Morally speaking, is a corpse really no different from a cabbage?

In his blog essay, ''Road Kill, Abandoned Eggs, and Dumpster Diving'' (July 2012), Francione maintains that consuming an animal's body parts or products when doing so does not contribute directly to demand for animal products is still ''deeply problematic as a symbolic matter'' because it ''reinforce[s] the idea that animal products are things to consume'' and ''reinforce[s] the idea that animals are things, are human resources...''

That consuming animal products reinforces the notion that animals are commodities is obvious – to vegans. However, what are we to say when educating nonvegans about veganism? What are we to say in a situation that many of us have encountered, or could, in any event, at any time, find ourselves in: a nonvegan, let's call her Susan, asks us what is wrong with eating a chicken who has been struck by lightning, or something of that sort. Of course our initial move may be, why is the chicken there in the first place. In reply, Susan might use the example of a wild animal who has neither been brought into existence nor killed by humans. What's wrong with eating a wild deer who died of natural causes, Susan might say.

To Susan as a nonvegan, we could not reply that eating the deer would be wrong because it would reinforce the notion that animals are commodities, since it could have no persuasive force with her, given her moral beliefs about animals, namely that there is nothing wrong with treating them as resources in the first place. Instead, we could try and make Susan consider whether she would eat, or use for other purposes, her beloved dog or cat when they, in a state of perfect health, had been run over by a car. Or any dog or cat who had come to die that way. Supposing Susan to be willing to be honest with herself, she would likely rule that out of consideration; if not, she would probably wish to deflect what she would uncomfortably experience as a question to which she had no ready reply.

What we would say to Susan is expressed in the aforementioned blog essay, where Francione writes:

Being vegan means that you reject the notion that animals are things for us to consume. They are not commodities; they are not resources. They are not food any more than a human arm that you find in the dumpster. We would never think of eating a human. Humans are moral persons. We don’t eat persons. But nonhumans are persons as well. They have moral value. Their bodies and the products made from them are not things we eat, even if we find them dead along the road way or in a dumpster, or even if they abandon their eggs.

In the ''Twenty Questions (and Answers)'' appendix to Introduction toAnimal Rights. Your Child or the Dog? (2000), Francione replies to question No 10, ''Do nonsentient humans such as those who are irreversibly brain dead have a right not to be treated as things?,'' that such humans ''are really no different from plants, they are alive but they are not conscious and have no interests to protect. According such humans a right not to be treated as the resources of others makes no sense.'' (p. 170)

It can be assumed that the same holds for animals.

But how can humans' and animals' bodies be no different from plants – and not things to eat at the same time?

With respect to rights and interests, there would, indeed, be no difference between a woman, let's call her Ellen, who had suffered severe brain injuries in an accident and had since been in a coma with no hope of recovery, on the one hand, and a mere source of spare parts, on the other. Yet we would not treat a victim of affliction such as Ellen, pitiably languishing in her comatose state, as an mere organ 'donor,' or as an object of biochemical experimentation, and we would not treat her as such even if there were no family or relatives who might oppose the instrumental use of Ellen's body. Why would we not do so? 

We give funerals to our dead and do not eat or otherwise use them as resources, not, at any rate, without the person's prior consent or her legal representative's or legal successor's permission, for the purposes of donating organs or of scientific experimentation. We think of certain ways of treating human corpses, e.g., grave robbing, as desecration. Why?

In her seminal essay, ''Eating Meat and Eating People'' (1978), philosopher Cora Diamond writes:

Now the fact that we do not eat our dead is not a consequence - not a direct one in any event-of our unwillingness to kill people for food or other purposes. It is not a direct consequence of our unwillingness to cause distress to people. Of course it would cause distress to people to think that they might be eaten when they were dead, but it causes distress because of what it is to eat a dead person. (p. 467)

She sees our relationship to companion animals in the same light when she argues that ''a starting point … must be understanding what is involved in such things as our not eating people: no more than our not eating pets does that rest on recognition of the claims of a being simply as one capable of suffering and enjoyment.'' (p. 471) According to Diamond, interests and rights cannot be the foundation of a case against seeing animals as things to eat because interests and rights are not what prevents us from seeing humans as things to eat or otherwise use as resources, either. ''[I]t is not respect for our interests which is involved in our not eating each other.'' (p. 469)

A vegan will not eat any animal, or consume any animal products, because of what it would mean to do it. The meaning of it would not be changed if the animal's death had not been caused by humans, nor if eating her had no effect of demand. Some vegans claim that they wouldn't do it merely out of squeamishness. But then, why did they not feel squeamish before they became vegan? The aesthetic disgust supervenes on our recognition of what it means to do it, specified as its being, in some sense or other, wrong.

Giving funerals to our dead, and giving names to our children rather than numbering them, are, Diamond argues, ''ways in which we mark what a human life is'' and which ''belong to the source of moral life. (p. 471)

Let's leave aside here the practice of giving funerals to our dead as a practice inextricably intertwined with legal requirements and having partly or potentially controversial cultural and religious connotations. Let's think of our beloved companion animals. When they die, most people, vegans and nonvegans, bury or cremate them; and their doing so is not the outcome of any process of reflection on whether they should treat their bodies in other ways, such as chopping them up and feeding them to carnivores in order to diminish the demand for nonvegan pet food. Most people would not treat a dead stray dog's or feral cat's body in that way, either.

We deeply grieve the loss of our animal companions. A fellow vegan, Andreas, lay beside his cat Michelle, who was fatally ill, the day she died. He kept laying beside her until the next morning, tenderly stroking her; then he carefully covered her with a pillow case, carried her into the garden and buried her under a cherry tree. To do this was extremely important to him; had he not been able to, it would have caused him distress – on top of his grief. Why? Andreas' treating the dead Michelle thus reflected his love for her, and he felt, we would suggest, that in doing it he "did right by her." However, while his acting that way prevented him from experiencing distress, this was not the reason for it; he did it not for his sake, but for Michelle's.

What sense can be made of this from an interests / rights perspective? Just to be clear, we are in no way questioning how anyone grieves for their dead companion animals, but whether animal rights ideology can be said to yield a plausible explanation of it. We had an animal advocate tell us, when her dog died, that she cremated him because doing so made her feel better – but that this was, strictly speaking, irrational – as an attempt to "hold on" to him. Now, what would it mean to truly believe that our treating our dead animal companions differently from plants or inanimate objects is irrational? If one did believe it, would this not neutralize the effect of psychological relief, which depends for its consoling power on one's really believing it - somewhat as a delusion has an effective influence on one's thinking only to the extent that one does not realize that it is actually a delusion? We find it hard to imagine that one could make oneself feel better by doing something that was inconsistent with what one sincerely professed to believe, especially when it concerns grieving for loved ones. When we grieve for them, after all, should we not be concerned to grieve lucidly, lest we should besmirch their memory? Perhaps it is not what we profess to believe, however sincerely, but how we actually act - when the latter is generally inconsistent with the former - that is the definitive expression of what we really believe.

