Submitted by An Animal-Friendly Life

For those just tuning in, I’m raising funds for I’m Vegan, a project I first announced back in April. I’m Vegan is a series of short documentary profiles that aim for long-term impact as an online series normalizing veganism, and is intended to serve as a form of ongoing advocacy. It’s personal, intimate and busts stereotypes.

The project is relatively low-budget and is being funded through a non-profit, which means the donations are tax deductible. I’m using The Point to gather pledges and reach my online goal of $22,000, and I’ve been keeping readers here posted in case they want to chip in any amount, no matter how small. The Point’s recent upgrade from beta to 1.0 totally destroyed the nifty badges that they were using to promote our campaigns, so I don’t have sexy graphic to update my fundraising, I’m sad to say.

In my previous update, I thanked an anonymous donor (a complete stranger) who mailed in a $9,000 check. I’m pleased to announce that, in the wake of that generous donation, another donor I know mailed in a $5,000 check. You can probably understand why donors want to remain anonymous. If you don’t, in large part it has something to do with not receiving a zillion solicitations for donations every year.

My total funding goal for the project is $25,000, $3,000 of which was donated before I set up my campaign at The Point to raise the remaining $22,000. Between all the offline donations and the online pledges, I have raised a total of $22,150 so far. That means I only need to drum up $2,850 more in pledges at The Point in order to start production on I’m Vegan! We’re getting close, which means I may actually be able to shoot this fall.

I know a few people out there have said you plan to pledge, so now’s the time. In fact, only another $350 will put the total funding at exactly 90% of the budget. Remember, unlike traditional fundraisers, The Point works in such a way that your pledge is not cashed until enough other people pledge to reach the campaign goal, including the offline donations I am receiving. Once the tipping point is reached, your funds will be donated to the non-profit that will fund the project. Thanks to everyone who has committed funds since my last update (Like Will, and thanks for “finally” getting off the couch, Mindy; it was worth the wait!).

For more details on the project, or to donate now, please visit its campaign page. Thanks in advance for your support. Share this post (or the campaign page) far and wide!

I like to hear from you. Comment below or email me.

Enjoy AAFL? Use the permalink icon to share this entry with your friends or to link it from your blog, submit to a service using the share button below, and consider making a small donation to support this site and my work. Thanks!

Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.

Submitted by An Animal-Friendly Life

I wrote a letter to the Washington Post in response to Wednesday’s article, A Dish That Gets a Fuzzy Reception. That letter, which they called Those Rabbits: Friend or Food?, was published today, FYI.

From the article:

Chef Stefano Frigerio braces himself when he puts rabbit on the menu at Mio. It’s only a matter of time before someone complains.

I like to hear from you. Comment below or email me.

Enjoy AAFL? Use the permalink icon to share this entry with your friends or to link it from your blog, submit to a service using the share button below, and consider making a small donation to support this site and my work. Thanks!

Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.

Submitted by An Animal-Friendly Life

Property status

Humans have long dominated animals, including wild (or “free-living”) animals, treating them as if they were our property since well before our laws formally defined them as such. Over time, our sense of entitlement to use animals as things for our benefit became firmly embedded in our culture. Indeed, it was animals’ de facto property status that led to them being legally classified as property to begin with.

This deeply entrenched property status is the key obstacle to securing legal rights for nonhuman animals because, as long as humans perceive nonhumans to be property, we will be unable to abolish their legal property status. As mentioned in my previous post, property cannot possess legal rights, only persons can.

Persons are the humans, corporations, and other institutions endowed with rights by law, including the right to own and use property as a means to some recognized end. For instance, a person’s bicycle is a means for her to travel from one place to another. That bicycle belongs to her, and she may use or not use it as she sees fit. Because the bicycle is an inanimate object, it is not sentient, and therefore it has no interests for her to take into consideration.

Unlike bicycles and all other inanimate objects, sentient animals do have interests that merit consideration, and this presents us with our problem: Because they are legally classified as property that humans may use as a means to any recognized end, just like inanimate objects such as bicycles, they are prevented from possessing any legal rights that would protect their interests.

Legal welfarism

In lieu of legal rights, numerous welfare laws and anticruelty statutes have been enacted over the past 200 years or so, with the intent of protecting at least one very important animal interest that humans have recognized as significant enough to be given our consideration: that of not being made to suffer. To avoid causing animals “unnecessary” suffering in the course of our using them as means to our ends, welfare laws seek to ensure that persons treat animals “humanely.” “Necessity” is evaluated by balancing human interests against the interests of animals in a given scenario.

Gary L. Francione identifies the futility of this balancing act in Animals, Property, and the Law:

…although the law prohibits the infliction of “unnecessary” pain and suffering on animals and requires that they be treated “humanely,” these terms are interpreted in light of the legal status of animals as property, the importance of property in our culture, and the general tendency of legal doctrine to protect and to maximize the value of property. (p. 4)

In other words, as long as animals are regarded as the property of humans, their interests will never count for as much as legally protected human interests, and so the scale will be rigged in favor of humans before the balancing has even begun. Despite the existence of myriad animal welfare laws and cruelty statutes intended to protect animals from suffering, then, animals’ interests remain more or less unprotected. Without legal rights, even an animal’s most significant interests cannot be protected from being traded away in favor of any trivial human interest so long as that human interest is in some recognized end (see Legal welfarism illustrated, below, for an example).

Francione calls this entire framework “legal welfarism.” Unlike rights theory, which regards every animal as an end, legal welfarism regards nonhuman animals solely as a means to some end (”food animals,” “lab animals,” “game animals,” “fur animals,” “companion animals,” “animal actors,” etc.). Presuming from the outset that animals are property for us to use, legal welfarism asks only that we determine whether or not an animal is being treated “humanely” in the course of being exploited–and provides them with only that level of protection that facilitates humans using them as a means to their recognized ends, e.g., advancing scientific knowledge, producing food, and so on. As Francione suggests, “The only activities that remain to be prohibited by such statutes are those where no socially recognized benefit can be traced to the animal killing or suffering.” (p. 129)

Legal welfarism illustrated

To illustrate legal welfarism in effect, let’s examine a couple of hypothetical scenarios involving the use of a cow. Bear in mind throughout that the cow has an interest in not being used as property precisely to avoid being the victim in either of these hypothical scenarios in the first place.

