[Please note that this version of this text has been recovered from an early draft due to a server crash. There may be a few typos and even mistakes in the following]
‘They pity and they eat the objects of their compassion’.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774).
The Citizen of the World.
In a discussion about forms of social knowledge, sociologists David Lee
and Howard Newby (1983: 18) make the claim that both common sense knowledge and
ideological beliefs suffer from certain limitations (which, they go on to
argue, sociological knowledge can go some way to overcome). Lee and Newby elaborate on the point,
suggesting that these forms of knowledge are self-centred, incomplete and likely intolerant. This latter
suggestion is of particular interest, especially since these authors add that
ideological belief can, ‘foster a dogmatic style of thought that insists on
being right regardless’ (ibid.)
It may be immediately acknowledged that all ideologies may have these
characteristics, including those based on ideas and beliefs favoured and
personally held, as much as those based on beliefs one opposes or is generally
‘neutral’ about. Constant vigilance and
a commitment to critical reflexivity are thus required to ameliorate these
tendencies to dogmatism.
With regard to traditional
animal welfare ideology, this thesis suggests and attempts to make plain its
dogmatic characteristics; built as they are on an apparently societywide belief
that this is undoubtedly,
self-evidently, and almost ‘naturally’ the right
and proper way to assess any
assertion made about human treatment of other animals. Animal welfarism seems to remain largely
accepted, largely uncritically, as the demonstrably
‘reasonable’ paradigm for looking at human-nonhuman relations; this alone being
seen as an attractive attribute in liberal Western nations.
Certainly throughout the
Western world, the ideology of animal welfarism seems to have become firmly
institutionalised, with its central ideological tenets widely adopted,
culturally internalised, and incorporating the all-important notion that every
human-nonhuman relationship issues can be adequately addressed without
questioning the central claims of the welfarist approach to the human treatment
of other animals. Claims are made on a
regular basis, often by British animal farming interests and politicians of all
stripes, that the ‘United
Kingdom ’ in particular has the strictest
animal welfare standards in the world.
Thus, it is suggested that ‘welfare costs’ are already substantial to
the commercial industries which use animals for human ends and animal welfare
legislation should not readily be further strengthened. However, there appears to be a general
acceptance - or at least the articulation of a formal recognition - of the
welfarist stance that says the ‘price’ paid for maintaining high welfare
standards is harsh yet justifiable.
However, that said, the notion of going beyond what is evidently necessary to achieve ‘humane treatment’ is
clearly regarded as largely uncalled for since it may dramatically endanger
commercial competitiveness.
In this sense, and rather
like formal supportive claims towards health and safety provisions, animal
welfare practices and legislation are presented as essential, adequate, strong
but fair, notwithstanding that its provisions come at a considerable cost
which, nevertheless, should be paid for reasons of morally good behaviour. This is essentially the presentation of a
pluralist political model allegedly based on seeking a satisfactory balance of
various and often contradictory interests, even including some of the interests
of the ‘lower animals’ humans use for their own purposes (or those that seek to
represent them).
In practice,
organisationally and politically, animal welfarism is a constituent part of the
various battle grounds and compromises between and among mobilisations such as
the National Farmers Union, Friends of the Earth, the RSPCA, Compassion in
World Farming and the British government’s Farm Animal Welfare Council and the
Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).
This means that the
‘reasonable, reasoned and proper debate’ over the human use of other animals is
seen as rightly the province of legitimate mainstream organisations committed,
on some level or other, to conventional animal welfare tenets; that is,
committed to the ‘non-cruel’ exploitation of other animals for human ends. Thus, on the animals’ side as it were
(although all participants would loudly claim this particular image-friendly
status), groups such as Compassion in World Farming stand for a move toward (or
a return to) extensive, and probably necessarily small-scale, systems of
‘animal husbandry’, while the more politically powerful National Farmers Union
would more likely support the status quo of substantial intensive (yet still
‘non-cruel’) production.[1] The most dogmatic elements of traditional animal
welfarism are readily evident when they are challenged by ‘animal rights’
thought, on the one hand, and (now rare) Cartesian-inspired claims that there
are no ethical issues involved in the human utilisation of other animals. Clearly, animal welfarism’s institutionalised
and internalised centrality as the firmly-fixed orthodoxy is suggested as
perhaps its greatest strength: from this assured position other perspectives
can be authoritatively characterised as extreme and unnecessary.
The widespread social
orientation to animal welfarism means that any thinking about human-nonhuman
relations is almost mechanically assessed within this long-established and
entrenched paradigm. As suggested throughout,
orthodox animal welfarism is virtually all-pervasive in discourse about
nonhuman animals; it is by far the commonest way by which children are
encouraged to view human relationships with other animals. Furthermore, by its own standards, it can
claim to ‘work’ or ‘function’, in the sense of reducing ‘unnecessary suffering’
caused to nonhuman animals. This
apparent functionality leads, as seen, to the suggestion that alternative views
(either way, left or right, as it were, from this dominant centre) represent unnecessarily radical views (see Henshaw
1989; Tester 1992; Franklin 1999 for accounts of ‘animal rights’ as ‘extremism’
and ‘fanaticism’). Once again, a
fundamental element in animal welfarism essentially says that animal rights
views are simply unneeded.
