Gary Francione on Philosophy Bites: Animal abolitionism is the only way
Gary Francione means business.
Humane treatment is a fantasy, it’s on an epistemological par with Santa Claus, bunny rabbits, Easter rabbits and things of that nature—silly. Humane treatment is impossible.
Philosophy Bites is a podcast series of short discussions of philosophical topics (duh). On Saturday, they had Gary Francione come discuss animal abilitionism.
If we take seriously the notion that we ought not to inflict unnecessary suffering on animals, the first thing we ought to do is all go vegan. … There’s something peculiar about discussing the moral status of animals when we’re killing and eating them for no reason whatsoever.
I strongly recommend you listen to the entire podcast—it is just under 17 minutes and it is pretty invigorating. They touch on the delightful (read: obnoxious) mollusk question, how disgusting Francione finds the concept of “happy meat,” and the effectiveness of abolitionism versus humane treatment.
So, let’s get into it: Where do you align yourself? Are you more of an abolitionist, or a welfarist?
One more quote to stoke the fire:
The most humanely treated animals are subjected to treatment which would be torture, which we would call literally torture if humans were involved.
There’s much more! Go listen, and let’s argue about the philosophy behind our vegan lifestyles.
[Photo by Keven Law via Flickr]
Serve With Fava Beans and a Nice Chianti: The Hannibal Lecterism of Happy Meat
veganfeministagitator.blogspot.no
I was originally drawn to her because of the rare quality of her breeding. The moment I saw the young female, I knew that I was the perfect person to be entrusted to see her through to the end.
I had had a young female the year before, a close relative of hers, and her fine heritage took me aback. She spoiled me for life: I couldn’t go back to having those of an inferior caliber again. When it was time that I wanted to have another one, I knew I wanted one of her pedigree once more, but I didn’t want to just be a passive bystander in her death again. Something within me needed a different experience. This time, I had to actively participate in her death, until her last shudder, and follow that through to her complete disassembly. The entirety of the young female would be used very purposefully and with great intention.
She had been born into a life of high standards. Being a rare creature myself, I recognized this in her. There are too many females of interior genetics, ones who are common and low born, and this one was cut from a different cloth. She was special and lovely and she had to be that way in order for me to consider having her as mine. Of course I wanted to see how she lived so I would have a deeper appreciation of how she was to die.
I wanted her parts, the internal organs, her viscera, the blood of her, still fresh and warm. I wanted her tender flesh, cut from her with my trusted instruments and pulled with my own hands. I wanted to understand the elegant, clever design of her before I consumed her, and I wanted to break her down personally. I wanted to find creative uses for every last inch of her so her life wouldn’t have been taken in vain.
Seeing her in out her natural habitat, breathing in the crisp autumn air, I knew that I made the right decision. She wasn’t like the others, the poor, pathetic creatures that have been so damaged by poor genetics and circumstances. This one was different. She was a perfect specimen of her variety, a natural female, her pretty cheeks warmed by the sun to a golden peach. This was a young female who had felt gentle breezes blowing through her auburn hair, who had never been mistreated by course, rough hands, who had dined on organic blueberries she’d plucked from a neighbor’s garden with her own graceful hands. I insisted that she live no less of a life before I would take it from her.
That day, I spent an hour getting to know her and she seemed to trust me from the start. I rubbed her shoulders, and I touched her hair, warm from the sun. She was playful, affectionate, spirited. She smiled easily, clearly enjoying this life, and she had no idea of my intentions. This began to make me very uneasy but I told myself that it was better this way, better that her life would end with someone she trusted rather than at a stranger’s hands in an unfamiliar, cold setting. This was much more humane. Breathing deeply to keep my emotions in check, I held her hands in mine. I looked my young female in the eye. I told her that I was grateful for what she was about to give me. I may have even shed a tear. I have consumed countless young females in my lifetime, but being there then was a deeper, richer experience, though one fraught with tension. I wouldn’t have traded it for anything in the world.
In the end, her death was astonishingly quick and easy – two quick bullets - which is fortunate because there was no time to waste.
First I carefully undressed her and then I began collecting my blood. I’d never had this before so it was a priority. I had to make that everything was positioned right to bleed my body properly, otherwise all that good blood would be squandered. It was a struggle propping everything correctly and I questioned whether I was cut out for this work but in the end, I was successful and I am very glad that I had the persistence to see this dream of mine – fresh blood – realized and that I didn’t quit.
