Like any social-justice movement, the struggle to advance the interests of animals has its share of detractors. The most vocal of these critics come from animal enterprises such as factory farms, labs, puppy mills, circuses and other industries that exploit animals for profit. And, of course, there’s a segment of the population ― sport hunters and those who believe they have a “right” to eat animals, for example ― that enjoys blogging about their affinity for cruelty.
But there are some within the animal-protection movement itself who criticize the methods other individuals and organizations use to advocate for animals. Chief among these cynics’ targets are Farm Sanctuary, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Those who disparage these nonprofits argue that they have sold out to animal agriculture and non-vegetarian businesses by cooperating with them. Here’s one example: Following pressure from Farm Sanctuary, HSUS and PETA, Smithfield Foods — the world’s largest pork producer — announced in 2007 that it would begin phasing out cruel gestation crates on all its company-owned farms. While many lauded this as step forward for animals, one longtime critic of animal-welfare campaigns decried it as a “sad defeat for nonhumans” and cynically labeled it a fundraising ploy.
Although I agree with those who argue that “humane meat” is oxymoronic, I believe that while we promote the benefits of veganism, we owe it to farmed animals to fight for every bit of humane treatment we can win for them as soon as we can. I understand there are those who think this position only benefits animal exploiters; yet, if that were the case, you would expect agribusiness and fast-food chains to be thanking animal advocates.
Let’s consider some of the comments from agribiz. Corporate farmers across the U.S. have their collective knickers in a twist in the wake of California’s Proposition 2 ― which, in case you’ve been meditating in a cave for the last year, will make it a crime to confine hens in battery cages, pigs in gestation crates and calves in veal crates and was primarily sponsored by HSUS and Farm Sanctuary. As Bryan Black, president of the National Pork Producers Council, put it: “It is regrettable that animal rights groups were successful in vilifying hardworking, honest farmers and ranchers who treat their animals humanely and provide them with a healthful and safe environment in which to grow.”
More to the point was Steve Kopperud, senior vice president of Policy Directions, Inc., which lobbies on behalf of agribusiness. Kopperud told attendees at a farm forum in Ohio this month: “The Humane Society of the United States say they aren’t pushing for a vegan society; however, if you cut the crap you’ll find they are in a PETA-kind of agenda. If you think you can sit down with an animal rights group and give them something and they go away, you are absolutely insane.”
Doesn’t exactly sound like they consider HSUS or PETA to be helping them, does it? In fact, Kopperud and many others declare animal rights organizations to be the biggest threat to their way of making a buck: raising and slaughtering animals for food.
And these complaints go back well before Prop 2. In its 2006 outlook report, Poultry Times quoted United Egg Producer President Al Pope (since retired), who noted that at a recent convention, an HSUS official stated that “its goal was to ELIMINATE the poultry industry.” The report goes on with more of Pope’s concerns: “Activists’ actions force the industry to add substantial costs to producing its product. Higher prices affect the customer’s willingness to purchase as we compete with other protein products. Long-term this issue has the potential of greatly impacting the demand and thus the economic well-being of the industry. It is imperative that animal agriculture look beyond 2007 and recognize ‘WE ARE AT WAR.’”
Gene Gregory, now president and CEO of United Egg Producers, used similar rhetoric three years ago in an Egg Industry Magazine article. “I’m afraid we’re losing the battle,” he said. The article described Gregory’s struggle “to compete with the budget of $100 million that the Humane Society of the United States has, and it’s relatively easy for the Humane Society to recruit members on college campuses…. [Gregory] also thinks that when universities go cage-free, it means egg consumption declines because total costs go up and that translates into fewer eggs that end up on student plates.”
In contrast to the grumbling from Big Ag, which is vociferous and frequent, you don’t hear much from fast-food companies, even though Burger King, Carl’s Jr., KFC, McDonald’s and Wendy’s have all been targets of campaigns encouraging them to adopt policies that reduce cruelty to animals (usually by sourcing from suppliers with higher welfare standards, such as not keeping laying hens in crowded cages, or that slaughter animals using methods that minimize suffering, such as controlled-atmosphere killing). That’s not to say these restaurant chains don’t have their gripes against animal activists ― not by a long shot. They just let front groups like the ironically named Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) do the griping for them. You’d be hard-pressed to find many purveyors of hamburgers or chicken nuggets complaining in public about PETA, Farm Sanctuary or HSUS. It’s much easier for them to support CCF, infamous for fighting consumers’ right to have nutrition labels in restaurants and maintaining that humans must eat animal flesh to be healthy. CCF has complained about PETA offering anti-meat and anti-dairy “propaganda” to children, has called Farm Sanctuary’s Adopt-a-Turkey project “a farce” and continues to criticize efforts by HSUS to outlaw cruel agricultural practices, to name but a few examples. (As a paid lobbyist for tobacco, alcohol, meat, soft drink and fast-food interests, CCF is likely to attack anyone who criticizes their clients’ products.)