As common sense knowledge
is putatively enough to understand
social phenomena, animal welfare is enough
to understand the needs and requirements of animals other than human. Garner (1993), in Part One, reviews several
philosophical positions and situates traditional animal welfarism in a broad
centre ground position by characterising it as the established ‘moral
orthodoxy’ in terms of ethical views about other animals. Garner also identified two comparative
extremes to the welfarist centre: the presently rare ‘no moral status’
position, and the growing ‘challenge to the moral orthodoxy’, which Garner
claims is represented by philosophers such as Andrew Linzey, Mary Midgley,
Stephen Clark, James Rachels, Bernard Rollins, Steven Sapontzis, Rosemary Rodd
and especially Singer and Regan (ibid.: 10).
In her ‘dismissals model’
(absolute and relative), Midgley (1983: 12-18) underscores the centrality of
animal welfarist understandings while noting that a certain degree of ‘mental
vertigo’ results from confusion about these positions, and this was before Gary
Francione came up with the added complication of the notion of ‘new welfarism’. While this may be true of professional
philosophers, it is probably more correct to state that in general discourse,
reliant of mass media transmission, animal welfarism holds centre stage to the exclusion of other views. It is important to note in this respect that,
despite regularly being labelled as concerning ‘animal rights’, the vast
majority of media coverage of issues concerning the treatment of nonhumans is
unconditionally welfarist in content. An
investigation of the British animal protection movement (Yates 1998) strongly
suggests that many animal activists and advocates are themselves often propelled
by their concerns for nonhuman animals into a confused position involving often
contradictory welfare and ‘rights’ orientations. Midgley does say that disentanglement
represents something of a ‘path to relief’ although, in practice, lines of
thought may commonly converge (Midgley 1983: 13).
Writing in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy,
Aubrey Townsend attempts to further define the conventional welfarist view of
other animals. He argues that the
ethical orthodoxy allows a distinction between two sorts of moral
considerations. The first applies to
human and nonhuman animals and is based on a welfarist commitment to do what
promotes the ‘living of a pain-free happy life’ (Townsend, in Garner 1993: 17). The second consideration is reserved for humans
only and is based on a respect for personal autonomy - ‘for what an individual
wants or values’. Therefore, since
animals are regarded as ‘only sentient’, they can only be accorded an inferior
moral status compared to human beings:
Thus, we are entitled to sacrifice the interests of animals to further human interests, whereas we are not entitled to treat humans in the same way - as part of a cost-benefit analysis (ibid.)
Garner (ibid.: 17-18) ultimately offers animal rights supporters little
comfort, declaring that the position outlined here by Townsend, ‘amounts to
what is the conventional view about animals at least in Britain’. He also agrees that this position corresponds
to the perspective of many traditional animal welfare organisations. In effect, then, welfarism accords to nonhuman
animals the ‘intermediate status’ discussed in the present study: while they
may be more than ‘things’, they are nevertheless very much less than ‘persons’
(ibid.: 18).
Media Coverage.
Apart from the philosophers and other academics who take an interest in
the subject on some level or other, it is remarkably common to find that
journalistic treatment of ‘the animal issue’ display a strong orientation to non-radical
welfarist norms. As suggested above, there appears to be a further acceptance -
indeed, sometimes an open ideological advocacy - of the assumed correctness of animal welfare’s central
location between extreme and groundless positions. For example, when in 1998 the British rights
campaigner Barry Horne[2] went on hunger strike in
protest at the government refusal to establish a Royal Commission on animal
experimentation, the Independent
newspaper ran an editorial (14/12/98 )
entitled ‘Remember the Real Animal Welfare Issues’. To some extent this piece appears to be a
genuine attempt to give serious attention to the issues raised by the fact that
someone was willing to risk their life for ‘animal causes’. However, the title itself is obviously firmly
located within the purview of the moral orthodoxy, and its censorious note is
common of such articles, many of which tend to at least imply that some ‘bigger
picture’ has been overlooked. Although
it may be suggested that the headline merely reflects the hyperbole of subeditorship,
it is also fairly clear from the substantive text that the writer was either
unable or unwilling (or both) to assess the situation from the type of animal
rights approach often adopted and expressed by Barry Horne himself.