Now, to determine whether or not an activity would be prohibited by an anticruelty statute, we must break the question of “necessary” suffering into two parts (See Figure 1, below). Part 1 asks whether the end is recognized, i.e., whether or not using the cow provides some recognized human benefit. If the end is, say, “satisfying a teenager’s sadistic interests,” the answer for Scenario 1 is “No.” The law does not recognize the end of satisfying one’s sadistic intersts as providing some human benefit–quite the contrary. Regardless of the teenager’s exact plans for the cow, any suffering he causes the cow in the end of satisfying his sadistic interests will be considered “unnecessary,” and is thus prohibited.

Case closed. On to Scenario 2.

If the end in question is “using a cow for the purpose of food, clothing (or some other recognized end),” then the answer to Part 1 under the legal welfarism paradigm would be “Yes.” While the cow has the exact same interest in not suffering as in Scenario 1, the law recognizes that producing food and clothing provides a human benefit, and so it is determined that this activity or end is “necessary.” The cow’s interest is effectively trumped, and so we move on to Part 2.

Part 2 asks whether the means the cow’s owner employs to the end of using a cow to produce food or clothing is consistent with that end. If the cow’s owner lets her starve due to neglect, then the owner will have caused “unnecessary” suffering. Neglect is therefore prohibited. Starving one’s cow is not consistent with the end of using that cow to produce food or clothing. It’s a pointless “waste.”

On the other hand, if a cow experiences suffering in the course of being used as a means to the end of producing food and clothing for human benefit, that suffering is considered “necessary” so long as the suffering is the result of a standard industry practice. Of course, the law also recognizes as “necessary” the death of the cow as a means to achieving the recognized end of feeding and clothing humans, despite the cow’s demonstrable interest in staying alive.

The law will rule as “unnecessary” only that suffering which does not conflict with the animal owner’s ability to exploit an animal efficiently. Generally, however, the law will defer to property owners when determining whether or not a certain activity is necessary.

It’s generally assumed under the legal welfarism paradigm that a property owner wouldn’t intentionally devalue his property by causing that property “unnecessary” suffering. Therefore, whatever suffering the owner does incur must be “necessary” to increase the value of the property or maximize the benefits of that use for humans.

What about “wild” animals?

Though many nonhuman animals are born free in nature, as non-persons they still do not have a legal right not to be property. Though they may not technically be property, they are still regarded as if they are property (e.g., as mere things, or potential property), and our laws allow humans to “convert” certain wild animals into their personal property through the act of hunting and capturing or killing those animals.

All animals’ interests may be traded away in favor of human interests as long as they are not protected by legal rights. And, even though some animals aren’t technically personal property, their property status always tips the scale in favor of human interests, as if they were in fact property.

Conclusion

As long as animals are regarded as property, the balancing of animal and human interests is futile. The only way to balance the scales–to honestly give the like interests of humans and nonhumans equal consideration–is to give animals legal rights that protect their interests, too. Then we’ll be on a level playing field. But if we ever want to see this happen, we must first abolish their property status–starting with the very perception that it is acceptable to use animals as if they were property.

Next post: Rights Theory v. Utilitarianism

Previous post: Animal Rights

I like to hear from you. Comment below or email me.

Enjoy AAFL? Use the permalink icon to share this entry with your friends or to link it from your blog, submit to a service using the share button below, and consider making a small donation to support this site and my work. Thanks!

Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.

Submitted by An Animal-Friendly Life

“I’m Vegan” documentary profiles

I wanted to update everyone on the fundraising progress for I’m Vegan, the video project I first announced back in April. My total funding goal for the project is $25,000, $3,000 of which I received at the beginning of the year as a private donation. I set up a campaign to raise the remaining $22,000 at The Point, and proceeded to raise nearly $4,000 from 30 people in 2 months. Pledges ranged from $10 to $1,000. Thanks to everyone who has committed funds so far!

Special thanks have to go out now to an anonymous donor that mailed in a $9,000 check, which was basically intended to halve the amount of money still needed to reach the total funding goal. That is a huge push and a wonderful vote of confidence! It also means I only need $9,125 more in pledges at The Point in order to start production on I’m Vegan. The $9,000 takes the campaign at The Point from 18% complete to 58%, so my next milestone is 60%. I only need $325 to get to that number, so please pledge today if you can.

For those that missed the original post and don’t feel like clicking through the above link, I’m Vegan is a series of short documentary profiles that aim for long-term impact as an online series normalizing veganism, and thus it is an ongoing form of advocacy. It’s personal, intimate and busts stereotypes. What’s more, the project is relatively low-budget and is being funded through a non-profit, which means the donations are tax deductible.

The great thing is, unlike traditional fundraisers, The Point works in such a way that no one parts with their hard-earned cash until enough people pledge funds to reach the campaign goal of $22,000 (once complete funding is received, it will be donated to the non-profit that is sponsoring the project with needed equipment and other expenses).

For more details on the project, or to donate now, please visit its campaign page at The Point. Thanks in advance for your support. Share this post (or the campaign page) far and wide!

I like to hear from you. Comment below or email me.

Enjoy AAFL? Use the permalink icon to share this entry with your friends or to link it from your blog, submit to a service using the share button below, and consider making a small donation to support this site and my work. Thanks!

Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.

Submitted by An Animal-Friendly Life

Introduction

As with the term “rights,” there is a great deal of confusion about the term “animal rights.” Much of this confusion has been caused not just by the media and the industries that exploit nonhuman animals, but also by activists and animal advocacy groups using the term to loosely describe any actions purported to improve the conditions of animals used by humans. In other words, rather than promoting the moral or legal rights of animals, some so-called “animal rights activists” focus on regulating animal welfare–how animals are treated.

Further confusing the issue, some animal rights activists seek legal rights for only a select category of sentient nonhuman animals (such as great apes), based on characteristics such as higher-order cognitive abilities. The rights theory I put forth here–laid out in far greater detail in Gary L. Francione’s highly recommended Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog?–holds that any sentient being has at least one basic moral right simply by virtue of that being’s sentience: The right not be treated merely as a means to another’s end.

Sentience

To be sentient is to be conscious or self-aware, capable of perception or feeling. Sentient humans and nonhumans feel sensations of pain, pleasure and so on. When a being is sentient, s/he will naturally have interests. For instance, the capacity for sentient beings to feel pain provides them with a clear interest in not feeling pain.

In recognition of this particular interest, we generally consider it unacceptable to inflict pain on another sentient being unless there is an extraordinarily good reason. Take the example of a boy who harms a nonhuman simply to satisfy his morbid curiosity. He straps an ordinary dog down on a table and cuts her open to have a look inside. As he does this, the dog yelps, howls, and struggles, but the boy keeps cutting, ignoring her cries.

