In defense of animals, p.1
In Defense of Animals, page 1
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
References
Part I The Ideas
1 Utilitarianism and Animals
Ethics
Utilitarianism
The Advantages of Utilitarianism
Do Any Nonhumans Have Interests?
Some Rebuttals
Food
Laboratories
Wildlife
Conclusions
Reference
Further Reading
2 The Scientific Basis for Assessing Suffering in Animals
Physical Health
Physiological Signs
Behavior
“Asking” the Animals
An Objective Measure of Suffering
References
3 On the Question of Personhood beyond Homo sapiens
The Concept of Personhood
Other Hominid Persons
Ordinary Great Apes and Dolphins as Borderline Persons
The Personhood of Certain Language-Trained Animals
The Significance or Insignificance of Personhood
Notes
References
4 The Animal Debate: A Reexamination
Framing the Question: The Prevalence of Rationalization
An Ideological Resumption: Proposing Further Demotion
Confronting Reification: False Tracks and a New Perspective
Conclusion
Essential References
5 Religion and Animals
Pervasiveness of the Animal Presence Outside the World Religions
Making Religion More Animal-Friendly
Works Cited
Additional Reading
Part II The Problems
6 Speciesism in the Laboratory
The Ethical Argument
The Elements of Reform
Some Severe Experiments
Legislation
U.S. Law
British Law
The Use of Great Apes
Alternatives to Experimentation with Live Animals
The Size of the Problem
Levels of Suffering
Political Campaigning
Notes
References
7 Brave New Farm?
Factories Come … Farms Go
The Factory Formula
Factory Problems, Factory Solutions
Biotech Barnyard
Human Health Concerns
Farmers (and the Rest of Us) Are Victims Too
Laws and Standards
8 Outlawed in Europe
Sow Stalls and Tethers
Veal Crates for Calves
Laying Hens in Battery Cages
Conclusion
References
9 Against Zoos
Zoos and Their History
Animals and Liberty
Arguments for Zoos
References
10 To Eat the Laughing Animal
References
Part III Activists and Their Strategies
11 How Austria Achieved a Historic Breakthrough for Animals
The Background
The 2004 Campaign
The Victory
How We Won: Some Tactical Lessons
Why Animal Activists Should Work to Change the Law
12 Butchers’ Knives into Pruning Hooks: Civil Disobedience for Animals
April 1999, World Day for Laboratory Animals
August 2001
Winter 2003
13 Opening Cages, Opening Eyes: An Investigation and Open Rescue at an Egg Factory Farm
14 Living and Working in Defense of Animals
The State of Animals Today
The Choice for Activists
Purity vs Progress
Beyond Sound Bites, Beyond Veganism
A History of Success
Further References
15 Effective Advocacy: Stealing from the Corporate Playbook
Selling Animal Rights: Creating a Movement Others Want to Join
Four Things We Do Wrong: Four Strategies for Animal Liberation
Closing: We Are Winning
References
16 Moving the Media: From Foes, or Indifferent Strangers, to Friends
Feedback as Force
Slaughterhouse Five TV
Love–Hate Relationships
Got MADD Mothers?
Taboo Topics on the Editorial Page
“Direct Action” – Shifting the Media Focus
More Explosive Topics
Influencing the Coverage, Not the Campaigns
References
17 The CEO as Animal Activist: John Mackey and Whole Foods
18 Ten Points for Activists
Introductory Note by Peter Singer
Ten Points for Activists
A Final Word
References
Further Reading: Books and Organization Websites
Books
Animals in Research
Farmed Animals and the Meat Industry
Veganism and Vegetarianism
Organization Websites
Index
© 2006 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
except for editorial material and organization © 2006 by Peter Singer
BLACKWELL PUBLISHING
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First published 2006 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
1 2006
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
In defense of animals : the second wave / edited by Peter Singer.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-1940-5 (hard cover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-4051-1940-3 (hard cover : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-1941-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-4051-1941-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Animal welfare—Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Animal rights movement.
I. Singer, Peter, 1946–
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Notes on Contributors
Matt Ball is co-founder of Vegan Outreach, a U.S.-based organization on the cutting edge of animal advocacy since 1991. An engineer by training, he was a Department of Energy Global Change Fellow and a Research Associate in the Biology Department at the University of Pittsburgh before working full-time for Vegan Outreach. He met his wife, Anne Green, while head of Students for Animal Liberation at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. They currently live in Pittsburgh with their daughter, Ellen, one of the top leafleters for the Vegan Outreach Adopt a College program.
