On PETA’s Definition of Animal Rights

When I say "animal rights," I’m thinking about working toward the day when nonhuman animals have one right and one right only: the right to not be the property of another. After all, once you’re someone’s property, they may use you as they wish, and sell you for parts if that’s what makes them happy. If a cow is not my property, I have no right to take away her reproductive control and basically have her raped at my whim to produce milk and children, whom I will then prepare to be made into a "delicacy," like veal, fatten for slaughter, or keep for milk production.

As I frequently discuss, when your argument for animal rights is that we shouldn’t use animals because the cruelty involved, you open the door for the exploiter to decrease cruelty. You have no choice but to say, "that’s better," as less suffering is always better than more suffering. You’re then stuck in a position where you’re praising an abuser. This is precisely the position People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is in (and many other groups are in the same boat, to be fair). I use PETA as the example here because Bruce Friedrich, PETA’s vice president in charge of international grassroots campaigns, recently posted a blog entry on The Huffington Post called "Humane Meat: A Contradiction in Terms," which underscores the contradiction that arises as a result of making your argument about cruelty rather than use.

Let’s deconstruct:

• "[R]outine farming practices are so abusive that they would warrant felony animal cruelty charges were they done to cats or dogs." True (although warranting charges is far different from getting convicted and imprisoned or subject to a stiff fine). And I’m glad he leads with that given the uproar over Michael Vick and dogfighting.
• "[H]ow ethical is it to pay someone to do things that are wholly unnecessary and too atrocious to watch?" This is with regard to slaughtering animals, and it’s a great question. Paying someone to slaughter a nonhuman animal puts blood all over your hands. There’s no ethical dilemma there. It’s unethical. Period.
• "We have no nutritional need for meat, eggs or milk." Unless you’re Nina Planck, I guess. Apparently she’s got some special needs.
• "Eating meat means, quite literally, eating a corpse." This is an especially effective way to frame meat-eating. I’m a fan.
• Nonhuman animals "are more like us than they are different." Again, great point that many people don’t understand.
• Various super smart, famous people were vegetarians and advocated vegetarianism for moral reasons (Einstein and Tolstoy are mentioned).
• Vegetarians influence others to go veg and save the lives of scores of animals with that choice.
• When you see someone eating "humane meat," you simply see a meat-eater. Brilliant, Bruce, you could be my new favorite person!

Ah, but then the fateful paragraph where it all goes terribly, terribly wrong. So wrong, in fact, that I feel it necessary to post it in its entirety.

I want to be clear that, as I’ve argued before, working for improved living and dying conditions for farmed animals is a critical element in the animal rights movement, and I spend a large portion of my time, day in and day out, working to change the way animals are raised and slaughtered. Victories like the banning of gestation crates in Oregon, Arizona, and Florida are real victories for animals. Burger King’s decision to give preferential option to chicken plants that slaughter animals in a controlled atmosphere is praiseworthy, and Whole Foods’ commitment to real change for farmed animals should be celebrated. We can’t just ignore their suffering, as people who care about animals. And of course, eating meat from animals who are not gratuitously abused is better than eating meat from animals who are.

I don’t think there’s universal agreement that "working to improve the living and dying conditions of farmed animals is a critical element in the animal rights movement." It’s a critical element for PETA. Some of us don’t praise Burger King for controlled atmosphere killing. We want them to stop killing. The reason I don’t praise Burger King is that its decision will make people feel better about paying someone to kill for them. That’s what these minor welfare improvements do: They make it easier for people to do something unethical, simply because some part of the process is now "less cruel." Better.

Nevertheless, Friedrich then says that "for individuals who care about cruelty, vegetarianism is the only choice. Vegetarianism makes a statement against oppression at every meal." I love that, and I’m certain he means it, but it doesn’t resonate with me coming from him after the paragraph above.  He has lost credibility in my mind.

There are dozens of comments after the post, including one that mentions Peaceful Prairie, one that mentions Gary Francione, and one that mentions Peaceable Kingdom. Friedrich points to an article with him and Peter Singer to defend himself at one point, and he clearly is convinced that improvements in welfare will lead to more people becoming vegetarians. I’m not. There’s some interesting discussion going on, and of course, there are always people who will write things like: "I’m no farmer, but I’m pretty sure you don’t have to kill your chickens to eat their eggs or cows to drink their milk." (That gem is thanks to Curedlib, whose other comments, political and otherwise, are often quite frightening.)

Michael Prejean is probably toughest on Friedrich so far (thank heaven, somebody was, and it seems the tide may be turning against him) with a comment beginning:  "Hey Bruce: How do you feel about your co-author’s rape of turkeys?" (referring to Singer and Mason in The Way We Eat). Zzing!

Jump in the conversation (I did!), and be kind. So far it’s dominated by happy meaters. But then again, that’s probably correct in its proportion. Maybe we can convert a couple!