Not only is the lens
through which the writer sees issues raised by Horne’s actions clearly
welfarist in the main, she also descends (if the point may be put this way)
into animal conservationist themes at times, for example, in the claim that
perhaps the activist was correct to draw attention to the ‘unnecessary
suffering’ (the central welfarist tenet) in ‘some animal testing’, but that
other animal issues are as, or are more, worthy of consideration. Raising a conservation theme, the author
notes that the short-haired bumblebee is reportedly recently extinct in Britain , and
implies that Barry Horne should give cognisance to this - and to the plight of
other threatened species such as the skylark and the water vole. Arguing that the size of the human population
represents a threat to animals in general, the author also complains that
humans have over-fished the waters around Britain . She again implies - as with the issue of the
skylark - that this is the ‘the important animal issue’ that should perhaps be
a more proper and worthy concern to the hunger striker. Such points, of course, are framed within
welfarist/conservationist understandings of human-nonhuman relations. For example, the author declares that the
fishing issue is not really an ‘anti-European issue’, as some may suspect or
claim, rather, ‘we have over-fished our
own fish’ (my emphasis), a factor that requires a degree of political
intervention.
While a commitment to a
genuine animal rights position obviously does not preclude an active interest
in the plight of animal ‘species’ taken as a whole group or as a population, it
is true to say that the essential focus of rights thought is based on the
individual and his or her protection: even against group welfare (see Regan
2001; Francione 1996a; 1996b).
Therefore, given his animal rights declarations, it is extremely
unlikely that Barry Horne would approach the issue of humans eating fishes in
terms of assessing - let alone ‘managing’ - ‘fish stocks’. Neither would he likely accept that, somehow,
fishes belong to human beings simply
because they are found in ‘their’ waters.
A rightist’s response may be to wonder whether it might be more correct
to claim the marine environment for the fishes
rather than for humans.
Despite the fact that the Independent newspaper had followed the
‘progress’ of the hunger strikes over many weeks, had reported on the basic
reasons for the action, and had often spoken to Horne’s representatives outside
prison or hospital, this piece is a representative example of a writer
ultimately finding it very difficult to assess an issue about the treatment of
nonhumans as animal rightists would be inclined to. Such an inclination would, for example,
challenge outright the human exploitation of other animals as resources and
object to the property status of animals; but not on the basis of the rarity of
any particular ‘species’.
On a more subtle level,
allowing for the fact that the Independent
had regularly covered the hunger strike stories, the writer of this piece
failed to recognise that, effectively, Barry Horne had been ‘reduced’ to
essentially making animal welfare demands of the ‘New’ Labour government. While he began by demanding the complete and
immediate abolition of animal experimentation; campaigning for the ‘total end
of vivisection’, a rightist’s aspiration outlined by Regan (1985), Horne
eventually ended up advocating that the government merely set up a formal
inquiry into the subject of animal experiments that would test vivisection as a
valid scientific methodology. Had such
an inquiry been established, a Royal Commission on animal experimentation would
have undoubtedly rejected any tabled option of total abolition as unrealistic
and uneconomic, as well as extremely difficult to do unilaterally. Therefore, any movement at all toward Barry
Horne’s demands would have been in the nature of traditional welfarist
measures: proposals such as ‘tightening’ existing regulations and
legislation. If anything, the Independent’s story of the ‘animal
rights hunger striker’ is a dazzling reaffirmation of the centrality of orthodox
animal welfarist ideology when it comes to discourse about, and responses to,
animal rights claims. Even when a rights
advocate shifted from a strictly rights position the journalist apparently had
little hope to be aware of it. Had she
ever examined the issue of human-nonhuman relations from any position other than that of the moral orthodoxy?
The Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee considered the hunger strike when
Horne had refused food for sixty-two consecutive days. In an article entitled, ‘Sorry, But I Think
Dying People are More Important than Dumb Animals’, Toynbee says she finds it
‘perverse’ that animal rights activists should ‘pick first on science’, since
she believes animal experimentation amounts to the ‘most morally justifiable
reason for the destruction of animals’.[3] However, she goes on, these ‘barmy’ and
‘dotty’ animal rights extremists, with their ‘selective cause’, may be
contrasted with other ‘sensible animal campaigners’ who do not take the ‘nutty’
rights view. ‘Sensible’ campaigners
‘simply want animals to be treated more kindly, farmed less cruelly’ and, where
used in experiments, ‘scrupulously cared for’.
Of course, these ‘sensible’ advocates are not ‘dotty’ animal rightists but,
yes, ‘realistic’ and ‘reasonable’ animal welfarists who - with another
enunciation of the kindly stewardship model - apparently appreciate, in
Toynbee’s own words, that ‘humans do have dominion over the birds and the
beasts, but that with dominion comes responsibility to treat them well’.
Toynbee’s strident
pronouncement of the putative correctness
of animal welfarism and her theological justification of the human domination
of other animals is immediately followed by a declaration straight from the
mouths of some of those who believe that the so-called ‘postmodern condition’
is a reality (see Best and Kellner 1991 for the debate between critical and
postmodern theorists about the ‘break’ from modernism to ‘postmodernism’). ‘We’ humans, Toynbee confidently claims,
currently live in a ‘causeless era’. In
this condition, she continues, many might perhaps look longingly on someone who
appears to have found something to passionately believe in, even something as
barmy as animal rights. Few people now
have a belief in religion, or in socialism, or have numerous ‘ologies’ and
‘isms’ to inform them, she goes on, so perhaps the absurdity of animal rights
can fill the void for some. For her,
however, ‘animal rights’ is evidently a decadent and a ‘murderous cause’ of
‘crazy’, ‘dangerous’ and above all ‘unreasonable’ passions; unlike the
sensible, judicious, commonplace and non-dotty cause of animal welfarism.