Martin Balluch was born in Vienna, Austria, where he studied mathematics and physics. He worked for twelve years as a research associate and lecturer at the Universities of Vienna, Austria, Heidelberg, Germany, and Cambridge, UK. He has been active for animal rights in Austria and other countries since 1985. In 1997, he dropped out of his academic career and has been a full-time activist in the Austrian animal rights movement since then. He co-founded the Austrian Vegan Society in 1999, and since 2002 has been president of the Austrian Association Against Animal Factories.
Paola Cavalieri, who lives in Milan, Italy, is the editor of the international philosophy journal Etica & Animali. She is the author of The Animal Question and the co-editor, with Peter Singer, of The Great Ape Project.
Marian Stamp Dawkins is Professor of Animal Behaviour at the University of Oxford and Fellow in Biological Sciences at Somerville College. She is the author of Animal Suffering: The Science of Animal Welfare, Through Our Eyes Only? The Search for Animal Consciousness, Unravelling Animal Behaviour, and, with Aubrey Manning, An Introduction to Animal Behaviour.
Karen Dawn has worked as a researcher and writer for various Australian publications and on ABC’s 7:30 Report. She has written for The Los Angeles Times and The Guardian, and is a contributor to Terrorists or Freedom Fighters, an anthology edited by Steve Best and Anthony Nocella. Her media monitoring service, DawnWatch.com, helps activists encourage animal-friendly coverage. Dawn hosts and co-produces the recurring series Watchdog, on Los Angeles’ KPFK radio.
David DeGrazia is Professor of Philosophy at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status, An imal Rights: A Very Short Introduction, and Human Identity and Bioethics. With Thomas Mappes, he has coedited Biomedical Ethics in its fourth and subsequent editions. DeGrazia’s articles have appeared in such journals as Philosophy and Public Affairs, Bioethics, and The Hastings Center Report.
Clare Druce co-founded the pressure group Chickens’ Lib (now the Farm Animal Welfare Network) in the early 1970s, to oppose the battery system for laying hens. Since then, she has campaigned against a range of restrictive and abusive forms of animal husbandry. Her book Minny’s Dream, an adventure story for children that highlights the deprivation of hens imprisoned in cages, was published in 2004.
Mary Finelli is a farmed animal advocacy consultant with a degree in animal science. She has worked for numerous animal protection organizations since 1986, and initiated and wrote Farmed Animal Watch, a weekly news digest, from 2001 to 2004.
Bruce Friedrich joined People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in 1996, and is the director of their vegetarian and farmed animal campaigns. Before joining PETA, Bruce ran a shelter for homeless families and the largest soup kitchen in Washington, D.C. He has been a social justice advocate for more than twenty years.
Dale Jamieson is Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy at New York University, and the author of Morality’s Progress: Essays on Humans, Other Animals, and the Rest of Nature.
Philip Lymbery spent a decade working for Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), a leading European farm animal welfare organization. As CIWF’s Campaigns Director, he founded and coordinated the European Coalition for Farm Animals (ECFA). After two years as international animal welfare and campaigns consultant, Philip now works for the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) as Director of Communications.
Jim Mason grew up on a Missouri family farm. He is co-author with Peter Singer of Animal Factories: What Agribusiness is Doing to the Family Farm, the Environment, and Your Health. His book An Unnatural Order traces the roots of the dominant worldview of human supremacy over animals and nature.
Gaverick Matheny is a Fellow in Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Maryland. He also directs New Harvest, a nonprofit research organization developing new meat substitutes (www.New-Harvest.org).
Miyun Park directs the Farm Animals and Sustainable Agriculture program of The Humane Society of the United States, in Washington, D.C. She was previously president of Compassion Over Killing (COK), where she focused on ending cruelty to farmed animals and conducted investigations at slaughterhouses, live animal markets, and factory farms. Miyun’s advocacy efforts were featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and CosmoGirl! magazine, and she was the subject of an hour-length documentary produced by the Korean Broadcasting System.
Dale Peterson’s recent books include Eating Apes, Chimpanzee Travels, The Deluge and the Ark, and Storyville, USA. He has also co-authored (with Richard Wrangham) Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence and (with Jane Goodall) Visions of Caliban: On Chimpanzees and People.
Richard D. Ryder studied experimental psychology in animal laboratories at Cambridge University and at Columbia University, New York, before becoming a pioneer animal rights advocate in the 1960s. His Victims of Science provoked political debate when published in 1975 and led to new legislation on animal experimentation in the United Kingdom and the European Union in 1986. He has several times been Chairman of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Council. In 1970 he coined the term “speciesism,” now in many dictionaries.
