Bookplanet: three books on animal liberation

Review Essay: Animals and Ethics
Books reviewed:
1. Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human-Animal Relationships by Richard W. Bulliet.
2. Animal Ethics by Robert Garner.
3. Animals, Ethics and Trade by Jacky Turner and Joyce D'Silva, eds.
Review by John Sorenson/Canadian Journal of Sociology Online

What role do other animals have in human societies? Are they merely our slaves or do we owe them ethical consideration?

Despite a long history of concern for other animals, moral orthodoxy asserts that they matter less than we do. In spite of all evidence to the contrary, some even continue to insist that an insurmountable barrier separates human beings from other creatures and that they exist merely to serve our needs. However, anthropocentric orthodoxy is coming under increasing challenge and faces demands for important changes in policy and practice. We are urged to seriously address these questions about our relationships with other animals, to incorporate these issues into our teaching and to improve our treatment of nonhuman animals. A growing number of books reflect these changes.

In Hunters, Herders and Hamburgers , Columbia University historian Richard W. Bulliet offers a study of the past and future of human-animal relationships. Bulliet proposes a four-stage division: separation, predomesticity, domesticity and postdomesticity, which he thinks we are now entering: a stage in which new attitudes and practices such as elective vegetarianism and the animal liberation movement are developing. Serious discussion of these phenomena would be welcome, but Bulliet actually says little about them. Much of the book is given to speculation about why humans domesticated animals in the first place, with Bulliet arguing for religious rather than material motivations. There is little analysis of contemporary relationships suggested by the "hamburgers" in the book's title, in the sense that one expects some investigation into the impact of a globalized meat industry on human cultures and consciousness; the word "capitalism," certainly relevant to understanding these relationships, never appears. More critical discussion occurs in Jim Mason's An Unnatural Order and David Nibert's Animal Rights Human Rights , which link domestication of animals with power over other humans and consider how intertwined forms of domination developed historically.

The book-jacket identifies Bulliet as "a leading figure in the study of human-animal relations" but Bulliet himself acknowledges that this is his first foray into the subject since a 1975 book on domestication of camels; most of his work is in Middle East studies. He seems unfamiliar with recent critical work on animal studies and shows little insight into the animal rights movement, dismissing it as driven by "guilt" and ignoring important ethical challenges. This leads him to misrepresent that movement, often by innuendo, rather than engaging with it seriously. For example, Bulliet notes that while "mainstream" American consciousness has not yet accepted animal rights, these ideas are "flourishing in the less-frequented byways." To exemplify such marginal works, he cites Charles Patterson's Eternal Treblinka , which examines common attitudes and behaviour in industrial slaughter of animals and Nazi efforts to exterminate Jews. Although one might expect Bulliet to consider this seriously, as Karen Davis does in The Holocaust and the Henmaid's Tale , he treats Patterson's work dismissively. He notes that Patterson's website lists "180 organizations that 'have expressed support for the idea of the book.' Whether this 'support' includes the equation between killing animals and killing Jews is unclear." The implication is that Patterson misrepresented the real aims of his book. Yet, presumably, if these organizations objected to Patterson's book they would demand that he remove their names from the list. If Bulliet is "unclear" about their support it would have been simple to contact the organizations and ask. Instead, he insinuates dishonesty and then selects from those 180 organizations a few with queer-sounding names, apparently to ridicule Patterson's thesis. Patterson's book is neither anti-Semitic nor a trivialization of human suffering; what Bulliet caricatures as an outrageous "equation between killing animals and killing Jews" imposed by animal rights activists is actually a profound and moving expression of compassion offered by Holocaust survivors themselves, exemplified by the words of Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz, who somehow endured five years in Dachau: "I eat no animals because I don't want to live on the suffering and death of other creatures ... I have suffered so much myself that I can feel other creatures' suffering by virtue of my own."