As for the idea that cremating or burying our dead is an attempt to "hold on" to them, with all respect to whomever may hold it, we think it is at best an overstrained interpretation to give to such action. We think it can much more plausibly be interpreted, not as consoling us by sustaning the illusion that we are somehow "holding on to" the dead, but, on the contrary, as enabling us to let go of them: an act of irretrievable separation in which we would feel pangs of guilt or betrayal were it not for our sense of doing right by them at the end, that is, by cremating or burying them, in what is the final act we can, and will, ever do for them.  

Cora Diamond criticizes Singer's and Regan's philosophical theories on the grounds that the discussion about interests and rights do not have the conceptual resources required to characterize an animal as the kind of being who is not something to eat [1]: ''[T]here is nothing in the discussion which suggests that a cow is not something to eat; it is only that one must not help the process along... '' (p. 468)

In our understanding, Diamond's critique, while referring to Singer and Regan, applies all the same to Francione in that the point of it is not to critique theories that require empirical properties and capacities beyond sentience for moral significance; it is rather to highlight the inadequacy of any theory that seeks to determine what humans (or animals) are solely by reference to their empirical characteristics. To date, her critique has not, to our knowledge, been responded to, much less refuted, by any proponent of the interests / rights approach to animal ethics.

What the bodies of our dead loved ones are as a moral matter cannot be determined in a detached scientific manner, solely by whether they possess any "morally relevant empirical properties and capacities." Indeed, we can agree with Francione's claim that corpses have no interests [1], and therefore no rights either, quite consistently with the recognition that corpses are nonetheless altogether different, morally speaking, from cabbages. To be sure, in terms of interests and rights, no morally relevant difference between a corpse and a cabbage can be identified. Yet the former can be treated in ways the latter cannot, at least not intelligibly. As in the above example of Andreas and Michelle, many of us may recall our caressing the dead but still soft body of a beloved dog or cat, rabbit, rat, or other companion animal. More generally, what the bodies of our dead loved ones are is "more an object of contemplation than observation" (Diamond), and can perhaps be best thought of as ''a unity of the given and the constructed''[2]. Here the given is the human form; the constructed, the tender, caressing responses made possible – invited, as one could put it - by it.    

In a documentary about Aids that we watched recently, a man related how he lost his lover, disclosing that when his beloved was alive, he used to brush his hair. When his lover had died, he did not cease to be for him an object of tender affection, which he expressed in what was a poignant, unaffected way: he once again brushed his lover's hair. We can respond tenderly to our dead as we can to the unborn, irrespective of their status as sentient, and the possibility of responding in such ways yields to us our sense of the radical difference in kind between the bodies of our dead loved ones and what a woman carries when she is pregnant, her unborn child, on the one hand, and mere inanimate objects, on the other; it marks a morally relevant difference between them and whatever cannot be the intelligible objects of such responses. Diamond notes that ''[i]t is a mark of the shallowness of these discussions [of animal rights] ..that the only tool used in them to explain what differences in treatment are justified is the appeal to the capacities of the beings in question.''

In his seminal book Good And Evil: An Absolute Conception (2004 [first published in 1991]), philosopher Raimond Gaita, another deeply insightful critic of the interests / rights approach, writes:

Women sometimes love their unborn children. Some people wonder whether that is sentimental because they wonder whether what a woman carries when she is pregnant is an appropriate object of love. They will say that to describe it as I have, as her love for her 'unborn child' is to beg a lot of questions. They will say that we must first, as objectively as possible, understand what the 'status' of the foetus is, so that we may determine whether is is properly called a child and also to determine whether it is an appropriate object of love . (…)

It is important that the child grows in its mother's body, that her body changes with its growth, and that these changes can appear to us as beautiful, for this provides a focus for love's tenderness without which there could be no love. A foetus growing in a glass jar on her mantelpiece, with many of its 'morally relevant empirical properties' in plain view, could not be an object of her love, for her love could find no tender expression (which is not to say that a serious concern could find no expression). Or perhaps, more accurately, it could not if that were a general practice in a community. The pleasure of a woman with child at the changes in her body is the opposite of narcissism. It's the expression of her love for her child, and the possibility of such expression is a condition of that love. (…)

Suppose someone were to point to a foetus growing in a glass jar and to ask, rhetorically, how could it be called a child? His rhetorical tone would be partly justified, but mostly not. He would be right to suggest that we could not, that we would at least find it difficult, but he would be wrong in what he thought that showed. Those for whom it is natural to speak of a woman as 'big with child' do not mean that she had been caused to grow by something they believed or conjectured to be a growing child, but which turns out to be the same kind of thing as is growing in the jar. 'Big with child' (in this way of speaking) does not mean: caused to grow big by something that belongs to the natural kind Homo sapiens, and which might, or might not, have the relevant properties to be grouped along with paradigmatic exemplars of the word 'child'. If we ask what, in that case, she is big with, then it would not be wrong to say that she was big with child. But the sense of that is given by the use of the expression as a whole ('big with child'), and by the kind of place it has, because of its echoes and resonances, in certain ways of speaking in a certain culture. The phrase 'with child' is not detachable from 'big with child' in the way it would need to be for someone who says that it is an arguable matter whether she is big with (a) child. By way of contrast we may say.(pp. 119 f.)

Gaita argues that a woman's love for her unborn child is, for her, "the kind of love that makes abortion impossible. We might want to add that it makes it morally, not psychologically, impossible.'' (p. 121) Gaita writes, ''I do not think that we can understand her finding it morally impossible to kill a foetus (consider the impossibility of her saying 'my foetus' in the tone in which she may say 'my child') except insofar as that is implicitly redescribed.'' (ibid.)

Footnotes

[1] The claim that corpses that have no conscious interests is of course (banally) true.

[2] G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind.

Gary Francione vs. Robert Garner: What does it mean to have a debate?

Putting aside matters of moral theory, as a practical matter, welfare reform simply does not work. (The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation? (2010), p. 26) 

While this has always been Francione's position, on his blog he writes (in the "Necessity of Theory" [2010]):

Try as you will, you cannot avoid theory. You can only choose a theory of equality or choose to accept the dominant theory of welfare, which assumes that animal life is of lesser moral value.

But choose you must and your activism will necessarily be informed by the choice that you make.