That task completed, there was a lot of work ahead of me, which meant scalding, scraping, cutting through fat, muscles, tendons, and tugging out organs. As repulsive as it might sound to an outsider, it was a breathtakingly clean and methodical process, breaking down the body bit by bit and seeing how the organs looked and felt close up: the heart, the kidneys, the bladder, one by one, I observed them with the cool-headed precision of a surgeon and gently placed them in my container. The bright pink lungs in particular, lungs that just a short time ago had breathed in the same cool fall air as I, were especially noteworthy. She did not disappoint.
Separating the intestines from the fat and other tissues meant that with just a good cleaning, I now had sausage casing that I had pulled from a body I chose with my own hands and technical skills. It was hard to not feel prideful pulling out handful after handful of healthy intestine. This makes it all worthwhile, I thought to myself as my organ container continued to fill, steam slowly rising from it. The young female was no longer of this world but all these different parts and pieces would extend her far life beyond her reach as a living being. The incredible responsibility I felt of needing to continue to provide stewardship for the young female even after her death was a profound realization.
After she was fully broken down and stored properly, I felt I owed it to myself and to her to finally enjoy the fruits of my labor. Carving bits of her flesh on my butcher block, I was able to quietly to reflect on our symbiotic relationship: she gave her life to provide nourishment for me and I was able to consume her with true appreciation for her fine quality. We gave this to each other.
In a beloved cast iron skillet that once belonged to my grandmother, I sautéed delicately sliced pieces of her flesh with minced garlic, baby carrots, parsnips and fresh purple basil and thyme from my garden. The scent of her filled the air: rich, savory, mouthwateringly alluring. A splash of her blood to thicken the sauté was an inspired improvisation, I think.
Sitting down to finally enjoy the meal I’d created, I knew that I had made the right choice. She was tender but perfectly substantial, sinewy in certain places but nicely balanced by her delicate texture. Her flavor so effectively captured her essence that at times, it was as if she was still with me, sitting across the table from me, her hair glinting in the candlelight. I toasted her spirit.
In all, it was a beautiful, bittersweet experience. I couldn’t help ruminating on how she slumped back with that first bullet, the look of shock and horror marring her perfect features along with the spray of blood. I thought of how much work it was to collect all the blood, how exhausted I felt, pulling out the intestines but how I had to do right by this young female. She would live on to be my steaks, sausages, burgers and bacon for the year as well as provide bits for stew, gravy, casings and so on. I think she would be proud to know how very well used she would be.
After this experience, I will never again take another’s life and death for granted. When it comes time for me to harvest another young female, I will bring this same intentionality and poignancy. It will be my gift back to those who give me their lives and it is my gift to myself. I will do right by all the future young females who will grace my butcher block. You can count on that.
________________________________________
If you think that this is extreme, please read this first hand account of the slaughter of a pig by popular Chicago butcher, Rob Leavitt. With me just making one simple, easy switch of who the victim is, suddenly it’s evident that the story was written by a psychopath, despite the key details remaining essentially unchanged.
The self-aggrandizement, as well as the perfectly clinical and Hannibal Lecter-esque narrative, were deeply disturbing to me in Rob Leavitt’s essay. It is one thing to mindlessly eat animals. It is another thing to romanticize the special flesh you consume, to repeat the narcissistic myths you want to think that eating it says about you. Make no mistake, it is the mindless consumption that is creating the immense death toll of ten billion land animals in the U.S. each year, but it is this arrogant, self-serving mentality of entitlement that is so pervasive among Happy Meat enthusiasts that I find deeply chilling. It is also what has me thinking as a satirist.
If my essay was disturbing to you, that is a good thing. It means you can still feel.
The Atlantic says merry Christmas, screw you non-meat-eaters
Nicolette Niman has a piece in The Atlantic where she and a few other idiots who have a vested interest in you eating meat talk about how great it is to eat meat. As Meave says, “so short, so full of horrors.” For real, I don’t even know where to start with this thing, it’s so full of stupid, gross speculation, and bad science. I wish Niman would stop espousing the virtues of eating meat. She married into a meat dynasty, of course she loves “ethical” meat! Just knock it off; stop pretending you ever understood what it means not to want to consume dead animals.
The point of the whole shebang is that eating animals is good for you, the environment, and for animals—if done in a very specific way that happens about one percent of the time. Great! The health and environmental points can be argued, but I simply will not concede on ethics. Eating animals is only ethical if you’re okay with killing animals—or more likely, letting other people kill animals—for your food when you don’t NEED to.
