Blogversation Series - Animal Advocacy Strategies - Patty Mark's Statement

Patty Mark, President of Animal Liberation Victoria in Australia: “The majority of the animal movement continues with the same approach we’ve taken for 25 years and things are getting worse for animals. The numbers killed have never been higher – 55 billion each year globally, and growing – and this doesn’t include aquatic animals. It’s a poor use of our time to engage with animal industries, big business and governments trying to encourage them to treat the animals who are at their mercy “better.” It’s time for us to set the pace and to be proactive. The real work isn’t negotiating with the animal industries, but with educating the public. The biggest threat to animal farming is veganism.”

Gary:

First off, let me express my abundant gratitude to Patty Mark for introducing the open rescue activism technique. This form of direct action is a powerful form of advocacy that not only saves animals from their hellish surroundings and brutal death but also compellingly conveys the suffering of animals and the compassion of their rescuers.

Kim:

Open rescues definitely serve to break down the barriers of speciesism, when openly exposing suffering elucidates the irrelevancy of “ownership”, in favor of individual rights. Our society gives little credence to a parent’s right to torture “his or her” child, for instance, and in much the same way that very few would be against intervention to stop cruelty to children by parents, it’s difficult after a while to argue that society doesn’t have the same responsibility for other species. Rescuing without masks reinforces the already existing notion that we each have a responsibility to protect the innocent from abuse, regardless of the “status” given to the abuser, in relation to the abused.

Gary:

In the last 25 years, the animal movement has engaged in a myriad of strategies and tactics: holding vegan feed-ins; handing out "Why Vegan?" brochures; putting welfare referendums on ballots; lobbying for companion animal laws and animal testing alternatives; staging “meatout” events; convincing school and company cafeterias to stop buying eggs from battery cage operations; publishing a profusion of books, cookbooks, magazines, newsletters, leaflets, veg restaurant guides; creating web sites, videos, films, You Tube posts, blogs, podcasts and MySpace pages; promoting vegan products and veg-friendly establishments; starting vegan businesses; persuading medical schools to end animal labs; harassing and shaming Huntington Life Sciences partners; opening and running farmed animal and wild animal sanctuaries; leveraging public opinion to free elephants from zoos; blocking boats at sea from killing whales; protesting against dolphin slaughters and animal circuses; documenting rodeo cruelty; starting vegan, animal rights, and animal protection groups in hundreds of cities; enacting foie gras bans; leafleting at human social justice events; tabling with vegan and animal protection literature at festivals and health fairs; running commercials on TV that show factory farm suffering; organizing wonderful and thought-provoking conferences to benefit animals.

I suspect that this boundless variety of approaches, reflecting the diversity of views in the animal movement – even, specifically, among ethical vegan activists in the animal movement - will continue. Different messages affect different audiences, and not every activist or potential activist is attracted to the same kind of advocacy.

Kim:

I don’t know where the notion of “25 years” of one approach comes from, as is evidenced by all the diversity you’ve listed among animal advocates’ approaches. If anything, it was just recently that any real attention has been paid to the plight of farmed animals at all, with most of the focus having been on the abolition of specific industries - fur and animal testing predominantly - and on companion animal issues. Historically speaking, the focus on vegan education is just developing, and clearly any claim of defeat or success using any particular methodology is premature.

Gary:

Let us not be too quick to rule out any form of advocacy that endeavors to help animals. One of the most frequent concerns raised about organizations that have moved away from strict vegan advocacy is that the vegan approach was not given a fair chance. To shift attitudes and behaviors that have become deeply entrenched in society takes time, and may require endless tweaking and adjusting. The criticism is valid in my judgment. But let's be evenhanded; let's not pronounce welfare reforms to be worthless or counterproductive, either.

By all means, let's honestly and openly evaluate approaches:

- giving fellow activists the benefit of the doubt and empathically listening to their points of view and experiences;

- avoiding becoming so vested in our positions regarding tactics and strategy that we reflexively defend them at any cost;

-trying our level best to not splinter into The Judean People's Front and The People's Front of Judea, the two factions in The Life of Brian that ostensibly had the same overall goals but were preoccupied with sniping at each other.

