Gary Francione, Esq.,
Animal Rights:
The Abolitionist Approach
February 2017
We express outrage about the chicks in Crowland, but, by virtue of being consumers of eggs, chickens, and other animals, we support practices that lead to the same conclusion: the very same vulnerable beings are killed. There are no two ways around it: our position is palpably confused.
The best justification we have for killing 60 billion land animals, and an estimated one trillion sea animals, for food is that they taste good.
The BBC reported that someone dumped about 1800 chicks in a field in Crowland, near Peterborough, in the United Kingdom. The chicks were killed because they were found close to an avian flu exclusion zone.
Photo: RSPCA/BBC
The RSPCA, which is investigating, believes that the chicks belonged to a
commercial chicken producer and were abandoned by a third party who received
them from a “rogue” employee of the chicken producer. The RSPCA
investigator, echoing considerable public outrage about this matter, stated:
“For someone to dump these vulnerable chicks is unbelievable,” adding “I
would consider this to be one of the most callous acts I have come across in
20 years with the RSPCA.”
But the British egg industry routinely kills millions of chicks per year.
Males cannot lay eggs so they are usually gassed but may be “macerated,” or
ground up. The RSPCA approves of both methods of killing the very same
vulnerable creatures left to die in Crowland. And the RSPCA actively
encourages people to eat chickens (and other animals).
How does this make sense?
The answer is that it doesn’t. We express outrage about the chicks in
Crowland, but, by virtue of being consumers of eggs, chickens, and other
animals, we support practices that lead to the same conclusion: the very
same vulnerable beings are killed. There are no two ways around it: our
position is palpably confused.
Is our conventional wisdom about our moral obligations to animals unable to
provide greater clarity and moral guidance in such situations?
First, we need to identify what our conventional wisdom about animals is. We
would submit that it is encompassed in a simple, uncontroversial single
principle: that it is wrong to inflict unnecessary suffering on animals.
That is, most people believe that animals have some moral value but have
less value than humans, so, in a conflict between humans and animals,
animals lose.
We need to think with a bit more clarity about what it is we say we believe.
When is Harming Animals Necessary?
What do we mean by our conventional wisdom, which says that we can use and
kill animals when it is necessary to do so? What is the meaning of
“necessary”?
Whatever satisfies the criterion of necessity, what most certainly cannot
satisfy it is pleasure, amusement, or convenience. That is, we need a real
conflict between humans and animals—some sort of compulsion that
necessitates our harming animals. If we interpret necessity to include
situations where our supposed “conflict” is that we will be deprived of some
pleasure or amusement, or we will be inconvenienced, then there is no
limiting principle. Our conventional moral thinking about animals would be
useless.
This is why many people oppose purely sporting activities, such as bull
fighting, dog fighting, and fox hunting. The problem is that our most
numerically significant use of animals—for food—has no more claim of
necessity than the use of animals for bullfighting.
People used to believe that eating meat, dairy, and eggs was necessary for
human health. But for many years now, the National Health Service, the
British Nutrition Foundation, and the British Dietetic Association, as well
as similar organizations in the United States and other countries, have
maintained that a balanced vegan diet of vegetables, grains, fruits, and
nuts, and foods made therefrom, is perfectly healthy. Increasingly,
mainstream health professionals are claiming that animal foods are actually
detrimental for human health. But that is beside the point. No one maintains
that it is necessary to consume animal products.
The best justification we have for killing 60 billion land animals, and an
estimated one trillion sea animals, for food is that they taste good.
Animal agriculture is not only morally problematic because it involves
imposing unnecessary harm on animals, it is also an ecological disaster,
responsible for pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than all
of the burning of fossil fuels for transport, and for soil depletion, water
pollution, deforestation, and a host of other ecological ills.
If it is not necessary to kill and eat animals for food, then all of the
suffering and death incidental to this use is, by definition, unnecessary.
And our conventional wisdom must rule it out. Otherwise, our conventional
wisdom means only that we should not impose more suffering than is necessary
given uses that are wholly unnecessary in the first place. Surely, our
conventional wisdom goes beyond prohibiting what is purely gratuitous harm
to animals.
Back to the Crowland Chicks
The two of us promote the idea that animals have moral rights. But we
recognize that most people do not agree with our position. However, it is
not necessary to embrace an animal rights position to see where our
conventional wisdom should lead: When we are starving on the desert island,
or adrift in a lifeboat, there is necessity; there is compulsion.
Conventional wisdom would hold that eating an animal in that circumstance is
morally acceptable.
If, however, we are not on a desert island or in a lifeboat, and there is no
real necessity or compulsion to kill or to pay someone else to kill, our
conventional wisdom should lead us to adopt a plant-based diet. The same
moral outrage that leads us to reject the victimization of the chicks
abandoned in Crowland should lead us to recognize that we should not be
killing those very same vulnerable creatures as part of the egg industry.
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If you are not vegan, please go vegan. Veganism is about nonviolence. First
and foremost, it’s about nonviolence to other sentient beings. But it’s also
about nonviolence to the earth and nonviolence to yourself.
If animals matter morally, veganism is not an option — it is a necessity.
Anything that claims to be an animal rights movement must make clear that
veganism is a moral imperative.
Embracing veganism as a moral imperative and advocating for veganism as a
moral imperative are, along with caring for nonhuman refugees, the most
important acts of activism that you can undertake.
Number of animals killed in the world by the fishing, meat, dairy and egg industries, since you opened this webpage.
0 marine animals
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0 dogs
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0 donkeys and mules
0 camels / camelids