On Nonhuman Slavery

Arguing For Animal Rights In the Victorian Era

2012-02-19T22:26:14Z

The following is an excerpt from Animals’ Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress written in 1894 by Henry S. Salt.

…I am aware that many of my contentions will appear very ridiculous to those who view the subject from a contrary standpoint, and regard the lower animals as created solely for the pleasure and advantage of man; on the other hand, I have myself derived an unfailing fund of amusement from a rather extensive study of our adversaries’ reasoning. It is a conflict of opinion, wherein in time alone can adjudicate: but already there are not a few signs that the laugh will rest ultimately with the humanitarians…

Have the lower animals “rights?”…From the earliest times there have been thinkers who, directly or indirectly, answered this question with an affirmative. The Buddhist and Pythagorean canons, dominated perhaps by the creed of reincarnation, included the maxim “not to kill or injure any innocent animal.” The humanitarian philosophers of the Roman empire, among whom Seneca and Plutarch and Porphyry were the most conspicuous, took still higher ground in preaching humanity on the broadest principle of universal benevolence. “Since justice is due to rational beings, ” wrote Porphyry, “how is it possible to evade the admission that we are bound also to act justly towards the races below us?”

It is a lamentable fact that during the churchdom of the middle ages, from the fourth century to the sixteenth, from the time of Porphyry to the time of Montaigne, little or no attention was paid to the question of the rights and wrongs of the lower races. Then, with the Reformation and the revival of learning, came a revival also of humanitarian feeling, as may be seen in many passages of Erasmus and More, Shakespeare and Bacon; but it was not until the eighteenth century, the age of enlightenment and “sensibility,” of which Voltaire and Rousseau were the spokesmen, that the rights of animals obtained more deliberate recognition. From the great Revolution of 1789 dates the period when the world-wide spirit of humanitarianism, which had hitherto been felt by but one man in a million—the thesis of the philosopher or the vision of the poet—began to disclose itself, gradually and dimly at first, as an essential feature of democracy.

A great and far-reaching effect was produced in England at this time by the publication of such revolutionary works as Paine’s “Rights of Man,” and Mary Wollstonecraft’s “Vindication of the Rights of Women;” and looking back now, after the lapse of a hundred years, we can see that a still wider extension of the theory of rights was thenceforth inevitable. In fact, such a claim was anticipated—if only in bitter jest—by a contemporary writer, who furnishes us with a notable instance of how the mockery of one generation may become the reality of the next. There was published anonymously in 1792 a little volume entitled “A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes,” [2] a reductio ad absurdum of Mary Wollstonecraft’s essay, written, as the author informs us, “to evince by demonstrative arguments the perfect equality of what is called the irrational species to the human.” The further opinion is expressed that “after those wonderful productions of Mr. Paine and Mrs. Wollstonecraft, such a theory as the present seems to be necessary.” It was necessary; and a very short term of years sufficed to bring it into effect; indeed, the theory had already been put forward by several English pioneers of nineteenth-century humanitarianism.

To Jeremy Bentham, in particular, belongs the high honour of first asserting the rights of animals with authority and persistence. “The legislator,” he wrote, “ought to interdict everything which may serve to lead to cruelty. The barbarous spectacles of gladiators no doubt contributed to give the Romans that ferocity which they displayed in their civil wars. A people accustomed to despise human life in their games could not be expected to respect it amid the fury of their passions. It is proper for the same reason to forbid every kind of cruelty towards animals, whether by way of amusement, or to gratify gluttony. Cock-fights, bull-baiting, hunting hares and foxes, fishing, and other amusements of the same kind, necessarily suppose either the absence of reflection or a fund of inhumanity, since they produce the most acute sufferings to sensible beings, and the most painful and lingering death of which we can form any idea. Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes. We have begun by attending to the condition of slaves; we shall finish by softening that of all the animals which assist our labours or supply our wants.”[3]

So, too, wrote one of Bentham’s contemporaries: “The grand source of the unmerited and superfluous misery of beasts exists in a defect in the constitution of all communities. No human government, I believe, has ever recognized the jus animalium, which ought surely to form a part of the jurisprudence of every system founded on the principles of justice and humanity.” [4] A large number of later moralists have followed on the same lines, with the result that the rights of animals have already, to a certain limited extent, been established both in private usage and by legal enactment.

It is interesting to note the exact commencement of this new principle in law. When Lord Erskine, speaking in the House of Lords in 1811, advocated the cause of justice to the lower animals, he was greeted with loud cries of insult and derision. But eleven years later the efforts of the despised humanitarians, and especially of Richard Martin, of Galway, were rewarded by their first success. The passing of the Ill-treatment of Cattle Bill, commonly known as “Martin’s Act,” in June, 1822, is a memorable date in the history of humane legislation, less on account of the positive protection afforded by it, for it applied only to cattle and “beasts of burden,” than for the invaluable precedent which it created. From 1822 onward, the principle of that jus animalium for which Bentham had pleaded, was recognized, however partially and tentatively at first, by English law, and the animals included in the Act ceased to be the mere property of their owners ; moreover the Act has been several times supplemented and extended during the past half century.[5] It is scarcely possible, in the face of this legislation, to maintain that “rights” are a privilege with which none but human beings can be invested; for if some animals are already included within the pale of protection, why should not more and more be so included in the future?

For the present, however, what is most urgently needed is some comprehensive and intelligible principle, which shall indicate, in a more consistent manner, the true lines of man’s moral relation towards the lower animals. And here, it must be admitted, our position is still far- from satisfactory; for though certain very important concessions have been made, as we have seen, to the demand for the jus animalium, they have been made for the most part in a grudging, unwilling spirit, and rather in the interests of property than of principle; while even the leading advocates of animals’ rights seem to have shrunk from basing their claim on the only argument which can ultimately be held to be a really sufficient one—the assertion that animals, as well as men, though, of course, to a far less extent than men, are possessed of a distinctive individuality, and, therefore, are in justice entitled to live their lives with a due measure of that “restricted freedom” to which Herbert Spencer alludes. It is of little use to claim “rights” for animals in a vague general way, if with the same breath we explicitly show our determination to subordinate those rights to anything and everything that can be construed into a human “want;” nor will it ever be possible to obtain full justice for the lower races so long as we continue to regard them as beings of a wholly different order, and to ignore the significance of their numberless points of kinship with mankind.

For example, it has been said by a well-known writer on the subject of humanity to animals[6] that ”the life of a brute, having no moral purpose, can best be understood ethically as representing the sum of its pleasures; and the obligation, therefore, of producing the pleasures of sentient creatures must be reduced, in their case, to the abstinence from unnecessary destruction of life” Now, with respect to this statement, I must say that the notion of the life of an animal having “no moral purpose,” belongs to a class of ideas which cannot possibly be accepted by the advanced humanitarian thought of the present day — it is a purely arbitrary assumption, at variance with our best instincts, at variance with our best science, and absolutely fatal (if the subject be clearly thought out) to any full realization of animals’ rights. If we are ever going to do justice to the lower races, we must get rid of the antiquated notion of a “great gulf” fixed between them and mankind, and must recognize the common bond of humanity that unites all living beings in one universal brotherhood.