This choice has the following implication:

If we agree with Bentham and Singer and with the dominant theory of animal welfare, then we promote welfare reform; we promote “cage-free” eggs; we promote consuming chickens who have been gassed rather than electrocuted; we support “happy” meat/dairy labels; we promote “flexitarianism” and view veganism simply as a way of reducing suffering. If we don’t support that theoretical view, and if, instead, we regard all sentient beings as having equal moral value for the purposes of not being used as a resource, then we promote veganism as a non-negotiable moral baseline.

This clear division is exemplified in the debate between Gary Francione and Robert Garner.

Garner who maintains the position of "animal protectionism'' holds that animals have a right not to suffer (not to have suffering inflicted on them by humans), regardless of the benefits that humans would gain from using them. This position, he argues, is distinct from a welfarist one, which balances the interests of animals in not suffering against the interests of humans in using animals. He agrees, however, with the welfarist notion that animals don't have an interest in being used (exclusively as means to human ends, that is, as property), which means they don't have an interest in their life, or at least not in the same way as humans do. Therefore, their lives are of less moral value than those of humans.

Garner thinks that the animals' property status ''is not inconsistent with protecting [their] interest not suffering'' (p. 236), that ''the use of animals does not necessarily infringe [their] interest in not suffering'' (ibid.), and that welfare reform ''is moving incrementally toward the recognition of the right of animals not to suffer in unacceptable ways.''(p. 176) He is, however, unable to identify what form of animal use would constitute a morally acceptable level of suffering. He concedes that, ''[w]hether suffering can be reduced to the point where my ethical principle is satisfied is an open question.'' (p. 238 f.) It is pretty clear that Garner's principle of ''acceptable suffering'' does not differ in any way from the common welfarist notion of ''unnecessary suffering,'' the advantages of which he identifies as ''its flexibility and its compatibility with widely accepted norms.'' (p. 250)

Garner calls into question Francione's point that welfare reform increases the efficiency of animal exploitation, when he asks, ''Is it in fact the case that only those reforms that increase efficiency of animal exploitation will ever be considered and introduced?,'' calling this ''an empirical question'' – as though Francione's work had not provided the theoretical and empirical answer to this question.

At the same time, Garner does not see a problem with welfare reform causing animals to be exploited more efficiently and, thereby, reinforcing the property paradigm: on the contrary, he not only sees a ''potential for making economic efficiency more compatible with animal welfare,'' (p. 209) but also thinks it ''possible to equate economic efficiency with high standards of animal welfare'' (ibid.), which he sees as low levels of suffering.

While Garner's defence of animal welfarism appears logically incoherent, it derives directly from his claims about the moral status of animals, which is fundamentally opposed to Francione's. If animals do not have an interest in their lives, or if such an interest does not equal an interest in not being used, not being treated as resources, property, then animal use is not inherently wrong. And if animal use is not inherently wrong, neither is anything that makes animal exploitation more economically efficient and profitable; neither is fund-raising for campaigns that create a ''win-win-win situation'' for producers, consumers, and animal advocacy groups. Regarding the latter, Garner ''[does] not hold the view that animal organizations are more interested in their own financial position than in the welfare of animals.'' (p.264 f.) Given his confidence regarding not only the compatibility but equation of economic profit for humans and benefit for animals, Garner would be compelled to wish for animal organizations to be in as strong a financial position as possible.

Given that, as Francione maintains, ''veganism not only respects animal life but also reduces suffering more effectively through reducing demand for animal products, one would think that even a utilitarian would urge veganism as having a greater benefit than, say, promoting a welfarist reform...'' (p. 71) One would think that even someone who does not think that using animals for human purposes is inherently wrong would nevertheless acknowledge that allowing animals to be used means allowing them to be subjected to all kinds and levels of suffering; that even if one does not believe that animals have an interest in continuing to live, if they take animals' interest in not suffering seriously, they would have to be committed to opposing all animal use. However, as Francione notes, ''welfarists, including Singer, do not seem to accept this analysis.'' (ibid.) To understand why they don't, one needs to consider the following:

(A) Referring to so-called marginal humans, Garner states that ''their capacity to suffer would be qualitatively different, as would be the quality of their lives'' (p. 195 f.) from that of ''normal adult humans.'' That's why, for Garner, there is nothing morally wrong with using ''marginal humans'' as forced organ donors, although ''their lives should be sacrificed only when to do so is to save the lives of normal adult humans,'' (p. 197) and under the provision that ''if forcing such an individual caused suffering, it would not be legitimate morally'' (ibid.) The analogy, though not explicit, is clear: What, for Garner, ''marginal humans'' have in common with nonhuman animals is that their lives do not matter morally as much as those of ''normal adult humans'' because ''they have less to lose by death'' (p. 197). Garner claims that ''nonhuman animals do have an interest in not suffering that is equivalent to humans.'' (p.187 f.) But if a being's life does not matter sufficiently to make using her as a resource morally unacceptable, then her suffering cannot provide a sufficient reason for not using her in that way. Garner rejects the analogy of animal exploitation with human slavery, but his moral consideration of animals equals that of a slave owner who wants slaves to be treated ''humanely,''' while finding it unintelligible that slavery itself constitutes an injustice. The suffering Garner seeks to alleviate is that of slaves, whereas the suffering Francione seeks to abolish is the suffering of equals, beings equal for the purpose of having an interest in not being slaves.

Someone who does not see animal use as inherently morally wrong cannot consistently advocate abolition; they would not support abolition even if they believed it to be the only way of reducing animal suffering because it would require them to see and treat animals as having a moral status that they believe cannot intelligibly be applied to them. An analogy may be helpful. Imagine a slave owner who deplored cruelty done to slaves. Then he would support efforts to reduce the suffering of slaves if they did not also incrementally lead to abolition; but not otherwise: for then such efforts would not result in reduced suffering merely, but would also at the same time spread beyond it in what would be for him the unmerited realization of equality. Equality between white people and black people would not be written off by the slaveowner as unwanted but acceptable 'collateral damage' incidental to his goal of reducing slaves' suffering. For this would mean according those whom he sees as less than fully human a status that can with moral propriety be accorded to whites only. This would appear to his racist narrowness as an affront to the value of whites. No slave owner would support the inherent value of slaves for such an instrumental reason.

(B) There are people who go vegan because they think this the best way of reducing suffering but not because they think veganism is a moral imperative. Someone who does not see veganism as a moral imperative also cannot support promoting veganism as a moral baseline of animal advocacy. In any event, someone who is not even a vegan simply cannot, given his moral beliefs. Near the end of the debate, Francione asks Garner whether he is a vegan, adding: ''I realize that whether you are or not has no bearing on the validity of your arguments.'' (p. 257) Garner's answer indicates that he does not eschew all animal products. This has no bearing on the validity on his arguments; it does, however, have a bearing on why he does not accept Francione's arguments in that since he is not vegan, he has a vested interest in not being impressed with abolitionist arguments. The same holds for those who, not consuming animal products themselves, run or support businesses whose economic subsistence relies on their making people feel better about consuming animal products.