As for the health argument, these people are no more health experts than I am, and again, they have a vested interest in humans eating meat, so hearing them try to argue against the health of a vegan diet is just infuriating. I can link to studies from actual health experts about how easy it is to get B12 and how animal products are bad for you until I’m blue in the face. We can trade articles back and forth all day long arguing for both sides. You can be healthy eating meat and you can be healthy not eating meat, and the proof is all the healthy people who do both things and live long-ass lives.
Now, I’ll say something some of you won’t agree with and that’s fine, but you can also care about the environment and still eat meat, no probs. It’s much easier to care about the Earth and not eat meat, but if you are in the one percent of people who raise and kill animals on a super small scale, then you might be able to say you care.
However, the point I absolutely will not accept is their claim that you can love and respect animals while you’re eating them. GIRLFRIENDS! Don’t get it twisted. No animal wants to die for your meal, no matter how many days you let her graze in an open field of organic grass or how many free-range hugs you give her before you slit her throat. If I take good care of grandma until I murder her because I need her room for my new baby, I don’t love and respect grandma. Ya dig?
You know what I think is worst of all? You have the MEANS to do better; you’re not ignorant to the realities of factory farming, and you choose to advocate a more ethical lifestyle by encouraging meat consumption. Get fucked.
Oh, well. At least The Atlantic has James McWilliams. I feel for you, bro!
Green Mountain College to make oxen burgers out of campus animal pals
This is what happens when “working animals” retire: they get slaughtered. Lou and Bill have worked the fields of Green Mountain College’s “sustainable” farm for ten years. Now, at eleven, the college wants to get rid of Lou and Bill. Apparently, at Green Mountain College, that means slaughtering them and eating them in hamburger form.
Needless to say, many are not happy. But, on the other hand, the college people in charge of this sort of thing make a good point: if these students opposed to killing Lou and Bill eat meat, then why the hell shouldn’t they eat these guys too? And once again, we are back to cognitive dissonance. This is well-worn territory when we discuss omnivore “animal lovers.” In fact, it’s threadbare. Therefore I’m not going to go into it but I will go into how much I resent the way “working animals” are disposed of.
Look at this video:
That doesn’t look super fun. They’ve done this for ten years. And after they’ve served the school for a decade, the thanks they get is to be made into a month’s worth of artery-clogging lunch. It’s just like dairy cows and racehorses and all the “working animals,” they serve these people and make them money and then they are thrown out like trash. I’m sorry, I can’t even say “working animals” without quotation marks because the idea is so ridiculous. It implies they a. volunteered for this “job” and b. were fairly compensated. Sorry bros: “working animals” don’t have resumes and they don’t get 401Ks. They get worked to the brink of death and then slaughtered for hamburger meat.
We Raise All Our Beef Humanely On Open Pasture And Then We Hang Them Upside Down And Slash Their Throats
theonion.comYou can rest easy with the knowledge that our cows are never, ever confined or cramped, and are entirely free-range until the day they turn 20 months old or hit 1,300 pounds, whichever comes first.
So next time you choose a steak or ground chuck to throw on the grill, consider a healthier, more humane, and tastier option, and look no further than the Nature’s Acres Ranch line of products. We’re the one with the smiling cow on the label!
Oh, yeah, I eat everyone I love, too...
[Picture: Background: Grey wall with white trim. Foreground: Martha Stewart wearing a sage blouse, accompanied by two French bulldogs whom she holds on a table in front of her. Has a friendly, smiling facial expression, showing teeth. Top text: “I love animals!*” Bottom text: “*Chickens, cows, pigs, turkeys, fish, goats, and sheep are plants.”]
Is There Anything Truly Sustainable or Humane About Eating Meat?
alternet.orgAnimal rights crusader Lee Hall says the only way to prevent animal suffering is to ‘stop breeding these poor beings only to betray them.’
Vegetarianism vs. 'Happy Meat'...
guardian.co.uk…which is actually more ethical, and can eating meat ever be considered moral?
As a veggie in a house of carnivores, there have been numerous occasions were I have become the target, (rarely voluntarily),of a good ol’ fashion talking-to about how the benefits of eating meat which has been raised organically and compassionately greatly outweigh those of vegetarianism. Thus I found this article jolly interesting and hope you do too.
I realise this is a bit deeper than my usual ‘Ohh look something shiney’ type blog entries; I guess that, in the build up to Uni-returnage, I’ve come over all academic-like.
P.S Meat is murder!
