The Animal Rights Challenge, By Kim Stallwood (Part 2)
In this post, I cover part two of Kim Stallwood’s presentation at the Minding Animals Conference in London, which is serialized on grumpyvegan.com. Stallwood argues that an important challenge for animal advocates is to “make the moral and legal status of animals a mainstream political issue.” Overcoming this challenge is made even more important because opponents of animals currently have the advantage with more sophisticated political involvement and the resources to use tools like message framing.
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Stallwood writes:
This is the animal rights challenge: Making society’s treatment of animals the responsibility of society, not just the individual responsibility of some. The challenge is to bring animal rights into the political mainstream and make it a legitimate public policy issue. The present emphasis on individual action (“Go vegan!”) must be expanded to include a political agenda for institutional change. Yes, individually, we’re all responsible for what happens to animals in our personal and professional lives but collectively the commercial exploitation of animals is the responsibility of society and government. |
The ultimate goal of any social movement should be to put itself out of business. That is, to create an environment in which the injustices the movement sought to end no longer occur. That kind of change would require millions, even billions of people to increase their awareness and evolve their attitudes and behavior. It would also require support from politicians to help pass legislation to bring about meaningful changes for animals and effectively enforce those changes. It would even require support from corporations to eliminate the cruelest practices and dramatically reduce how many animals they use. While all of these outcomes are important, Stallwood’s focus is on animals in politics.
Animals are, of course, already in the political arena. It’s their representatives who we should be concerned about. Powerful commercial interests that profit from animal exploitation are well established political players. Their involvement in the political process helps to maintain the status quo, adopt regulations and pass laws that help animal users more than the animals. Of course, this political bias in favor of animal exploitation is reinforced by our continued use of animals.
Animal rights is framed by those who profit from animal exploitation as:
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In a previous post called “The Death of Animal Rights,” I wrote that animal advocates would be well-served to frame our messages and policy goals around certain shared values. “Framing” a message means to craft that message such that it triggers a specific context and reaction from one’s target audience. As Stallwood notes above, opponents of animal rights have had more success framing the concept than the animal advocates themselves, and the result is that animal rights has remained largely a fringe issue. Faunalytics research has shown that the opposition has successfully used framing to nurture the concerns that some people have about some forms of animal advocacy being considered “extreme.”
The movement’s present repertoire of protest demonstrates our political naivety. Actions frequently occur in isolation and absent any long-term strategic, organized political vision or mission. They do not make a coherent long-term, macro-strategy to achieving institutional change. Surely, the mission of the animal rights movement is to encourage individual change as well as to work for regulatory and legislative victories. Yes, I know the movement has had some successes in elected bodies. These activities, however, are a small part of our overall endeavor. Even the ballot initiatives in the United States, as successful and important as they are, are extensions of public education campaigns. |
I have always thought it would be interesting to analyze how the resources of the animal protection movement are spent, both by type of animal and type of program. I think the analysis would bear out what Stallwood is saying about political activities accounting for a very small proportion of those resources. Decades of protest and public outreach have achieved some important gains for animals, but it’s time for advocates to start focusing on public policy as well. The animal movement has made some significant progress in this area in recent years, but much more work remains to be done.