Welfarists do not support veganism as a moral imperative and as a baseline of animal advocacy, not because they don't believe it to be the best, or only, way of achieving abolition, but rather precisely because it is best the way. They are all for reducing animal suffering – to the extent that it does not come ''at the cost'' of abolition; the ''costs to humans of abolition,'' as Garner puts it, ''might outweigh the costs to animals'' of continued animal use (p. 185) In other words, to someone who does not want abolition, there is simply no alternative to supporting welfare reform, even if they are not entirely satisfied with welfare campaigns.

In order for opposing views to be discussable, the discussion must be based on some common ground. What The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation? paradigmatically shows is that between the position that using animals is morally acceptable, as long as we respect their interest in not suffering ''unacceptably,'' and the position that animal use per se cannot be morally justified, regardless of the level of suffering involved, aiming at reducing suffering cannot serve as a 'lowest common denominator','' does not constitute the common ground on which a discussion about strategy could take place. Garner misses the point completely when he states, ''[i]t is at the strategic level that our views differ,'' (p. 256), or speaks of ''the paradigm shift that we both would like to see'' (p. 214), or of ''the long term goal of both of us'' (p. 235). There simply is no shared goal; and when Garner denies that welfare reform is counterproductive, he is right, in any event when referring to his own goal, that of continued animal use involving an ''acceptable'' level of animal suffering – 'humane' exploitation -- though not of course when referring to Francione's goal, abolition, to which welfare reform is indeed counterproductive.

As for there being no common ground, Francione and Garner do not even agree on basic standards of human ethics, given Garner's view that it is morally acceptable to ''sacrifice'' 'marginal humans, to use them as organ donors for the benefit of ''normal adult humans'' (p. 197). In his very first blog entry in November 2006, Francione had this to say referring to Peter Singer:

Singer...thinks that it would be appropriate to use severely mentally disabled humans in this situation because it would be speciesist to prefer nonhumans over what he views as similarly situated humans. So, right from the outset, Singer promotes a view that is completely at odds not only with the animal rights position but with commonly held principles of human rights and, indeed, is who used “defective” humans in experiments.

As of Singer, so likewise of Garner is it true that he promotes a view that is completely at odds not only with the animal rights position but with commonly held principles of human rights.

Given this, the primary task of a debate on abolition vs. regulation should, in our view, have been to focus exclusively on an exploration of its ethical foundation, i.e., the participants' irreconcilable views on the moral status of animals (and humans). For if Francione and Garner had done that, instead of talking at crossed-purposes over "strategy," it would have enabled readers to understand why they can but differ diametrically according to their respective ideological positions in their assessments of welfare reform, welfare campaigns, and the role animals' property status plays in institutionalized exploitation - an ideological division which, in its implications for animal advocacy, could not be more profound.

For any serious (not only academic) debate to be worthy of the name, it is paramount that all participants argue in good faith and adhere to certain intellectual standards, that is, to show intellectual and - given what is at stake – moral seriousness. Neither of these requirements are, we think, fulfilled on Garner's side.

1. Garner characterizes Francione's position using pejorative terms, while claiming improbably enough to use them in a non-pejorative --''neutral'' – sense: terms such as ''fundamentalist'' and ''moral crusade''; and he grossly misrepresents that position, in a way that cannot easily be accounted for by any ordinary lapse in judgement, when he suggests that ''if we accept your view that to support welfare reforms is to make abolitionist objectives more difficult to achieve, then you must logically resist those reforms that might reduce suffering,'' (p. 231), that ''[t]he logic of this position is that if this horrendous suffering were reduced .. people would not give up animal products altogether'' (p. 232), and so, even if an effective welfare reform were introduced... you would still be reluctant to accept it because it would make your long-term goal (the abolition of the use of animals) less likely'' (p. 233). This is a slightly more sophisticated version of the likewise disingenuous accusation quite commonly raised by supporters of welfarism against abolitionists that the latter want animals to suffer as much as possible - according to the logic, the more animal suffering, the sooner abolition will be achieved.

2. Although Garner acknowledges the weakness of his position, that it provides no guidance, no criteria for determining whether, or which level of, suffering incidental to animal use is morally acceptable, he does not see this weakness as posing a challenge to his approach, much less as defeating it: he thinks instead that the problem can be resolved by leaving it to ''advocates of a position such as [his] .. to work this out with greater clarity.'' (p. 203) In other words, although Garner is unable to defend his claims, he does not see this as a reason for reconsidering them. Also, perhaps in a sense not surprisingly, given that he cannot defend it, he trades away, like a bargaining chip, what is ''ethically more desirable'' for what according to his lights is politically advantageous: ''I think the enhanced sentience position is probably ethically more desirable. Politically or strategically, however, I would probably opt for the sentience position.'' (p. 201) For us the ethical determines the political, whereas for Garner, the reverse obtains such that his political commitment to welfarism determines his "ethical position," which changes, promiscuously, according as it does not serve that reactionary agenda.

Far from offering any serious criticism of the abolitionist approach, Garner merely attempts to discredit it using whatever expedient is at hand, so as to give some semblance of legitimacy to corporate welfarism. This may be seen, not only but especially from the following: Garner, while giving the impression that his position is determined by his recognition of the soundness of his arguments, does not even modify that position when, as we have said, in the face of Francione's criticism he cannot marshal any defence; instead delegating the task of doing so to others. Here one catches a glimpse of the purely political character of Garner's opposition to abolition: it is an opposition that, unamenable to rational correction, can on that account be said to be not so much determined by his arguments as merely rationalized by them. That is, perhaps, the deepest reason why no debate took place in the debate book; for a genuine debate, as opposed to its false semblances, presupposes that both parties are, at least in principle, open to modifying their positions if in the light of criticism they are shown to be deficient. And accordingly we should not be so naïve as to be shocked by Garner's misrepresentation, which, when no debate took place, could be expected to follow almost as a corollary.

The question naturally arises how an academic can violate basic standards of intellectual propriety - in this case, by grossly misrepresenting the work of another scholar – with secure impunity. The answer, we suggest, lies in Garner's representing a position – welfarism - in which almost everyone has an interest, economic, social, or professional: from animal industry itself and its economic offshoots to consumers of animal products to welfarist organizations, and so on. This unity of interests, ranged against abolitionism, supplies in effect a special exemption from criticism for welfarist academics who distort and misrepresent abolitionist theory, often so grossly that the resulting impudent counterfeit would, were it of a mainstream theory, be seen as amounting to ideological defamation.