Pro-use
countermovements.
Views such as Toynbee’s are eagerly reproduced by those who support the
instrumental and sentimental use of other animals for human ends; those some
animal rights advocates call members of the ‘animal use industries’, ‘animal exploiters’
or, in the blunt current parlance of young activists, ‘scum’ (see Guither 1998:
chap 11 and, for more details, the following chapter of this thesis). There are a number of organisations, most
apparently having originated in North America
in the last decade or so, which expressly warn visitors of the ‘nuttiness’ of
‘animal rights’ thought. These groups
tend to publish articles such as ‘Eating Meat is Natural’, ‘Why Animals Have No
Rights’, and ‘Human Superiority’.[4] One such group calls itself ‘People Eating
Tasty Animals (PETA)’ to mock the acronym of People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals (PeTA), who claim to be the largest ‘animal rights organisation’ in
the United States; the ‘rights’ assertion seemingly getting more and more
dubious as time passes.
These pro-use
organisations[5]
are careful to avoid Midgley’s (1983) absolute dismissal position: their stance
is strictly based on contrasting the reasonable,
normal, conventional relative
dismissal (traditional welfarist) position with ‘irrational’ and ‘fanatical’
‘animal rights’ views. For example, in a
piece entitled ‘Reply to Singer’,[6] the author approvingly
quotes Robert Nozick of the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University
who asserts that, ‘animal rights seems a topic for cranks... The mark of cranks
is disproportionateness’. For these
groups, and this philosopher, the proof of a ‘disproportionate’ approach simply
means going beyond the self-evident
correctness of orthodox animal welfarism.
In his ‘Eating Meat is
Natural’ article from 1996, the author Jim Powesland suggests that ‘animal
rights’ denies ‘our evolutionary and dietary heritage’. Therefore:
it would make more sense to adopt an animal welfare approach that advocates the humane use of our animal food sources rather than an animal “rights” position which ultimately seeks no use of and no contact with animals (including pets).[7]
This ‘threat to pets’ line is repeatedly used in these internet postings
(and public ‘animal rights’ debating forums) as unequivocal - and presumably
frightening - evidence of ‘animal rights extremism’ and, again, to suggest the
utter ‘craziness’ of the rights position that would prevent people owning and
keeping pet animals as well as curtailing meat eating and ending absolutely
‘vital’ bio-medical (animal) experimentation.[8] The remedy to such fanaticism, the reasonable alternative to such views -
precisely because nonhumans should be
treated with some kindness and care - is conventional animal welfarism.
Marjorie Spiegal (1988)
demonstrates that such pro-use groups are essentially repeating the same
justifications and excuses for using nonhuman animals as US slave-keepers used
to justify owning human slaves. In a
chapter about the defence of slavery from Aristotle onwards, she reproduces
arguments of slave-owners who assert that the slaves themselves benefit from
their status as property. The very same
arguments, she finds, are currently in service in suggestions that animals
benefit from the use humans make of them.[9]
From the point of view of
the animal rights challenge to the moral orthodoxy, a great obstacle to it, and
the greatest benefit for the orthodox who defend ‘normal’ and ‘reasonable’
duty-of-care welfare approaches, is the already-identified fact that the latter
perspective represents the longstanding and traditional socially-constructed
view of human-nonhuman relations. Like
many widespread and firmly sedimented social views - daily reinforced by
numerous macro- and microsociological agencies of socialisation - animal
welfarism seems extraordinarily resistant to change and critical
evaluation. On one level, how can any
position be seriously questioned when questioning immediately places those who
ask in ‘barmy’, ‘lunatic’, or even ‘terrorist’ categories?[10]
With an allegiance to traditional
animal welfarist views, humans can safely remain users of other animals in the
incredibly comforting knowledge - frequently reinforced - that the animals used
do not (should not) suffer. Furthermore,
in this view the very lives of many animals depend on their continued
exploitation: for what would ‘meat animals’ and domesticates do without meat
eaters and pet owners?
Foot and Mouth
Disease.
During the writing of this thesis, Britain witnessed a serious and
widespread outbreak of foot and mouth disease.
Like influenza in humans, foot and mouth disease (FMD) is a highly
contagious viral disease which spreads very rapidly through herds of hoofed
animals such as cows, pigs and deer.
Although the aphthovirus that causes FMD is transmitted quickly from
animal to animal, the symptoms it causes are generally - but not always -
nonfatal. Lameness caused by foot
blisters is a common and very painful symptom, as is the common blistering of
the lips, nose and tongue. Some animals’
tongues fall out and most experience some degree of pain, which can be severe.
