http://www.evana.org/index.php?id=63506
Norm Phelps: Science Weighs In at Last: Campaigns for "Welfarist" Reforms
Cause People to Buy Significantly Less Meat
February 2011
Two agricultural economists from prominent American universities have published
the results of the first known study of the effects of "welfarist" reforms-or
more precisely, the effects of the media attention generated by campaigns for
these reforms-on consumer demand for meat. The findings are clear and
unequivocal: "As a whole, media attention to animal welfare has significant,
negative effects on U.S. meat demand." (Kansas State University) In other words,
publicity regarding the welfare of farmed animals-the preponderance of which is
generated by campaigns for "welfarist" reforms-causes the public to buy and eat
less meat. And they buy less meat overall; they do not simply switch from one
type of meat to another.
"[I]ncreased media attention [to animal welfare issues] caused a reallocation of
expenditures to nonmeat food rather than reallocating expenditure across
competing meat products." (Kansas State University)...
The Debate
This is the first rigorous scientific
look at an issue that has roiled the animal rights movement across North
America, Europe and Australia for fifteen years. The debate was kicked off
in 1996 when Gary Francione, law professor at Rutgers University in New
Jersey in the U.S., published Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the
Animal Rights Movement. In that book, Professor Francione asserted (and
continues to assert) that animal rights activists must campaign only for the
abolition of the use of animals and must never support so-called “welfarist
reforms” that ease their suffering, such as bans on battery cages or
gestation crates—even when those campaigns are conducted in conjunction with
vegan or other abolitionist advocacy.(1) Professor Francione and his
followers proclaim themselves to be “abolitionists” because they
uncompromisingly insist that all animal rights campaigns must be for the
abolition of a particular form of animal use (i.e. raising chickens for
food) and reject measures that fail to meet this test. In fact, they
proclaim themselves to be the only abolitionists in the entire animal rights
movement—even though they have never abolished any form of animal use
anywhere and have shown no visible signs of progress toward the abolition of
any form of animal use. Anyone who has the temerity not to agree with their
rigid strategic orthodoxy, they dub “welfarists” or “new welfarists,” the
latter being a pejorative coined by Professor Francione, who defines it as
the “coupling of rights ends with welfarist means.” (Rain, pg. 35) The
“abolitionists” specifically reject the use of campaigns for “welfarist
reforms” as a means for making progress toward abolition in part because
they believe doing so is theoretically inelegant and in part because they
contend it does not work.
Thus, they dismiss out of hand the
argument that these campaigns advance the cause of abolition by sensitizing
people to the brutal realities of animal exploitation and forcing the public
to think of animals as sentient beings who love life and fear death, long
for happiness and dread suffering. Because of their dogmatic insistence that
there is only one right way to campaign for animal rights—their way—I have
described the “abolitionists” as “one track activists.” ( See
“One Track Activism:
Animals Pay the Price” )
Professor Francione is adamant that
campaigns for “welfare reforms”—such the EU’s ban on battery cages due to
come into force next year and the new California law that will ban battery
cages and gestation crates (known as Proposition 2)—do not lead to a
reduction in animal exploitation.
“Moreover, there is absolutely no
proof whatsoever that animal welfare reforms will lead to the end of animal
use or significantly reduce animal use.” (“Animal Rights: The Abolitionist
Approach”)
This latter claim has now been shown to be unfounded. But
Professor Francione has made another, more specific, claim that has also
been called into question by the study:
“[L]et us assume that a
person does give up eating poultry completely. She may eat more fish or
consume more eggs or some other animal products and any offset to suffering
will be counterbalanced accordingly. The new welfarist position assumes that
for every animal product that is not consumed, those calories will be
replaced by plant foods. There is absolutely no reason to assume that.”
(“New Welfarism Fails on its Own Terms,”)
And again: Animal welfare
reform will not, as some claim, lead to the abolition of exploitation; it
will lead to more animal consumption. (“What Battle Are We Winning?”)