The modern animal movement has only had a visible presence in mainstream America and the Western world for 30 years, and only in the last few years have more than a tiny portion of residents of medium-to-large cities or college towns been able to pronounce and even define "vegan" with relative accuracy.

Everything's still on the table.

Kim:

I agree. I’ve said before that at this point it’s all just throwing darts in the dark. No one has the definitive solution for how to break through the societal brainwashing by the industries exploiting animals for profit. It’s a daunting proposition. That the notion of “animal rights” even has mainstream awareness is remarkable in itself, and illustrates that something pretty effective has taken place to make even that happen. How fortunate that we have models available to critique, criticize and learn from!

I think as a “movement”, it’s important to examine methodologies and strategize about effective ways to proceed. But claiming any one approach is superior to another and treating those who disagree as co-conspirators with animal industries, is not only presumptuous, but counter productive. There’s nothing the animal industries would like more than a fractious and acrimonious group of animal advocates. The reality is that different people are going to come to different conclusions about focus and strategy, and have different preferences about contributing. You can’t dictate activism preferences to others no matter how personally convinced you happen to be about the efficacy of your ideas.

Gary:

The increase in the number of animals killed for food in the U.S. can be attributed mostly to a) a rising population, b) a shift from beef to chicken, c) an increase in the number of calories eaten per person. Another contributing factor is that relative to other items in the Consumer Price Index, meat has stayed relatively inexpensive. According to my perusing of USDA figures, the percentage of calories on our plates from animal sources has gone down in the last 25 years, even though the amount of food on our plates has expanded.

Worldwide, increases in meat consumption is largely due to socioeconomic factors that, so far, have been mostly outside the scope or influence of the animal movement.

I mention all this as a hedge against laying the blame for the rise in the number of animals killed in the U.S. or worldwide on certain animal advocacy tactics.
We should also consider other numbers and trends. How many vegan products and veg*an meat and dairy substitutes are there in stores now compared to 25 years ago? How easy is it to get vegan main courses at college cafeterias now compared to 25 years ago? What percentage of the population has a general idea of what "vegan" means now compared to 25 years ago? (The fact that Burger King used the word, albeit disparagingly, on a prominent billboard was a reflection of how mainstream the word has become, at least in some areas of the country.) How many vegan and vegan-friendly establishments are there now compared to 25 years ago? How many states in the last 25 years have made certain crimes against companion animals a felony? How many zoos have declared that they're closing their elephant exhibits? How much has the percentage of hunters in the population gone down? How much have sales of faux leather and faux fur gone up in the last 25 years?

Each purchase of veggie bacon usually contributes to saving pigs' lives. The same basic concept holds true for purchases of most other veggie versions of meat and dairy products. If we're looking at numbers, we should consider how many more animals would be killed if not for these products. Who gets the credit?

Kim:

Advocacy doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There is no way to judge the effectiveness of actions without addressing simultaneous shifts in societal factors during the examined period, as you've outlined above. It’s ridiculous to claim that any one strategy can cause an end result. And I hear that claim a lot. It’s convenient to ignore other factors contributing to a situation in an effort to bolster an argument, but it has no basis in fact.

Gary:

Polls show that interest in veganism among young people is rising. Who gets the credit here? Vegan Outreach, which gets a steady stream of positive feedback and conversion testimonials from people who have received their literature at college campuses across the country? Compassion Over Killing's well-put together commercials on MTV? HSUS' recent environmental advertising campaign that recommended cutting back on all animal product consumption as much as possible? United Poultry Concerns, which campaigns for chickens on every front imaginable? PETA? Meet Your Meat? Grassroots groups? One-on-one activism? Maybe all of the above and more; the whole mix.

Kim:

Yes, it’s the mix. And I think you’ve hit on the most probable continued course of action that has the greatest chance of bringing information to such a diverse society - multiple approaches. Once you get out on the street and do any advocacy, it becomes quickly apparent that different people respond to different approaches.