Animal rights organizations are also putting pressure on corporations by owning stock in the company. PETA, for example, which currently owns 478 shares of Smithfield Foods stock, recently submitted a shareholder resolution calling on the company to publicly disclose a timeline for fulfilling its promise to phase out gestation crates, and McDonald’s shareholders will soon be asked to vote on HSUS’ resolution urging the chain to begin switching to cage-free eggs.
It is not my contention that the tactics and campaigns of Farm Sanctuary, HSUS and PETA are always right. They have their share of misses just like any organization. But when animal exploiters or those paid to shill for them are raising the battle cry against animal advocates, I know we’ve got them on the run. Their vitriol is a signal that we ― the individual activist and nonprofit group alike ― are impacting their bottom line and making a difference for animals.
I love how Steve Kopperud, the trusted advisor to factory farms, characterizes the situation. Warning his Ohio farm forum audience about the reforms animal-protection organizations are working on, he said: “This is a collective threat. If all of the Ohio agricultural community does not sit down and figure out a collective way to stop this right now, you will all wind up as crop producers.”
And that’s supposed to be a bad thing?
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March 20, 2009 at 11:59 am
Sleeping with the Enemy? | Vegan.com
[…] are in bed with the enemy, it’s for the purpose of giving the industry an incurable disease. Link. Spread the […]
March 20, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Ari
Great piece! I’ve come across a few people in the animal rights movement who consider themselves “abolitionists” and were against Prop 2 because they thought that it somehow legitimized the consumption of eggs, pork, and veal. Now, I’m vegan and want nothing short of animal liberation — the whole idea of “happy meat” seems absurd to me. But, I would never stand against legislation that helped alleviate animal suffering.
The fact is that while I continue to do vegan outreach, I recognize that not everyone is going vegan overnight. As with any social justice movement, you don’t get from A to Z without B,C,D… and the rest of the steps in between. While animal activists can sit in comfort and bicker over our philosophies there are billions of animals out there being tortured and slaughtered every minute. ANYTHING that moves us towards a more compassionate reality for them I’ll support while of course still pushing forward towards a world where animals are no longer exploited.
One of the things that upsets me the most about the animal rights movement is all the in fighting. It’s bullshit. We’re all people, we all make mistakes. We may have different ideas on how to get there but we’re all working towards the same goal pretty much. Farm Sanctuary, HSUS, and PETA are all taking very different paths but ultimately I believe their destination is the same.
March 20, 2009 at 12:16 pm
mhawthorne
Actually, Ari, I think you said it better than I did! Thanks.
March 21, 2009 at 12:24 am
Topics about Animals » Archive » Are Animal Advocates Sleeping with the Enemy? « Striking at the Roots
[…] mhawthorne placed an observative post today on Are Animal Advocates Sleeping with the Enemy? « Striking at the RootsHere’s a quick excerptAnimal activism around the world. … While many lauded this as step forward for animals, one longtime critic of animal-welfare campaigns decried it as a “sad defeat for nonhumans” and cynically labeled it a fundraising ploy. … […]
March 21, 2009 at 3:22 pm
mathomas
It’s interesting how animal agribusiness typically characterizes mainstream groups like Farm Sanctuary & HSUS as “radical,” and yet self-defined animal abolitionists say these same groups are selling out the animals — too often leaving us reform supporters smack in the middle of a maelstrom. Like Ari (see previous comment) I am extremely frustrated that there is so much infighting within the animal protection movement — especially between “abolitionists” and “pragmatists.” As a journalist, I have tried my best to respect both philosophies by presenting both perspectives, but of course no good deed goes unpunished, and I have sometimes, sadly, even been subjected to calls of censorship simply for trying to be fair and balanced (see http://ananimalfriendlylife.com/2008/05/abolitionists-fringe-or-core.html for an example).
I am not the first to observe that the animal protection movement is a lot like the different political factions skewered in Monty Python’s “Life of Brian.” That is, despite a shared goal, the People’s Front of Judea would much rather fight with and obsessively separate itself from the Judean People’s Front than unite against the Roman Empire, getting caught up in meaningless minutia and semantics because that’s easier than facing the real enemy. So long as we animal advocates remain fundamentally divided into splinter cells, no matter how large and influential some may be, we cannot hope to bring down the system that exploits and kills billions of animals every year.
In order to find the common ground where we can effectively work together, animal activists of all stripes need to open their minds to each others’ views rather than reject, censor, suppress, and condemn others with different positions from our own. We need true democracy, in which people have the freedom to express themselves trusting that they will be heard instead of disrespectfully shouted down as though their opinion is not only useless, but harmful to the animals we’re trying to help. That includes writers like myself who are trying to give every deserving voice a chance to speak in the public forum of print journalism.