The motivation for academics to defend welfarism, invariably by means of pseudo-intellectual erudition, may be seen from the effects it has. It means, as we have said, justifying the status quo, which, in return for their corrupt fidelity, duly rewards them, for example, with career advancement, advisory positions with welfarist organizations, invitations of speak at ''animal rights'' conferences bringing with it celebrity status in the welfarist movement; or even merely with praise, much easier to elicit for oneself when one supports rather than rejects the dominant paradigm, and enticing, at least to those who crave blandishments, however supremely insincere in the end, for their academic work which, having no merit in and of itself, would otherwise languish in undignified obscurity.

Conclusion

It is unfortunate that however unintentionally, the debate book co-authored by Francione and Garner feeds into the misconception that the disagreements between them are strategic rather than ethical in character. Serious discussions on movement strategy can take place only between members of one and the same movement, not between proponents of opposing movements, such as the welfarist and the abolitionist ones. Serious criticism of abolitionism can only come from allies, that is, fellow abolitionists.

Do Corporate Welfarists act with Sincerity and in Good Faith?

In Rain Without Thunder. The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement (1996), Gary Francione writes in "Conclusion": "Finally, I emphasize again that my analysis is not concerned with, and should not be read as, criticizing in any way the motivations of any particular people or groups. I assume that everyone is well-motivated and that these are simply difficult issues that have not been subjected to a great deal of intramovement discussion..." (p. 224).

Since then, Francione has, with some regularity, in his online writing emphasized that he does not question the sincerity of those whose policy on animal advocacy he criticizes.

As guest on NZ Vegan Podcast, hosted by fellow abolitionist Elizabeth Collins, he addresses in episode 75 (March 2011) the "idea...that the people who work at these organizations know that they are doing wrong by promoting animal welfare regulation but they are doing it anyway just to make money" and commented: "Are there people like that? Yes, I suppose there are, but it's a lot more complicated. I think people talk themselves into things...A lot of these welfarist people are probably sincere and think that they are doing something good because they've talked themselves into it."

Referring to academic supporters of welfarism such as Peter Singer and Robert Garner, and to welfare organizations such as HSUS, PETA, RSPCA, Francione notes:

"Do I believe that the people who are arguing that with me believe in in good faith that animal welfare regulation works? Yes."

He emphasizes that he thinks welfarists "really believe on some level" in what they promote.

In order to assess Francione's comments, it is necessary to distinguish between welfarism on the grassroots level, on the one hand, and welfarism on the corporate and academic level, on the other. The latter, in contrast to the former, consists of people who, in one way or another, but always in substantial ways, gain personal benefit or profit from employing, or promoting, a welfarist policy in animal advocacy. It is Francione, first and foremost, who has been continually pointing out that welfare organizations are businesses, some multi-billion dollar businesses. Those who run them and those who work for them have a vested interest in keeping the business running safely, efficiently, and profitably, to borrow a phrase from slaughterhouse designer Temple Grandin. These organizations are not, for that reason, designed to become superfluous by eliminating what purportedly makes them necessary, i.e., animal exploitation. They depend entirely on the financial support of a public which, being overwhelmingly nonvegan, generates the problem that welfare businesses are purportedly there to solve, in the first place.

Welfare organizations are sustained by people who have an interest in exploiting animals, in consuming animal products, particularly; people who, in return for this support, are furnished by those organizations with handy pretexts, convenient excuses, not only but especially in the form of 'humane' animal products, for continuing their participation in the primary practice of animal use, that of eating animals.

An individual or group that is not independent of the support of those whose interests are in opposition to the avowed goal of its policy stand in a manifest conflict of interest which corporate welfarists seek to obscure by identifying their own interests with animals' interests. Such an economic conflict of interest deprives welfarists' defence of their policy of the authority needed for it to be deemed worthy of serious consideration.

Those who make money – a living or a fortune – or otherwise benefit personally from making the public feel better about consuming animal products may or may not sincerely believe in what they do; they simply cannot "afford" to be convinced by the better argument – not, at any rate, when it speaks against welfarism. They will buy into, and promote, whatever ideology serves to provide a justification for welfarism.

That is why corporate welfarists' "arguments" are in need not of being rebutted so much as exposed - exposed as being in the service of a business agenda.

The relationship between the two is quite clearly reflected in Francione's comment:  

Do I think that being involved in one of those organizations facilitates your buying into the mythology that animal welfare regulations is a good thing? Yes.

How "helping the animals" and making money conveniently come together has been shown in detail by Francione in his books and online writing. A particularly illustrative example is his blog essay, "Save a Seal; Eat Non-Canadian Seafood"(April 2010), which deals with HSUS's "Save A Seal Today" campaign, calling for people to boycott Canadian ''Sea Food'' until the seal cull stops, and employing an effective marketing tool to get people to make donations. Francione's judgement here is rightly unrelenting: "It is, of course, terrible that the seals are being killed. But it is also terrible that some use this tragedy to rake in a few more dollars."

HSUS's CEO Wayne Pacelle is paid $300,000 per year; that's 300,000 reasons for him to ''believe'' that he is doing the right thing.

Given his own analyses, one is left sincerely wondering how Francione can maintain that corporate welfarists act in "good faith." Is this not a pious fiction, sustained by ignoring their conflict of interest?

As for "sincerity," what could it mean in this context other than self-servingly participating in collective rationalization? And, to the extent to which welfarists "talk themselves into" the identification of their own economic interests with animals' interests, a grotesque self-delusion? The application of the notion sincerity and good faith here is unintelligible so much the more given that Francione's well-founded work exposing the problems with welfarism has been publicly available at least since 1995 – and has, since then, been ignored or dismissed.

In academia, like the rest of society, welfarism is the prevailing paradigm the challenging of which comes at the cost of losing peer support and, possibly, career advancement. Academic proponents of welfarism, providing its theoretical justification, benefit, although they may not be on an animal organization's pay roll, through having their books promoted among animal advocates and being given ample opportunities for self-promotion on ''animal rights conferences'' and internet sites.

Grassroots advocates who support welfarist corporations need to be educated about the structural conditions under which these organizations and their academic ''think tanks'' act, and the role welfarist ideology plays in obscuring these conditions.

Let's not get into judgements, let's get into analysis. (Francione on NZ Vegan Podcast, episode 75)

In so far as "judgements'' here is meant to stand for judgementalism or unsavoury moralism, we could not agree more. However, any suggestion, approving or disapproving, concerning someone's motives, constitutes judgement. And judgement, we think, should be identified with analysis, not of someone's motives, but of the credibility of welfarists' professed beliefs in the light of their organizational policies, scrutinized in terms of whether the latter can be understood as credibly consistent with the former.