Gary:

Efforts to ban fur have largely focused on eliminating it, not improving fur animal welfare – probably because a large segment of the public is opposed to fur and/or doesn't wear it; fur is not deeply embedded into everyday society the way meat and dairy are. Yet the fur industry has rebounded from its dip in the 1980s and recently has been making record profits. I point out this unimpressive record of a prolonged abolition effort's attempt to have a serious impact on an industry that the public largely thinks of as expendable if not ostentatious, not to suggest that we switch strategies but that there's no surefire strategy that we've found thus far that quickly and permanently reduces the number of animals killed for profit.

Kim:

Which shows the monumental problem we have to overcome with vegan promotion. We all need to eat, and the overwhelming majority of people believe you need to eat animals to survive. The fur industry hasn’t gone away, yet we don’t require fur to survive, like we do food.

Gary:

To be fair, we may finally be turning the corner on the fur front, as a growing number of clothing lines and retailers are removing fur from their inventories.
Should we engage with "the enemy?" I tend to look at this tactic on a case-by-case basis. Negotiations with industry led to many corporations stopping animal tests of cosmetic and personal care products. PETA and some other groups have talked companies into dropping fur. HSUS has leveraged the public's growing disapproval of certain agribusiness practices into bans of those practices at the supplier and buyer ends. (Although to reiterate what I said in a previous post, we must continue to expand the public's consciousness and work on fundamentally changing its attitudes toward animal exploitation, and vegan advocacy is essential in these efforts.)

Kim:

I’m sure a rebuttal would be that Saks, for instance, isn’t the “enemy” but the fur producers are. You would be asking Saks to discontinue selling that type of item, not to close its doors completely. In other words, you wouldn’t be able to approach "Blood Money Furs" retailer with the same request.

Gary:

For purposes of this discussion, I'll consider establishments that sell and promote the offending products to be part of "the enemy." But a better term might be "suppliers" or "sellers." My goal would not be to drive companies out of business - even though that might happen - but to get them to stop selling the products of exploitation, products from killed animals in particular. But I agree, it's easier to accomplish that if you're not asking the company to get rid of its main or only product. So a department store could replace its fur garments with faux fur items or other apparel (and eventually do the same with its leather and wool clothing), and a small mixed-use farm could stop raising beef cattle and grow more crops for human consumption instead.


Kim:

You also raise the oft argued issue of whether or not “we” should ever work with the “enemy”, since it would most likely be an effort to address welfare, not abolition. I personally believe it has a place in the process, as even the appearance of a nationally known entity acknowledging the welfare of animals has an impact on the public consciousness. Even if the ultimate “welfare” benefits to the animals aren’t incredibly significant (although I do believe every improvement is incredibly significant from that animal’s point of view) I think the overall effect, in combination with other types of advocacy, is a necessary part of the process.

Gary:

Often, small businesses are more approachable and flexible than mega-corporations. From personal experience, I know that a single activist can influence small companies' business practices. Of course, we ultimately want to eliminate demand for animal-derived products, but a) changes in supply and promotion can affect demand, b) business owners and managers are people too, and sometimes we can have an impact on their own demand, which may be reflected in their business policies. For some animal advocates, meeting with businesspeople may be an attractive outlet for their activism.

Kim:

And I’ve seen evidence of this kind of advocacy gaining national attention, when major media picks up on a story, for instance. Action creates action, no matter how small it appears to be at the start.

Gary:

I agree that the biggest threat to animal farming is veganism. But one might also say that the biggest threat to animal farming is the change in the public's consciousness that precedes vegan-inspired changes in behavior. I believe this transition is presently occurring, albeit at a frustratingly slow and uneven pace. Any way that we can wrest people from their deeply-entrenched notions that certain animals are here for us to eat, and that meals aren't complete without meat, will help speed up that transition. Any way we can engender people to develop sympathy and respect for farmed animals and all sentient beings will help move us to veganism and perhaps many magnificent possibilities beyond that.

Kim:

There are so few humans educating other humans about veganism, that trying to do it person by person, without any other larger societal influences concurrently making the pitch, is unrealistic. I think the public is becoming more receptive to veganism because of the groundwork that has been laid and that there is no way to measure what kind of success we would be having now in our vegan outreach if it wasn’t for PETA or HSUS approaching the issue on different fronts. I have no way of knowing what our position would be today if PETA had only done strictly vegan education, for instance. And anyone who claims they know differently is fooling themselves.