As far as any excuses can be alleged, in explanation of the insensibility or inhumanity of the western nations in their treatment of animals, these excuses may be mostly traced back to one or the other of two theoretical contentions, wholly different in origin, yet alike in this — that both postulate an absolute difference of nature between men and the lower kinds.

The first is the so-called “religious” notion, which awards immortality to man, but to man alone, thereby furnishing (especially in Catholic countries) a quibbling justification for acts of cruelty to animals, on the plea that they “have no souls.” “It should seem,” says a modern writer,[7] “as if the primitive Christians, by laying so much stress upon a future life, in contradistinction to this life, and placing the lower creatures out of the pale of hope, placed them at the same time out of the pale of sympathy, and thus laid the foundation for this utter disregard of animals in the light of our fellow-creatures.” I am aware that a quite contrary argument has, in a few isolated instances, been founded on the belief that animals have “no souls.” Humphry Primatt, for example, says that “cruelty to a brute is an injury irreparable,” because there is no future life to be a compensation for present afflictions; and there is an amusing story, told by Lecky in his “History of European Morals,” of a certain humanely-minded Cardinal, who used to allow vermin to bite him without hindrance, on the ground that “we shall have heaven to reward us for our sufferings, but these poor creatures have nothing but the enjoyment of this present life.” But this is a rare view of the question which need not, I think, be taken into very serious account; for, on the whole, the denial of immortality to animals (unless, of course, it be also denied to men) tends strongly to lessen their chance of being justly and considerately treated. Among the many humane movements of the present age, none is more significant than the growing inclination, noticeable both in scientific circles and in religious, to believe that mankind and the lower animals have the same destiny before them, whether that destiny be for immortality or for annihilation.[8]

The second and not less fruitful source of modern inhumanity is to be found in the “Cartesian” doctrine —the theory of Descartes and his followers—that the lower animals are devoid of consciousness and feeling; a theory which carried the “religious” notion a step further, and deprived the animals not only of their claim to 1 a life hereafter, but of anything that could, without; mockery, be called a life in the present, since mere “animated machines,” as they were thus affirmed to be, could in no real sense be said to live at all! Well might Voltaire turn his humane ridicule against this most monstrous contention, and suggest, with scathing irony, that God “had given the animals the organs of feeling, to the end that they might not feel!” ”The theory of animal automatism,” says one of the leading scientists of the present day,[9] “which is usually attributed to Descartes, can never be accepted by common sense.” Yet it is to be feared that it has done much, in its time, to harden “scientific” sense against the just complaints of the victims of human arrogance and oppression.

Let me here quote a most impressive passage from Schopenhauer. “The unpardonable forgetfulness in which the lower animals have hitherto been left by the moralists of Europe is well known. It is pretended that the beasts have no rights. They persuade themselves that our conduct in regard to them has nothing to do with morals, or (to speak the language of their morality) that we have no duties towards animals: a doctrine revolting, gross, and barbarous, peculiar to the west, and having its root in Judaism. In philosophy, however, it is made to rest upon a hypothesis, admitted, in despite of evidence itself, of an absolute difference between man and beast. It is Descartes who has proclaimed it in the clearest and most decisive manner; and in fact it was a necessary consequence of his errors. The Cartesian – Leibnitzian – Wolfian philosophy, with the assistance of entirely abstract notions, had built up the ‘rational psychology,’ and constructed an immortal anima rationalis: but, visibly, the world of beasts, with its very natural claims, stood up against this exclusive monopoly—this brevet of immortality decreed to man alone—and silently Nature did what she always does in such cases—she protested. Our philosophers, feeling their scientific conscience quite disturbed, were forced to attempt to consolidate their ’rational psychology’ by the aid of empiricism. They therefore set themselves to work to hollow out between man and beast an enormous abyss, of an immeasurable width; by this they wish to prove to us, in contempt of evidence, an impassable difference.”[10]

The fallacious idea that the lives of animals have “no moral purpose” is at root connected with these religious and philosophical pretensions which Schopenhauer so powerfully condemns. To live one’s own life—to realize one’s true self—is the highest moral purpose of man and animal alike; and that animals possess their due measure of this sense of individuality is scarcely open to doubt. “We have seen,” says Darwin, ” that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, reason, etc., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals.”[11] Not less emphatic is the testimony of the Rev. J. G. Wood, who, speaking from a great experience, gives it as his opinion that ”the manner in which we ignore individuality in the lower animals is simply astounding.” He claims for them a future life, because he is “quite sure that most of the cruelties which are perpetrated on the animals are due to the habit of considering them as mere machines without susceptibilities, without reason, and without the capacity of a future.”[12]

This, then, is the position of those who assert that animals, like men, are necessarily possessed of certain limited rights, which cannot be withheld from them as they are now withheld without tyranny and injustice. They have individuality, character, reason; and to have those qualities is to have the right to exercise them, in so far as surrounding circumstances permit.

“Freedom of choice and act,” says Otiida, “is the first condition of animal as of human happiness. How many animals in a million have even relative freedom in any moment of their lives? No choice is ever permitted to them; and all their most natural instincts are denied or made subject to authority.” [13] Yet no human being is justified in regarding any animal whatsoever as a meaningless automaton, to be worked, or tortured, or eaten, as the case may be, for the mere object of satisfying the wants or whims of mankind. Together with the destinies and duties that are laid on them and fulfilled by them, animals have also the right to be treated with gentleness and consideration, and the man who does not so treat them, however great his learning or influence may be, is, in that respect, an ignorant and foolish man, devoid of the highest and noblest culture of which the human mind is capable.

Something must here be said on the important subject of nomenclature. It is to be feared that the ill-treatment of animals is largely due—or at any rate the difficulty of amending that treatment is largely increased —by the common use of such terms as “brute-beast,” ”live-stock,” etc., which implicitly deny to the lower races that intelligent individuality which is most undoubtedly possessed by them. It was long ago remarked by Bentham, in his “Introduction to Principles of Morals and Legislation,” that, whereas human beings are styled persons, “other animals, on account of their interests having been neglected by the insensibility of the ancient jurists, stand degraded into the class of things;” and Schopenhauer also has commented on the mischievous absurdity of the idiom which applies the neuter pronoun “it” to such highly organized primates as the dog and the ape.