I think it’s safe to assume we all find the boy’s behavior objectionable. Various reasons may be offered for this, from our concern that the boy has psychological problems–and that these problems could lead to him harm other humans some day–to our concern that the dog might belong to another human who has an emotional attachment to her. But these are not the fundamental reasons for our objection. We are upset by the example because we recognize that the boy is causing the dog unnecessary pain.

If the dog was not sentient, then she wouldn’t have an interest in not being caused pain (because non-sentient beings are unable to sense pain), and so there would be no harm done. But, of course, we know that the dog is sentient, and we know that the boy’s actions cause her much pain.

Now, if we were to agree that the pain was for some justifiable reason necessary, we might be distressed by what is being done to the dog, but we would not object to it as a moral matter. For instance, if the boy was attacked by the dog and killed her to protect himself from a similar fate, we might be saddened by her death, but we would say that it was justified in this particular situation. However, it cannot be reasonably held that the boy needs to harm the dog merely to satisfy his curiosity.

This example illustrates how, as long as a being is sentient, we recognize–as a moral matter–that the being has an interest in not being harmed, which cannot be ignored or overridden unless it is truly necessary to do so. This belief is based on no other characteristic than the being’s ability to feel that pain. No other characteristics beyond sentience are necessary to merit moral consideration.

Equal Consideration

The principle of equal consideration holds that, as a basic moral matter, we ought to treat like cases alike. Viewed in terms of interests, the principle requires that the like interests of various beings must be given equal consideration. As described above, nonhumans and humans are alike in at least one important, morally relevant respect: they are sentient and, as such, they have interests that must be considered. Extending the principle of equal consideration to all sentient beings requires that we give nonhumans’ interests equal weight to humans’ interests. Where our interests are the same, we must weigh them equally.

So how does this work?

Let’s examine a simple case involving humans. Morally, we disapprove of killing other humans without justification (e.g., self defense). This is because we recognize that human beings have an interest in not being killed. We take this interest very seriously, protecting it with a legal right. A person’s interest in not being killed does not derive from skin color, sex, or cognitive abilities. When we give equal weight to the interests of white and black people, people of any sex or intelligence level, we recognize that they all have an equal interest in continued existence, and we accept that we might protect this interest equally.

Species is not the basis for an interest in continued existence, either. Humans do not have an interest in continued existence because they are human, but because they are sentient. As previously discussed, all sentient beings have interests, including a fundamental interest in staying alive.¹ According to the principle of equal consideration, to whatever extent we respect a human’s interest in not being killed, then we must also respect a nonhuman’s interest in not being killed. If we accept that a human’s interest in continued existence cannot be outweighed by another human’s interest in pleasure, then we must accept that a nonhuman’s interest in continued existence cannot by outweighed by a human’s interest in pleasure.

There is simply no non-arbitrary difference between humans and other animals that justifies treating their like interests differently.². Remember, we accord equal consideration where our interests are alike. Because there is no characteristic possessed by sentient nonhumans that justifies giving their like interests less consideration than our own, they ought to be protected equally. This brings us to animal rights.

Animal Rights

Recall from my previous AR101 post that rights protect one’s interests against those who would disregard those interests. All sentient beings have interests, both human and nonhuman, and so they all belong in the moral community of rightholders. When we say that nonhuman animals have moral rights, we are basically acknowledging that some of their interests are like ours and that these interests must be given equal consideration to our own. So, if we have a moral right not be killed (even if it might benefit someone to kill us), then our understanding of the principle of equal consideration leads us to the conclusion that nonhuman animals have that moral right as well, as they have the exact same underlying interest.

As discussed previously, we expect that, at some point, legally defined rights will reflect the moral rights that we already accept. Moral and legal rights for animals, then, derive from the notion of equal consideration for their basic interests. Saying that animals have rights is the same as saying that animals are rightholders. It doesn’t necessarily say which rights animals have morally, and which they should be granted legally. Moral rights would, of course, become better understood as we begin to give the interests of nonhuman animals equal consideration. The expectation is that legal rights would follow along the same lines.

While we may not agree on all the specific moral rights possessed by sentient nonhuman animals, but there must be at least one fundamental moral right they hold if any other rights are to make sense: The right not be treated as a thing, as merely the means to another’s end. This must also be granted as a legal right if any other legal animal rights are going to mean anything. Nonhuman beings simply have no legal rights as long as they are regarded as property, i.e., a means to the ends of a person. Remember, property cannot have rights, only persons can.

In my next post, part four of AR101, I will discuss in more detail how property status relates to animal rights, along with its implications.

Next post: Property Status

Previous post: Rights

I like to hear from you. Comment below or email me.

Enjoy AAFL? Use the permalink icon to share this entry with your friends or to link it from your blog, submit to a service using the share button below, and consider making a small donation to support this site and my work. Thanks!

Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.

Submitted by An Animal-Friendly Life

Though this widely-reported news is nearly two weeks old now, I haven’t yet written about the Spanish parliamentary resolution to grant great apes the right to life and freedom. This is due in part to my posting schedule, but mainly I wanted to see how this all shook out. Then last week I heard about a piece by William Saletan at Slate that I wanted to read, which I finally remembered to do this morning when it reappeared at Philly.com (via my news alerts) as an opinion piece.

Time to get to this one, I suppose.

The good news: It seems very likely that Spain will be the first national legislature to grant any animals the legal right to life and freedom.

The Great Ape Project, co-founded by philosopher Peter Singer, has been pursuing this goal for about 14 years now. Singer rejects the validity of moral rights (he’s an act–and presumably occasionally a rule–utilitarian) but he believes that certain animals should have legal rights in order to protect them from harm. At the GAP website, a news release states that, “Under most government structures, legal rights are the only way to insure that non-human great apes are free from torture, unnecessary death and capture.”

Of course, Spain is not about to turn loose the 315 great apes kept in its zoos, though evidently the law’s specifications would require dramatically improving conditions at 70 percent of them. Keeping apes for use in entertainment will be forbidden, backed by Spain’s penal code. As of now, there don’t appear to be any great apes being used for vivisection in Spain, but there are no laws to prevent that from happening, so the government will update the legal code to outlaw “harmful” experiments on apes in Spain. I haven’t been able to turn up the text of this resolution with a quick skim of Google results, but I think that last bit about “harmful” experiments is a some cause for concern. It seems to leave open the option to use great apes for non-invasive/non-”harmful” experiments (behavioral research?). So, with one caveat already noted, this is the good angle on the news.