Professor Francione specifically applied this principle to Proposition
2, a 2008 ballot initiative in California to ban battery cages and gestation
crates, urging activists not to support it because it would actually retard
the progress of animal rights:
“[N]ot only will Proposition 2 not
provide meaningful protection for animals, it will actually make people feel
more comfortable about continuing to exploit animals by misleading them into
believing that they can now eat ‘humanely’ produced animal foods.” (“A
Losing Proposition”)
This argument is essential to the
“abolitionists” case for one-track activism. If it can be demonstrated that
“welfarist” reforms—or the publicity that accompanies campaigns for such
reforms—do, in fact, lead to a reduction rather than a increase in animal
use, then the claim that animal activists must turn their back on reforms
and campaign exclusively for abolition collapses. “Abolitionism” will be
shown to have been just another elegant, ivory-tower theory that
disintegrated upon contact with reality.
In his most recent book,
The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation? co-authored with Robert
Garner, Professor Francione stated that: “The problem with the new welfarist
position is that there is absolutely no empirical evidence to support it.”
(pg. 49)
Of course, this was also the problem with the abolitionist
position. But even when the book was being written (presumably 2009; it was
published in 2010), Professor Francione’s claim—which he had made numerous
times before—was open to dispute. In fact, it had already been disputed by
Austrian physicist and philosopher Martin Balluch, co-founder and president
of the Verein Gegen Tierfabriken (VGT, Association Against Animal
Factories), who claimed in a 2008 article that Austria’s ban on battery
cages had reduced the number of laying hens in Austria by 35%.
(“Abolitionism vs. Reformism”) Professor Francione countered with his own
claim that the number of laying hens had actually risen by 3% following the
ban and repeated his assertion that “As a practical matter, animal welfare
simply does not work.” (“A ‘Very New Approach’”)
Doctor Balluch
defended his original assertion, pointing out that the numbers on which
Professor Francione relied in making his estimate came from Statistics
Austria, the statistical agency of the Austrian government, and included
numerous egg-producing facilities that had, in fact, closed following the
battery cage ban. Doctor Balluch’s numbers came directly from the Austrian
egg producers’ association and took the closings into account. (“Comment:
Abolitionism vs. Reformism”)
The Study
There the issue rested until the publication of the American study that I
spoke of in the first paragraph, which was conducted by agricultural
economists Glynn T. Tonsor of Kansas State University and Nicole J. Olynk of
Perdue University. Using the so-called “Rotterdam model,” a differential
statistical analysis technique employed by economists to estimate consumer
demand for specific products, and to isolate the effect that individual
variables have on demand, Professors Tonsor and Olynk were able to estimate
the degree to which negative stories in the media about the treatment of
farmed animals affected consumer demand for beef, pork and poultry during
the period covered by the study (1982 through 2008). (Tonsor and Olynk, pg.
3)
Their findings were that:
[M]edia coverage of animal
well-being and welfare has (i) reduced US pork and poultry demand and (ii)
largely reallocated expenditure to non-meat food rather than across
competing meats. . . . Therefore, . . . the beef, pork and poultry
industries all stand to lose as meat expenditure is reallocated to non-meat
food expenditure. (Tonsor and Olnyk, pg. 5)
Nor is this negative
impact merely a short-term blip: Results . . . suggest that long-run demand
for both pork and poultry is hampered by increasing media press on animal
welfare issues. Moreover, this lost demand is found to exit the meat complex
rather than spillover and enhance demand of competing meats. (Tonsor and
Olnyk, pg. 6)
In short, the study demonstrates that “welfarist”
reforms—or at least the media attention generated by the campaigns leading
up to them—do, in fact, cause consumers to buy less meat.
For
example, the study revealed that between the first quarter of 1999 and the
fourth quarter of 2008, an ever-increasing level of animal welfare coverage
in the media reduced the demand for pork by 2.65 percent and for poultry by
5.01 percent. (Kansas State University)
During the period of the
study, the increase in negative animal welfare stories in the media did not
lead to an actual decrease in the consumption of meat. Rather, consumption
increased at a lower rate than would have been the case had there been no
increase in negative animal welfare stories: 2.65 percent over ten years for
pork and 5.01 percent during the same period for poultry. The authors are
careful to note that while this rate of reduction is relatively small, and
is in fact less than the rate of reduction caused by price increases, it is
statistically significant and demonstrates that “increasing media attention
to animal welfare issues [conveys] notable economic impacts to the U.S.
livestock industry.” (Kansas State University)
The authors report
that the decline in demand was observed for poultry and pork, but not for
beef. (“Impacts of Animal Well-Being,” pp. 4, 6) (Although, significantly,
consumers who gave up or reduced their consumption of poultry and pork did
not switch to beef.)
