More on Vick’s Dogs, China and Property Damage
I snapped this little guy at 4am. He uses the jade buttons like a hammock, draping himself between them and securing himself by wrapping his tail once around the thinnest part of one. That’s a spider’s silk thread on the left–not a scratch.
The combo grande for today begins with an article and slide show in today’s New York Times called "Given Reprieve, NFL Star’s Dogs Find Kindness." There are no revelations, but it’s nice to see the dogs getting a second chance with people dedicated to their rehabilitation and happiness.
Next, I was reading an article from December of 2006 about the Olympics and how all of the food and ingredients that will be prepared in the Olympic kitchens will first be fed to white mice to see if there are any adverse reactions. The article is called "Olympics to Showcase Growing Chinese Animal Testing Industry" and it got me thinking about sabotage and property damage.
Here’s my concern: Huntingdon Life Sciences, Covance and the rest move their operations (or simply outsource) to China and other countries with more lax regulations, where the animals could actually have worse lives than they do now.
Oh wait, it’s already happening.
PeTA’s plan to deal with this is shareholder activism, of which I’m a fan. If you can get enough numbers on your side and work within the system, it can work. But that’s a big "if," it’s time consuming and expensive, and it could very well fail as it faces huge opposition.
PETA introduced shareholders’ resolutions at the Eli Lilly and Pfizer 2006 annual meetings, asking the companies to "justify why [they are] increasingly exporting animal testing to countries with no or poor animal welfare standards." PETA further asked Eli Lilly and Pfizer to "assure stockholders that these overseas labs are, at the very least, complying with animal welfare standards mandated by the U.S. government."
Naturally, none of that gets the animals out of the labs. What’s the solution, then? For me, rather than purchase shares of a company I despise in an attempt to alter its policies, I’d like to support companies that are developing alternatives, including companies researching embryonic stem cells.
What do you think? Do you think direct action (sabotage and property damage) could make things worse for animals because more companies will go overseas, thereby putting the animals in even more danger? Would you rather give money to the ALF, or to a company creating alternatives (or to one that sells them, such as Digital Frog)? Or maybe neither one. Maybe you have another strategy. Maybe you don’t think money is going to change anything, no matter where it’s directed.
What are your thoughts?
As with attempting to legally regulate exploitative industries, attempting to slow them down with property damage, seems to generate so many "BUT WHAT IF.."s, unknowns, and other questions about what kind of agency we really have using those strategies. Not to mention where they actually lead, and how the public and individuals interpret those strategies. Regulation reifies property status, and property damage can be distractive. I would rather put all that aside, and focus on promoting the dedication to rejecting instrumentalist thinking (and the lifestyle thereby entailed), which is veganism. It is a guaranteed win, with far fewer unknowns and surrounding questions.
Those are my thoughts.
I doubt that most animal experimentation would be outsourced because:
(1) Experimenters want to keep their jobs and have the political power to do so because of their high socioeconomic status.
(2) Outsourced animal testing would likely be seen as less credible to the public.
On the second question:
If we believe the lives of each and every individual animal matters, we should not denigrate actions that liberate animals and destroy the objects (whether tools or buildings) that are used to inflict and hide atrocities. Regardless of potential negative consequences, each life saved is a victory. If the aboveground movement (all of us) would unite in support of nonviolent direct action, it would do much to combat the negative PR from the media and industry and would be the animal exploiters worst nightmare.
"I doubt that most animal experimentation would be outsourced because:
(1) Experimenters want to keep their jobs and have the political power to do so because of their high socioeconomic status.
(2) Outsourced animal testing would likely be seen as less credible to the public."
Are you just making this stuff up? Animal testing is already being outsourced—and what makes you think the public cares? People obviously don't care about anything having to do with China, unless it affects them directly.
"Regardless of potential negative consequences, each life saved is a victory."
This makes no sense either. The "potential negative consequences" to which you speak could entail more animal lives lost, in myriad ways. There's no "life saved," and no "victory," either.
I am not going to pretend like I have all of the answers either; however, the kind of "non violent direct action" you describe here only further perpetuates the idea that activists/animal rights anything is outrageously out of touch with society and the world at large. We need to present a different way of viewing animals, period, before we attempt to liberate them all from the labs; let's face it, most people in the world (a VAST majority?) don't view animals as having any inherent value. I think so called vegan education is going to go much further, faster, in changing the world than attempting to rescue every tormented, suffering animal. Of course, the tendency–maybe it's a human need?–is to want to help in some tangible way, but most of this nonviolent action rhetoric seems terribly misguided at best. At worst, the animals are going to suffer more.