The Problem: “Animal Advocates” Who Promote Animal Exploitation
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Gary Francione, Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach
October 2015

The problem is identifying the problem as “factory farms” and not animal use or exploitation–wherever it occurs and however supposedly “humane” or “compassionate” or “merciful” it is.

Mercy for Animals, an animal welfare organization, claims that “The Problem” is “Animals suffering miserably on factory farms.”

Wrong.

The problem is identifying the problem as “factory farms” and not animal use or exploitation–wherever it occurs and however supposedly “humane” or “compassionate” or “merciful” it is.

Misidentifying the problem has absurd and speciesist consequences, such as declaring the McDonald’s “cage-free” egg announcement as a “victory” and identifying this:

cage-free hens

and this

cage-free hens

as “Progress!” and as representing “meaningful changes.”

Mercy for Animals post

McDonald’s sells the suffering and death of animals.

Groups like the Humane Society of the United States and Mercy for Animals act as partners with McDonald’s in selling that suffering and death.

McDonald’s gets “animal advocates” to promote them and their products.

In return, McDonald’s gives these “animal advocates” meaningless “victories” to use in fundraising.

HSUS declares the McDonald’s “cage-free” egg announcement as a “watershed moment.”

MFA “applaud[s] McDonald’s for its commitment to phasing out cruel cages in its North American egg supply chain” and calls McDonald’s “praiseworthy.”

That statement is breathtaking.

Here’s a screenshot of the MFA statement in case you simply cannot believe that “animal advocates” would “applaud” animal exploitation.

McDonald's

Notice that, in addition to “applaud[ing]” the McDonald’s “cage-free” egg announcement, MFA tells its supporters to ask McDonald’s to continue it’s “praiseworthy progress by adopting meaningful standards for chickens killed for Chicken McNuggets.”

And that’s the problem.

Supporting these groups is supporting animal exploitation just as much as consuming a McDonald’s animal product is.

If animals matter morally, then we are obligated morally to embrace and promote veganism as a moral imperative and we are equally obligated to oppose the speciesist idea that imposing suffering and death on animals can ever be “praiseworthy.”


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