PETA and KFC-Canada -- Gary L. Francione`s take on it

The PETA / KFC-Canada story has generated a lot of discussion in veg*an circles over the internet this past week. I've gotten involved in a few of them, myself, and have been surprised at how divisive the rights vs. welfarism issue has become. Criticizing /praising PETA has also become a divisive issue within veg circles (which I won't get into today, although I'd like to write about it and about the love / hate veg*ans have for PETA at a later date). Anyway, I just wanted to post this link to my favourite animal rights philosopher, legal scholar Gary L. Francione's take on the whole PETA / KFC-Canada happenings, since I think he makes a really sound case for why it's all just been one big ol' publicity coup for KFC-Canada and why PETA's work here is far from a step forward, but is instead several steps backward for the animals in question.

Taylor Clark's ''Meatless Like Me'' and some ramblings on it

Tricia Woolfendon from The Grand Rapids Press' MLive.com wrote a short opinion piece about vegetarianism in response to Taylor Clark's recent piece for Slate called ''Meatless Like Me''. (Actually, if you do a line count, around a third of her piece is actually just a quote from Clark's.)

Woolfendon agrees with Clark's point that vegetarians don't really judge meat-eaters for eating meat. I agree with this to a limited extent. I mean, I don't see how most vegetarians or vegans could walk around in the world, otherwise. All of us are parts of social networks -- friends, family, coworkers, et al. -- that consist mostly of people who consume an omnivorous diet, and regardless of this, we love and like them for the sum of the individuals they are. We deal with it every single day and it's the status quo; that being said, it doesn't mean that we have to like that it's the status quo, or that we should even resign ourselves to it. And it shouldn't have to mean that not liking it or not resigning ourselves to it makes us ''bad'' vegetarians and vegans. It's especially disheartening to me to see vegetarians judging and shaming other vegetarians for having ethical convictions and for not pretending that they don't process and filter life around them (to a certain extent) according to what they value.

Woolfendon also takes it further by saying that she doesn't really care what meat-eaters consume. I think that anyone with real ethical concerns about animal consumption, whether willing to admit it or not, does indeed care about the big picture. We do wish that people would minimize their meat consumption. Less meat consumed means less animals spending lives of suffering until they're slaughtered; less meat consumed means less water and cropland wasted, and less havoc wreaked on our environment. And when it comes to family members, whose health and longevity we cherish, less meat consumed means lower cholesterol, lower rates of obesity and less cancer. You don't have to be preachy to care, and not being preachy doesn't mean that you don't care; not judging does not equate not caring. And although Woolfendon may think that bringing this out in the open (see her link to PETA's factsheets) means you're wagging a finger at others, it doesn't; it just means that you're stating facts. When PCRM publishes an article about the negative health effects of eating meat, they're not judging; they're reporting findings from scientific studies.

Woolfendon does take issue with Clark's assertion that vegetarians '''know' that meat tastes good''. I second Woolfendon's exception to that. I get this from one of my well-meaning omni friends all the time -- her voice takes on a complicit purr and she tries to elicit a confession out of me that surely I must have overpowering memories of the mesmerizing deliciousness of this or that piece of meat and that I just don't want to admit it. The thing is that I really don't. Many vegetarians or vegans find the very sight or smell of meat repulsive, just by virtue of having come to terms with the realization of what's done to animals to serve them up on a plate. It's called association. (And even Clark ends up touching upon this in his Slate article, mentioning how certain types of meat have become gross to him after years of vegetarianism; he only does so, however, after overstating his visceral attachment to the smell and taste of bacon.)

Clark brings up the existence of so many meat analogs on the market as some sort of proof that other vegetarians also crave the taste of meat. Sure, there are a lot of fake meat products on the market, but the thing is that there are actually a lot of non-vegetarians buying them, too. For instance, I have friends who feed their kids soy-dogs rather than meat-based hot-dogs, because of the sodium, preservatives and fat content of the meat-based ones. I try to avoid meat analogs, since although some of them are nicely fortified with vitamins and minerals (like B12), most seem to be high in sodium and are often made using GMO soy. I ate more of them while living with my omni spouse (who adored them).