The bad news: This leaves the vast majority of nonhuman animals completely in the lurch, still waiting at square one. Do we protect humans from torture, death, and restriction of liberty based on cognitive capacity? No, we legally protect all sentient humans with rights. Of course, this protection is generally exclusive to our own species, an arbitrary distinction when it comes to determining which beings merit legal protection for their moral rights. We don’t legally give some humans preferential protection from torture, death, and the restriction of liberty on the basis of race or sex, but for some reason we think it makes sense to discriminate against nonhumans simply because they are not human, even though they have the same interests we do in not being tortured, confined, or killed. GAP and others discriminate based on cognitive characteristics.

So, supposedly species membership would no longer be the key criterion for inclusion in the moral community, but GAP’s stance and Spain’s resolution still advance a hierarchy based on criteria unique to certain species, and which go well beyond the criteria necessary for moral consideration, i.e., sentience. As Saletan notably remarks, “the arguments GAP has deployed in Spain don’t advance the idea of equality among animals. They destroy it.” GAP and others claim that this is the point of a spear that has broken the species barrier, making it easier for other species to eventually be included within the sphere of legal rights protection. But how can far can this go if we base such rights on how similar animals’ cognitive capacities are to humans?

Modern conceptions of rights are generally egalitarian. We have extended fundamental legal rights to all humans, regardless of race, sex, or cognitive capacity. Notions of egalitarianism play directly into animal rights theory, which looks at the reasons for excluding nonhumans from legal rights protection and finds that there are some arbitrary distinctions that lead to grave inconsistencies.

When Tom Regan pioneered actual animal rights theory in The Case for Animal Rights, he focused on equality based on the inherent value of animals who are “subjects-of-a-life,” or that they have value in themselves unrelated to how they might be valued by others. If all animals have inherent value (humans and nonhumans alike), then they all have it equally, according to Regan, and they have the moral right not to be treated merely as a means to the end of others.

However, he did stop short of a totally egalitarian approach, requiring animals to meet certain cognitive criteria in order to reasonably be considered a rightholder. His subject-of-a-life requirement is not all that dissimilar from Singer’s notion that some animals value their lives more than others. Regan also believes that death is a greater harm for humans than for nonhumans. Both philosophers appear to accept that the more like humans nonhumans are, at least in terms of cognition, the more likely that the nonhumans in question are to qualify for protection for his or her interests. GAP perpetuates discrimination, according to Saletan:

GAP’s mission statement says great apes are entitled to rights based on their “morally significant characteristics.” It says they enjoy a rich emotional and cultural existence in which they experience emotions such as fear, anxiety and happiness. They share the intellectual capacity to create and use tools, learn and teach other languages. They remember their past and plan for their future. It is in recognition of these and other morally significant qualities that the Great Ape Project was founded.

Morally significant qualities. Morally significant characteristics. These are appeals to discrimination, not universal equality. Most animals don’t have a rich cultural life. They can’t make tools. They don’t teach languages.

Animal activists often take approaches like GAP to be tactical means to the end of extending rights to all animals some day (as points of spears and such), but this kind of thinking misses the mark. We don’t need to extend the hierarchy, we need to erase that hierarchy entirely. I’ll let Saletan’s conclusion, eloquent as it is, serve as my own:

George Orwell wrote the cruel finale to this tale 63 years ago in Animal Farm: “All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.” That wasn’t how the egalitarian uprising in the book was supposed to turn out. It wasn’t how the animal rights movement was supposed to turn out, either.

FYI, I will publish my next AR101 post this week. In it, I discuss the concept of animal rights in more detail.

Enjoy AAFL? Use the permalink icon to share this entry with your friends or to link it from your blog, submit to a service using the share button below, and consider making a small donation to support this site and my work. Thanks!

Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.

Submitted by An Animal-Friendly Life

Gary L. Francione just posted a self-produced vegan education pamphlet at his blog, The Abolitionist Approach. It’s a double-sided document, so it will be easy to reproduce and distribute. A lot of people have been clamoring for a resource like this, and now you finally have it, from the very person behind the abolitionist approach. If that’s not good enough for you, I don’t know what is! Get out there and spread the message far and wide.

I like to hear from you. Comment below or email me.

Enjoy AAFL? Use the permalink icon to share this entry with your friends or to link it from your blog, submit to a service using the share button below, and consider making a small donation to support this site and my work. Thanks!

Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.

Submitted by An Animal-Friendly Life

I’ve received my final assignments for FARM’s national animal rights conference, running from August 14-18, 2008 at the Hilton Mark Center in Alexandria, VA (the program). This conference certainly makes for some strange “bedfellows”, but at least it does not censor abolitionist views, which is a rare plus.

I’ll start things off Thursday by moderating the opening night plenary, which I also did last year. The plenary consists of an overview of the various animal protection campaigns being conducted in the several broad categories of animal use. It’s requested that plenary hosts not add their two cents during the session (I’m the host, not an invited speaker), so I will avoid editorializing that night. However, I would like to ask all participants in advance (and everyone, really) to consider the common roots enabling the different types of animal use in the first place. This is an animal rights conference, after all, not an animal welfare conference (and precious little animal rights discussion actually occurs at any of the national conferences).

Friday you can find me at four more sessions, including the Newcomer Orientation, at which I will present an introduction to animal rights. Later on, I will dine with other New Englanders interested in local/regional issues and networking at a Regional Lunch session at noon (come eat with me–I’ll try not to speak with my mouth full). After lunch, I’ll focus on Developing Leadership Skills and moderate a rap session called What Rights? Which Animals? It’s a sign of how fragmented the ‘movement’ is that those questions are even being asked, so I’m looking forward to seeing where the various participants in that discussion are at on the subject.

Saturday I’ll discuss Running a Local Group (something I happen to do), followed by a Perceptions of Animals panel, at which I intend to speak about the human tendency to compartmentalize their attitudes toward nonhuman animals.

Finally, if you plan on attending the conference through Monday morning, join me for an hour of public speaking training, along with long-time public speaker Howard Lyman. We’ll put you on the spot for 1-2 minutes to help identify your strengths and weaknesses as a public speaker.

I wasn’t invited to speak on behalf of abolitionism for the annual Paths to Animal Liberation debateplenary, though it looks like D.C. attorney and activist Sean Day will be representing that viewpoint, as he did at AR2006 and at the United Poultry Concerns’ annual forum, where he “emphasized that any welfare action that isn’t at least a step toward abolition is not doing the animals any good.”

I’ll also be sure to stop in on a couple of rap sessions covering this same topic, Which Path To Animal Liberation? (moderated by Harold Brown, who spoke in favor of abolition on AR2007’s Paths to Animal Liberation panel) and Does Welfare Bring Abolition? (moderated by Karen Davis, who hosted the UPC conference addressing this topic as well). I hope you’ll join in on these discussions.

