I. Introduction
a. Nonhuman animals are exploited
Ever
since Darwin we have clearly known that human beings are not the only
animals to have interests and to feel emotions. Nevertheless,
nonhuman individuals are legally a property in our speciesist
society. Considered as a ressource, they are exploited for their milk
and eggs ; are killed for their skin and flesh ; are
used as a “biological material” for
experiments, etc.
b. 99.8% of animal exploitation = food
The
number of terrestrial animals killed for food is numbered at roughly
60 billion individuals every year. Aquatic animals are counted in
tons, about 150 million tons every year, which makes at least 1000
billion victims. Overall that makes about 1'060 billion individuals
killed every year for food. In comparison, the fur industry kills 60
million individuals (→ 0,0057% of food victims) and animal
experimentation about 300 million victims (→ 0.028% of food
victims).
II. What strategies must be used to abolish animal exploitation?
First,
we will analyse the strategy used by social movements to bring about
change and secondly we shall compare this to the strategy used by many animal rights activists until now.
a. Strategy used by social movements
aa. Claim-making machines
Social
movements are claim-making machines.
1)
They express a claim: → “Abolition
of apartheid!”, “We demand women’s right to vote!”, “The war must be stopped!”
2)
Then, they make the claim more visible in the society (demonstrations,
petitions, letters, TV debates, etc...)
3)
This claim-making creates a debate in society, causing the issue to be put on the agenda and hence to become a
public problem.
It
is important to notice that it is always
a minority who starts making a claim.
And during the societal debate (that can last for decades) the
more the claim is discussed, the bigger the minority becomes,
even eventually becoming a majority.
Once
the unanimity concerning a situation/practice is broken because some
people begin to make claims for a change, it becomes easier for
others to question the practice → the psychological study of Asch.
bb. Psychological study of Professor Asch
"Which
of the bars on the right is the same length as the one on the left?"
It depends...
In
this experiment, Professor Asch showed ten people a line drawn on a
paper. These participants were asked to say which of the bars next to
it was the same length. In reality, however, only one of the
participants was the real subject of the study, as the other nine
were this psychologyst's accomplices and were instructed to give an
incorrect answer. When the nine accomplices gave a wrong answer, the
subject often complied with the majority. But when there was at least one person who broke
unanimity by giving the correct answer, it became easier for the
subject to question what the majority said and he was more likely to
respond correctly. The presence of just one person breaking the unanimity could reduce conformity as much as 80% (see: Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 70(9), 1–70. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0093718 ).
If the social pressure generated by unanimity is so strong for those questions for which the solution can be found just by looking, we can easily imagine that it is even greater for justice issues that require some ethical thinking.
Once a claim demanding the abolition of a practice is heard in society, the unanimity about the legitimacy of that practice is broken. It begins to be perceived as problematic, making it easier for others to refuse to comply with the majority and to also support the abolition of the practice.
Therefore, one can understand that by expressing and making visible the claims that create a debate in the society, social movements take full advantage of the beneficial effect caused by the act of breaking the unanimity about certain situation.
b. Strategy used by animal rights activists: conversion strategy
We
have seen that animal exploitation for food represents about 99.8%
of the exploitation. Nevertheless, concerning this issue animal
rights activists have used the
conversion strategy.
Conversion
strategy consists of converting people to vegetarianism/veganism
without creating a societal debate nor making any claims (like for
example: “Slaughterhouses must be closed now!”).
The
belief behind the conversion strategy is this:
“we are just a minority, so we have
to first convert a lot of people to veganism and only then will we
create a public debate.“
1)
But all social movements were a small minority when they started to
make claims, even the movement for the abolition of human slavery.
2)
And the conversion to veganism is much more complicated if there is
no debate in society concerning this issue, because it is extremely
difficult to question a unanimously accepted practice (Asch study).
Social
movements have never used this kind of tactics alone. If
boycott is used, it is used with claim-making. Examples: Martin
Luther King called for a boycott of Montgomery buses and
claimed that racial discrimination had to be abolished. Gandhi called
for a boycott of British textiles and claimed that India had
to be independent. Moreover, what is also problematic is that
veganism isn't even perceived by the public as a political boycott,
but as a personal choice (see later).