However, about 95% of
diseased animals apparently recover after a period of around one to two weeks
(Gellatley 2001). The British
government’s official policy to ‘contain’ FMD is a slaughter policy, based on
the intention of ‘killing-out’ the disease.
This strategy was used in this latest outbreak. Thus, all animals found with the disease are
immediately killed along with the contiguous killing of the animals on
neighbouring farms, small holdings (sometimes rather disparagingly labelled as
‘hobby farms’ by ‘real’ farmers) and animal sanctuaries. As if to entirely contradict and refute
Adrian Franklin’s (1999) thesis that there has been a ‘dramatic transformation’
in human-nonhuman relations within the shift from modernity to ‘postmodernity’,
the FMD experience in Britain appeared to violently slam the door shut on the notion
that the human subject has been ‘decentred’ in present times, or that the
‘postmodern condition’ has somehow resulted in a ‘celebration’ of the
differences between humans and other animals.
Franklin
even talks of what he calls ‘the demise of meat’ in postmodernism, despite
numbers of animals killed for food increasing.
The fact is, from the beginning of the foot and mouth disease outbreak,
in numerous newspaper articles and countless radio and television programmes,
‘farmers’ leaders’ from the National Farmers Union and politicians of all
colours let it be known that the FMD crisis was overwhelmingly ‘a human issue’
- indeed, they claimed that it may be regarded as a very severe ‘human
tragedy’. Of course, nonhumans were
involved as well, but in true welfarist fashion, their most important interests
(their very lives) were systematically ‘sacrificed’ due to the economic
imperatives of human beings, and political expediency related to ‘export market
considerations’. Even so, for several
weeks, and for several times every day, the British public were unusually
exposed to a brutal reality for ‘farming animals’ used as if they were food: they are killed and they get burnt.
On the surface at least,
these facts were evidently a shocking, horrific, and something of a complete
surprise to the public. Moreover, just
as shocked were a large number of weeping ‘livestock’ farmers (who might be
expected to know the basic realities of ‘animal agriculture’) who appeared in
the media during the outbreak. However,
rather than being a product of ignorance of ‘farming outcomes’, food animal
enslavers’ apparently genuine distress came largely to be understood as a result
of uncommonly witnessing their animal property being killed; a rare event for
many farmers used to routinely leaving nonhumans virtually at the gates of
abattoirs. Nonhuman animal deaths at
such execution centres are not often seen by many ‘outsiders’, and especially
not the public, as active steps are made to keep this unpleasant reality well
beyond view (see Thomas [1983] for a historical account of ‘hiding’
slaughterhouses).
More instrumentally,
talking about their losses due to FMD, many enslavers noted the upsetting loss
of ‘bloodlines’ and valuable ‘breeding stock’ as the cause of many of their
tears. As said, the whole issue - and
particularly this part of it - was largely characterised as an event effecting
the lives and economic viability of human beings, rather than being principally
about the deaths of (eventually) millions of nonhuman animals. However, perhaps due to the very visibility
of the slaughter, outraged public voices were raised about the treatment of the
animals being killed. On April 13, 2001,
the Welsh Mirror carried a detailed
report (all of p. 1; pp. 4-5; and editorial on p. 6) of a white-suited council
slaughterer in an open field taking what were described as ‘pot-shots’ at sheep
with a rifle. The accompanying
front-page picture features a reproduced still from a video recording of the
‘sickening scene’ made by a ‘shocked’ member of the public.
The inside pages contain
further images from the same video, complete with a dramatic narrative
explaining the sequence of events.
‘Doomed’, says the first caption as the sheep ‘mingle in fear’; followed
by ‘Taking Aim’; ‘Target’; ‘Cornered’; ‘Last Breath’; and finally, ‘It’s
Over’. A Ms. Irene Smith, who took the
video with her husband from a window in their house, explained her outrage: ‘We
could hear the gun going off and the sheep crying out. I can’t get the haunting noise and the awful
picture out of my mind. Three of our
grandchildren arrived minutes after it ended.
I’m just so relieved they missed it’ (p. 5).
Concern for the welfare of
the sheep and the potential distress of human witnesses informs this piece throughout. For example, another observer of the killing
said it was ‘pure horror’, presumably for the sheep themselves, but for herself
also in having seen it; while she also expressed her sympathy for the ‘poor
people’ who have to carry out the ‘cull’.
The editorial comment, ‘The voice of the Mirror’ (p. 6), spoke of the newspaper’s support for the
government’s slaughter policy, again exclusively expressed within an orthodox animal
welfarist framework, while the earlier piece acknowledges the endorsement for
the killing of Britain’s largest animal welfare organisation, the Royal Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
The sheep ‘have to die’, the leader comment states, adding a standard
welfarist rejoinder ‘but not to die in such an appalling way’.