If you’re a regular AAFL reader, please don’t be shy — come say hi during the conference. It’s always nice to put a face with comments!

I like to hear from you. Comment below or email me.

Enjoy AAFL? Use the permalink icon to share this entry with your friends or to link it from your blog, submit to a service using the share button below, and consider making a small donation to support this site and my work. Thanks!

Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.

Submitted by An Animal-Friendly Life

Animals as Persons: Essays on on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation was released May 23rd, but it has taken me a while to finish reading Gary L. Francione’s latest book because I’m perpetually swamped lately. However, working it into my ridiculous schedule was relatively easy, in part because the book is comprised of individual, self-contained essays that allowed me to conveniently break my reading up into manageable sessions as time permitted. You might find this helpful as well. While the essays range in length, none of them are terribly long (particularly after the first two), and together they all provide an excellent and highly readable introduction to Professor Francione’s abolitionist theory of animal rights. If you are one of those people who have put off reading his earlier books due to time constraints or for any other reason, this might be an ideal place to start.

I recommend not skipping over the introduction, particularly if you’ve never read Francione before. In it, he gets right to the pivotal assertion that the animal advocacy movement is, in effect, two very different movements: one that seeks to abolish animal exploitation by eradicating the property status of animals, and the other a movement that seeks the regulation of animal-using industries while failing to effectively challenge the property status of animals.

He expands on the core concepts of abolitionism in the first chapter, “Animals as Persons.” That essay is itself a relatively brief but thorough presentation of Francione’s theory as developed more fully in Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? (ITAR) While it is not a substitute for reading that book, “Animals as Persons” is a very clear essay that will quickly have you up to speed on the basic concepts.

The next chapter is an essay called “Reflections on Animals, Property, and the Law and Rain Without Thunder.” In it, Francione responds to various critics who have argued that the property status of animals does not necessarily prevent advocates from improving animal welfare, and that animal welfare regulation is an effective way of moving incrementally toward recognition that animals have more than the value that we assign to them.

You don’t necessarily need to have read the two books to appreciate “Reflections,” though I’m sure I got more out of it because I had. I found the essay particularly interesting because Francione deconstructs real-world legislation such as Florida’s gestation crate ban and California’s foie gras ban. While he frequently deconstructs current events on his blog, as he did with the announcement that KFC Canada would adopt a controlled-atmosphere killing policy, these case studies offer new readers relevant and useful applications of his abolitionist theory.

In his third essay, “Taking Sentience Seriously,” Francione focuses on flaws in the “similar-minds” theory, a critical analysis all the more relevant in light of news that Spain’s parliament plans to extend legal rights to life and freedom for great apes. Based as it is on cognitive abilities rather than sentience, this pending legislation is a case in point for Francione, so you’ll definitely want to read chapter 3 if you don’t know why this seemingly good news is a bad precedent for animal rights.

Returning to his critics, chapter four’s essay, “Equal Consideration,” focuses specifically on Cass Sunstein’s review of ITAR, in which he claims that Francione fails to justify why animal advocates should not focus on regulating human treatment of animals rather than abolishing animal use. This gives Francione an excellent opportunity to point out some fatal flaws in Sunstein’s thinking, along with that of Jeremy Bentham and Peter Singer, who seem to believe that some sentient beings have no interest in continuing to live, despite the logical implication that their very sentience gives these animals an interest in continued existence.

Francione’s fifth essay examines the justifications for vivisection, which he also covers in IATR (along with descriptions of numerous specific experiments). Here, too, he observes that even if there is some plausible empirical claim for necessity, this form of animal use cannot be morally justified. “The Use of Nonhuman Animals” is one of the clearest, most concise critiques of vivisection I have read, from both the empirical and moral points of view. While the empirical section should be sufficient in and of itself to clear up any confusion as to whether vivisection is as valuable as is usually claimed, Francione footnotes our way to additional resources, and of course he follows this up with a moral critique that is impossible to refute without engaging in hypocrisy.

His next essay, “Ecofeminism and Animal Rights,” is actually a 1996 review of Beyond Animal Rights: A Feminist Caring Ethic for the Treatment of Animals, in which he examines arguments made against animal rights and for an “ethic of care.” Like Cass Sunstein’s review of IATR, essays in Beyond Animal Rights suggest that we do not need to end the institutionalized exploitation of nonhuman animals in order to include them within the moral community, and even go as far as to actually legitimize that exploitation, ironically perpetuating speciesist hierarchy at the same time that they condemn the rights view as hierarchical. Francione swiftly and effectively counters these views.

Finally, Francione turns his attention to perhaps the world’s best-known animal rights author and philosopher, Tom Regan, who in his seminal The Case for Animal Rights makes a sustained, comprehensive, and complex philosophical argument for animal rights. In the course of his argument, which can be seen as a case for which criteria are valid for inclusion in the moral community, he presents the “lifeboat case” as an example of a conflict between rightholders. The lifeboat case is a hypothetical scenario Regan resolves in part by claiming that death is a greater harm to humans than it is to nonhumans such as dogs. Francione critiques this view with “Comparable Harm and Equal Inherent Value,” a 1995 essay updated with a 2008 postscript to respond to the new preface Regan wrote in 2004 for the second edition of The Case for Animal Rights, in which he responded to critics of his lifeboat example.

One of the few drawbacks of gathering together all these different essays is that, even though the case studies and responses to specific criticisms may prompt you to understand Francione’s abolitionist theory more clearly, you frequently end up reading the same thing you’ve read elsewhere in his work, including other essays in this book, and sometimes nearly even verbatim. However, it is that very deja vu experience that reminds you how so many supposedly different debates always come back to the fundamentals, which we would do well to learn… and that may just be the reason Francione keeps repeating them.

In recapping his abolitionist animal rights theory and defending it with such precision, clarity, and authority, Gary Francione successfully reasserts the view that nonhuman animals will not be meaningfully protected from unnecessary harm so long as they are considered human property, and that welfare reforms or variations on the theme are incapable of leading to their emancipation. Animals as Persons is a must-read for anyone claiming to support or to even simply be interested in animal rights. Right now you can purchase it and all Columbia University Press animal studies titles at a steep 50% off until August 1st.

While you await your copy, you can read the publisher’s interview with Francione and listen to his most recent interview (part 1) on Vegan Freak Radio (part 2).

I like to hear from you. Comment below or email me.

Enjoy AAFL? Use the permalink icon to share this entry with your friends or to link it from your blog, submit to a service using the share button below, and consider making a small donation to support this site and my work. Thanks!

Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.