A word of protest is needed also against such an expression as “dumb animals,” which, though often cited as “an immense exhortation to pity,” [14] has in reality a tendency to influence ordinary people in quite the contrary direction, inasmuch as it fosters the idea of an impassable barrier between mankind and their dependents. It is convenient to us men to be deaf to the entreaties of the victims of our injustice; and, by a sort of grim irony, we therefore assume that it is they who are afflicted by some organic incapacity—they are “dumb animals,” forsooth! although a moment’s consideration must prove that they have innumerable ways, often quite human in variety and suggestiveness, of uttering their thoughts and emotions.[15] Even the term “animals,” as applied to the lower races, is incorrect, and not wholly unobjectionable, since it ignores the fact that man is an animal no less than they. My only excuse for using it in this volume is that there is absolutely no other brief term available.

So anomalous is the attitude of man towards the lower animals, that it is no marvel if many humane thinkers have wellnigh despaired over this question. “The whole subject of the brute creation,” wrote Dr. Arnold, “is to me one of such painful mystery, that I dare not approach it;” and this (to put the most charitable interpretation on their silence) appears to be the position of the majority of moralists and teachers at the present time. Yet there is urgent need of some key to the solution of the problem; and in no other way can this key be found than by the full inclusion of the lower races within the pale of human sympathy. All the promptings of our best and surest instincts point us in this direction. “It is abundantly evident,” says Lecky,[16]^”both from history and from present experience, that the instinctive shock, or natural feelings of disgust, caused by the sight of the sufferings of men, is not generically different from that which is caused by the sight of the suffering of animals.”

If this be so—and the admission is a momentous one —can it be seriously contended that the same humanitarian tendency which has already emancipated the slave, will not ultimately benefit the lower races also ? Here, again, the historian of ” European Morals” has a significant remark: “At one time,” he says, “the benevolent affections embrace merely the family, soon the circle expanding includes first a class, then a nation, then a coalition of nations, then all humanity; and finally its influence is felt in the dealings of man with the animal world. In each of these cases a standard is formed, different from that of the preceding stage, but in each case the same tendency is recognized as virtue.”[17]

But, it may be argued, vague sympathy with the lower animals is one thing, and a definite recognition of their “rights” is another; what reason is there to suppose that we shall advance from the former phase to the latter? Just this; that every great liberating movement has proceeded exactly on these lines. Oppression and cruelty are invariably founded on a lack of imaginative sympathy; the tyrant or tormentor can have no true sense of kinship with the victim of his injustice. When once the sense of affinity is awakened, the knell of tyranny is sounded, and the ultimate concession of “rights” is simply a matter of time. The present condition of the more highly organized domestic animals is in many ways very analogous to that of the negro slaves of a hundred years ago: look back, and you will find in their case precisely the same exclusion from the common pale of humanity; the same hypocritical fallacies, to justify that exclusion ; and, as a consequence, the same deliberate stubborn denial of their social ”rights.” Look back—for it is well to do so—and then look forward, and the moral can hardly be mistaken.

We find so great a thinker and writer as Aristotle seriously pondering whether a slave may be considered as in any sense a man. In emphasizing the point that friendship is founded on propinquity, he expresses himself as follows: ” Neither can men have friendships with horses, cattle, or slaves, considered merely as such; for a slave is merely a living instrument, and an instrument a living slave. Yet, considered as a. man, a slave may be an object of friendship, for certain rights seem to belong to all those capable of participating in law and engagement. A slave, then, considered as a man, may be treated justly or unjustly.” [18] ”Slaves,” says Bentham, ” have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing as in England, for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which could never have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.”[19]

Let us unreservedly admit the immense difficulties that stand in the way of this animal enfranchisement. Our relation towards the animals is complicated and embittered by innumerable habits handed down through centuries of mistrust and brutality; we cannot, in all cases, suddenly relax these habits, or do full justice even where we see that justice will have to be done. A perfect ethic of humaneness is therefore impracticable, if not unthinkable ; and we can attempt to do no more than to indicate in a general way the main principle of animals’ rights, noting at the same time the most flagrant particular violations of those rights, and the lines on which the only valid reform can hereafter be effected. But, on the other hand, it may be remembered, for the comfort and encouragement of humanitarian workers, that these obstacles are, after all, only such as are inevitable in each branch of social improvement; for at every stage of every great reformation it has been repeatedly argued, by indifferent or hostile observers, that further progress is impossible; indeed, when the opponents of a great cause begin to demonstrate its “impossibility,” experience teaches us that that cause is already on the high road to fulfilment.

As for the demand so frequently made on reformers, that they should first explain the details of their scheme —how this and that point will be arranged, and by what process all kinds of difficulties, real or imagined, will be circumvented—the only rational reply is that it is absurd to expect to see the end of a question, when we are now but at its beginning. The persons who offer this futile sort of criticism are usually those who under no circumstances would be open to conviction; they purposely ask for an explanation which, by the very nature of the case, is impossible because it necessarily belongs to a later period of time. It would be equally sensible to request a traveller to enumerate beforehand all the particular things he will see by the way, on pain of being denounced as an unpractical visionary, although he may have a quite sufficient general knowledge of his course and destination.

Our main principle is now clear. If ”rights” exist at all—and both feeling and usage indubitably prove that they do exist—they cannot be consistently awarded to men and denied to animals, since the same sense of justice and compassion apply in both cases. “Pain is pain,” says an honest old writer,[20] “whether it be inflicted on man or on beast; and the creature that suffers it, whether man or beast, being sensible of the misery of it while it lasts, suffers evil; and the sufferance of evil, unmeritedly, unprovokedly, where no offence has been given, and no good can possibly be answered by it, but merely to exhibit power or gratify malice, is Cruelty and Injustice in him that occasions it.”

I commend this outspoken utterance to the attention of those ingenious moralists who quibble about the “discipline” of suffering, and deprecate immediate attempts to redress what, it is alleged, may be a necessary instrument for the attainment of human welfare. It is, per-haps, a mere coincidence, but it has been observed that those who are most forward to disallow the rights of others, and to argue that suffering and subjection are the natural lot of all living things, are usually themselves exempt from the operation of this beneficent law, and that the beauty of self-sacrifice is most loudly be lauded by those who profit most largely at the expense of their fellow-creatures.

