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Animal Rights/Vegan Activists' Strategies



One Struggle, One Light: Animal Liberation, Human Rights

From Lee Hall, VeganPlace
October 2024

As a principle, veganism holds that humans are one community among many, not the very point of Earth's existence. Vegans relinquish the human assumption that the Earth (or any other planet) is ours. Consider how this enriches the human experience. It calls for a truce with, and maybe even a sense of contribution to, life on Earth that could not be experienced otherwise.

animal-human-liberation
Photo source: Hladnikm (CC-BY-SA-4.0).

While millions of people seek food aid, we feed billions of farm animals.

Fish, dairy, meat and egg products take a huge toll on the planetary systems that sustain our lives.

Let's be clear. We’re talking about all of animal agribusiness, not just factory farming.

The local, family-run farm betrays animals who trust their keepers. It exploits resources that could sustain hungry and thirsty humans. Its waste is largely unregulated simply because small farms (which are many, in the aggregate) slip through the cracks of federal environmental law. The development of local animal farms is a form of sprawl, no less than roadside malls and mini-marts. And animal farming involves the selective breeding, the purpose-breeding, of members of other living communities.

There is no fair animal farming business.

Nor is animal ag conducive to social fairness among human beings. Animal ag on every scale contains gruesome work. While we don't want to see how the sausage is made, someone has to make it for so long we demand it. Those in the supply chain work long hours; some are migrants, housed in dorms to be ever-available.

Save for a handful of animal refuges, all animal farms sentence their nonhuman residents to death at some point. And that means some humans experience the repetitive and ghastly trauma of the killing floors. A more privileged class need never witness the sausage being made [The Jungle by Upton Sinclair].

Veganism responds to urgent food security and social justice needs. If it can't solve world hunger, at least it can drastically reduce it. And in a time of global climate breakdown, high-protein, drought-resistant pulses such as lentils are making a comeback [How the lentil was tamed – and helped human societies thrive].

As a principle, veganism holds that humans are one community among many, not the very point of Earth’s existence. Vegans relinquish the human assumption that the Earth (or any other planet) is ours. Consider how this enriches the human experience. It calls for a truce with, and maybe even a sense of contribution to, life on Earth that could not be experienced otherwise.

And here I'm getting into Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s urge to "go to the root of the trouble." Jeffrey says:

I believe the single most dangerous idea of the human community is pseudospeciation—the belief that we are superior. This leads to depersonalization of “other” cultural groups within humanity, as it mimics our notion of dominion over all nonhuman life on the planet. If sustained any longer, it will surely undo us and much of the living world. How long can we cling to our illusory feeling of control that has already fashioned hominids into the most destructive presence the Earth has known? Yet there is hope; we do have the mental power to decide on the side of respect rather than exploitation. The point is to strive. The path ahead might not always look the same to you, to Lee, or to me as we contemplate this shared journey.

After noting the pain involved in acknowledging domestication as exploitation, Jeffrey says: "I would go even further: I would claim that humanity's original sin lies in the domestication of animals."


Posted on All-Creatures.org: October 7, 2024
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