Having dismissed Patterson's book as an oddity of postdomestic thought, Bulliet turns to the Animal Liberation Front, relying on a single news report on "Terror Tactics," and suggests this "probably forecasts the future of human-animal relations in the United States." Most "illegal direct actions" actually involve rescue of animals from the terrible cruelty of animal-exploitation industries. Yet Bulliet constructs postdomestic consciousness as something bizarre and dangerous, rather than understanding it as the outcome of compassionate and progressive ethical sensibilities that have developed over centuries. A new ethical world may be developing but Bulliet misunderstands it, ignoring the long history of concern for other animals within domestic societies and the association with other emancipatory movements.

Other ideas are also unconvincing. Bulliet opens his book by suggesting "Let's start with sex and blood," claiming that postdomestic separation from animals explains contemporary tastes for graphic depictions of sex and violence whereas in domestic times, in which Americans regularly watched animals mating or being slaughtered, people became innured to these sights. His notion that postdomestic sensibilities arose because modern Americans no longer see this echoes claims by defenders of animal-exploitation industries that such ideas are just sentimental fantasies of urban people who "don't understand animals." Bulliet overlooks spectacles of sex and violence in domestic societies such as ancient Rome or the popular postcards of public lynchings in late- nineteenth to mid-twentieth century America. He thinks "postdomestic societies with high levels of sex-and-blood pornography may exhibit a strong and generalized abhorrence for real-life maiming, killing, and sexual predation." The Abu Ghraib torture photographs or the Mahmoudiya rape-murders by US soldiers in March 2006 suggest otherwise, as does the routine use of pornography by soldiers, who abuse women as the spoils of war. Furthermore, graphic depictions of violence in postdomestic America co-exist with high levels of actual violence in American cities.

While Bulliet fails to engage with central aspects of human-animal relationships, Robert Garner takes these up in Animal Ethics . Reader in Politics at the University of Leicester, Garner is the author of Animals, Politics and Morality and The Political Theory of Animal Rights . In Animal Ethics , he provides a comprehensive survey of philosophical debates from various positions: rejection of moral status for animals; moral orthodoxy that acknowledges concern for animal welfare or humane treatment but puts human needs and desires above these; ideas of rights based on sentience or on inherent value; utilitarian and contractarian arguments. Garner provides a clear examination of the arguments about rights, direct and indirect duties, personhood, equal consideration of interests, and the argument from marginal cases (i.e. the claim that because human non-persons, such as infants, people who are severely cognitively-disabled or demented or living in a persistent vegetative state, etc., are acknowledged to have rights or moral status, then it is consistent that at least certain animals should have rights or moral status). He follows this with discussion of how ethical theories are applied in key areas of human-animal relationships: using animals for food, vivisection, keeping animals in zoos and as pets, and killing them for entertainment. A final chapter discusses what sorts of political agency and strategy would be most effective for animal protection. Garner considers socialist, feminist, and environmentalist alliances but concludes that liberalism offers the best hope for advancing animal protection.

Garner's book is mainly a review of existing ethical arguments. For those teaching courses in animals and society or in applied ethics, Garner's book could serve as an introduction to various arguments for and against extension of rights and moral status to animals. The book is serious, concise and clearly-written, and Garner sets out the arguments fairly, even where it is plain that he disagrees. The final chapter is too brief and leaves open some important questions (although Garner has addressed them in other publications). For example, Garner notes that "unfettered, free-market liberalism, with its emphasis on the maximization of profits and the sanctity of private property, makes it much more difficult to reform the infrastructure of animal exploitation" and acknowledges that "improvements to the way animals are treated are regularly obstructed by those — agribusiness or pharmaceutical interests — who have a vested interest in being able to continue exploiting animals" but he sidesteps this by saying a discussion is beyond the scope of the book. However, this obstruction is the key point. These huge corporations do exert powerful influence over government and over public opinion through their control of mass media. In Canada, even proposals for very modest changes in anti-cruelty laws were effectively blocked by a coalition of animal-exploitation industries, who used their influence to ensure that the proposed legislation was strangled in the Senate. Garner maintains that direct action is legitimate in cases where these special interest groups control policy but thinks non-violent means are still available., although he does not say what means would be effective in the current context of unprecedented control of supposedly-public institutions by private power.

