal rights movement, the change in question is that of ending the exploitation of animals. Activist groups attempt to bridge the distance between their intentions and accomplish their goal through numerous strategies. The character of these strategies varies considerably. For example, by legislation or public protests, either legal or illegal means, public education or public communication in news and social media concerning the suffering of animals, moral persuasion by rational arguments or provoking moral shock or outrage through graphic images of animal suffering, public pressure in confronting and even shaming animal abusers, appeals to the considerable influence and gravitas of celebrities in reshaping social mores, and so forth.
Strategies vary greatly according to how activists interpret the overarching goal of ending animal exploitation and how they choose to measure success. The motivation may be withdrawing from all uses of animals or animal products for human ends and purposes, or it may be accommodating some such uses as morally justifiable. Should an activist measure success in terms of abolishing the institutions and practices through which animals are exploited – stopping, once and for all, industrial food production in animals, sports, or even survival hunting or poaching? Or should they work toward piecemeal improvements in animals’ living conditions bound for slaughter, demanding ethical standards in hunting, consistent with wildlife conservation, etc.? These differences in approach may, in turn, reflect profound ideological or philosophical differences among activists.
On the one hand, activists may accept the justifiability of capitalism and the state, along with respect for the democratic rule of law and private
property rights. On the other hand, they may accept an anarchistic view of the justifiability of direct actions taken quite independently of the state. They may deny the legitimacy of the state’s legal sanctions or even democratically expressed public opinion when mired in speciesist sentiment and prejudice. Alternatively, differences in approach may be a function of activists responding to differences in context or circumstance, pragmatically assessing the art of the possible when confronted with local asymmetries of power between, say, wealthy corporations and poor communities. Hence, activists might aim pragmatically to gain a toehold with minimal opposition from powerful interests by campaigning, say, for a ballot initiative relating to egg farming in states with very few farms and many urban centers with progressive voters. Typically, animal rights strategies will include (1) gathering and selecting information, (2) communicating such information to a target audience, whether a specific target group or the general-public body of voters and consumers, (3) building this audience to maximize its influence on society, and (4) promoting some meaningful action for the audience to undertake to promote movement goals. Here the trick is to bring together these several components to either mitigate or eliminate the exploitation of animals: overcoming entrenched cultural norms, competing claims on people’s attention, and resistance to acknowledging previous wrongdoing by powerful corporate entities, individual voters, and consumers. This chapter catalogues some of the most effective strategies developed in the twentieth century, providing relevant examples.
Infiltration
Some form of infiltration might be required to gather information that is not common knowledge. Infiltration means entering or gaining access to an organization or place, usually surreptitiously to acquire secret information or cause damage. Infiltration might entail the Native American activist Rod Coronado taking a job at a Chinchilla Fur Farm to collect evidence of animal suffering and abuse hidden from the public gaze. Another such case in point is PETA’s Alex Pacheco, who infiltrated the Silver Springs Monkey facility as a volunteer.
However, it might also entail illegally entering some such a private facility, causing minor property damage such as breaking locks – to video and subsequently broadcast the exploited and abused animals’ plight. Here such infiltration tactics might fall within the remit of civil disobedience, breaking the law to publicize grave injustices, while accepting the legal consequences of resorting to illegality.1 Indeed, infiltration involves a strategic combination of deception and publicity. On the one hand, those infiltrating a facility –legally or illegally – intentionally deceive the employees and the managers of
