June 23rd, 2012 by Gary Smith

I purposefully chose a provocative title, so before you spend time formulating the hate mail in your head that you intend to send me, be patient and listen to my argument.

animal liberation: (noun) the freeing of animals from exploitation and cruel treatment by humans.

The main mission in the animal rights movement at present is towards creating more vegans. Sadly, this obsession has caused us to subordinate animal liberation. It has also created a mentality of “do whatever it takes” to make more vegans. This mentality has moved us away from the ethical/animal argument and more toward health, consumer lifestyle and environmentalism. This has created enormous compromises in the both the message and the outreach.

For instance, there is an inordinate amount of attention paid to celebrities who have gone “vegan” – meaning celebrities who have made a self-serving choice to eat plants. Very few of them ever mention their shift was due to animals or ethics. Not only are we countering a shallow culture with a shallow argument for why people need to support animal liberation, but we are bastardizing the philosophy of veganism. It is shocking to me how many vegans get upset when you point out that veganism encompasses food, clothing, entertainment, and vivisection – and that it is not a diet. What is so radical about using the term for the philosophy properly?

There is so much effort made to express what veganism is going to do for the person being reached out to, rather than what using animals actually does to animals. I see so much outreach about weight loss, reversing or preventing diabetes, heart disease, cancers, clearing up your skin, silkier hair, vegan cupcakes, how delicious the food is. What does any of that have to do with animal liberation? Veganism is not concerned with your health or your skin. Veganism is concerned with the rights of animals to be viewed as persons and members of the moral community, not as objects to be used for greed, taste and entertainment. The meaning has not changed since 1944, when Vegan Society co-founder Donald Watson coined the term “vegan” to mean “a way of living which excludes all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, the animal kingdom,” as well as stating it is “not so much about welfare [of animals] as liberation.”

Then there’s the outreach focused around “humane” meat, dairy and eggs. Well, if we can’t get them to go vegan, we might as well get them to buy cage-free, free range, grass-fed, organic, enriched-caged, gestation crate-free, vegetarian-fed, five-point-animal-welfared animals. Why in the world would vegan activists promote the use of any animals under any circumstances? This does not move us towards animal liberation. It only serves to placate the public into thinking that there is an ethical way to oppress and exploit other animals. Asking people nicely to reduce their consumption of animals is still giving them your ethical blessing to continue exploiting animals.

I get it. We want people to stop eating animals because the large majority of animals murdered are done so for food. I also get that if we can convince people to stop eating animals and their secretions, the possibility of them hearing the animal liberation picture increases. I also appreciate it when people choose to eat plants, but I question whether our tactics are speeding us towards animal liberation or moving us farther away. I see us moving farther away. At what point do we start to articulate animal liberation, the ethical argument for veganism? At what point do we start to articulate the animal rights message? At what point do we tell people that veganism is a social justice movement, not a lifestyle club filled with vegan cupcakes, potlucks and recipe books (not that those don’t rule)?

I don’t live in some fantasy world where I believe that if each and every person is given the ethical/animal argument (or if slaughterhouses had glass walls or if people had to kill their own animals), they would wake up to their role in the exploitation industries and go vegan on the spot. Yet I have enough faith in people that to know that when they are treated like adults, told the truth, and supported, potential future vegans are and will be made. The outreach we are currently focused on is disingenuous and misleading, and backfires if it takes longer for people to understand the ethical message of liberation.

One of the statements that depresses me most is when vegans who were long-time vegetarians say, “I just didn’t know.” As animal liberationists, it is our duty to make sure people know. It is our duty to speak the truth, confront injustice, creatively work together to end the animal holocaust. Let’s bring the focus back to where it needs to be, on the animals.

animal liberation, animal rights, vegan, vegan cupcakes, vegan recipes

October 18th, 2011 by Kezia

A comprehensive new report on the use of non-human primates in federally regulated vivisection labs was issued today by SAEN (Stop Animal Exploitation Now). The report on the state of primate research is based on USDA documentation, including the little-known “exemptions” to welfare laws that mean animals can be deprived of enrichment, food, and water; that permit severe confinement; that deny anesthesia for procedures; and that even allow cages to go weeks without cleaning.