March 22, 2009 at 11:07 am
mhawthorne
Thank you for taking the time to post your thoughts, Mat. I know this is a sensitive topic in the AR community, and it’s good to talk about it. I too have been criticized by “abolitionists” for things I’ve written (including articles in VN). Until someone can give me proof that working for better treatment of non-human animals while concurrently promoting the benefits of veganism does NOT benefit animals, I will continue to follow my conscience and pursue both tactics.
March 22, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Impacting Their Bottom Line
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March 22, 2009 at 2:20 pm
mathomas
Actually Mark, the unfounded attack in this particular case came from Prop 2 proponent Bryan Pease, who accused me of “attacking progress” because I included a brief statement from an abolitionist (Lee Hall from Friends Of Animals) in my column on the ballot initiative (http://animalrighter.org/Taking_the_Initiative.html). While the column was unabashedly pro-Prop 2 and Hall’s statement accounted for a single paragraph in a 900-word essay, Pease erroneously accused me, in a letter published in VegNews magazine, of giving “equal weight…to statements by a fringe group opposing such bans.” He even charged me with “attacking progress” for daring to include the abolitionist perspective – supposedly to make myself, “the critic feel relevant.” Furthermore, Pease claimed that “Such negative views (i.e., abolitionism) are not widely shared in the animal protection movement and should not be portrayed as if they are to newer activists who can sometimes easily be pushed toward a counterproductive approach.”
I was deeply offended that Pease portrayed my inclusion of an alternative perspective as merely a way of making myself “feel relevant.” That is an absolutely ludicrous insult from a journalistic perspective, and on a personal level absolutely false. Pease apparently thinks newbie activists are so stupid and impressionable that they must be shielded from reality, and rather than learn to think for themselves should be coerced into blindly believing whatever the majority does. Worse yet was Pease’s statement that it was wrong of me to even include the abolitionist perspective: that I should not have given those animal activists a forum to be heard (this is what I referred to when I said I have “been subjected to calls of censorship”). By this distorted “logic,” the mass media should altogether ignore veganism and animal rights because the wider society at which it is aimed regards us as little more than a “fringe” movement undeserving of even the most minimal exposure.
As a journalist, my job is to provide readers with the information they need to understand the issues. In my particular case, I’m also an activist/advocate who uses journalism to promote animal protection, and often my own biases about how best the movement can do this come out in the subjects I choose and the way I write about them. That was certainly the case with my column on Prop 2, which I strongly supported. Many of my friends were coordinators and signature gatherers for the campaign, and I saw writing the column as my way of making a contribution to the effort by informing people about the initiative and encouraging them to get involved in the volunteer push to put it on the ballot.
In order to be effective activists, our understanding of the issues must continually evolve, and engaging in an ongoing process of challenging our preconceptions ultimately improves our effectiveness by either strengthening our existing beliefs or altering our perceptions to align with a newly-perceived complexity. We must also be secure enough in our convictions to be able to incorporate new facts and experiences, and welcome new ideas into our way of thinking. Calling for restrictions on freedom of speech and the press subverts this essential and invaluable process.
I therefore wholly welcome accurate and legitimate criticism of my work based on reasoned and respectful feedback (such as the abolitionist critique http://ananimalfriendlylife.com/2008/05/abolitionists-fringe-or-core.html that I mentioned in my previous post). What bugs me is when people distort and misrepresent my writing as something that it clearly is not – which is what Pease did so publicly. However, this experience did strengthen my commitment to challenging readers’ expectations and honoring the minority opinion, because the number of people who hold a belief does not necessarily determine that particular belief’s objective validity or usefulness.
Mat Thomas
http://www.animalrighter.org
March 22, 2009 at 4:35 pm
easyVegan.info » Blog Archive » easyVegan Link Sanctuary, 2009-03-22
[…] Striking at the Roots: Are Animal Advocates Sleeping with the Enemy? […]
May 11, 2009 at 11:19 am
The Not-So-Big Picture « Striking at the Roots
[…] you wonder how effective animal advocacy is, one of the best barometers is animal agribusiness, which gets downright apoplectic when asked about animal activism. Big Ag’s attitude may be best […]
May 17, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Emily
Hi Mark!
I just had to tell you how much I LOVE your post here! What a great balanced examination of the issues — I can’t tell you how much flak I get for writing about improving egg-laying conditions. 🙂
May 19, 2009 at 3:10 pm
mhawthorne
Hi, Emily. Thanks very much for your remarks. Yes, this is a big issue a lot of activists struggle with. Glad you liked the post!