The position of animals in a context of corporate globalization is taken up in Animals, Ethics and Trade: The Challenge of Animal Sentience . Based on a 2005 conference "From Darwin to Dawkins: The Science and Implications of Animal Sentience", organized in London by the animal welfare organization Compassion in World Farming, the book has the weakness of conference-based publications — some papers need to be more developed — but it is quite a useful resource and could serve as the basis for classroom debate. As the subtitle indicates, much of the volume concerns sentience and implications for our treatment of animals. Contributors include well-known animal advocates such as Jane Goodall, Tom Regan, Andrew Linzey, Marc Bekoff and Steven Wise, who provide convincing arguments for animal sentience and for extension of rights to nonhuman animals.

More surprising contributors to a volume about ethical treatment of animals include corporate executives such as McDonald's Keith Kenny, who asserts that "McDonald's takes animal welfare seriously...." Certainly, when a hamburger corporation, an organization based on the industrial murder of animals, can claim to be an advocate of their "welfare", we have reached the outer limits of what words can be made to mean. Similarly, Oliver Ryan of the International Finance Corporation — World Bank Group, dedicated to the neoliberal agenda of privatization, claims to support animal welfare, but acknowledges that this is a minor concern: "Economic development may not be positively correlated with improvements in animal welfare." D'Silva, in her concluding note, endorses cooperation with these giants of capitalism. Accepting corporate propaganda, she asserts that none of these contributors maintains "the traditional, anthropocentric view" that animal suffering is regrettable but necessary, a statement that is plainly false since the suffering continues. D'Silva advises that although animal advocates might be frustrated at the slow response of corporate institutions, "their efforts deserve encouragement rather than critique." The "efforts" have been made by animal advocates, not the corporations who oppose them every step of the way. Certainly, any measure to reduce the horrendous suffering of animals in the industries that exploit them so savagely should be encouraged, but it is not clear why this should preclude critique. It is sad to think that the major victory of animal welfarists is to have persuaded industries to introduce, slowly, cages that allow animals some movement. As David Wilkins of the International Coalition for Farm Animal Welfare points out in his chapter, even these achievements are threatened by rules imposed by the World Trade Organization since these small improvements raise production costs and elimination of tariffs on imports will mean an influx of cheaper eggs from countries where battery cages are used. Rhetorical support for animal welfare from the International Finance Corporation is contradicted by that institution's actions to promote such types of factory farming and neoliberal policies are likely to drive standards downward to ensure competition and "efficiency."

Indeed, basic formulations of animal welfarists are confused. For example, John Webster of the University of Bristol argues that through the Amsterdam Protocol, the European Commission has recognized animals as sentient beings and established a social contract with them: "The contract compels them to work and die for us, but equally compels us to respect their rights to a reasonable standard of welfare through life and at the point of death. This is only fair." Webster acknowledges that it is we, not they, who define what is fair but he suggests that this problem can be reconciled by comparing their status to that of children. If one were to substitute children for animals in the abovementioned social contract, some might feel that more is to be desired in such an arrangement. Fortunately, contributors such as Kate Rawles and Vandana Shiva present a more critical perspective, pointing out destructive effects of factory farming not only on animals but on whole ecosystems and human communities and cultures and calling for radical changes based on expanded ethical awareness and compassion towards other animals.

None of these books really take a principled abolitionist position in support of animal rights but their appearance does indicate growing awareness of the need to reassess our relationships with other animals and for more work in this area. If a new ethical sensibility about animals is developing, one can scarcely imagine a nobler task than contributing to it.

(John Sorenson teaches courses on Animals and Society at Brock University and is currently working on a SSHRC-funded study of various 'representations of animals'. )