But “nature is one with rapine,” say some, and this Utopian theory of “rights,” if too widely extended, must come in conflict with that iron rule of internecine competition, by which the universe is regulated. But is the universe so regulated? We note that this very objection, which was confidently relied on a few years back by many opponents of the emancipation of the working-classes, is not heard of in that connection now! Our learned economists and men of science, who set themselves to play the defenders of the social status quo, have seen their own weapons of “natural selection,” “survival of the fittest,” and what not, snatched from their hands and turned against them, and are therefore beginning to explain to us, in a scientific manner, what we untutored humanitarians had previously felt to be true, viz., that competition is not by any means the sole governing law among the human race. We are not greatly dismayed, then, to find the same old bugbear trotted out as an argument against animals’ rights— indeed, we see already unmistakable signs of a similar complete reversal of the scientific judgment.[21]

The charge of “sentimentalism” is frequently brought against those who plead for animals’ rights. Now “sentimentalism,” if any meaning at all can be attached to the word, must signify an inequality, an ill balance of sentiment, an inconsistency which leads men into attacking one abuse, while they ignore or condone another where a reform is equally desirable. That this weakness is often observable among ” philanthropists ” on the one hand, and ” friends of animals ” on the other, and most of all among those acute ” men of the world,” whose regard is only for themselves, I am not concerned to deny ; what I wish to point out is, that the only real safeguard against sentimentality is to take up a consistent position towards the rights of men and of the lower animals alike, and to cultivate a broad sense of universal justice (not “mercy “) for all living things. Herein, and herein alone, is to be sought the true sanity of temperament.

It is an entire mistake to suppose that the rights of animals are in any way antagonistic to the rights of men. Let us not be betrayed for a moment into the specious fallacy that we must study human rights first, and leave the animal question to solve itself hereafter; for it is only by a wide and disinterested study of both subjects that a solution of either is possible. “For he who loves all animated nature,” says Porphyry, “will not hate any one tribe of innocent beings, and by how much greater his love for the whole, by so much the more will he cultivate justice towards a part of them, and that part to which he is most allied.” To omit all worthier reasons, it is too late in the day to suggest the indefinite postponement of a consideration of animals’ rights, for from a moral point of view, and even from a legislative point of view, we are daily confronted with this momentous problem, and the so-called ” practical ” people who affect to ignore it are simply shutting their eyes to facts which they find it disagreeable to confront.

Once more then, animals have rights, and these rights consist in the ”restricted freedom” to live a natural life—a life, that is, which permits of the individual development—subject to the limitations imposed by the permanent needs and interests of the community. There is nothing quixotic or visionary in this assertion; it is perfectly compatible with a readiness to look the sternest laws of existence fully and honestly in the face. If we must kill, whether it be man or animal, let us kill and have done with it; if we must inflict pain, let us do what is inevitable, without hypocrisy, or evasion, or cant. But (here is the cardinal point) let us first be assured that it is necessary ; let us not wantonly trade on the needless miseries of other beings, and then attempt to lull our consciences by a series of shuffling excuses which cannot endure a moment’s candid investigation.” - Excerpted from Animals’ Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress, chapter 1, The Principle of Animals’ Rights. Written by Henry Stephens Salt, 1894.

[2] Attributed to Thomas Taylor, the Platonist.

[3] ”Principles of Penal Law,” chap. xvi.

[4] John Lawrence, ” Philosophical Treatise on the Moral Duties of Man towards the Brute Creation,” 1796.

[5] Viz. : in 1833, 1835, 1849, 1854, 1876, 1884. We shall have occasion, in subsequent chapters, to refer to some of these enactments.

[6] ” Fraser,” November, 1863 ; ” The Rights of Man and the Claims of Brutes.”

[7] Mrs. Jameson, ” Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies. ”

[8] See the article on “Animal Immortality,” ” The Nineteenth Century,” Jan., 1891, by Norman Pearson. The upshot of his argument is, that “if we accept the immortality of the human soul, and also accept its evolutional origin, we cannot deny the survival, in some form or other, of animal minds.”

[9] G. J. Romanes, ” Animal Intelligence.” Prof. Huxley’s remarks, in ” Science and Culture,” give a partial support to Descartes’ theory, but do not bear on the moral question of rights. For, though he concludes that animals are probably ” sensitive automata,” he classes men in the same category.

[10] Schopenhauer’s ” Foundation of Morality.” I quote the passage as translated in Mr. Howard Williams’s ” Ethics of Diet.”

[11] ” Descent of Man,” chap. iii.

[12] ” Man and Beast, here and hereafter,” 1874.

[13] ” Fortnightly Review,” April, 1892.

[14] In Sir A. Helps’s ” Animals and their Masters.”

[15] Let those who think that men are likely to treat animals with more humanity on account of their dumbness ponder the case of the fish, as exemplified in the following whimsically suggestive passage of Leigh Hunt’s ” Imaginary Conversations of Pope and Swift.” ” The Dean once asked a scrub who was fishing, if he had ever caught a fish called the Scream. The man protested that he had never heard of such a fish. ‘ What!’ says the Dean, ‘ you an angler, and never heard of the fish that gives a shriek when coming out of the water? ‘Tis the only fish that has a voice, and a sad, dismal sound it is.’ The man asked who could be so barbarous as to angle for a creature that shrieked. ‘ That,’ said the Dean, ‘ is another matter ; but what do you think of fellows that I have seen, whose only reason for hooking and tearing all the fish they can get at, is that they do not scream?’ ”

[16] ” History of European Morals.”

[17] ” History of European Morals,” i. 101.

[18] ” Ethics,” book viii.

[19] ” Principles of Morals and Legislation.”

[20] Humphry Primatt, D.D., author of ” The Duty of Mercy to Brute Animals ” (1776).

[21] See Prince Kropotkine’s articles on ” Mutual Aid among Animals,” ” Nineteenth Century,” 1890, where the conclusion is arrived at that ” sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle.” A similar view is expressed in the ” Study of Animal Life,” 1892, by J. Arthur Thomson. “What we must protest against,” he says, in an interesting chapter on ” The Struggle of Life,” “is that one-sided interpretation according to which individualistic competition is nature’s sole method of progress… The precise nature of the means employed and ends attained must be carefully considered when we seek from the records of animal evolution support or justification for human conduct.”

—

Painting: Illustration of The Trial of Bill Burn under Martin’s Act by P. Mathews

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Nothing Can Ever Be Seen In Quite The Same Way Again

2012-02-07T22:24:54Z

“At the moment our human world is based on the suffering and destruction of millions of non-humans. To perceive this and to do something to change it in personal and public ways is to undergo a change of perception akin to a religious conversion.

Nothing can ever be seen in quite the same way again because once you have admitted the terror and pain of other species you will, unless you resist conversion, be always aware of the endless permutations of suffering that support our society.” - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes series

Speciesism and Veganism: Transcending Politics and Religion by Angel Flinn and Dan Cudahy

2012-02-12T12:20:20Z

The following essay, written by Angel Flinn and Dan Cudahy, comes from the Gentle World website.

Although this may come as a surprise to some, there are ethical vegans across the political spectrum and in every major religion. Veganism transcends politics and religion because it is based on the simple matter of rejecting a particular form of prejudice: speciesism.