The outrage expressed in
all of these pages appears to be firmly predicated on the palpable
contravention of the fundamental welfarist assumption and indeed promise that animal exploitation can
usually be carried out in ways that cause no ‘unnecessary’ animal suffering.[1] It is only too clear that this phrase,
‘unnecessary suffering’, is welfarist through and through, since it
unconditionally accepts the notion that humans are morally permitted to
‘sacrifice’ the greatest interests of other animals if theirs are deemed
important enough, therefore allowing for some
suffering – but only the ‘necessary’ sort - to be legally sanctioned. The ideological welfarist message comes over
loud and clear in this press report: even at the height of the extraordinary
circumstances of a serious nationwide foot and mouth epidemic, there is
nevertheless no excuse for ‘unnecessary’ cruelty.
When in June 2001 (reported in BBC Radio 4’s Today programme) further members of the
public witnessed part of the FMD ‘cull’ in Skipton, Yorkshire ,
the pattern of response repeated itself.
In this case, slaughterers chased cows, shooting them with rifles from
‘quad bikes’. One cow was apparently left
partially paralysed. Another was still
alive after three attempts to kill her.
She eventually died but only after being throttled by being hung from a
JCB tractor by a neck chain.[2] According to the radio report, members of the
public were again said to be very upset and once more a great deal of that can
be explained by the highly unusual visibility
of the killing. One eye-witness noted,
as in the Welsh case, that children were playing close to the spot only minutes
before the killing commenced (slaughtering lasted for nine hours in the Skipton
incident) and they may have seen what was happening. Others observers noted that they understood
that the ‘‘cull’ had to continue’ to maintain the decrease in FMD incidence
but, again, there was simply no excuse for causing this amount of cruelty to these animals.
The FMD outbreak of 2001 in Britain may be characterised as an
out-of-the-ordinary public event -
and therefore particularly distressing for that reason alone. Members of the public as well as journalists
sought to make sense of events which, many concluded, must have involved the
regrettable but, presumably, ‘necessary’ deaths of animals. The dominant interpretative framework through
which the majority of people attempted to come to understandings of the ‘cull’
was unmistakably welfarist in origin.
That said, a limited number of people, journalist and former Member of Parliament
Matthew Parris being one, suggested that maybe this outbreak, following as it
did cases of BSE/CJD and swine sever, placed a serious question mark on the
whole idea of using non-human animals as food.
However, these were minority voices, and most discourse on the FMD
crisis failed to get beyond its characterisation as a human tragedy; moreover, British nonhuman advocacy groups such as
Animal Aid and Viva! claim that they were regularly refused access to media
coverage through-out the outbreak.[1]
Of significance are the
suggestions that the events witnessed by the public amounted to incidents which
‘failed to live up’ to the usual high standards of animal slaughter thought to
be routinely practised in Britain . In relation to the FMD ‘cull’, much was made
of the fact that the requirements of speed of slaughter, and slaughtering on
farms, resulted in ‘the usually high animal welfare standards’ being
compromised. However, although this is
perfectly likely to have been the case, the point tends to obscure standard
slaughtering practices in ‘normal’ British abattoirs in ‘normal’ times. Animal advocates claim that the notion of
‘humane slaughter’ a virtual impossibility in standard procedures as much as
those put in place to deal with an industry crisis[2] (Singer 1983: 161; Penman
1996: 53; Gellatley 2000: 156).
In terms of the ‘normal’
practice of animal slaughter, perhaps an attitude that ‘ignorance is bliss’ is
quite understandable. As Juliet
Gellatley (2000: 155) puts it: ‘Most people don’t work in a slaughterhouse,
have never set foot in one and refuse to listen when you try to tell them about
it’. All of which makes the unusual
visibility of slaughter during the FMD outbreak especially distressing to a
public generally shielded from such scenes.
Animal welfare ideology states that, by and large, British slaughter
standards are relatively high and largely unproblematic. However, journalist Jan Walsh, whose book
about ‘the meat machine’ (Walsh 1986) is especially designed not to put people off eating meat, and
is not an animal advocate, states that:
Most people are probably aware that there are problems with the way we slaughter our food animals. Undoubtedly some arrive at the slaughterhouse bruised and suffering from a long journey; some are fearful when they approach their end; and some fail to be knocked unconscious before the slaughterman’s knife does its job (ibid.: 43-44).
Welfarist ideology says that these problems are relatively small. They are far from the norm and a whole raft of
legislation exists to ‘ensure’ non-cruel slaughter. Walsh goes on:
If the slaughterhouse staff mistreat an animal when it is unloaded, or waiting its turn, they are committing an offence. If they allow a creature to see one of its fellows being killed, that again is an offence. And if the system is not good enough to make sure that every animal is either killed instantaneously, or stunned into unconscious oblivion before its life is ended, then again the slaughterhouse can be prosecuted. It is the duty of the local authority inspectors, and the vets in attendance, to make sure that these laws are kept (ibid.: 44, emphasis added).
“Horse
Ripping”.
The traditional animal welfarist view is the orthodox and central
cultural resource for ‘thinking about animals’.
