CAF’s Executive Director Martin Rowe remembers Karen Davis, the founder of UPC United Poultry Concerns, who died of cancer on November 4, 2023.
From UPC: Karen Davis, President and Founder of UPC, Has Passed Away
I honor Karen Davis for her dedication to a group of animals that, even within the animal liberation movement, were largely ignored or considered too vast a “problem” to be addressed, until she became their vocal supporter. I will miss the kind of person she was: singular, unwilling to be silenced, unapologetic. In a world where the power centers of capital, industry, politics, and technology aren’t held to account for the havoc they’re wreaking on our planet, we need more people like Karen Davis to shout j’accuse (even at the risk of ridicule or humiliation) to stop the smooth conveyor belt we’ve created and are standing on from taking us over the edge.
Karen and Rainbow...
Many years ago, the Economist magazine ran a piece on one of Karen
Davis’ books. At the time, I was publishing Karen’s work at Lantern
Books, and while I wasn’t responsible for
Prisoned Chickens Poisoned Egg:
An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry (1996),
I did bring out More Than a Meal - The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual and Reality (2001),
The Holocaust & The Henmaid’s Tale:
A Case for Comparing Atrocities (2005), and, much later,
For the Birds: From Exploitation to Liberation (2019).
Lantern, which published many books on veganism and animal rights
(and still does, as Lantern Publishing & Media), didn’t get much
notice from the mainstream media, so an article in the Economist was
a big deal. As it turned out, the magazine had decided to devote its
precious real estate to a takedown of Karen’s book (I can’t remember
which one). The tone (I’m sure you’re familiar with it) combined
arch condescension with the sort of winking self-satisfaction that
bien pensants share with one another when they encounter an idea or
person who is obviously beyond the realms of reasonable or serious
critical consideration. Karen’s work was a palate cleanser to the
already stuffed readers of that august organ of truth.
To my knowledge, Karen, who died this past weekend from cancer, took
the hatchet job in her stride. That was no surprise. Karen could
more than handle herself when it came to withering, direct, and
artfully constructed takedowns. Schooled in literature, she was a
very capable writer, with a strong rhetorical style, and as the
title to her third book illustrates, she was unafraid to offend or
court controversy.
Those qualities animated Karen’s activism. Timidity and reticence
were not what the chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, and other
domesticated birds she dedicated so many decades of her life to
defending needed. Their plight demanded someone who was not afraid
to speak out, and that person was Karen. Literally. When she used a
microphone, she turned it into a megaphone; when she talked to you
in person, it was as though she was addressing a public meeting. She
was filled with righteous fervor. Even if you were well-versed in
the matter, you had to understand just what these billions of
forgotten and/or belittled individual souls were experiencing.
Karen may have been abrasive and impolitic; her singular focus may
have at times been unstrategic or alienating. But in mourning her
passing, I’m filled with gratitude for having known her, and for her
having been in the movement.
The Economist’s supposed humor depended not just on ridiculing Karen
or the argument, but on the readership assuming that even talking
with passionate moral concern about domesticated birds was risible,
absurd—perhaps insultingly so. Back then, and even now, those
creatures the industry lumps together as “poultry” are the most
abused of the animals we farm on the land, and they constitute more
than 90 percent of that number. Almost all of them are raised in
confinement, mutilated, and denied their natural behaviors. All of
these are killed prematurely, and millions of male chicks (who are
of no use to the egg-laying industry) are ground up alive almost as
soon as they’ve left the shell.
“Chicken” is the meat that environmentalists eat because they’re
worried about greenhouse gas emissions, and no longer consume (as
much) beef or lamb. “Chicken” is the protein source that
conscientious carnivores turn to because they’ve discovered that
pigs are as smart as dogs. “Chicken” is the word that describes
dumbness, cowardice, ineffectuality, and every bland substitute or
weird exotic substance that humans in our craven omnivory wish to
sample: “It tastes like chicken.”
The animals who are genetically disfigured, plucked, skinned,
eviscerated, and packaged for us needed a champion; their
invisibility and individuality demanded a storyteller—and Karen
Davis made her full-throated case on their behalf. I know she often
despaired of slowing, let alone stopping, the production lines and
conveyer belts that sent to their premature deaths so many of the
creatures that she knew for their quirky personalities—capable of so
many things, including affection and companionability. She’d veer
between calls for outright abolition and any means of alleviating
their suffering: ideological consistency for her meant little if it
delayed them a modicum of comfort or inhibited action. I think she
carried the burden of what she knew heavily, which was in turn a
reaction to her relatively late realization about what is done to
farmed animals on our behalf. There was no time to waste, and Karen
made you aware of it.
All social movements go through periods of waxing and waning, and
all of them struggle to reconcile the understandable wish to
professionalize, grow membership, and gain the ear of the powerful
and influential with the passion of their activists, who may not
confine themselves to smoothly delivered PowerPoints, well-modulated
presentations, or glad-handing the deep-pocketed capitalists who
fund them. The animal advocacy movement is no exception, with the
added dimension that too many men have claimed power and authority
at the expense of the much greater number of women who constitute
the movement’s foot soldiers. I’ve no idea who wrote the Economist
piece (its articles are unattributed), but it smacked of entitled
masculinism. Karen had to deal with that, too, both within and
outside the animal movement.
I honor Karen Davis for her dedication to a group of animals that,
even within the animal liberation movement, were largely ignored or
considered too vast a “problem” to be addressed, until she became
their vocal supporter. I will miss the kind of person she was:
singular, unwilling to be silenced, unapologetic. In a world where
the power centers of capital, industry, politics, and technology
aren’t held to account for the havoc they’re wreaking on our planet,
we need more people like Karen Davis to shout j’accuse (even at the
risk of ridicule or humiliation) to stop the smooth conveyor belt
we’ve created and are standing on from taking us over the edge.