Speciesism, racism, sexism, and other prejudices rely on a morally irrelevant criterion (in this case, species) as the basis on which to deny the interests of an individual belonging to a different ‘group’, even if those interests are more significant than one’s own. As such, speciesism is simply a different form of the same underlying wrong at the foundation of all prejudices. It really doesn’t matter which morally irrelevant criteria we base our prejudice on – sex, race, skin color, age, sexual orientation, species – it is ethically wrong to use such arbitrary criteria to deny the rights of others.

Despite the cultural evolution that has brought humanity a long way from the ‘kill or be killed’ mentality of prehistoric times, the world today remains profoundly speciesist. The extreme prejudice of our cultural speciesism reaches far beyond disregarding an individual’s right to avoid persecution. It extends as far as absolute indifference to the right to be free from unjust imprisonment, mental and emotional torment, extreme physical violence in the form of mutilations and the infliction of injury and death. Owned as chattel property, with no laws to protect their most fundamental rights, those who are not human are condemned to a life with no protection against the brutal and unremitting oppression from those who control their world: Us.

Animal exploitation is perfectly legal and socially acceptable everywhere in the world, despite the emergence of satisfactory alternatives to virtually all uses (not to mention those yet to be developed, once our society rejects our current speciesist practices). Although there is a growing movement drawing attention to the many brutal rights violations routinely carried out against nonhumans being used for human gain, we continue to confine, injure and kill animals of all kinds, maintaining unnecessary, antiquated, exploitative practices for food production, research, fashion, and even entertainment.

The ubiquitous nature of this extreme cultural prejudice explains why speciesism (and the proper moral response to it: veganism) is unrelated to political leaning. Although social justice movements generally arise from the left, there are some political conservatives who are principled vegans, while some on the political left, sadly, continue to scoff at issues of animal rights. In fact, it is remarkable that the vast majority of those on the political left choose to remain uninformed and to deliberately ignore these glaring justice issues, including their own participation in practices that would be rightly abhorred by anyone in touch with their conscience.

As it is with politics, so it is with religion. Christians were strongly divided over human chattel slavery in antebellum America, with slavery proponents using Bible quotes to defend their “God-given” right to own slaves. Opponents of slavery used different Bible quotes to point out that slavery was condemned by God. And so it is with regard to animal rights today. Those on both sides of the issue use quotes from religious texts either to justify unnecessary killing, or to validate the vegan ethic of nonviolence.

Eastern religions are no exception. Many of today’s Buddhists attempt to justify animal use, unnecessary killing, and speciesism by pointing to loopholes in the various contradictory writings about the Buddha’s teaching of universal compassion for all sentient beings. Other Buddhists choose instead to practice and promote veganism as the rational response to the essential Buddhist teaching of nonviolence. Presumably, having been liberated from their own speciesism, vegan Buddhists are able to see through such prejudiced rationalizations, and recognize the higher authority in the truth the Buddha was apparently trying to impart to his students.

(In other words, if the Buddha wasn’t a vegan, as some people claim, then he wasn’t living up to his own teachings, which state very clearly that reverence for sentient life is a fundamental principle of a spiritual existence.)

In any case, it is clear that politics and religion are irrelevant to rejecting our common prejudice against fellow sentient beings. Regardless of whether we are conservative, liberal, leftist, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, atheist, or fall under any other category, we have the choice to acknowledge and reject the underlying cultural speciesism that we have all been conditioned to accept.

In fact, one might say that a deep-seated awareness of the essential rights and needs held by all sentient beings is the common ground that every one of us shares. Despite our many differences and divergences, underneath religion, politics, worldviews, interests, personalities, shape, size, sex, color, and even species, underneath it all, every single one of us is made from flesh and blood. Or, as the Buddha himself is said to have taught:

“All beings tremble before violence. All fear death. All love life. See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do?” - Written by Angel Flinn and Dan Cudahy. From the Gentle World website.

Let Animals Amaze Us – by James McWilliams

2012-02-12T12:29:20Z

The following is an excerpt from Let Animals Amaze Us by James McWilliams.

“Humans love animals because we empathize with them. And we empathize with them because, like us, they are sentient beings capable of feeling pleasure and pain. I became a vegan the day I watched a video of a calf being born on a factory farm. The baby was dragged away from his mother before he hit the ground. The helpless calf strained its head backwards to find his mother. The mother bolted after her son and exploded into a rage when the rancher slammed the gate on her. She wailed the saddest noise I’d ever heard an animal make, and then thrashed and dug into the ground, burying her face in the muddy placenta. I had no idea what was happening respecting brain chemistry, animal instinct, or whatever. I just knew that this was deeply wrong. I just knew that such suffering could never be worth the taste of milk and veal. I empathized with the cow and the calf and, in so doing, my life changed.

The field of animal ethology shows how right I was to react as I did (which, in the short term, was to cry a lot). Animals are deeply emotional creatures, and their emotional lives are often lived just as, if not more, acutely than ours. Of course, the emotions expressed by non-human animals aren’t only ones of grievance. Animals also show gratitude, often towards other species, including humans. In 2005, when five divers went to free a humpback whale trapped in crab trap ropes off the coast of San Francisco, the whale became preternaturally calm as the divers hacked at the chords entangling her. When the rescuers finally released the whale, she carefully approached each diver and, with gentle finesse, nuzzled him. To dismiss this anecdote as “mere instinct” would be to overlook the power of the human-animal emotional bond. The whale valued its life, the divers saved her, and she thanked them. It was a beautiful expression of gratitude, one that every self-aware human should understand.

There will always be naysayers. There will always be those who dismiss such stories as sentimental distortions of those prone to anthropomorphism. It’s worth noting, however, that such naysaying has deeper roots in Biblical evangelicalism than in Darwinian biology. The reason the emotional lives of animals are so openly accessible to us is because emotions have evolved and, as any high school biology class teaches, humans share an evolutionary lineage with the animals we exploit. From this perspective, to anthropomorphize an animal is seek a bond with that animal. As one expert on animal behavior has written, “feeling in animals [is] an inevitable consequence of phylogenic continuity. If morphological and physiological traits are evolutionarily continuous, so, too, are psychological ones.” We thus have every reason to look animals in the eyes, assess how they feel, take those feelings seriously, and ask why we would ever inflict unnecessary harm on the sentient creatures with whom we share the ability to feel pain and pleasure…” - Excerpted from Let Animals Amaze Us by James McWilliams

Property, Violence, And The Roots Of Oppression by Bob Torres

2012-02-06T14:00:30Z

The following is an excerpt from Making A Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights by Bob Torres

Animals are nothing more than the means to the end of profit in contemporary capitalist production. Their particularity, their interests in not suffering, their desires to be free and to live as beings in the world are all subjected—en masse—to the productive ends of agricultural capital.