Submitted by An Animal-Friendly Life

Rights

The term “rights” is widely misunderstood. It will be helpful here to distinguish between moral and legal rights. These classes of rights are similar in at least one respect: in both cases, a right protects a person’s interest by providing that person with a claim against any party who interferes with the satisfaction of the person’s protected interest.

An example

Let’s look at an example in which a person is protected by both kinds of rights.

Person A is an average human being whose interest in continuing to live we can hopefully agree is important enough that it should not be arbitrarily ignored by any other person. When we say that Person A has “a right to live,” we are more or less stating that Person A’s interest in continued existence is protected by a “claim” against any person and/or actions that would prevent Person A from continuing to live. Another way of looking at this is that the right protecting Person A’s interest in continued existence imposes a duty on other people not to ignore this interest.

Of course, there are limitations on this protection. If Person A attempts to kill another person, then most people would not object to the other party defending herself with lethal force, or to Person A being shot and killed by an officer of the law. Person A’s interest in continuing to live has not evaporated, but his actions have provided appropriate justification for ignoring that interest.

With this example in mind, let’s take a look at the difference between legal and moral rights.

Legal rights

The law identifies that certain interests ought to be protected, even if infringing upon those interests would serve the interests of another person, or the interests of the greater good. When a person’s legal right is violated by another party, then the right provides the person with a justified legal claim against the violating party.

Valid legal claims can lead to various legal sanctions against the violating party, including financial penalties and/or imprisonment. Legal rights are generally codified and enforced by a political institution, such as a government, and they are held by certain entities functioning as legal “persons,” such as humans and corporations.

Moral rights

Moral rights derive from objective morality, not from governmental authority. They can be understood to have approximately the same logical structure as legal rights, but they are not backed up with the same sort of protection offered by legal rights. However, the claim a person has against another party who infringes upon a moral right is no less valid. Consequences for violating moral rights can range from a personal demand for an apology to being ostracized by one’s community.

The relationship between moral and legal rights

Moral rights and legal rights are distinctly different, but they are closely related. We can think of a moral right as an underlying, pre-legal form of a right. Whatever moral rights a being holds will ideally (if not now, at least some day) be reflected in the legal system. For instance, our moral right to liberty is reflected in our legal right to that liberty. As public opinions about right and wrong shift, laws generally evolve along with them. Humans enslaved in the United States before 1865 had the same basic moral rights as every other human, but these moral rights were not reflected in the law until the 13th Amendment was passed.

It is possible for legal rights to clash with moral rights. For example, some animal rights advocates believe that all sentient beings have at least one basic moral right: the right not to be treated exclusively as a resource by others. This moral right conflicts directly with the morally indefensible legal right humans have to own nonhumans.

Other considerations

A right typically does not need to be understood by someone who possesses that right in order to receive its protection. For example, the interests of children and mentally incompetent persons are protected by rights. Claims to these rights can usually be made on their behalf.

Because nonhuman animals are legally classified as property instead of persons, they cannot possess legal rights.

Conclusion

In my next post, I will describe animal rights. It will be helpful to keep in mind the above discussion as we consider what interests nonhuman animals have.

Next post: Animal Rights

Previous post: The Need

I like to hear from you. Comment below or email me.

Enjoy AAFL? Use the permalink icon to share this entry with your friends or to link it from your blog, submit to a service using the share button below, and consider making a small donation to support this site and my work. Thanks!

Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.

Submitted by An Animal-Friendly Life

This is going to be a pretty lousy food post, since I don’t have any pictures to show for my wife’s culinary adventure. Yup, she picked up my slack.

I’ve been wanting to make cinnamon rolls for weeks, but I have been so busy (and I have a really hard time waking up early on weekends… or any day, for that matter), so Dr. Prescott took it upon herself to make this happen for us. The results weren’t as photogenic as the pictures in Colleen Patrick-Goudreau’s The Joy of Vegan Baking, but they looked very similar. My iPhone simply isn’t a good substitute for a real camera with the lighting in our apartment, and my other camera, as mentioned previously, is dying a sad death.

But, man… Oh, man. Up until recently, I had not eaten a vegan cinnamon roll that tasted anything like the cinnamon rolls I remember from Cinnabon, et al. Certainly there are plenty of other vegan goodies to distract me. Far too many, really. I’ve managed to cut back at least a little on indulging my sweet tooth these past couple of months.

But all along, I periodically would try a commercially available vegan cinnamon roll and think to myself, “C’mon. How hard can it be? I mean, really, is it just that the people making these cinnamon rolls have simply never had the good stuff, or are vegan cinnamon rolls doomed to be like vegan “cheese,” a pale imitation of the original recipe?” Okay, my thoughts weren’t that coherent, but they more or less covered the same ground.

Fortunately, I remembered I owned The Joy of Vegan Baking, so I looked up cinnamon rolls. Voila! Colleen never lets me down.

Ironically, I didn’t actually try her recipe, though I’m sure it’s great. Everything I’ve tried from that book has been delicious so far. Fortunately, Colleen is focused on making sure vegan baked goods taste amazing, not on making sure they are made with fruit juices and bran fiber (thank you, Colleen). However, her recipe requires significant dough rising time, which is hard for me to come by, as mentioned above.

My friend, Kristin (who writes a blog called Beans and Greens), let me know about a recipe she modified with great success, and recommended it because it uses instant yeast, saving oodles of time.

However, the recipe Kristin posted called for corn syrup to make the icing. We don’t have corn syrup and we don’t want any. Dr. Prescott had the brilliant idea to combine recipes. We used the instant yeast goodness of Kristin’s find (which still took a while to prep, unfortunately), and iced those rolls with the frosting from Colleen’s book… I tell you, people: They tasted amazing (sugar rush!), so they are worth a little effort, especially if (unlike us) you actually have a rolling pin!

If you want the recipe, visit Kristin’s write-up. She posted enticing pictures to go with it, which more or less represent how ours turned out as well.

Riding your coattails, ladies… Many thanks to both my wife and Kristin for my cinnamon roll heaven this past weekend.

I like to hear from you. Comment below or email me.

Enjoy AAFL? Use the permalink icon to share this entry with your friends or to link it from your blog, submit to a service using the share button below, and consider making a small donation to support this site and my work. Thanks!

Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.

Submitted by ANIMAL RIGHTS MALTA’S BLOG

Following last Wednesday’s entry entitled “Hate campaigns and tarnished reputations“, and my comments on The Times online’s report entitled “Hunters call for end to ‘hate’ campaign“, Sylvana Zarb Darmanin’s further replies confirmed my deep suspicion that two major stumbling blocks preventing the comprehension of animal rights theory are usually a lack of grasp of ethics and moral philosophy, and sometimes a lack of comprehension of language. Ms Zarb Darmanin unfortunately seems to exhibit both, for how would one otherwise explain her latest comments?