The
conversion strategy is not used in social movements but in religious
movements.
But
the success of this tactic is very limited: After 2,000
years of this strategy being used by Christianity, the majority of
humans are still not Christian, and Christianity has even used
plenty of very violent conversion tactics. How many thousands of
years will we have to wait to abolish animal exploitation if we use this
strategy?
III. Consequences of the conversion strategy
a. Inefficiency
aa. Historical look
Throughout,
history no change for more justice was obtained with the conversion
strategy. However, the strategy of social movements has been shown to
succeed many times (human slavery abolitionist movement, civil rights
movement, women's liberation movement, LGBT movements etc.). So we
can see, that it is very strange for the animal rights movement to
use a strategy that has never brought about any change for more
justice instead of using the one that already been proven to work
many times.
bb. Proportion dominance
Studies have found that courses of action that completely (or almost completely) eradicate some problem are preferred over courses of action that provide incomplete eradication. For example, in a study published in 2006, Professor Bartels found that an intervention saving 102 lives out of 115 at risk was judged more valuable than one saving 105 lives out of 700 at risk, even if the number of lives saved was higher in the second intervention! This psychological effect is called “proportion dominance” and Bartels showed that its impact was even more important in the context of saving natural resources or animal lives. An intervention preventing 245 of 350 fish deaths due to pollution from Factory A was judged much more important than one preventing 251 of 980 fish deaths due to pollution from Factory B (see: Bartels, Daniel M., Proportion Dominance: The Generality and Variability of Favoring Relative Savings Over Absolute Savings (2006). Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 100, pp. 76-95, 2006).
Let's
imagine that being vegan saves the lives of 100 animals each year.
Since the total number of animals killed every year is at least 1'060 billion,
the saving of those 100 animals is considered as totally
insignificant by our human mind because of this “proportion
dominance” effect. This is the reason why many people refuse to
change their diet, knowing as they do that their tiny individual
actions will not even slightly change the enormous number of animals
killed for humans each year.
However,
if the act of refusing to eat animal products was presented as part
of a global boycott from an international movement seeking to
eliminate the entire 1'060 billion killings every year, we can assume
that people would think much more seriously about the issue. All this
without even taking into account that just the expression of the
claim “Killing animals for food has to be abolished!” will create
a debate in society, will help to spread our arguments in society and therefore make a substantial amount of
people think about the problem.
cc. Misuse of time and energy
The
animal rights movement doesn't have an astronomic number of activists
and our resources aren't infinite. Nevertheless, we are using our time
and energy to convert 6 billion non-vegans one by one, all without
even knowing if our strategy will succeed one day. Instead we could
be creating a debate among our society as a whole on the legitimacy
of killing animals for food, therefore making every citizen think
about the issue. Because our goal is to change the situation for the
animals, we should spend our time using the most effective strategy
that allows us to achieve the abolition of animal exploitation as
quickly as possible, otherwise billions of animals will suffer and
die for nothing.
So,
if we want our ideas to be heard more clearly by society, hence
encouraging more people to boycott animal products and ultimately
causing animal exploitation to be abolished; we need to
generate a societal debate, and this latter will be created by claims and not by the strategy of conversion.
b. Question of personal choice
The advocacy of veganism creates the impression amongst the public that it is a question of personal choice and not a question of justice. “Just like some people are Muslim, some people are vegan, everyone has the right to do what s/he wants.”
Of
course the decision of killing and eating another individual isn't
a question of personal choice but a question of justice towards the
exploited animals. However,
people will not realise this if there are no people who claim that
the killing of animals for food has to be abolished.
Because
of the use of the “veganism” concept, this is what remains
to the public mind: “They
don't eat animal products because they are vegan” which is very similar to “This
guy doesn't eat pork because he is Muslim”.
It comes down to personal choice again. If
we use political claims it will change to:
“they
boycott animal products because they demand the closure of
slaughterhouses / they want animal exploitation to be abolished /
they want to ban killing animals for food.”