Captive monkey at Princeton University

The report, authored by SAEN co-founder and executive director Michael Budkie, calls out Emory University, Harvard Medical School, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, the National Institutes of Health, Oregon Health Sciences University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Wake Forest University for together exempting 41 percent of the primates in their care from basic standards set by the Animal Welfare Act.

In a clear conflict of interest, these exemptions to the AWA are decided by the very organizations that stand to benefit.

“The committees empowered to…exempt animals from Animal Welfare Act regulations are comprised of employees of the institutions that receive funding to perform the experiments,” said the report. “These individuals have a vested interest in approving experiments because that keeps the federal funding rolling into their employer.”

The report also includes statements from current and/or former employees at prominent facilities, whistleblowers who stated while they are not ethically opposed to animal experimentation, they were “uniformly horrified” by what they had witnessed.

“I was once allowed to watch a necropsy,” said the anonymous whistleblower at Oregon Health Sciences University’s Oregon Primate Research Center. “No medications, the monkey was made to bleed, then cut open and organs removed as he bled to death. [I] was told it was necessary for accurate studies.”

“Because a member of our staff had an outside connection it was always known EXACTLY what day and time the FDA and/or USDA would be at Princeton for inspections,” said an unnamed worker at Princeton who gave numerous examples of animal cruelty and neglect he/she witnessed.

The infamous New Iberia Research Center at University of Louisiana, Lafayette confines approximately 7500 non-human primates, 1773 of whom are used in experimentation and 5716 confined for later use or breeding. Whistleblower testimony revealed numerous examples of veterinary neglect, poor animal health, and poor working conditions.

“I have seen animals with diarrhea for days upon days, but because of the study are simply given half of a banana and a Pepto-Bismol,” said the worker. “The techs from the veterinary department would sometimes leave the Pepto-Bismol on the door of the cage. The animal would reach for it and most times the Pepto-Bismol would fall in their feces to the tray below.”

According to current USDA statistics, laboratories in the U.S. confine and torture more than 125,000 non-human primates – an all-time high. October 15-23 is National Primate Liberation Week. For actions scheduled near you please click here. Although some events have already taken place, there are still ongoing campaigns that need the support of animal activists.

Please see The Thinking Vegan’s interview with SAEN’s Michael Budkie here.

animal liberation, animal rights, animal testing, Michael Budkie, SAEN, speciesism, suffering, vivisection

March 17th, 2011 by vegina

We are a movement being pacified with veganism and potlucks. Yes, it is important to embrace a lifestyle that rejects death for sustenance and encourages camaraderie. We do need at least that, but we also need more. We need total liberation.

Animal liberation will only come with total liberation. Until there is total liberation we will live in a world of inequality, in which those in power will seek out ways to confine and control the masses. Sexism and racism and ageism and disablism and heterosexism and nationalism, or any other form of disadvantage or abuse targeted at populations because they are different from those in power, must always be rejected. We must keep our eyes on animal liberation, running toward it full force, using our fists to push back any other inequality that rears its head. For any inequality is a roadblock if we are to have a world of liberation. We must make community organizers, feminists, anti-racists, anarchists, and anyone working for social justice our comrade. We must hold their hands, and not grasp their oppressions as a tool to forward our own goals. We must acknowledge that total liberation will only come if we absolutely believe in liberation for everyone; even when that means relinquishing some of our own advantage and comfort.

