A colleague tweeted a link to this article, which I found rather amusing. This is the kind of stuff you're supposed to read about government spending or on The Onion. I thought I would share it. The full length article is here:
It's written by Che Green. It starts:
"As a social scientist,�
Stop. A social scientist with the name Che Green. Really? Now, I don't want a lot of hate mail for picking on the name someone's parents gave him. I just thought it was ironic. Che Green's article shows a serious misunderstanding of both the failure of the environmental movement to gain traction, but also a serious lack of political-economic teeth. At first, I assumed that it must be a pseudonym, and so, I Googled him. Nope. There really is a Che Green.
But, according to his CV, his opinion on these matters is the opinion of someone with neither the practical experience nor the academic credentials required to refer to himself authoritatively as "a social scientist". He's not a PhD; he holds a bachelors. In Business Administration. He's not someone with decades of social science research on the human/non-human relationship. Che Green worked for one animal advocacy group (starting in 2002, where he was executive director, by himself) before working as Executive Director at Humane Research Council. Before that, he worked at Microsoft doing marketing research.
As someone who knows marketing spin when he sees it, this revelation made me lulz. Yes, I'm a big meanie, but that only raises serious questions about you and why you're reading this blog.
Now, don't get me wrong. I know how animal adovocates love to get wound up when someone claims to know something that they don't just because that someone has studied the issue for years and years, and has bothered to read more than 2 books on the matter, looked at the decades and decades of available data and other evidence on the matter. In the interest of full-disclosure, I think wonderful ideas often come from children, and anyone can make a rational argument.
But what Che Green gives us is a fundamentally irrational and immoral argument, founded on what looks like an apparent lack of knowledge about social justice history, as well as the particular history of animal advocacy and wraps it up as legitimate social science. It's not. Nor is it an argument he's qualified to make in that regard. Nor are the ideas particularly original, since just about every animal welfare organization (except HSUS and very conservative welfare organizations) says we can bridge the gap between welfare and abolition by working exclusively on welfare.
But getting back to Che Green's article, he goes on to point out some obvious, glaring, painful failures of the animal welfare movement:
Companion Animals: Despite significant declines in U.S. shelter euthanasia from 1970 to the mid 1990s, progress over the past decade appears to have slowed. In 2005, on average more than eight shelter animals were euthanized every minute.
Maybe it has something to do with organizations like HSUS refusing to criticize breeding, or maybe it has something to do with organizations like PeTA killing nonhuman animals (17,000 since 1998 according to Newsweek).
Farmed Animals: In 1970, an estimated 3.2 billion animals were raised for food in the U.S. In 2007 that number was 9.5 billion. Additionally, a much larger proportion of farmed animals today are raised in closely confined environments.
Maybe it has something to do with organizations ilke PeTA and Vegan Outreach and many, many others promoting happy meat or "reducing suffernig" instead of promoting veganism. You see, when you promote consumption as morally acceptable, the message people take away is that consumption is morally acceptable. The problem of animal use is animal use, not treatment.
Research Animals: Since the law was created in 1966, the Animal Welfare Act has excluded rats, mice, and birds, thus leaving out about 95% of the animals currently used in research. Not even basic legal protections are mandated for these animals.
Well, maybe this is the result of numerous animal organizations focusing on harassing specific suppliers pointlessly instead of fighting speciesism and promoting the rights of animals not to be used as property and veganism.
Furbearing Animals: Fur is back in fashion thanks to the admittedly brilliant work of the industry to convince consumers that fur trim is less audacious and more ethical. A majority of U.S. adults still believes that buying clothes made of animal fur is "morally acceptable."
Really? It has nothing to do with welfare groups focusing on single issues campaigns, and a move of fur production to Asia, just industry marketing? As a social scientist, I can understand why Che Green might not understand basic political economy, but with a handle like Che? Guevara must be spinning in his grave.
Vegetarianism: Actual vegetarians and vegans in the U.S. are a roughly 2-3% minority among adults, and this percentage has remained essentially unchanged for 20 or more years despite an active vegetarian advocacy community.