For instance, Ms Zarb Darmanin writes:

“Mr. Cassar, I was glad to read that you have finally confirmed to all and sundry that you are an extremist. Indeed you are tarnishing the reputation of the law-abiding hunters.

As implied, these individuals practice something which is LEGAL whatever way you try to put it.

You mention that you have a right to expose injustice - WHERE IS THIS INJUSTICE?

Remember, there are laws regulating this activity which the law-abiding hunters respect. You have a right to your opinion, however you cannot consider yourself to be superior and impose your opinion on others.

I also have my opinion on various injustices committed, however, I am not that presumptuous to expect that I get my way on such things and neither show hatred towards other human-beings.

Going through your various comments to date, I find it rather hard to understand how you harbour such love towards birds, yet show such hatred and disrespect towards fellow human beings.

Honestly, Mr. Cassar, I just cannot comprehend this!!!”.

Well, first of all, I never confirmed that I am an extremist. All that I said was that I am viewed by animal abusers as an extremist.

Ms Zarb Darmanin insist I am tarnishing the reputation of law-abiding hunters. All I am saying is that all hunters needlessly kill animals. I never said that legal hunting is illegal. I only believe it should be. If Ms Zarb Darmanin insists that I am tarnishing reputations by telling the truth, there is not much more I can say, and will let the readers judge for themselves.

Ms Zarb Darmanin asks where is the injustice. The injustice is in the practice of unnecessarily killing animals. That she does not see a problem with this does not make the practice just.

Regarding imposing opinions, anyone who understands basic science, knows that opinions cannot be imposed. One cannot force beliefs or opinions into anyone’s mind. To be influenced (which is the most a campaigner can hope for), one needs to be at least receptive to new ideas.

Ms Zarb Darmanin says that she also has her opinion on various injustices committed, but says that she is not that “presumptuous” to expect that she gets her way on such things. Being morally convinced of an injustice and doing nothing about it, is usually called moral cowardice.

As for hate, I do not harbour hate against anyone. I only harbour hate against unjust practices.

I would have expected Ms Zarb Darmanin to understand, and recognize her mistake, particularly in her claim that she would tolerate injustice, and her calling “presumptuous” anyone who would expose or challenge injustice. Alas, the opposite is the case.

Ms Zarb Darmanin writes:

“Please, Please, Mr. Cassar – STOP YOUR INSULTS. One is judged through one’s words and actions! Implying that one is ignorant or a coward make your argument no much better. Not doing anything about certain injustices is definitely not cowardice BUT respect and tolerance towards others.

Incidentally I hold the human-being above all others. As for your not harbouring hate against anyone but only harbouring hate against unjust practices, you seem to harbour quite an amount of hatred against me, even though I am not a hunter (an unjust practice in YOUR opinion).

An explanation as to the mix-up in your priorities (as requested in my previous comment) would definitely have been more appropriate than rude insults”.

Well, to start with, I didn’t insult anyone. It is Ms Zarb Darmanin herself who said (twice) that she would do nothing about injustice. To moral people, doing nothing about injustice is moral cowardice. If one tolerates injustice, that says more about them than it says about me.

Let us see once again what Ms Zarb Darmanin is saying here. Ms Zarb Darmanin says that she also has her opinion on various injustices committed, but goes on to say that, however, she is not that presumptuous to expect that she gets her way on such things.

Now, remember that Ms Zarb Darmanin does not believe that killing birds is an injustice, so when she says that she has her own opinion on various injustices committed, she is limiting the injustices to those committed on humans. To make matters worse, she goes on to insist that “not doing anything about certain injustices is definitely not cowardice BUT respect and tolerance towards others”.

So does Ms Zarb Darmanin believe that moral persons should do nothing about injustices, such as discrimination at the work-place, including, but not limited to, sexual and racial discrimination? Does she believe that people should do nothing about injustices such as the incarceration of people for political or religious reasons? Does she believe that people should do nothing about the injustice of torturing prisoners, for whatever reason? But perhaps I am being too harsh. Perhaps this is not what she had in mind when she says that injustice should be tolerated out of respect and tolerance towards the unjust. If this is not what she meant, I sure would like to know what she did mean. Remember we are talking about what she believes to be injustices, and not simply differences of opinion on matters that have nothing to do with justice.

And to make matters worse, since all this is about writing letters and comments, does Ms Zarb Darmanin really believe that people should not even do as “little” as writing a simple letter or comment, opposing injustice, again out of respect and tolerance for the people performing the injustice? And she tells me that I have mixed priorities!

I also must comment on Ms Zarb Darmanin’s claim that I “hate her”, presumably because I choose to reply to her comments on The Times online. I do not even hate people who have done me personal harm in the past. But if she wants to believe that I see her as worse than such people, again, she might as well suit herself. If I saw every reply to my comments and letters that oppose my views, as coming from people who hate me, I would end up being paranoid and would need psychological help. Ms Zarb Darmanin is lucky in this sense. She only has me and a few others who reply to her comments opposing her views. Surely this should be no case for paranoia.

I also checked her previous comment in The Times online, and found that she didn’t mention priorities. But perhaps she refers to when she said: “I find it rather hard to understand how you harbour such love towards birds, yet show such hatred and disrespect towards fellow human-beings”.

Her confusion stems from two common mistaken perceptions about myself.

For one, I do not harbour any special love of birds. I just see birds as individuals with an equal right to life and liberty.

I also do not hate human beings. I only believe they have no right to murder non-humans for pleasure or convenience. Once again, I hate practices and not people. To say that someone who opposes the unnecessary killing of non-human animals is someone who hates humans is no different from saying that someone who opposed the Nazi holocaust hates Germans.

If everyone respected everyone else, (including respecting non-human animals), there would be no need for priorities. We would simply live our lives doing as little harm to others as possible. Alas, too many people insist on harming others. To claim that one should not defend the abused or harmed out of respect and “tolerance” towards the abuser is, to put it mildly, bizarre.

I’ll end this entry with the lyrics of the song “If you tolerate this, your children will be next” by the Manic Street Preachers, which deal on tolerance of injustice.

The future teaches you to be alone.

The present to be afraid and cold.

So if I can shoot rabbits,

Then I can shoot fascists.

Bullets for your brain today.

But we’ll forget it all again.

Monuments put from pen to paper,

Turns me into a gutless wonder.

And if you tolerate this,

Then your children will be next.

Gravity keeps my head down.