We must not be satisfied with constructed truths or half measures. Bigger cages save no one and lengthen the route to change; they institutionalize our claims within the very systems of exploitation that generate and justify the abuses, inequalities, injustices, mass genocide, and torture to which we are opposed. Liberation, once institutionalized and embraced by these systems, is nothing more than welfare at its best and rhetoric at its worst. We must not concede to accept less for other animals than what we would want for ourselves. When we turn our attention to bigger cages rather than empty cages, we are gluing shut the locks of the oppressed, not of the oppressors, and we keep the concept of animal imprisonment and ownership intact.

When we persist in the struggle for liberation there is nothing to fear and everything to hope for. Yes, it is true, authorities repress us and will continue to do so. Their repression is a sign of their fear. Their fear is a token of hope. It means we are effective and now is the time to push forward not to shirk in fear. Do not hide, or cower, or silence yourself on their behalf. Do not stay locked inside your home because you fear they will lock you behind their bars if you step out and speak up. Do not cage yourself like they have caged the animals. Be free, and in your moments of freedom, lend your voice to the dogs and cats and bunnies being killed in shelters, the cows and pigs and sheep and goats and chickens and turkeys living the most painful lives and meeting the most violent deaths so that their bodies can be rendered into “food,” the elephants and tigers and bears who are beat until they perform tricks, the monkeys and cats and dogs and mice and rats and bunnies and guinea pigs and fish and alligators tormented daily in Frankensteinish experiments that help no one and solve nothing.

We have an obligation. As those who recognize the insanity inherent in the way that billions of animals are tortured and murdered, we must do something about it. The thing we must do is to fight for total liberation. We must never compromise ourselves or our goals. Our potlucks and our veganism should not be all that defines us. We should define ourselves by the work we do to free others. Veganism should be the foundation upon which we build our work for total liberation. Potlucks should be where we rejuvenate, take in love from our community to strengthen ourselves, and build unity in our fight against oppression. Each of us must cultivate the talents we have and the skills we’ve learned so that we can better fight for animals. We must be honest about our own capacities and aptitudes to decide how best we can help. We must also acknowledge that different people can help in different ways, allowing us to stand in awe and support, not in judgment, of those who fight this battle from a different vantage point.

The world is a tragic place these days. Environmental devastation, human atrocities, and individual acts of hatred and violence abound. We can give up all hope in this context or we can fight for change.  Yes, we will make mistakes and yes, sometimes, we will fail. But we need to try. When we give up the fight for total liberation, when we are pacified with lifestyle choices and potlucks, our silence casts a vote in support of oppression.

*Courtesy of Vegina.

animal liberation, animal rights, vegan

February 7th, 2011 by Gary Smith

Welcome to The Thinking Vegan. You’re probably asking yourself if the world needs yet another vegan blog. The answer is obviously yes. At least I hope so.

The focus of the blog is on veganism as a social justice movement, as opposed to a dietary plan. Veganism is an ethical philosophy that encompasses the prohibition of animal use for food, clothing, entertainment, scientific “research,” labor and pets.

The blog’s philosophical bent is abolitionism and liberationism, which does not support any use of animals. I do not believe in reform measures or incremental ethics. There is no magical ladder that one climbs to become ethical. We all make real-world decisions and engage in behaviors that are either ethical or unethical. Veganism is the ethical choice.

If you have made the choice to move in that direction, I hope you will find support and encouragement on this blog. I will not, however, pat you on the head if you feel good about your choice to use animals. If you are looking for someone to validate your consumption of “organic” or “free range” or “grass fed” or “family farmed” animals, you may need to find another blog.

The Thinking Vegan will include articles and postings, short notes and ideas, interviews with thinkers and doers in the vegan/animal rights community, guest posts, and a thinking vegan’s take on newsworthy events.

Your comments are encouraged so please contribute to the discussion. I can guarantee that we won’t always agree. However my hope is that through this blog, with the feedback and participation of others, we can learn and grow as vegans and as animal rights activists.

abolition, abolitionism, animal liberation, animal rights, ethical vegan, liberation, liberationist, vegan, veganism