Woolfendon ends her article echoing Clark's call to chefs everywhere to provide more inventive (i.e. vegetarian dishes in restaurants that are more than leafy greens on a plate). I have to say that over the past couple of years, I've found more and more places -- even a lot of the local pubs in my small city -- offering a wider diversity of vegetarian options. It's not uncommon to find grilled or raw vegetable wraps, pasta dishes, stir fries or veggie-burgers anymore. Interest in meat-free products is on the rise in the mainstream, and this is being reflected in restaurant options. Vegan options are still a dismally altogether different story, however...

With regards to Clark's article itself, I was glad to see him address the issue with folks who refer to themselves as vegetarians, although they still eat fish or chicken. He points out -- and rightly so -- that ''unless we're talking about the kind of salmon that comes freshly plucked from the vine, this makes you an omnivore''. On the other hand, I was disappointed that he chose to marginalize vegans, limiting what he says about them to: ''they call themselves vegan, which rhymes with 'tree men' These people are intense.'' It's funny how an article that seems to diminish perceived differences between vegetarians and non-vegetarians would segregate one type of vegetarians in that manner.

The overall tone of the article seems almost apologetic. ''Hey guys, I'm just like you -- I even wear leather shoes! See?'' It's as if in purportedly attempting to demystify the relationship between vegetarians and non-vegetarians, Clark also attempts to portray an image of vegetarians as being indistinct from non-vegetarians, and although in most ways they are, I think that in some significant and more weighty ways -- the underlying reasons to what's on their respective plates -- they aren't. And although blurring that over may make dinner conversation a bit more light, it leaves me with a sense that the only good vegetarian is a closet vegetarian, or a vegetarian who shuts up and keeps his vegetarianism to himself, and I'm certain that won't benefit any cow or pig destined for the slaughterhouse in the long run and in a sense, I feel it's being a bit hypocritical in how one presents oneself to the world. As a lovely vegan friend once said to me when I'd mentioned my reluctance to out myself at work: ''There's no shame in being a vegetarian!'' I'm pretty well sure that lecturing and proselytizing aren't the way to go, but I'm even more sure that pretending that one's reasons for becoming a vegetarian should be kept private under fear of social ostracism. I think there's important gray area that should be explored when it comes to how we walk around in the world as vegetarians or vegans, without shame or fear of reprisal and least of all, fear or reprisal from your fellow vegetarians. And I can't help but feel an underlying sense of that from both of these aforementioned articles. Just a whiff of it...

Stereotypes, misinformation and Happy Meat

It's curious how just in the past two days, the Ottawa Citizen's managed to provide two lifestyle articles promoting negative stereotypes of vegetarians and / or vegans and, with them, completely inaccurate opinions of the healthiness of vegetarianism.

Michael Murray's piece in Saturday's paper asserts that anytime he's ever been inside a vegetarian restaurant that ''everybody in those places looked unhealthy. Thin and anemic, they all appeared as if they'd been suffering the affects of a parasite'' and concludes that ''the avoidance of meat was in fact making these people sick''. Then he perpetuates the stereotype that all vegetarians and vegans are ''humourless'' and ''political'', that they're living ascetic existences and seeking ''equal rights with humans'' for non-human animals. Murray strikes me as being that sort of loud and obnoxious type who makes unbelievably tasteless jokes based on stereotypes at an office party, completely oblivious to the reactions around him, and then when told he's being rude, lewd or mean-spirited, would shrug and, even more loudly, exclaim ''What? You can't take a joke?!''.