It is to be critically noted that Francione's comments concerning welfarists' ''sincerity'' are not a remedy of judgementalism so much as its reverse mirror image.

The idea that the other [the opponent] sits around and says, 'I'm evil, and I enjoy being evil', is cartoonish, it is simplistic, it is ridiculous. (Francione on NZ Vegan Podcast, episode 75)

We fully agree with Francione that such an idea would be grossly inadequate to an understanding of the problem we are faced with, i.e., welfarism, and no serious animal advocate would resort to demonizing a political opponent as ''devil with scorched wings,'' who in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov appears in a vulgar form (''rather shabby,'' out of season). That, however, does not, in our understanding, mean the concept of evil is invalid or illegitimate. Evil is something that people do – and those who do it are not Satan but evildoers.

Regarding institutionalized injustice, Hannah Arendt's analysis of what she famously termed ''the banality of evil'' reveals its nature as born out of the utter absence of reflection, the refusal to think, in the service of self-interest – not out of devilish, demonic desires to destroy what is good and right.

In a recent online column, "The Careerists," Chris Hedges quotes Arendt from Eichmann in Jerusalem: "The trouble with Eichmann ...was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal."

Hedges writes: 

The greatest crimes of human history are made possible by the most colorless human beings. They are the careerists. The bureaucrats. The cynics. They do the little chores that make vast, complicated systems of exploitation and death a reality.… They work in corporate advertising and public relations. They issue the forms. They process the papers.… They enforce the laws and the regulations. And they do not ask questions.… They are there to make corporate systems function.…

The most dangerous force in the industrialized world does not come from those who wield radical creeds, whether Islamic radicalism or Christian fundamentalism, but from legions of faceless bureaucrats who claw their way up layered corporate and governmental machines.…

These systems managers believe nothing.... They do not think beyond their tiny, insignificant roles. They are blind and deaf. They are, at least regarding the great ideas and patterns of human civilization and history, utterly illiterate.… Men and women who know no history, know no ideas. They live and think in an intellectual vacuum, a world of stultifying minutia.…They find their self-worth in the prestige and power of the corporation, in the status of their positions and in their career promotions. They assure themselves of their own goodness through their private acts as husbands, wives, mothers and fathers.…

Little acts of kindness and charity mask the monstrous evil they abet. And the system rolls forward.

Safely. Efficiently. Profitably.

Incremental Change and the Primary Practice

The focus of abolitionist advocacy: the primary practice of animal use

'As long as we don't change the way people think, you are never going to see a sustained change. But that paradigm shift has got to centre on and focus on what people eat. As long as 99 % of us think it's all right to eat animal products – with the best justification we have … that [ animals] taste good… nothing is ever going to change. Gary Francione, Documentary Project ''I'm Vegan''

[A]ll animal use is derivative of the fact that we eat animals and animal products. If that changed, everything would follow. Gary Francione, ''Is Every Campaign A Single-Issue-Campaign?''

The most significant form of animal exploitation – the form that “legitimizes” all the others – involves using animals as food. If you dislodge that use, you dislodge all others. Gary Francione, ''A Short Note on Ethical Veganism as a Single Issue Campaign''

Eating animals – understood as the consumption of flesh, milk, and eggs from land or sea animals - accounts for more than 90% of our total animal use. It is the primary practice of animal use, considered, as Francione has put it, to be as normal and natural as breathing air and drinking water. This makes it not only, with regard to numbers, quantitatively but also qualitatively different from all other forms of animal use. If all other practices of animal use are derivative from the primary practice, eschewing the former derives from eschewing the latter. No one who stops consuming animal foods for ethical reasons will continue to buy clothing or other products made from leather, wool, or fur, support vivisection, or go to zoos, or circuses that use animals. (We are aware of there being cases of ''dietary vegans''; however, we consider such cases as ''marginal'' and negligible with regard to the general point we're making.)

As Francione has pointed out, as long as animals are on our plates, we will not be able to think clearly about the issue of animal exploitation. As long as the primary practice prevails, advocacy focusing on any issue other than the use of animals for food[1] will serve as providing nonvegans with an alibi for causing terrible suffering and death to animals by doing what is ''normal and natural.'' This is the inevitable effect of diverting attention away from the use of animals for food, in which everyone participates, to not commonly accepted animal uses practised by relatively few, such as hunting, or wearing fur, or to animal species most people do not have an interest in exploiting (seals, whales, for example), or forms of treatment deemed ''unnecessary''.

This effect is precisely what accounts for the phenomenon of consumers of animal products supporting campaigns against any use of animals other than for food. There is a well-established arrangement at work in society: those groups which are publicly perceived as advocating for animals generate financial and ideological support by giving the public countless opportunities to ''help animals,'' without having to do the one and only thing that helps the victims of institutionalized exploitation: stopping participating in it. In his blog essay, ''A Revolution of the Heart,'' (2009), Francione illustrates this situation aptly as one in which ''animal organizations have become modern sellers of indulgences similar to the medieval Catholic Church,'' so that these organizations have the function of ''absolving'' people from their moral obligation to become vegan.

SICs target anything but the primary practice of animal use: eating animals. And precisely because these campaigns do not challenge the practice engaged in by 99 % of the population several times each day, they make the public feel (more) comfortable about doing so. How this works psychologically is not difficult to grasp: As a general matter, if you feel uncomfortable about something that you do but have a strong interest in continuing to do it, you will inevitably support anything to make yourself feel better about it. People who care about animals but have either not been presented with veganism at all, or only in ways that portray it as ''extreme,'' ''daunting,'' or just one ''way of reducing suffering'' among others, will support almost anything that is touted as helping animals, only provided it does not require them to go vegan. As a matter of instrumental rationality, this makes perfect sense. When someone who wants to do something about animal suffering is told by those who publicly claim to act on behalf of animal interests that she can make things better for animals either by writing a cheque or by changing her life, that is, by becoming vegan, why on earth would she choose the latter?

Campaigning against less common or less significant practices can lead to a prohibition of them. Referring to practices such as animal sacrifice and animal fighting (dog fighting, cock fighting, and bull fighting, to offer some examples), often engaged in by marginalized groups in society, Francione writes in Introduction to Animal Rights. Your Child or the Dog? (2000), ''these prohibitions concern animal uses that are simply not part of the traditions of a particular culture, or not part of the traditions of the dominant group in a society...'' (p.164). While this does not apply to practices such as fur-farming, hunting, or using animals in circuses, which are engaged in by groups within mainstream society, what the latter share in common with the former examples is that prohibitions do not change or challenge the paradigm of animal use defined by the primary practice, the use of animals for food.

