Tag: Responsible Policies for Animals

David Cantor, of Responsible Policies for Animals, recently weighed in on what I’ll call the accommodationists vs. the abolitionist wings of the animal rights movement. The accommodationists try to win changes in animal welfare in the apparent hope that this will ultimately lead to rights for such animals. The abolitionists argue that accommodationist efforts are counter-productive, and have little use for groups that try, for example, to improve the conditions used by suppliers to fast food restaurants.

Cantor, not surprisingly, is an abolitionist who thinks accommodationist efforts are a waste of time. This isn’t exactly a surprise coming from someone whose campaign against animal agriculture is titled “10,000 Years Is Enough.”

In his article published in Animal Writes,

Opportunities to take political action for animal right are infinite. The basic principal is that prohibitions can lead to abolition and regulations cannot. Reasons for this are many, and some exceptions may be discovered, but remember: officials never risk their careers for nonhuman animals’ well-being; they swear to uphold the Constitutions of the United States and of individual states in which they serve, and those documents do not mention nonhuman animals or their ecosystems; and what I call the industry-government-media complex ensures that nonhuman animals exploited or abused for human purposes can never have protections that can only come with basic rights.

So, for example, Cantor says that supporting legislation to have turkeys and other poultry covered by the Humane Slaughter Act cannot advance animal rights.

As Cantor elaborates,

If achieving a political activity’s stated objective would not prohibit any animal exploitation or abuse, it is probably not an animal rights political activity. If a proposed change has the support of the abusing industry, challenge any claim that it is an animal rights demand — industries or business do not lobby to shut themselves down.

At least Cantor does not pretend, as some activists do, that their success is right around the corner. On the other hand, enlisting people for a political fight that even honest activists have to concede is decades or centuries away if it is possible at all is hardly much of a rallying cry. Cantor writes,

To realize how long it will take to achieve the very big victories that will truly indicate humanity acknowledges and is establishing the animalsÂ’ rights, it helps to understand how enormously powerful are large industries and companies under the capitalist system, industryÂ’s grip on government authority, industryÂ’s and governmentÂ’s grip on the mass media from which most people get most of what they suppose is information, the power and insidiousness of entrenched speciesist ideology and arrogant forms of humanist ideology, and most human beingsÂ’ drives to get through another day alive, maintain possession of what they have, obtain more of something whether it is of real or illusory value, avoid ridicule or rejection, and maintain a sense of belonging.

Comprehending those facts does not excuse animal abuse or exploitation and can help us appreciate the nature of the struggle for animal rights, its likely duration, and why it is crucial to adhere to an undisguised, uncompromising animal rights agenda, whatever the short-term odds. For those same facts indicate that – with 6.4 billion people on Earth and counting – if we do not secure rights for nonhuman animals, absolute boundaries beyond which human beings may not tread with respect to the animals regardless of how much anyone does or doesn’t “care” about them, virtually all animals’ chances for decent lives eventually will be nil.

Somehow, though, I think even Cantor fails to realize just how entrenched the “arrogant forms of humanist ideology” are. In fact, the most effective strategy deployed against the animal rights activists today is clearly depicting any particular outcome they want to achieve as just one step in a long chain toward abolition. Some animal rights activists try to pretend otherwise, but Cantor not only wants to affirm that but also that that particular step may be counterproductive.

Now if we could only help persuade the bulk of the animal rights movement to adopt the abolitionist pose of Cantor, Joan Dunayer and others, our jobs would be that much easier.

Go David!

Source:

“Get Political for Animals”: What Does That Mean? David Cantor, Animal Writes, March 27, 2005.

Okay, here’s my prediction about Responsible Policies for Animals’ 10,000 Years is Enough Campaign to eliminate animal agricultural programs at universities in the United States — toward the end of this century, the group will need to change the title to 10,100 Years is Enough.

The group continues to send out letters to universities, including Cornell whose student newspaper recently ran a story on the group’s efforts, urging universities to drop their animal agriculture programs. The Cornell Daily Sun quotes RPA president David Cantor as saying,

Systems are set up so that billions of animals each year live extremely short lives and are never treated humanely; I don’t see much of a way that that could change as long as schools are teaching people to run those systems that have animals enslaved.

RPA’s abolitionist perspective is so outside the mainstream, that a lot of the coverage of the 10,000 Years is Enough campaign miss the point and talk about issues specific to contemporary, intensive agricultural practices. But as Cantor makes clear, his goal is not to go back to enslaving animals using 19th or early 20th century practices, but rather to abolish animal agriculture altogether. As Cantor was quoted in a November 2003 PR Week piece,

We’re an abolitionist organization. We want an end to the animal industry, and we want an end to the teaching of that industry.

In September 2003, Responsible Policies for Animals launched another campaign called “This Land Is Their Land” attacking wildlife management policies in the United States. As RPA’s web site puts it (emphasis added),

But wildlife suffer even more than people from suburban sprawl, automobile dependency, forest fragmentation, 24 million acres of U.S. land covered with nonnative turf grass, and other disruptions of natural ecosystems. RPA’s This Land Is Your Land campaign maintains it is inhumane and unethical to kill animals short of their species’ natural lifespans other than to remedy irremediable suffering. The deer and goose slaughters perpetrated throughout the East Coast, in the Midwest, and elsewhere are unethical and reflect an unfortunate determination on the part of our government to rely on anti-environmental approaches.

Because “wildlife management” policies and poor land use have created virtually all situations that now lead to complaints about wildlife from many people, every complaint about free-roaming nonhuman animals should be assumed to indicate a change in human practices is required, not further or harm to animals.

Sources:

Animal activists call for change. Andrew Beckwith, Cornell Daily Sun, January 30, 2004.

This Land is Their Land. Press Release, Responsible Policies for Animals, September 2003.

Animal Rights Vs. Industry Battle Moves To Campuses. John N. Frank, PR Week, November 10, 2003.