vegan: person who seeks to exclude the use of animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose.
soapbox: platform used to make impromptu or unofficial public speeches.
When the idea of Cultured Meat (or In vitro Meat) became news in 2005, a lot of activists in the Animal Liberation/Animal Rights movement were not sure how to respond to it. Debate and controversy surrounding this issue continues to exist and will receive more attention in upcoming years as wider exposure seems unavoidable considering the global food crisis and current environmental challenges (global warming, deforestation, species extinction, air and water pollution, topsoil erosion and resource scarcity).
Many of the activists who tend to resist the idea of cultured meat are abolitionists who follow Gary Francione’s abolitionist approach and/or James LaVeck’s superb work. Here is a on the subject of cultured meat and its primary goal is to urge every Animal Rights activist – abolitionist, Animal Welfare person or any other animal advocate – to reconsider his or her views on cultured meat. Some of the following concepts may seem harsh or insulting to readers who do not understand the logic behind Animal Rights & veganism. If you are one of those readers: a) please keep in mind this “insulting” is nothing compared to the pain and suffering farm animals go through in factory farms; b) we encourage you to watch Earthlings.
Health & Environment activists who acknowledge the importance of cultured meat might be more interested in New Harvest’s website, where the health & environmental aspects of meat-eating are being addressed at length.
To capture this introduction, we would like to emphasize one significant point that became clear to us over the years: the less interest people have in resisting the idea of Animal Rights, the greater the chances of them accepting it. In other words, the less a person exploits nonhumans in his personal life, the more chances he or she will accept that using animals as property is immoral.
When the self-interest is not there, the chances of Animal Rights groups to succeed are much higher; because then only, the public (general speaking) manages to view moral issues in a fair and objective way. Examples include cosmetic animal testing, circuses, zoos, fur, puppymills, dog fighting, etc. Otherwise, moral or rational considerations are nowhere to be found and the repression mechanism works overtime (more on this issue here >>).
One day, vegan education may be the most effective way to promote abolition of animal exploitation. That time is yet to come, thus first, we should try to eliminate the conflict of interests between the public and the animals.
Factors Animal Rights activists should consider when choosing a path:
The human species (as do other species) is inherently selfish and programmed for its own perpetuation.
“Humans are much more social than rational creatures. In everyday life on average, people try to merge into society, behave correspondingly, and afterwards rationalize their behavior, i.e. find “rational” reasons why they act as they act.”
Most of them lack the intelligence required to understand the concept of Animal Rights.
Most humans lack the emotional intelligence required to understand what farm animals go through in factory farms.
Most humans don’t care about things which are not related directly to themselves or to the group to which they relate themselves (family, race, specie, etc.).
Humans in general have a strong need for social security, they want things to stay as they are.
Religion: for billions of people around the world, the concept of Animal Rights (not necessarily veganism) is not even a consideration due to their religious beliefs.
The birth rate in the world is much higher than the death rate & rate of people turning vegan combined.
Animal Rights is a philosophical idea; it cannot be proven as mathematical theorem can.
More than half of the activists in the movement believe animal welfare is a positive step towards abolition/liberation and therefore cooperate with the exploiters.
Many activists dedicate significant amount of their activism to issues like companion animals & fur, not to vegan education.
The ramifications of vegan education are “theoretical.” Apart from ALF, animal rights activists rarely receive instant gratification for their hard work; they don’t get to see all the nonhumans they are saving.
With regards to past struggles, the Animal Rights struggle is unique: the strugglers are not the ones who are being oppressed and exploited.
The struggle to end Slavery in the United States took hundreds of years and was finally won in a Civil War which broke out more as a result of political interests than as result of moral interests. All this, when there were much more activists, the movement had much more money, the strugglers were the ones who were being oppressed and the oppressed side was closer specie-wise to the oppressing side.
The Western society is an achieving society. From childhood people are being brainwashed and taught that their worth is measured by their grades and that winning is everything. Losing and low grades are a negative. Most people are not willing to compromise or accept anything less than what they have right now. On the contrary, even the wealthiest of people try to raise their quality of life even higher.
To become vegan, many must give up on what they consider to be one of the greatest pleasures in their lives.
Wow! I think this is one of the most enlightening articles you’ve posted! I see your point–humans are greedy and selfish. SO TRUE. No matter how hard we try, they will NEVER stop eating meat. The best way to change this is to support in vitro meat. Same for animal testing–humans will NEVER stop, so we need to support the manikins and other simulators. Why don’t we vegans and ARA’s stop figthitng and join together and put our money and resources into this?!
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Wow! I think this is one of the most enlightening articles you’ve posted! I see your point–humans are greedy and selfish. SO TRUE. No matter how hard we try, they will NEVER stop eating meat. The best way to change this is to support in vitro meat. Same for animal testing–humans will NEVER stop, so we need to support the manikins and other simulators. Why don’t we vegans and ARA’s stop figthitng and join together and put our money and resources into this?!
in vitro meat is a great alternative and I do believe this would be a very very big step forward
oneandonlyhypnos´s last blog ..hope for the future: but we ain’t there yet