Peter Singer is Ira W. De Camp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University and Laureate Professor in the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne. He first became well known internationally after the publication of Animal Liberation in 1975. His other books include Democracy and Disobedience, Practical Ethics, How Are We to Live?, Rethinking Life and Death, One World, Pushing Time Away, and The President of Good and Evil. He is also editor of four other titles for Blackwell: A Companion to Ethics (1991), A Companion to Bioethics (with Helga Kuhse, 1999), The Moral of the Story: An Anthology of Ethics Through Literature (with Renata Singer, 2005), and Bioethics: An Anthology (with Helga Kuhse, 2nd edn., 2006). He is president of Animal Rights International, and of the Great Ape Project.
Henry Spira (1927–98) was a merchant seaman, journalist, civil rights activist, union reformer, and high school teacher before becoming the most effective American campaigner for animals of the 1970s and 1980s.
Pelle Strindlund is a Swedish activist and writer. He is the author of Djurrätt och socialism (Animal Rights and Socialism) and I vänliga rebellers sällskap: kristet ickevåld som konfrontation och ömhet (In the Company of Amicable Rebels: Christian Nonviolence as Confrontation and Tenderness).
Paul Waldau is the Director of the Center for Animals and Public Policy at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Oxford, a Juris Doctor degree from the University of California Law School, and a Master’s degree from Stanford University in Religious Studies. He is the author of The Specter of Speciesism: Buddhist and Christian Views of Animals, and has taught “Animal Law” courses at Harvard, Yale, and Boston College law schools.
Introduction
Peter Singer
The book that follows is very different from the one that appeared under the same title twenty years ago. That work reflected the first generation of the modern animal movement – a movement that began, hesitatingly, in the 1960s, in the United Kingdom. The first sign of a new, more radical approach to combating the maltreatment of animals was the willingness of some members of the League Against Cruel Sports to engage in sabotage to stop hunting with hounds. They started using chemicals to dull the fox’s scent, or they laid false scents to mislead the dogs. By 1963, the Hunt Saboteurs Association emerged as a separate organization, freed from the constraints of the more traditional League.
At first, this new radicalism was still focused only on putting an end to hunting with hounds. But just one year after the founding of the Hunt Saboteurs Association, Ruth Harrison’s Animal Machines was published. For the first time, the British public became aware of the existence of factory farming. This system of animal production, Harrison persuasively argued, acknowledges cruelty only when profitability ceases. Unfortunately for the animals, the individual productivity of a laying hen is less significant for the profitability of egg producers than the number of hens the producers can cram inside their sheds. Thus profitability proved compatible with a vast amount of cruelty.
A dairy farmer named Peter Roberts tried to persuade the major British animal welfare organizations to take up the issue of factory farming. Getting little response, in 1967 he started Compassion in World Farming. It has now grown into an international organization and a major player in farm animal welfare issues in Europe.
Philosophy got involved in the animal question in the early 1970s, when three graduate students at Oxford – Roslind and Stanley Godlovitch, together with John Harris – edited Animals, Men and Morals, the first modern work in which philosophers – among others – discuss the ethics of our treatment of animals. The book attracted virtually no attention. I tried to remedy this situation by writing by a review essay in The New York Review of Books under the more dramatic title “Animal Liberation.” That was followed by my own book with the same title, and after that, a number of other philosophers began to write about the topic from their own ethical perspectives. As James Jasper and Dorothy Nelkin observed in The Animal Rights Crusade: The Growth of a Moral Protest, “Philosophers served as midwives of the animal rights movement in the late 1970s” (1992: 90). The metaphor is apt: philosophers were not the mother of the movement, but they did ease its passage into the world and – who knows – may have prevented it being stillborn. In his essay below, Richard Ryder, who was present at the birth, speculates on the reasons why it happened at that particular time.
In 1970 the number of writings on the ethical status of animals was tiny. Sixteen years later, when the first edition of this book appeared, it was small. In a comprehensive bibliography of writings on this subject, Charles Magel (1989) lists only 94 works in the first 1970 years of the Christian era, and 240 works from 1970 to 1988, when the bibliography was completed. The tally now must be in the thousands. Nor is this debate simply a Western phenomenon. Leading works on animals and ethics have been translated into most of the world’s major languages, including Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, and scholars, writers, and activists in many countries have contributed.