Defining
ourselves as vegans/vegetarians transforms the refusal of a practice
into a simple lifestyle. If we don't want this issue to be perceived
as a question of personal choice, when someone asks us why we don't
eat animal products, instead of saying “I
am vegan” we should say: “I
boycott animal products because I am for the closure of
slaughterhouses” or “because I
am for the abolition of animal exploitation”.
c. Psychological reinforcement of speciesism
If
we were in a society where some people ate children, would we
criticise the practice by saying that this can be bad for the health
of the cannibals? No, we would criticise it only by saying that
children have an interest in living their lives. Also talking about the health of cannibals sends the unconscious message
that the interests of the children are not so important.
Imagine
there was a demonstration against the genocide
in Rwanda in which people would have
said: “This
has to be stopped because there is too much blood produced by the
killings and this pollutes the groundwater.”
It is immoral to use this kind of
argument (health or environment) when humans are killed.
And it is also immoral to use
this kind of argument when sentient beings from another species are
killed.
The
conversion strategy drives us to use every argument that we have in
order to convert people to veganism, but when we use the health and
environmental arguments instead of takling about the victims killed every day, we
implicitly send the unconscious speciesist message
that the lives of nonhuman animals are not so important.
IV. What to do to abolish the exploitation of nonhuman animals?
a. Example of human slavery abolition
Let's
take the example of human slavery abolitionists in the 19th century.
Did
they try to convert people to « hooganism » (a way
of living that excludes all products of human slavery)?
No!
They made claims that human slavery has to be abolished and created a
debate in the society on the question. Animal rights activists should
do the same.
By the way, the famous american abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, even openly ridiculed the tactic of boycotting all products of slavery, saying it was at best a distraction from the larger abolitionist work and at worst it whitewashed the conscience of the people to the detriment of slaves who did not profit from it. (see: Hinks, Peter and McKivigan, John, editors. Williams, R. Owen, assistant editor. Encyclopedia of antislavery and abolition, Greenwood Press, 2007, p. 268)
b. Morally unacceptable strategy
If
there were concentration camps in our country in which human
slaves produced all kind of products, would we just tell people to
stop buying these products or would we claim that these concentration
camps have to be closed down? I think we would clearly express
that they have to be closed down and it would be totally immoral from
our part just to ask people to boycott these products.
Thus, not only is
the strategy of conversion inefficient, creates the impression that
killing animals is a matter of personal choice and unconsciously
reinforces speciesism, but moreover is not a morally acceptable
position.
c. Social movement strategy
If we want to abolish animal exploitation, we must express a claim asking for its abolition and make it resound more and more in the society, creating a societal debate on this issue.
For
example when we write flyers, press releases, when we are
interviewed, when we organise demonstrations, instead of the individualist sentence: “go
vegan!” we
must make clear claims for a change in society:
“Killing animals for simple food habits must be abolished.”
To illustrate and
fully understand the difference between the two strategies, compare
the following examples.
Conversion strategy,:
“Go vegan!”
“Veganism is good for the planet.”
“Veganism is good for your health.”
“Vegans have better sex.”
“Going vegan
is a rational choice.”
“Vegan food is great!”
Social movement strategy:
“Slaughterhouses must be closed now.” (copied from the official website of international marches to close down all slaughterhouses: https://stopabattoirs.org/)
“Killing
animals for simple food habits should be forbidden.”
"We demand the abolition of the property status of animals"
"We ask for the abolition of fishing and fish farming" (copied from the official website of the World Day for the End of Fishing: https://www.end-of-fishing.org/en/why/ )
“Animals
should have a legal right to life.”
“Farming,
fishing and hunting, as well as selling and eating animal products,
must be abolished.” (copied
from meat abolition movement website:
http://meat-abolition.org/en/wwam
)
“Society
should condemn and fight speciesism just as it fights racism and
sexism.”
(copied
from the official website of the World Day for the End of Speciesism:
https://www.end-of-speciesism.org/en/our-demands/
)
Conclusion
When we take
part in activism or just speak in defense of non-humans, we need to
be sure that our message is understood as a request
for change that concerns the whole society.
Instead of being afraid of the public, we must have
the courage to speak for the animals
involved and begin to express
what we really want:
“We demand
the abolition of animal exploitation!”
Edit: since this article was first published (november 2012), many thousands of animal rights activists and organizations are now using this social movement strategy to highlight the injustice of the practice of killing animals for food habits.