Anti-vivisectionism: no ''gateway'' to veganism

Using animals in biomedical experiments is the most significant form of animal use that is not economically linked to animal agriculture, and anti-vivisectionism has the longest tradition in the history of welfarist animal advocacy. As Francione has pointed out, animal experimentation is the least trivial form of animal use in that it is taken to be important for human health. Given that, by contrast, as Francione has also noted, no one really believes that consuming animal products is necessary for human health, 

[w]hy would people who think that is acceptable to impose suffering and death on animals for reasons of pleasure think that there is anything morally wrong with using animals for a purpose that they actually think (wrongly in my view) is necessary and beneficial? The answer is clear: they won’t. They can’t. 

Gary Francione, ''Why Veganism Must Be the Baseline''  (blog essay)

To illustrate this situation, Francione analogizes it to the driving of cars:

Arguing to people who eat animal products that vivisection is morally wrong is like arguing to classic car enthusiasts that driving for an important reason is morally wrong. 

If people think driving a car for fun is fine, why would they have any problem with driving to a doctor’s office for a medical examination or to the emergency room?

''Again, they wouldn’t. They couldn’t." (ibidem)

Advocates have argued that it is possible to ''utilize'' the issue of vivisection for discussing the primary practice, and that doing so can cause, and indeed has caused, a number of people to go vegan. The same point has been made with regard to animal uses such as fur farming or animal circuses: that such issues could work as a ''hook'' in a vegan campaign. How does the idea of getting nonvegans ''hooked'' relate to the ''gateway arguments'' shown by Francione to be invalid (see blog essay so titled, March 2009)? A classic example of the former is his blog essays on the case of Michael Vick (see, for example, ''A Note About Michael Vick''). In them, Francione decidedly does not undertake to raise moral concern about dog fighting. Rather, he uses as a “hook” the widespread agreement of this comparatively marginal practice of animal use as abhorrent, and then argues by analogy that the most common practice of animal use (consuming animal products) is no more morally justifiable.

''Gateway'' advocates - as one could call them - on the other hand, campaign against practices other than eating animals, practices which they call to be given up or prohibited, independently of whether those supporting them go vegan, and for the prohibition of which they seek to garner public support through donations and signatures – a tactic that inevitably has the anti-abolitionist ''indulgence-effect.'' While Readers of Francione's essays on Michael Vick can be ''hooked'' to see eating animals as the issue, from any campaign against animal circuses, however ''enriched'' it may be with information on veganism, nonvegans can come away feeling that they have been let ''off the hook.'' The same applies to anti-vivisectionism.

Moreover, in a deeply and pervasively nonvegan world, the ethical case against vivisection functions, in effect, as a reductio against abolition in that it undermines, in a peculiarly self-confounding way, the case against the primary practice, the abolition of which is the prerequisite of abolishing vivisection itself, as well as all other animal uses. Extending Francione's car analogy, we think the claim that there is something morally wrong with taking someone who has a stroke to hospital by car can only appear as ''extreme'' or even absurd to people who have no problem driving for fun, and can only serve as a pretext for dismissing the case against driving cars at all.

[T]he practical reality is that if people rejected eating any animal products, we would see a rejection in all sorts of other animal use. 

Gary Francione, ''A Short Note on Ethical Veganism as a Single Issue Campaign'' (Blog essay, April 2010)

If Francione is right here, and we think he is, this means, in our view, that people do not eat animals because they regard animal use as such as acceptable; rather, they regard animal use as such as acceptable because they eat animals. If this is true, then eating animals is in fact the ''Archimedean point'' to target in animal advocacy. For the latter to be effective in eroding animal use, it must, in our view, confine itself to targeting the use of animals for food, that is, neither initiating nor participating in activism against issues other than the primary practice.

Single-issue campaigns: no path to incremental change

In chapter 6 of Rain Without Thunder. The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement (1996), Francione discusses the possibility of incrementally eroding animal exploitation through animal advocacy that is consistent with rights theory. Consistent with rights theory are only those forms of animal advocacy which aim at, and result in, an eradication of animals' property status: ''[T]he issue of incremental change is understood as the incremental eradication of this property status.'' (p.189)

Francione concludes that an incremental strategy in this sense can work as a conceptual, theoretical, and practical matter. He distinguishes between two types of incremental measures on a macro level (beyond the scope of each individual's actions concerning his or her personal life): one type, referred to as indirect, encompasses all forms of educating the public about veganism and abolition; the other type, referred to as direct, ''may consist in changing the institutions of exploitation through legislation and administrative regulation.'' (p. 219) In order to determine which legislation and administrative measures are suited to lead to incremental change consistent with rights theory, Francione proposes five conjunctive criteria that are, as he points out, ''somewhat imprecise'' (p.191), and unavoidably so because ''social protest movements cannot strive for the certainty in complicated ethical matters that we have in mathematics.'' He makes it clear that he offers these criteria in order ''to begin and not to end discussion''(p. 191), and that, ''since the animal rights movement has only just begun to discuss these issues, any effort to connect theory with practice will have first to pave the road over which others will travel.'' (p. 192)

Examples of advocacy given by Francione as meeting his criteria include a prohibition of the following: the leghold trap; the live export of farmed animals; battery cages for laying hens; the dehorning and castration of animals used for food. In addition, Francione mentions the Great Ape Project as a campaign satisfying his criteria, though he subsequently, it should be pointed out, contributed a chapter to The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity (1994), co-edited by Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri, repudiating the GAP organization; and, more recently, he has changed his position on great ape personhood campaigns generally. While these issues are among those which welfarist organizations typically target, it is clear that the latter have never done so in a way that would conjunctively satisfy Francione's five criteria. Some welfarist campaigns have called for a prohibition, rather than a regulation (first criterion), of practices that are constitutive of exploitative institutions (second criterion); however, none has ever sought to protect a non- or extra-institutional interest of animals (third criterion); to ensure that the protection of that interest is not tradeable (fourth criterion); or to prohibit a particular exploitative practice without substituting an alternative, supposedly more ''humane'' form of exploitation (fifth criterion).