It remains the dominant paradigm even in attempts to make sense of
incidence of animal harm which appear to be utterly senseless, very frightening
and absolutely ‘unnecessary’. A recent sociological investigation of a
series of attacks on horses in the South of England in the early 1990’s (Yates,
Powell & Beirne 2001) provides an interesting example of interactive
sense-making among humans about a set of events involving serious injuries to
nonhuman animals.
In terms of an animal
welfarist orientation, cases of ‘horse maiming’ or ‘horse ripping’ (as the
attacks on the horses quickly came to be labelled in press reports) do not
immediately render themselves as especially suitable candidates for the usual
cost-benefit analysis based on the idea of ‘necessary’ and ‘unnecessary’
suffering assessments. In other words,
all those who took an interest in the plight of the various horses involved;
that is, police officers, newspaper journalists, animal welfare organisation
employees and the legal owners of the horses, appeared to have initial and
sustained difficulty in understanding the situation through any standard
welfarist criteria: in these cases, animal welfarism simply did not appear to
‘fit’, or explain much.
Usual terms of reference
just did not meet these particular
circumstances of animal harm. For
example, absolutely no-one could be found to state that someone’s apparent wish
– or even ‘need’ - to maim horses was sufficient
reason to hurt or kill these particular horses.
Even for traditional animal welfarists, the notion of ‘sacrificing’
animal interests for these particular
human ones could not be sanctioned in any of the horse maiming cases. In fact, the very idea that human pleasure
could be included within a utilitarian calculus of these events was universally
ruled out and viewed with disgust and bewilderment. In any event, the property status of the
horses concerned would prevent such a calculation in the first place. It is understood that notions of ‘legitimacy’
and ‘in place’ and ‘out of place’ feature in animal welfare ideology. In other words, in such a view, there are
particular and highly ‘controlled’ locations in which animal exploitation and
‘necessary’ nonhuman harm can legitimately
take place. Since animal welfare is a
regulatory mechanism, it can be sensibly applied to places such as abattoirs,
circuses rings and ‘winter quarters’, pet shops and vivisection laboratories. Places where people are often officially licensed
to exploit animals in a structured, effectively monitored and tightly
controlled manner. The controlling element
of animal welfarism exists to ensure compliance with, by enforcement if
necessary, its ‘non-cruel’ promise.
Clearly, then, attacks on nonhuman property in open fields, at night, by non-owners, or any other
‘non-authorised’ persons, are to be deemed utterly illegitimate.
In the case of
‘horse-ripping’, as said, no-one could countenance or apply the usual welfarist
balancing act. It was left to the
authors of the paper analysing the incidences of horse harm to acknowledge and
point out that ‘humans sometimes are allowed to assault, injure and kill
horses’ (ibid.: 16). They make the
observation that the general discourse surrounding the events in question
passionately asserted that these
horse, in these places, were
unequivocally not of that order. Only one commentator in all the fairly
extensive (national and local) press coverage, the Christian theologian Andrew
Linzey, hinted otherwise. Linzey
suggested that horse assaults like these could be seen within the wider
perspective that acknowledges that animals are simply ‘regarded as things’ in
Christian thought.
Because standard welfare
criteria apparently dictated to those who tried to make sense of the horse
attacks that they viewed the attacks as overwhelmingly ‘unnecessary’ in any
conceivable sense, it soon became clear that the emergent (and apparently
rapidly-formed) consensus was that the explanation of the maimings would be most
likely found in the pathological state of the person or persons who had
perpetrated the unwarranted attacks.
Unable to place these specific events of animal harm into the
conventional welfarist framework of ‘justified and justifiable exploitation’, the
assumed ‘irrationality’ of the perpetrator became stronger and ever more stridently
asserted as announcements of horse maiming were made in the media and public
meetings.[3]
The attacks came to be -
in fact, could only be - universally regarded as utterly reprehensible, totally unwarranted,
‘sick’, ‘perverted’, and just downright wrong! Those whose beliefs about human-nonhuman
relations are imbued with the norms and values of animal welfare ideology could
only interpret attacks on (mainly pet as opposed to ‘working’) horses as an
unjustified betrayal of important welfarist principles based on an agreed
‘necessity of such use’ with the assumed concomitant infliction of ‘no cruelty’.
*******
Garner (1993: 101) may be quite correct to claim that most people appear
to accept the validity of the moral orthodoxy that says that nonhuman animals
are inferior to human beings. For such
people, this means it is ethically excusable to override their most precious
interests for human ones, even when the latter may be regarded as much less
important. However, one of the lessons
from the understandings which emerge from ‘horse maiming’ cases is that they
seriously break the unwritten (not to mention one-sided) welfarist ‘contract’
between humans and other animals which obliges humans not to harm animals
unless the cause is clearly ‘important’ enough.
