Animal Rights vs Animal Welfare
That the National Council of Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals NSPCA)
and the Animal Anti-Cruelty League (AACL) felt the need to issue a joint press release
on January 2007, attempting to clarify the difference between the animal welfare movement
and the animal rights movement is an indication of their desire to make it absolutely clear
to the public as well as all animal exploiting industries that they are not
committed to the eradication of animal abuse or exploitation. - merely that this abuse and
exploitation occurs within the parameters of existing animal welfare legislation.
Contrary to the NSPCA and AACL statement, animal rights organisations and animal welfare organisations
DO NOT share the same aims, goals or objectives in terms of animals. Whereas the animal welfare movement
is committed to the “humane” exploitation of animals, it is the absolute and unconditional
abolition of all forms of human tyranny over animals that is the cherished ideal of the
animal rights movement, and it is this which sets it apart from the animal welfare movement generally.
If the animal welfare movement in South Africa does have the abolition of all forms of
animal abuse and exploitation as its goal, including the exploitation of animals for
food, science, entertainment, cultural and religious purposes, and pleasure then
Animal Rights Africa (ARA) challenges it to make a public statement to this effect.
The NSPCA/AACL press release also implies that the animal rights movement does not do
hands-on work with animals. This is a deliberate attempt to marginalize animal rights
as a theoretical movement that is removed from the day to day reality of animal suffering.
Nothing could be further from the truth as much of the most affective hands-on animal care
work done throughout the world is by animal rights organizations.
In trying to justify the role they play in working for humane exploitation of animals,
the welfare movement is only able to do this by attempting to paint the animal rights
movement as one that uses “militancy, confrontation or shock tactics”. They believe
that this will enhance their standing as rational proponents of incremental change
towards better treatment of animals whilst at the same time demonizing the animal rights
movement in the minds of ordinary citizens.
Animal welfarists acknowledge that animals have interests, but they believe these
can be sacrificed or traded away if there is some overridingly compelling human interest
at stake. Depending on the particular welfarist, animals’ interests may be overridden
for any number of reasons. Welfarists do not believe animals should be caused “unnecessary”
pain, and hold that any suffering caused them be done “humanely.” Animal rightists, by
contrast, reject the utilitarian premises of welfarism that allows the sacrifice of animals
to some alleged greater utility or consequence. Animal rightists believe that animals’
interests cannot be sacrificed, no matter what good consequence may result
(such as an alleged advance in medical knowledge). Animal rightists believe that it is
immoral to sacrifice a human individual to a “greater good” if it improves the overall
social welfare, and persuasively apply the same logic to animals.
Importantly, animal rightists treat animals as conscious, sentient and thinking individuals,
whereas animal welfarists - whatever their professed degree of sentimentality -- treat animals
as things or property. Indeed, the main barrier to the liberation of animals from their
countless forms of exploitation is their property status and the legal claims the property
holder has over them. For example, the 50 billion land-based animals that suffer and die in
factory farms and slaughterhouses every year endure indescribable horror because they are
the property of an evil industry that profits off their pain.
The lives of animals ultimately can only be protected through a shift from welfarism to
rights, and the abolition of the legal system that enslaves them as property objects.
But animal rights is not an all or nothing proposition. Rights are
compatible with welfare reforms, but everything hinges on how these
reforms are defined and linked to the ultimate aims of rights and liberation.
According to animal rights lawyer, Professor Gary Francione, for a reform to strengthen
rather than weaken the goal of animal rights, there are four minimal conditions an acceptable
welfare reform regulation would have to meet:
- it must prohibit or end a particular form of exploitation rather than seek its amelioration through “more humane” standards;
- it must repudiate sacrificing or trading away an animal interest for utilitarian reasons;
- it must therefore be informed by the concept of the inherent value of an animal life and repudiate the reduction of the subject of a life to the object of someone’s property; and
- it must be accompanied by demands for the end of animal exploitation as a whole.
“The most important contribution any person can make towards ending animal exploitation is to adopt a vegan lifestyle”, says Steve Smit of ARA. “As a vegan you can go to bed each night in the knowledge that nothing had to suffer or die for you today.”
"Ïnjustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"
Martin Luther King