As commodities, animals are also the property of their owners. They “belong” to people, or legal entities like corporations in much the same way as any other piece of property. The farmer can sell and buy cows, the vivisector can purchase mice prone to develop certain kinds of cancers; and you and I can buy purebred designer dogs or cats if we wish. To many of us, this seems like an everyday fact of life; we are so accustomed to thinking of animals as our property that we rarely think of the impacts of this legal and social status for animals. …

In most legal senses, your dog is like your iPod or your car or any other material effect you own… The big difference between my iPod and my dog, however, is that my dog is sentient. She has a subjective awareness, she has needs and wants and emotional states, and she clearly feels pain and pleasure.

As our property, animals are essentially producers who are unrewarded for their production—animals are chattel. This relationship of ownership and the property status of animals is essential for extracting profit from animals, either directly through the rearing and sale of the animals themselves, or by leveraging their labor power for producing other commodities….

As a student in the agricultural sciences, I learned that modern agriculture was a cut-throat business, and that to survive one had to “get big or get out,” adopt the newest technologies for production, and maximize expenditures on inputs. For example, in working with feedstuffs, we were encouraged to source the cheapest possible inputs, for they would have a clear impact on the bottom line. This drive to reduce the costs of what is already a business with very slim margins has led to practices which most people would find shocking. To illustrate: mad cow disease came about because cows—ruminant herbivores—were fed the viscera of cows and other animals, including spine and brain tissue as a source of raw protein.[1] Cows were essentially turned into cannibals because cow spinal tissue and other slaughterhouse waste products were inexpensive feed inputs. It did not occur to producers that feeding cows back to cows was necessarily problematic: after all, it was just another source of protein. There are other examples of researchers working to turn animals into cannibals by feeding them the waste products of their own species. Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed and marketed an enzyme called Valkerase that breaks down the keratin in feathers.[2] One of the applications of this is to feed the feathers left over from slaughter back to the chickens. By reducing the price of inputs, the farmer or producer can then reduce the costs of raising the animal—and as long as the animal stays alive and continues to be productive, it makes economic sense for the producer to be as economically cut-throat as possible. Doing otherwise is a waste of capital and a potential risk for the investor.

Much like the production of any other commodity, the production of animal commodities relies on investing the very least in production and selling for the highest possible price. This is obvious economic logic, but contained within this is a logic of exploitation that often goes unnoticed. As I argued earlier, private property leveraged to create capital contains within it the stored up exploitation of those workers from whom value has been stolen. As a manifestation of an exploitative social order, private property is built upon the dominance of the weak by the strong. In the case of human labor, it is evidence of the fact that some have only their labor to sell, and nothing more. Moreover, accruing private property allows the capitalist to perpetuate this social order. If the worker can gain little more than they need to live, they will need to continue working. Considering this, private property then also helps to perpetuate the social order from which it springs.

Private property involved in the production of animals for human ends has similar characteristics, and similarly helps to extend domination. Animals labor to produce commodities or to be commodities, and they do this as the mere property of humans. We generally talk of this relationship in magnanimous terms, describing our “care” of animals as “husbandry,” or as us being guardians of their “welfare,” yet, underneath these comfortable and bucolic notions of animal-human relations, there is a system of exploitation that yields value for the producer while denying the animal her right to live fully… The subjectivity of the animal, the fact that animals feel pain and experience acute suffering, the denial of most natural habits—all of this becomes secondary to the motives of leveraging animal labor and bodies for profit. Private property perpetuates this, and the desire to gain more necessitates it.

Along with commodification, the relations of private property impose needless violence and suffering on animals, all for the sake of profit and our taste for animal products. The centrality of classifying animals as property should not be underestimated when it comes to considering the depths of animal exploitation woven into our society and economy. Having animals categorized as property gives us the ability to exploit them as a resource for even minor human wants. Because our wants as property owners will necessarily win out over any conflict with the interests of our property, we can basically do as we wish with animals, especially since welfare laws provide very shallow protections for animals, and farm animals are typically excluded. [3] “We choose the human interest over the animal interest even in situations where the human interest is trivial and the animal interest is fundamental – a matter, literally, of life and death. What we are really choosing between, however is the interest of a property owner and the interest of a piece of property. The outcome of this ‘conflict of interests’ is predetermined.” [4]

This property relationship is one that is woven into our economy, our society, and our laws. To return to the example I used earlier of my dog, Emmy, the law grants me the right to own her exclusively. I can then use that ownership to do with her almost as I please, including making a profit from her, selling her, using her as collateral on a loan, or forcing her to labor for me. [5] If I wanted to, I could even donate her to science or sell her to a lab for experiments. Under the law, any of these activities are completely legal, and are my absolute right as the owner of this particular piece of animal property. The property relation, when applied to animals, is a form of violent domination over them, constantly subjecting them to human whims.

…As nothing more than property, animals will always be in a subordinate position to us. In this position, violence can be visited on them simply because of their “non-human” status, and because—for lack of a better way of phrasing it—we simply feel like it. Animals stand on unequal footing in the social order, subject to structural violence as the social order is already stacked against their interests. This happens simply because we think of animals as “other,” and because we have constructed the social and economic apparatus to institutionalize exploitation and violence against animals. Because this violence and exploitation is bound up in the acquisition of profit and the extension of private property, the capitalist state clearly has every interest in maintaining this arrangement, and stridently fights any threat to it.

The capitalist state works actively to protect the interests of property holders, and those who use animal property desire the least regulation of their property as possible…[A]nimal exploitation industries have recently championed laws in the United States that Seek to limit opposition to their actions. In particular, two US laws, the Animal Enterprises Protection Act (AEPA) and the Animal Enterprises Terrorism Act (AETA) are telling indicators of the way the capitalist state will support the interests of property holders exploiting their animal property unjustly. They also help to illustrate how the dynamics of exploitation are institutionalized in society.

The AEPA and the AETA were passed more than a decade apart. The Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992 was passed to protect animal industries from economic damage and physical disruption, and to stiffen penalties for those who cause harm to those involved in animal exploitation. Under the rubric of “animal enterprise terrorism,” the AEPA was a direct response to actions of groups like the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). NEvertheless, some within the animal industries saw the AEPA as too weak.

The National Animal Interest Alliance (NAIA) was one of these groups. A visit to their web site is an exercise in incredulity. Prominently featuring photos of puppies, kittens, rabbits, and other animals in what appear to be peaceful and happy settings, the site describes NAIA as “an association of business, agricultural, scientific, and recreational interests dedicated to promoting animal welfare, supporting responsible animal use and strengthening the bond between humans and animals.” The pictures, of course, belie the kinds of activities that NAIA members engage in. A quick look at the board members reveals furriers, cattlemen, vivisectionists, breeders, and others who make a living on animals, often by killing them. - Excerpted from Making A Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights by Bob Torres, Chapter 3: “Property, Violence, and the Roots of Opression”

[1] United States Department of Health and Human Services. Federal Agencies Take Special Precautions to Keep “Mad Cow Disease” Out of the United States <http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2001pres/01fsbse.html> (20 March 2007).