They seem puzzled by this, but I think there
are two very probable explanations:
a) beef cows are the
least horrifically treated of all factory farmed animals. Their abuse does
not generate images with the shock value of battery cages, confinement
sheds, and gestation crates. (The exception would be slaughterhouse scenes,
but very few of these have appeared in the American media.)
b) The “welfarist” campaigns that generated the media interest studied by
the researchers focused primarily on poultry and pigs, specifically battery
cages and gestation crates; they did not, by and large, deal with cows.
Although it is true that broiler chickens are not usually kept in battery
cages, to the American public a chicken is a chicken; I do not believe that
they distinguish clearly between laying hens and broilers.
Although
there seem to be no hard figures readily available, anecdotally veal
consumption in the U.S. appeared to decline sharply during the intense
anti-veal campaigns of the 1980s and ‘90s, and to have begun to rise slowly
over the last five years or so. Ignoring the fact that the initial decline
was due to reform campaigns, Professor Francione has claimed that the recent
apparent increase is due to people feeling good about “humanely” raised
veal. (“What Battle Are We Winning?”) It seems to me more likely that with
the high-profile veal campaigns now more than a decade in the past, most
people have simply put the cruelty of veal out of their minds. I would be
amazed if a significant number of consumers—at least in North America, with
which I am intimately familiar—are even aware that producers have been
changing their confinement systems.
Conclusions
There are, I think, several conclusions to be drawn from this study:
1) It fatally undermines the abolitionists’ call for animal activists to
boycott campaigns for “welfarist reforms.”
2) It directly supports
the claim that “single issue campaigns” for reform reduce overall animal
consumption by sensitizing the public to the plight of animals and forcing
them to think of animals as sentient beings who love life and fear death,
long for happiness and dread suffering. When you think of animals this way,
it becomes very hard to eat them.
3) The report gives us no reason
to think that reform campaigns alone would lead to the abolition of animal
use. But no one has ever claimed that they would. If we campaign only for
reform, we will slowly reduce the demand for meat, but we will never come
close to eliminating it. Our reform campaigns must supplement and support a
vegan message. As I have said many times before, the animal rights movement
needs a two-track strategy: vegan advocacy supplemented by reform campaigns
aimed at producers and reduction campaigns aimed at consumers, such as the
Meatless Mondays campaign and the Farm Animal Rights Movement’s Great
American Meatout, which has now gone international.
4) The
agricultural economics departments of Kansas State and Purdue universities
promote the interests of producers. The fact that this study was even
conducted shows that agribusiness is worried that reform campaigns are going
to make a serious dent in their profits. (The researchers specifically cite
the Proposition 2 campaign in California as well as similar campaigns in
Florida and Arizona as the primary factor motivating the study. (Tonsor and
Olynk, pg. 1) The industry has not shown a similar worry over the vegan
campaigns that the “abolitionists” claim should be the only strategy of the
movement. In fact, the authors issue what producers will regard as a dark
warning and we should see as a ray of bright hope: “Although media attention
elasticity estimates are relatively small, it is important not to mistake
this for evidence of demand being insensitive to animal welfare media
attention.” (“Impacts of Animal Well-Being,” pg. 6) Or, if I may translate
this into English: “The impact so far may not be great; but it’s real and
it’s significant, and animal welfare campaigns that draw media attention are
a serious problem looming on the horizon.” The report is, in fact, a call
for the industry to develop strategies to offset the impact of negative
stories in the media about animal welfare.
5) In this regard, the
authors express some uncertainty (and call for further study) about whether
the effects of negative animal welfare publicity can be neutralized by
positive media coverage of animal welfare. But that would certainly be an
intuitive conclusion. And so it seems almost certain that this study will
inspire the industry to launch a campaign to plant positive animal welfare
stories in the media. We need to be prepared for this.
6) And most
important: the animal rights movement needs to focus heavily on generating
and maintaining high-profile negative media coverage of farmed animal
welfare issues. Reform campaigns are one of the best ways of doing this.
Some Closing Thoughts
For the sake of the
animals whose only advocates we are, we have to put aside the sectarian
squabbling that diverts critical time and energy away from the real
adversary: animal exploiters.