After all, just as Farmer
Rafferty from Mudpuddle Farm
(Morpurgo & Rayner 1994) is fully aware, the deal is that ‘they look after
us’ and ‘we look after them’. The
assumed pathology ascribed to the perpetrator(s) of the horse attacks stands as
an example of attempts to explain the extraordinary. In this rare case, the normal, reasonable and
realistic lens by which human-nonhuman relations are viewed fails. Such assumptions also express the widely felt
opinion that any (warped) ‘pleasure’ which the (assumed pathological) person
may have experienced (commonly thought, according to the press, to be sexual or
‘Satanic’ in nature) is entirely unacceptable and illegitimate.
[1] Juliet Gellatley, the founder of the
organisation VIVA!, did manage to get on a BBC TV programme about FMD which was
transmitted a week or two after the outbreak began. From memory (the show was seen but not
recorded), the programme concentrated on the ‘human tragedy’ slant. So much so, in fact, that events became
remarkably heated when Gellatley attempted to shift the emphasis to the plight
of those actually being killed.
[2] Gold (1995: 77) notes that not only
slaughterers have to be quick. He
recounts a time when he helped edit a film about farming and remembers a Chief
Environmental Health Officer arguing ‘that it was perfectly feasible for meat
inspectors to spot nearly all diseased chicken even though the conveyor belt
whizzes along at 3000-4000 birds per hour’.
This means that individual chickens were ‘inspected’ for less than one
second each.
[3] Clinical psychologists did advance
suggestions that there may be rationality within these apparently irrational
acts. For example, retired psychologist
Tony Black suggested that the horse attacker may believe that horses were
‘devil-carriers’. Given such a view,
destroying horses could be conceived as a fairly sensible - even responsible -
thing to do (Yates, Powell & Beirne 2001: 11).
[1] Radford claims (1999: 702, 703) that the
concept of ‘unnecessary suffering’ is not entirely universal in animal
protection law but it is a ‘recurring theme’.
He says that the term was first used in statute in 1849 and in major
pieces of legislation since. A Judge
Shearman, in a leading case Radford cites, also declared that the phrase
‘causing unnecessary suffering’ was the best definition of the word ‘cruelty’.
[2] Some of these details come from an account
of the Skipton incident on an animal email list (25/6/2001 ).
The author also reports that the police were called to the scene but
left because they found it too distressing to watch.
[1] Compassion In World Farming caused
apprehension among campaigners in July 2001 when they proposed a joint
initiative with farming representatives to try to get supermarkets to buy the
normally rejected ‘light lambs’ on welfare grounds. In the same press release, farmers called for
the reopening of small local abattoirs.
[2] Barry Horne died on 5th November, 2001 , during his fourth
hunger strike about ‘animal rights’ issues.
[3] This type
of position prompted Francione to include a chapter in his latest book
(Francione 2000: 31-49) entitled: ‘Vivisection: A Trickier Question’.
[6] http://www.acs.ucalgary...nting/rights/singer.txt Perhaps it is notable, at least it appears to
have some utility for them, that critics of ‘animal rights’ thought keep
suggesting that Singer is an ‘animal rights’ philosopher. They seem content to attack his non-rights
approach (while at the same time characterising it as animal rights) rather than engaging genuine rights thinkers such
as Francione and Regan. Scruton tends to
focus on Singer, criticising every book the latter writes. A recent example comes from the New Statesman (www.newstatesman.co. uk...%3A+Front +Page&newDisplayURN=-200101220048) which
declares that ‘Roger Scruton demolishes Peter Singer, perhaps the most famous
philosopher in the world and a passionate founder of the modern ‘animal rights’
movement’. It should be noted that
Scruton does not call Singer a rights theorist in the main text. That said, his book Animal Rights and Wrongs (Scruton 2000) contains seven citations of
‘Peter Singer’ or ‘Animal Liberation’,
three citations of ‘Tom Regan’ and none of ‘The
Case for Animal Rights’, and not a single mention of Gary Francione or any
of his writings on human and animal rights.
[8] A further
strategy of pro-use organisations such as the (US ) National Animal Interest
Alliance is to claim that the fulfilment of the animal rights agenda would
represent a situation of absolute ‘no contact’ between humans and
nonhumans. Similarly, Dr. David Starkey
suggested on the BBC’s Moral Maze
radio programme (07/07/2001 )
that animal rights meant a form of ‘animal apartheid’.
[9] For example (Spiegal 1998: 65), the author
quotes James Boswell who said: ‘[The abolition of the slave trade] would be
extremely cruel to the African savage, a portion of whom it saves from
massacre, or intolerant bondage in their own country, and introduces into a
much happier state of life’, and the Reverend William Jones who said: ‘[It was]
best for the beasts that they should be under man’. Jones’ position is summed up by Keith Thomas
(1983) who states that ‘in the 18th century it was widely urged that
domestication was good for animals; it civilised them and increased their
numbers: ‘we multiply life, sensation and enjoyment’’.
[10] Similar points have been repeatedly made in
public debates since ‘September 11th’ because George W. Bush effectively
silenced debate about the retaliatory attacks on New York and Washington by declaring, ‘You are with us,
or you are with the terrorists’.
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