[2] Vicki Lee Parker. “It Began with Chicken Feathers.” NC State University Technology Incubator <http://techincubator.ncsu.edu/news/BioResourceInternational_jan07.htm> (30 March 2007).

[3] Gary L. Francione, Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog?

[4] Ibid., 55

[5] Ibid, 54

Photo: cattle auction

Living According To Your Own Values

2012-01-30T14:33:27Z

“I think the way to reach people is to connect with the values they already have. I think that’s key. I always say that I’m not asking people to live according to MY values; I’m urging people to live according to THEIRS. It’s a very important distinction to make.” – Colleen Patrick Goudreau, from an AR Zone interview.

Photo: a young woman shares a tender moment with a rescued goat at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. Photo source.

Gay Rights and Animal Rights: Intersections by Jasmin Singer

2012-01-30T14:03:11Z

The following is an excerpt from Gay Rights and Animals Rights: Intersections by Jasmin Singer published in The Scavenger.

…It perplexes me that anyone who has fought for the rights of people to express themselves sexually in the way that is right for them, can be part of a system that undermines so completely the sexuality and reproduction of living, breathing, sentient beings.

Farmed animals are different from us in many ways, but does anyone really think that they are so different from us that they cannot enjoy these same basic pleasures? That it matters not at all that their every desire for the simplest imaginable comforts or pleasures, are thwarted, or that their lives are sheer, unadulterated hell?

In the dairy industry, cows are forcibly inseminated (raped) over and over again in order to produce milk. They are strapped onto what the agriculture industry refers to as “rape racks” (their term), and as soon as they give birth and their baby is immediately taken away from them, the cycle continues. The girl cows then become dairy cows, and the boys become veal calves. After the dairy cow is considered useless (ie her milk production has waned, which happens when she is around four), she is slaughtered for low-grade beef. What a life.

And regarding the egg-laying hen – who is arguably the most abused of any farmed animal – she likely will live her entire life in a space smaller than a sheet of paper. She will be painfully debeaked. And she will be genetically manipulated so that she lays far more eggs than she would in nature. She won’t be able to roost or to hatch her own young, and after she is considered spent, which won’t take more than two years, she will be killed for low-grade meat, like pot pie or dog food.

Again, while birds may be even more different than us in some ways than cows are, do we really think that that difference means that they do not know comfort from misery? Do not prefer to raise their chicks rather than have their eggs taken from them? Wouldn’t prefer grass under their feet to life in a wire cage with six other hens who are so crowded they can barely move?

Recognising privilege

As a gay person, even one with extraordinary privilege, I know what it is like to be “othered.”…

…Of course, this awareness is an ongoing journey for all of us. And one of the most important elements of that awareness is to be mindful of our great grand privilege as human animals.

Once we are aware of that privilege, what are we to do about it? Well, with farmed animals, it certainly means that we must boycott the cruelty to them altogether. We must cease being the financial engine running the instruments of their oppression.

You know how you spell boycott? V-E-G-A-N. And our responsibility really goes further. Since they are not able to speak up for themselves, it is most certainly our obligation to do so for them.

Just as so many straight people choose to stand up and be counted when it comes to gay issues, we must each take a stand against violence to our fellow beings.

In fact, when it comes to violence, whether it is violence against a member of the LGBT community or violence to an animal (or violence to so many other marginalized groups), the rationale is so frequently similar, if not identical.

Here are two of the most common ones: “Insert-the-blank was put here for my use.” And, “It is okay for me to abuse insert-the-blank because God said so.”

This mindset has resulted in so many horrors, including slavery, genocide, and women’s oppression. It results as well in the belief that the lives of animals simply don’t matter as much as fleeting pleasure, or even just adherence to outmoded custom or habit.

No one is free while others are oppressed

As someone who has lived my life going up the down staircase, I am aware of what it’s like to constantly feel like you’re challenging others’ stereotypes. Other gay people probably feel the same way.

One of the results of that is that there do seem to be a disproportionate number of gay people in the animal rights movement. In fact, that prompted me to start a “Gay Animal” series for the animal rights organization that Mariann and I co-founded, Our Hen House.

Our first subject was Nathan Runkle, the executive director of Mercy for Animals. Among other things, Nathan’s feature discussed a yearly campaign that he spearheads, where he and hundreds of his group’s members march at gay pride parades throughout the country, behind a banner that says “No one is free when others are oppressed.”

One of the reasons that I believe that slogan is true is that the knowledge that we are participating in, or even just ignoring, the oppression of another forces us to enter into a state of denial.

Those who would deny people their fundamental humanity because they are gay must force themselves to not really see the people whom they are oppressing. If they truly allowed themselves to see us, they would not be able to avoid our fellow humanity, our similar needs and desires, our participation in the human community, with both its wonders and its deep flaws.

The same things holds true for those who are aware of the horrors that are visited upon animals in factory farms and turn a blind eye. Those who would deny animals their every source of pleasure, their every comfort, their every instinct, their every desire, are also forced to live in a world that they are refusing to see…- Excerpted from Gay Rights and Animal Rights: Intersections by Jasmin Singer, published in The Scavenger.

Photo: Mercy For Animals Loud and Proud Parade

The Power Of Just One Voice by Karen Dawn

2012-01-23T15:04:39Z

The following is an excerpt from Thanking The Monkey: Rethinking The Way We Treat Animals by Karen Dawn

One of the most important things we can do is to be willing to raise our voices and say what is happening to the animals matters. The power of just one voice can have enormous impact.

In one of her taped lectures, the spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson talks about an experiment done by NBC’s Dateline. The show had an actor pretending to be hurt and crying out for help. Nearby, two other actors were just hanging out and talking. In a candid camera-type of situation, Dateline watched the reactions of people walking by. A,most every person, as they saw two others ignore the cries for help, just kept walking. One person in twenty stopped, and then called for more help.

Here’s the good part: Once one person stopped, every person who came into the situation afterward also stopped and was willing to get involved. As Marianne explains it, once one person acts from an awakened heart, others will follow. When one is willing to speak the word, others will listen. But we must be willing to take a stand and speak it in a way that others will hear. The problem is not that we don’t have enough love; the problem is that we are whispering our love. Or we are yelling it in such a tone that it does not sound like love at all.

On that Dateline show, the one person in twenty was not whispering. Nor was she attacking or insulting those who had not stopped. That wasn’t necessary. To completely change the situation, all it took was for one person to call out and say, “Somebody needs help over here.”