In today's paper, Joanne Laucius presents meat eating as making a comeback, continuously referring to omnivorous humans as ''carnivores'' (which would mean that people subsist on meat alone, with no need for vegetables, fruit or grains -- see any food guide for proof to the contrary). She sets the tone by kicking off her article by referring to the ''dedicated and pallid vegan'' with whom she used to work and describes how she'd needle this coworker about her dietary choices. She spends most of the article talking about what she calls ethical meat eating, then brings up another example of the stereotypical sickly vegetarian by mentioning a born again meat fetishist (and self-proclaimed former on-again / off-again vegetarian) who's recently -- jumping on the latest trend -- written a book about happy meat (see Gary Francione's post about the expression and movement) and who states that when she eschews meat, ''she doesn't feel or look well''.

It's interesting for me (and very telling) to see how, in writing articles promoting the eating of animal flesh, the writers need to rely, at some level or another, on perpetuating the myth that not eating animals is unhealthy and somewhat freakish. As presenting this misinformation is needed to add weight to the argument that eating meat is and should be the norm.

Gary Francione's abolitionist theory

Gary L. Francione is Distinguished Professor of Law and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University School of Law-Newark and an author of several animal rights books (including Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement pictured in this post). I mentioned him briefly a few months ago. He is a proponent of abolitionism and in his work he examines how, in order to truly make some headway to reduce animal suffering, we need to destroy our view of animals as property -- i.e. to abolish the concept of our right to legally own them. He also argues that animal rights supporters need to set veganism as their moral baseline to avoid what he calls ''moral schizophrenia''.

Francione compares supporting animal rights while eating animal products to being against slavery while owning slaves. He also stresses that there is as much suffering in a bowl of ice cream as there is in a piece of steak (since animals raised for milk production are often kept in condition similar or even worse to those raised for their flesh, plus are kept longer before their production value is deemed worth of being sent off to slaughter). To claim to be an animal rights advocate while continuing to contribute to their suffering by eating their flesh or products (e.g. milk or eggs) because one enjoys their taste, therefore, would be illogical and even hypocritical.

Francione is an outspoken critic of animal welfarist groups, into which he also counts PETA. He argues that these groups have evolved into corporate-like entities and have become effective at merely making people more comfortable with consuming animal products (e.g. consuming eggs from hens kept in barns rather than battery cages, rather than considering not consuming the eggs so that how the hens are treated becomes a non-issue in the first place). Some members of the animal rights movement, as well as animal welfarists who advocate more moderate reforms, criticize Francione by calling him divisive and claiming that his position concerning animal welfare reforms only harms the animals in the end. In response to this, he asserts that large animal welfarist groups such as PETA as stifling dissent and discussion and creating a false dichotomy -- you either support moderate animal welfare reforms, or, you're against the animals!

In the following two-part interview with Claudette Vaughn of Abolitionist-Online, Francione discusses his abolitionist theory in greater detail, explaining why it's the only logical approach to ending the the suffering imposed on animals through our use of them for our own consumption.

Part I

Part II

After a long time spent a'mullin'...

I'm glad to put (the hot potato that was) 2007 behind me. And I think that I should get back on track with what I'd intended to do with this little nook of the web, which was to follow-through with urges and interests by fleshing them out a little in print.

For instance, something I intend to examine further in the New Year are the realities that initially led me to vegetarianism, and (subsequently) to the formal study of ethics. It's been a strange journey, meandering through the web of emotional support of some online vegetarian communities, as well as through the realm of academia where I've learned to throw together rational arguments that seem to fall flat in the muck of the "real" world where the status quo prevails over logic. I'll likely re-read this later and want to clarify or contextualize.

For now, I'd like to share some of what's caught my attention over the past year. Gary L. Francione is "Distinguished Professor of Law and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University School of Law-Newark. He's been an effective critic of animal welfare laws and a champion of what he calls the abolitionist approach to animal rights. I intend to explore his work in greater detail over the next while, and to use it as a springboard of sorts to suss out my own thoughts on the issue completely.

So? No sense in jumping into the animal welfare vs. animal rights debate without first providing a link to the slide-show presentation that is an intro to Francione's take on the abolitionist approach to animal rights. Please note that the slide-show in question contains images (and words!) that may disturb you into thinking out side of the box. Or just disturb you.