A ''quasi sixth'' criterion, no less important than the others, is that all cases of incremental change on the legislative and administrative level ''should be accompanied by a clear statement that it is only an increment in a larger scheme and that the ultimate goal of the rights advocate is the abolition of all institutionalized exploitation.'' (p. 216)

In his book, articles, and blog essays since December 2006, Francione has critically analysed what are referred to as single-issue campaigns (henceforth SICs), pursued by welfarist organizations. As with the type of direct incremental measure discussed in Rain, SICs generally target relatively minor animal uses, that is, any issue other than eating animals; they characteristically, though not always, aim also at change through legislation and administrative regulation. If, as argued here, SICs are, as a conceptual matter, a type of animal advocacy focusing on any practice other than the primary one, the objection Francione discusses in his blog essay, ''A Short Note on Abolitionist Veganism as a Single Issue Campaign (April, 2010), that focusing on the the consumption of animal products itself constitutes an SIC, is unfounded.

Francione has shown that SICs of various kinds all send a confused and confusing message to the public: that the issue targeted is morally distinguishable from other forms and practices of exploitation; so that the public is not educated about veganism and abolition but rather made to feel (more) comfortable about animal exploitation. Moreover, SICs serve as the primary fund-raising vehicle for welfarist organizations, generating public support through donations and membership fees, which are used to keep welfare businesses up and running.

In the light of Francione's in-depth analysis of the structural and functional – not contingent – characteristics of SICs, applying his five conjunctive criteria to them reads as a thought experiment demonstrating that they cannot practically be met by any SIC, or, to put it another way, that any campaign that would meet them would, by that very fact, not qualify as an SIC.

We take the hypothetical anti-battery-cage campaign as devised in Rain to be an example of what Francione would identify as an SIC matching his criteria. But campaigning against the battery cage only makes sense when this system is intended to be replaced with a ''cage-free'' or ''free range'' system. Although there is no way the call for a ban on the battery cage could be taken politically to imply a call for respecting a non- or extra-institutional interest of hens, such as their interest in unlimited freedom of movement, even if no alternative system was explicitly suggested, Francione does not classify the hypothetical anti-battery-cage campaign as an inherently impracticable case.

Animal advocacy does not take place in a political vacuum, in a laboratory-type environment; it has to be assessed against the background of its taking place in the real world, a world in which welfarism is the prevailing paradigm. While SICs can, on the blackboard, be devised as being compatible with animal rights theory, they cannot practically be made compatible with abolitionist advocacy because they do not target the primary practice, thereby making people feel better about eating animals. Moreover, when the targeting of a relatively minor issue (A) is accompanied by the call for veganism (B), the message this sends makes no sense: Why would anyone advocate A and B simultaneously, given that, to the extent that B is successful, A becomes obsolete? Politically, the effect is counter-productive in the sense outlined above: Given the chance to write a cheque or sign a petition as a way of ''helping animals,'' most nonvegans will do that rather than go vegan.

It is understandable why Francione maintained in Rain that his five conjunctive criteria could positively determine which measures in addition to promoting veganism could play a role in abolitionist advocacy by the degree to which they approximated the standard embodied in them: ''[P]roposed incremental changes may be judged by how close they come to satisfying all the criteria ..'' (p.218). He had after all, only a year earlier, in his groundbreaking work Animals,Property, and the Law (1995), just paved the road to emancipation from the welfarist paradigm by providing the theoretical and empirical foundation for a rejection of legal and corporate welfarism. From today's perspective, however, the idea of single issue advocacy as having an abolitionist function simply cannot be sustained.

In Animals as Persons. Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation (2008), Francione states in a footnote: ''I accept .. that this portion of Rain Without Thunder [regarding incremental legal change], which I presented explicitly as a preliminary analysis, was not as clear as it could have been and I plan to clarify my views on incremental regulatory change in further writing.'' (p. 113) It is to be critically noted that to date, Francione has not provided an explicitly clearer view of the matter.

In his most recent book, The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation (2010), he notes: ''[S]ome of the examples that I used in my discussion of incremental change in Rain Without Thunder have caused confusion, and I would approach the issue differently if I were writing the book today'' (p. 247) - yet without using that opportunity actually to approach the issue differently.

[A]ny single-issue campaign, including those that seek to prohibit something rather than regulate it, runs the risk of conveying the impression that certain forms of exploitation are worse than others,'' (p. 76) and ''single-issue campaigns tend to undermine the idea that is central to the rights position: that any instrumental use of non-humans violates the interests that animals have in not being treated as human resources. (p. 76)

The phrases ''runs the risk'' and ''tend to undermine'' do not reflect the conceptual incompatibility of SICs with an abolitionist agenda. Moreover, Francione goes on to qualify SICs along the lines of the criteria outlined in Rain as being able to move the discussion in an abolitionist direction. (see p. 78) And, like 16 years ago, he still seeks to provide normative guidance for something that, at the same time, he advises strongly against:

To the extent that advocates want to pursue single-issue campaigns, and I advise strongly against these campaigns, they should at least pursue prohibitions of significant animal uses rather than regulations...(p. 78)

But unequivocally rejecting X because X is considered to be wrong, i. e., something no one should be doing, is inconsistent with giving advice about how to do X ''the right way''.

There is no ''right way'' of doing the wrong thing.

While tending toward outright rejection, Francione's position on SICs appears vitiated by equivocation. While he has been perfectly clear that he would not do SICs himself and that vegan advocacy is the most effective thing to do, this does not imply that SICs are per se counter-productive to achieving abolition (because they make people feel [more] comfortable about their own participation in animal exploitation, the end of which is, by definition, not called for by SICs). But exactly that is the point that has increasingly been made the focus of attempted rebuttals of Francione's analysis of legal and corporate welfarism. For example, political scientist Robert Garner's reasoning in favour of all sorts of campaigns other than vegan advocacy revolves around the argument that even though campaigns aiming at regulatory and legislative changes might not have been satisfactory as yet, they could be in the future.

It may be objected that while there is, in theory, an obvious difference between ''hooks'' and ''gateways,'' no clear line can be drawn in practice, and that therefore, it is unwarranted to unequivocally reject anything other than straightforward vegan advocacy. But if there is no clear line, this does not, in our view, warrant any leniency for not straightforwardly promoting veganism, simply because there is no good reason for not doing the latter, which is the most effective way of eroding the primary practice. It is, after all, not a matter of personal preference. If it were not a moral issue we were dealing with, we could allow for ''preferences'': one advocate prefers to do advocacy this way, another prefers to do it that way. But since it is a moral issue, and especially since it is the most pressing one of our time, any form of advocacy other than the most effective one is wrong, and therefore is to be rejected.

Francione's equivocation on this matter is problematic in that it can serve as a ''loophole'' for justifying, ideologically and politically, those campaigns which, being the primary fund-raising vehicles for welfarist organizations, are not merely ineffective, but positively counter-productive to abolition.

That is why it would be encouraging to see Francione revise his view on this crucial point.

Footnotes

[1] The use of animals for food in general, that is, and not concerning special products, supposedly more cruel than others (foie gras, crated veal, for example).