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Life Outside the Fast Lane
I am pleased to report that for the 4th consecutive year, I did not “fast against slaughter” on World Day for Farmed Animals (October 2). Here are some of my thoughts on why I made that choice… and why I think others should as well.
Before I began living vegan, if I’d known that someone was “fasting against slaughter”, I would not have been compelled in the least to inquire about why they were taking such an action. In fact, it would likely have further solidified my existing belief that “vegans are extremists”, a myth that was fed to me as a byproduct of our human society’s ubiquitous exploitation of individuals of other species for its own pleasure and benefit. In my non-vegan mindset, such activities struck me as ludicrous and I could not have imagined investigating or taking part in something I saw as completely nonsensical. It’s important for those vegans who choose to support and participate in this and related events to understand and carefully consider the probability that a furthering of this “extremist/ridiculous vegan” image may be an unintended outcome of their involvement and association with such single-issue campaigns organized by large, self-serving corporate animal welfare charities. When this happens we move further from, rather than closer to, the goal of dismantling speciesism to achieve the right for non-human animals to no longer be treated as human property.
In this case, the group behind the event is Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), an organization whose founder Alex Hershaft made this revealing statement when asked in a 2015 interview to describe FARM’s mission:
“Our mission is to get people to reduce and eventually eliminate the number of animals killed for food. We tried to make it very simple. We’re not into making vegans, we’re not into reducing suffering, we’re not into ending factory farming. All that other stuff is implicit, but we’re very focused on just reducing the number of animals [killed], however we can do it, and there are lots of ways of doing it. The most obvious way is to get people to go vegan, but you can reduce the number much more effectively by getting some major cookie company, like Keebler, to reduce the number of eggs in making cookies.”
Simple logic proves that these campaigns are not reducing animal use and are, in fact, causing more harm than good by failing to clearly, emphatically and unequivocally call for an end to all animal use and instead promote the message that some animal use is morally acceptable.
While it’s a nice-sounding idea that reducing the number of eggs used by a cookie company will reduce the number of animals killed for food, apply a little critical thinking and it is difficult to believe that when Keebler agrees to use fewer eggs, the result is a decrease in egg production and the freeing of laying hens. Many such reduction initiatives have been implemented in recent years and yet the number of animals being killed every year for human consumption continues to increase, not decrease (for any who might be under the false impression as I once was that “no animals die in egg production”, please read this eye-opening article from Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary). When animal “rights” organizations such as FARM promote the message that “it’s ok to use eggs – but just not too many eggs” – they are reinforcing the speciesist idea that it’s morally acceptable for humans to use animals and their secretions – to steal their property and their lives – for their own purposes.
FARM’s intentional refusal to promote veganism as a non-negotiable moral imperative and instead to present it as just another option to “reduce the number of animals killed for food” (which conveniently overlooks the myriad other uses of non-humans for human pleasure and personal benefit) is the hallmark of the animal welfare movement. As always, one need only frame the issue with humans as victims to immediately see the speciesism inherent in the idea of working to “reduce” rather than advocating for a stop to such violent and oppressive victimization. From a previous Turbulence of Dreaming essay entitled Challenging Our Complacency Vol. 1:
“Unfortunately, it’s quite likely that humans will always rape and murder other humans as they have since the beginning of time, but it’s not likely that anyone is going to advocate for ‘gentler’ rape and ‘kinder’ murder based on that terrible likelihood. When we believe a behavior is morally unjustifiable, we advocate for the abolition of said behavior rather than ‘nicer’ ways to continue propagating the same injustice. To do the latter only helps the perpetrators and beneficiaries of the injustice feel comfortable about continuing to reap the benefits of their oppression-of-choice.”
Non-Human Resources
Fasting for farmed animals, as my friend and fellow abolitionist vegan educator Colin Wright has noted, does nothing to further the idea that, if we are to change the property paradigm that allows and demands that animals be used as disposable, replaceable resources to be exploited for human pleasure and benefit, we need always promote veganism as the moral baseline for our treatment of individuals of other species.
There is no discernible educational value in intentionally refusing oneself nutrition in order to make a vague (and mostly silent) point about standing “in remembrance and solidarity” with the millions of animal slaughtered for food each day. I don’t need to cause my own suffering to enhance my empathy about the unnecessary suffering of my fellow sentient beings.
No, I won’t be fasting against slaughter this year or at any time nor will I ever promote such an idea. Instead, I’ll continue living vegan and educating others about veganism as our moral obligation to those non-human individuals with whom we share this planet.