This is exactly why we should promote veganism and not vegetarianism. It's worthwhile to note that Che Green does not bother to promote veganism in this article. In fact, he uses the term vegan only 3 times, in this paragraph and two others, both disparagingly. it sounds more like Che Green is opposed to promoting veganism. That's kind of odd. Instead, he suggests that vegans are angry protesters, mobilizes a bunch of silly stereotypes, suggests that the world won't go vegan, etc. Totally unsubstantiated nonsense -- claims pulled from the air without a shred of evidence. Since when is that sound social science?
Of course, these are all obvious failures of the welfare approach, and that's great. But what�s the solution that Che Green promotes? Abolition! No, wait, it's MORE WELARE:
Given the reality of their situation, animals would probably scoff at the increasingly heated debate among some advocates regarding �welfare reforms� vs. �animal liberation.� A discussion of where to focus one�s limited resources is rarely a bad idea, but to suggest that any single approach to animal advocacy is right � or that others are wrong � is just na�ve. The argument is moot, not least because advocating for animals will always be a diverse effort. But making gains for animals today is perfectly valid, even if those gains are minimal. And ensuring that we stay focused on the ultimate goal of abolishing animal cruelty (at least to the extent possible) is also a valid role for some advocates to play.�
I have nothing against small gains, at all. Everyone who takes animal rights seriously and goes vegan, stays vegan, says vegan is a "small gain". But welfare is not a small gain. It's a zero-sum game, as Gary Francione argues (c.f., the link to his article further down), and this is the same old standard new welfare argument: let's work on reform now and abolition never.
Frankly, I'm also surprised by the proposal that nonhuman animals would care much about human disagreements. This kind of anthropomorphism is silly and contrafactual. Time to crack a book on animal ethology, I guess. What nonhuman animals want is an unequivocal, immediate, and unconditional end to their slavery (and all the harm that goes with it), and in cases where care is required for domesticated animals, care. Welfare, as Che Green promotes it, only further entrenches that slavery. I spoke with a few animals the other day. You know what they told me? They're tired of their "advocates" apologizing for their slavery and promoting its continuation.
But more seriously, one definition of crazy is to do the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. If I drop a penny, over and over again, I'm not going to expect it to start floating upwards. Welfarism has failed animals, morally and practically. over and over and over. Welfarism is objectively, strategically and tactically misguided. The answer is not more welfare, it's abolition.
As Gary L Francione argues, the choice is not between welfare and nothing, it is between regulating and entrenching the status of nonhuman animals as our slaves and working to abolish that status and to restore their personhood. More welfare as Che Green argues will only produce more failures. Welfare works to entrench animals as our slaves by reaffirming their status as our property both legally and socially.
Promoting welfare is morally misguided. It is rationally misguided. It stands in contrast to about 30 years of statistical evidence that welfare has not correlated with a drop in animal use, and it stands in contrast to 200 years of history during which promoting nicer use (the welfare position) has correlated with more use.
I�m not a social scientist, but I know the evidence is important. Here's an actually well-written piece on the subject: The Four Problems of Animal Welfare: In a Nutshell
A couple of works cited aside, Che Green's piece is clearly not a bit of social science; it�s thinly veiled marketing. With the recession, the life blood of the �Animal Advocacy for Hire Movement" (donations) are on the downswing. I don't think it's a coincidence that HSUS' 2008 spending on fundraising jumped to 20% relative to their 2008 revenues (almost double the spend on fundraising compared with 2007, 2006, and 2005).
When it comes to marketing in an overcrowded niche, it's not just a matter of convincing someone they need indulgences, it's a matter of convincing them that they should buy the indulgences they need from a particular organization. "Don't by the other guy's breath mints, buy mine!" What we�re witnessing, in my view, is a point in the market growth for indulgences/good feeling/adventurism -- the various things that all animal welfare organizations sell is finally resulting in some serious competition and consolidation between these organizations.
For abolitionists, it�s one ideology (abolition) against other ideologies (the wide variety of positions that continue to promote animal use as morally acceptable, and that includes all large animal advocacy groups today). But for those animal welfare advocacy groups, it's their organization's business plan vs. the business plans of their various competitors for donations. So, what I expect is that we'll see a lot of these types of claims going forward: "not all welfare works, just our welfare!"
Don�t be fooled by these kinds of claims. Look behind the curtain. Only abolition works to end animal slavery, and abolition means veganism. If you are not vegan today, you should go vegan. If you are vegan, but not an abolitionist, you can learn more about the approach at Gary L. Francione�s Web site, www.abolitionistapproach.com.
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