The vegan advocacy espoused by the
abolitionists is essential to the success of the animals’ movement. I
support it. And my own advocacy is almost entirely vegan. But I also support
reform campaigns. Achieving a vegan society will be a slow, incremental
process. Each step forward must become the starting point for the next step
forward. We must patiently pursue each individual step, while impatiently
fixing our gaze on the goal of a world that is vegan.
Professor
Francione is a brilliant, dedicated, and eloquent pioneer for animal rights.
And he is certainly sincere in his advocacy. But his condemnation of “new
welfarism” and his insistence that animal rights advocates abstain from
supporting reform campaigns are distracting and divisive. Each of us should
concentrate on the form of advocacy with which we feel most comfortable and
in which we believe we can do the most good for animals. And we must respect
one another’s choices. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, we must all hang
together or the animals will all suffer and die separately.
(1) Francione generously credits Helen Jones, founder of the
International Society for Animal Rights (ISAR) with being the first leader
of the animals’ movement (in 1981) to specifically reject “welfarist means”
as a way to achieve animal rights. (Rain, pg. 46) But it was Professor
Francione who first integrated this idea into a theoretical matrix and
turned an idea into a denomination.
References:
Balluch, Martin,
“Abolitionism vs. Reformism: or which type of campaign will lead to animal
rights eventually?” On the English language website of Verein Gegen
Tierfabriken,
www.vgt.at/publikationen/texte/artikel/ 200880325/Abolitionism/index_en.php
. Viewed on February 14, 2011.
-------------------, “Comment:
Abolition vs. Reformism.” On the English language website of Verein Gegen
Tierfabriken,
www.vgt.at/publikationen/texte/artikel/ 20080414/Abolitionism/index_en.php
. Viewed on February 14, 2011.
Francione, Gary L., Rain Without
Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement. Philadelphia (U.S.)
Temple University Press, 1996.
-------------------, “Animal Rights:
The Abolitionist Approach,” undated flyer on Professor Francione’s website,
www.abolitionist.com . Viewed on
February 5, 2011.
-------------------, “‘A Very New Approach’ or
Just More Welfarism?” on Professor Francione’s blog, Animal Rights: The
Abolitionist Approach,
www.abolitionistapproach.com , dated August 30, 2009. Viewed on February
5, 2011.
------------------, “New Welfarism Fails on its Own Terms”
on Professor Francione’s blog, Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach,
www.abolitionistapproach.com
, dated August 30, 2009. Viewed on February 5, 2011.
------------------, “A Losing Proposition,” on the worldwide web at
http://animalrights.about.com/od/ proposition2ca2008/a/FrancioneProp2.htm
. Viewed on February 7, 2011.
-----------------, “What Battle Are We
Winning?” on Professor Francione’s blog, Animal Rights: The Abolitionist
Approach,
www.abolitionistapproach.com , dated March 28, 2007. Viewed on February
14, 2011.
Francione, Gary L., and Robert Garner, The Animal Rights
Debate: Abolition or Regulation? New York, Columbia University Press, 2010.
Kansas State University, Department of Agricultural Economics,
Bulletin MF-2951, “U.S. Meat Demand: The Influence of Animal Welfare Media
Coverage,” September, 2010. Online at
www.agmanager.info . Viewed on February 5, 2011.
Tonsor, Glynn
T., and Nicole J. Olynk, “Impacts of Animal Well-Being and Welfare Media on
Meat Demand,” in the Journal of Agricultural Economics, Volume 62, Issue 1,
pages 59-72, February, 2011. Available on the worldwide web at
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1477-9553.2010.00266.x/pdf
. Viewed on February 5, 2011.
Norm Phelps is an American animal rights activist and author. He is the
former spiritual outreach director of The Fund for Animals, a founding
member of the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians, and a member of
the North American Committee of the Institute for Critical Animal Studies
(ICAS). His books include The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from
Pythagoras to PETA, The Great Compassion: Buddhism and Animal Rights, and
The Dominion of Love: Animal Rights According to the Bible, all published by
Lantern Books in New York
Source:
Norm Phelps - animals and ethics
Autor: Norm Phelps
Link:
Lantern Books -
Books by Norm Phelps
Link:
Support grows for Meatless Mondays campaign
Date: 2011-02-17
Other EVANA-articles about this topic:
Norm Phelps: In Praise of
'The New Welfarism' (en)
One-Track Activism:
Animals Pay the Price (en)
New Book: The Longest
Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA (en)