Or is it maybe shame,

At being so young and being so vain.

Holes in your head today.

But I’m a pacifist.

I’ve walked La Ramblas,

But not with real intent.

And if you tolerate this,

Then your children will be next.

And on the street tonight an old man plays,

With newspaper cuttings of his glory days.

And if you tolerate this,

Then your children will be next.

Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.

Submitted by An Animal-Friendly Life

Today marks the launch of humanemyth.org, a website created to “correct the misinformation that is associated with the Humane Myth, and to inspire a form of working for the peaceful transformation of our society that fully respects the inherent dignity and worth of animals and people alike.”

On the front page of the site, “humane myth” is defined as:

An idea being propagated by the animal-using industry and some animal protection organizations that it is possible to use and kill animals in a manner that can be fairly described as respectful or compassionate or humane.

Sounds like something you should definitely be checking out, and there’s a lot to see.

According to a press release available at the site, “HumaneMyth.org offers provocative new testimony from former farmers, investigators, and animal rescuers who expose fallacies associated with animal product labels such as cage-free, sustainable, organic and certified humane.”

Other features include:

• Humane declaration
• Deconstructions of the humane myth in the media
• Downloadable “cage free” and “happy meat” slideshows
• Downloadable literature, web banners and other resources
• Tips for humane myth advocacy
• Humane myth glossary

HumaneMyth.org is sponsored by James LaVeck and Jenny Stein, the award-winning filmmakers behind the documentaries The Witness (2000) and Peaceable Kingdom: The Journey Home (in post-production).

James LaVeck is speaking several times at the 34th annual Vegetarian Summerfest, happening this weekend in Johnstown, PA. He speaks on the humane myth tomorrow at 10am (”Deconstructing the Humane Myth”) and Saturday at 9:55am (”Don’t Buy the Myth!”). If you’re headed out there, be sure to check out these presentations, and don’t forget to report back here!

I like to hear from you. Comment below or email me.

Enjoy AAFL? Use the permalink icon to share this entry with your friends or to link it from your blog, submit to a service using the share button below, and consider making a small donation to support this site and my work. Thanks!
Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.

Submitted by An Animal-Friendly Life

You may have seen the following survey announced elsewhere, but now it is available as an online dealio, which makes it a little easier to complete and submit than the text version that was going around before. This approach also makes your replies more anonymous.

M. Butterflies Katz: Vegan Relationship Survey

I don’t know Katz, nor do I have a clear sense of how your information will be used. The email providing me with this link stated, “The results of the survey will be used to research an article that will be published on-line and in magazines.” That’s all you get. If you don’t like that, don’t bother filling out the survey. I know some folks could use a way to burn through 15 minutes at work, though, so have at it.

I like to hear from you. Comment below or email me.

Enjoy AAFL? Use the permalink icon to share this entry with your friends or to link it from your blog, submit to a service using the share button below, and consider making a small donation to support this site and my work. Thanks!

Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.

Submitted by ANIMAL RIGHTS MALTA’S BLOG

A quick read of some of the pro-hunting comments under The Times online’s news report, entitled “Hunters call for end to ‘hate’ campaign“, makes it clear that the task of convincing animal abusers to stop abusing (and killing) animals, is an uphill struggle.

The main difficulty seems to be either that those who gain pleasure from abusing non-human animals are reluctant to see the facts as they are, or that some of them actually lack the linguistic and logical ability to comprehend the animal rights arguments, or both, as is evidenced in some of the comments I am reproducing (and replying to) below. One may find more comments of mine as well as comments from others in The Times online’s article.

In reply to one of my posts, for instance, Sylvana Zarb Darmanin writes:

“Mr Cassar, one must realise that most of the human being’s practices might bother others at one time or another. It then depends on how tolerant one is. I am bothered by many behaviours and acts of other human-beings, as I am sure others are bothered by what I sometimes do. That is absolutely normal. If we are to live peacefully together, we have to put up with these things and respect all individuals.

Unfortunately, some people are all the time pointing fingers and tarnishing other people’s reputations. They would be wise to sit down and think of the many things they do which irritate people. Only then will they start showing respect and tolerance towards others”.

Of course, I agree that all practices will bother someone at one time or another. However, the (hunting) issue in question is not simply a case of “bother”, but a question of rights. I have no right to launch a campaign against people who wear a brown t-shirt, even if brown t-shirts bother me. However, when it is a question of gross violation of rights, things somewhat change drastically.

However, perhaps, even in cases of rights violations, generally one should not resort to violence or personal hate-campaigns (perhaps it should be pointed out that the only people who resorted to violence in the recent past are hunters, albeit a small minority), but we should limit ourselves to educational and awareness campaigns with the clear intent of convincing a majority - legislation might then, in time, follow. I can see this already, slowly but surely, happening.

One can be tolerant towards a person and intolerant towards a practice that violates rights. To tolerate injustice, however, is to perpetuate and compound injustice. When saying “If we are to live peacefully together, we have to put up with these things and respect all individuals”, Sylvana Zarb Darmanin is obviously leaving non-human animals out of the equation.

Regarding tarnishing reputations, I value truth. If truth shows a person to be in the wrong, it is that person’s actions that are tarnishing his or her own reputation. Hunters kill non-human animals. If by saying so, and thereby saying the truth, I am tarnishing their reputation, I wonder if Ms Zarb Darmanin believes I should lie, and say that hunters don’t kill non-human animals. If, on the other hand, this is not what Ms Zarb Darmanin expects from me, then is it perhaps possible that by claiming that I am tarnishing hunters’ reputations by saying that they kill non-human animals, she recognizes that unnecessarily killing non-human animals tarnishes one’s reputation, and therefore, if one sees the logic, hunting is wrong? But perhaps I am giving Ms Zarb Darmanin too much credit. Perhaps all Ms Zarb Darmanin means when complaining about tarnished reputations, is that hunters are above criticism.

Moral persons have an active duty to expose injustice, and I’ll keep on doing just that.

Then, following my reply, Ms Zarb Darmanin wrote:

“Don’t you think you are infringing on the rights of the law abiding hunter? This traditional pastime (hunting) is practised throughout the world. It seems that only the Maltese anti-hunting lobby are being so intolerant towards these hunters. As usual you are tarnishing the reputation of the law abiding hunter and I feel you have absolutely no right to do so. That is what call disrespect to the people around you. You may accuse law breakers, and I will join you in this, BUT placing all hunters in one basket and accusing them unjustifiably is definitely a shortcoming!

That is injustice indeed. Mr Cassar, it appears that my comments invariably hit home. This has been going on for years. Is it a case of la verita’