Somebody does. The animals desperately need the help of those willing to call attention to their plight, to say that they matter, to speak the word. Don’t whisper it — speak it loud. Speak it with laughter and love so others will be willing to listen. You cannot be shy as you speak it; your voice is crucial. You speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. - Karen Dawn, from Thanking The Monkey: Rethinking The Way We Treat Animals

Photo by Animal Equality

Does It Take Willpower To Be Vegan?

2012-01-17T15:44:44Z

“I believe that veganism, in contrast to diets and most raw or specialist food regimens, requires no will power. It’s simply based in understanding. It may take will power in the very beginning when things are all new, but with understanding, there is no need for will power at all.

Animals are not food – there is no desire to eat them. Even non-vegetarians understand this clearly. For example, an American doesn’t need any will power to keep from eating dog meat – dogs are not seen as food in this culture.

But when I was in Korea I saw that many men there felt they needed to eat dog to be healthy, and so, since they did eat it regularly and it was a part of their culture to do so, it took quite a bit of will power for them not to eat it.

We must never underestimate the power of cultural programming. In determining the contexts of our behaviors, aspirations, fears, and wounds, cultural programming is everything! The only reason people are eating animal flesh and cow mammary secretions is the massive indoctrination we all receive at the hands of every institution in our culture.” - Will Tuttle

Photo: Dog meat seller eating fruit

Animals in “Art” – an Interview With Peter Singer

2012-01-18T14:38:50Z

The following is an excerpt from an interview with Peter Singer published in Antennae, issue 19. Questions by Giovanni Aloi

Giovanni Aloi: In 2007, you gave a talk at the Getty Centre on the subject of animal representation in art. What brought you to consider the subject of animals in art? In this talk you extensively dwelled on a painting by Oudry of Clara the rhinoceros questioning the artist’s level of empathy with the animal portrayed. What is your take on the treatment of animals in contemporary art by artists like Abdle Abdessemed or Huang Yo Ping?

Singer: The Getty Museum invited me to give a lecture that coincided with an exhibition they were having of Oudry and his contemporaries. I saw this as an opportunity for my views about the ethics of how we treat animals to reach a wider audience (the same reason that led me to agree to answer your questions), and most of my talk sought to set the context for Oudry’s paintings by describing Western attitudes to animals. I also explained what was wrong with those attitudes. But I am no expert on animals in art, and I am not familiar enough with the work of the artists you mention to comment on it.

Aloi: In the 2007 talk, the ideas of empathy/sympathy for animals, as reflected by the choice of subject and composition, was extensively discussed over a number of examples. Do you find that the essential differences between the examples displaying a less empathic approach and those suggesting a more empathic one essentially differ in degrees of objectification?

Singer: Yes, that is certainly one way of putting what is happening in those different examples.

Aloi: In 2000, Marco Evaristti, an artist who has made controversy his main artistic skill, produced Helena. The installation stirred animal rights campaigners and public like nothing previously; it also got Evaristti charged with animal cruelty multiple times, in multiple countries. Helena was inspired by the famous Milgram Experiment from 1963, where the willingness of participants to obey an authority figure resulted in them performing acts that conflicted with their personal ethical stands. According to Evaristti, the installation, comprised of ten Moulinex Optiblend 2000 liquidisers, each containing water and a gold fish, essentially constitutes a social experiment.

In front of Helena, we simultaneously, by implication, become a passive voyeuristic individual, a potential killer or an inevitable moralist; which of the three we already are, or we are about to become whilst exposed to the work, is sometimes an unpredictable factor. Which ethical issues are here at stake in consideration of the fact that the animal featured in the work is a goldfish?

Singer: The issue at stake is the pointless killing of goldfish. Can that be justified? Most people find it disturbing, but of course these same people, or most of them, eat fish and meat when they have no need to do so, and this practice requires killing animals. In the case of fish, all commercially caught fish die more slowly and painfully than the goldfish killed in the blenders. So people who are disturbed by the idea of liquidizing the goldfish should really question their own eating practices. And it is hard to see why Evaristti is guilty of cruelty but every commercial fisherman or amateur angler is not.

On the other hand, when live animals are used in harmful ways, there is always the risk that the artist simply reinforces our prejudices by using sentient beings as objects for art in ways that ignore their interests. That is why I prefer the use of methods of enlightening the public that do not involve harm to animals.

Aloi: As Steve Baker asked in his essay featured in the collection Killing Animals (2006): “Can contemporary art productively address the killing of animals?”

Singer: Perhaps it can. But I am not aware of any contemporary work of art that has really done very much to change our attitudes to animals. The really effective examples are now very old – what has there been that can compare with William Hogarth’s Four Stages of Cruelty? Perhaps films like Bambi, Babe and now Rise of the Planet of the Apes have taken over the role of art in influencing the broader public about the way we treat animals.

Aloi: In the Getty lecture, you explored the work of artists Sue Coe, Federico Uribe and Barbara Dover as examples of practitioners whose work proposes an alternative to the animal representations of the past, and in doing so you highlighted that at the core of this art lies a more or less overt propagandistic vein. Aside from denouncing our treatment of animals in contemporary society and consequently raising awareness of some specific issues, what other purpose do you believe these artworks serve?

Singer: They raise questions about the purpose and role of art in a situation in which a great wrong is being done to billions of animals – and most of those who view the art are participating in that great wrong. We should recognize that the treatment of animals is only one of several great moral wrongs going on in the world today. Another is the way in which most people in rich nations do nothing to aid those in extreme poverty. As a result of that indifference, according to Unicef, the United Nations fund for children, more than 8 million children under 5 die every year from avoidable poverty-related causes. Then there is climate change, where again the lifestyle of people in affluent nations is the main culprit, but the poor in developing countries will be the majority of the victims.

In the midst of these grave moral crises, can art be anything other than a means of raising our awareness of our moral failings? Can we really justify engaging in art for art’s sake while every day billions of animals suffer unnecessarily, thousands of children die unnecessarily, and the energy used by patrons of art, and indeed by the air-conditioned art galleries in which we view art, contribute to changes in rainfall patterns and rises in sea levels that are already forcing people to become refugees, and will increasingly do so in future? In these circumstances, isn’t the art world guilty of gross self indulgence?

Aloi: In 2000, Chicago based artist Eduardo Kac created GFP Bunny. The project consisted of a routinely produced albino laboratory rabbit to which the florescent genes of jellyfish were added through biotechnological processes. The work generated extremely heated response and opened the way to a new artistic field called transgenic art, in which art and science are reunited in the space of the laboratory. What is your take on this emerging genre?

Singer: There are much worse things we do to animals, but I think that, like zoos, this genre of art treats live animals as objects for our amusement, so I find it objectionable.

- Excerpted from an interview with Peter Singer published in Antennae, issue 19.