"Defensanimal.org" interviewing "Gary L. Francione"
(January 2008)

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http://www.defensanimal.org/e/articles/interview_Gary_Francione.htm

(Gary L. Francione is Distinguished Professor of Law and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University School of Law-Newark, New Jersey)

(Defensanimal.org) Would you agree with the general consensus that in the last 15 years we’ve seen significant improvements with regard to respecting the interests of non-human animals?

(Gary L.Francione) No, I would not agree. The “general consensus” to which you refer is the view of the large welfarist organizations that have a vested interest in promoting the illusion that there has been progress in this regard. The reality, however, is that things have not improved in any significant way and in certain respects, things have actually gotten worse.

(Defensanimal.org) How do you evaluate the fact that legal reforms are being proposed to regulate exploitation methods, with the aim of helping certain non-human animals?

(Gary L.Francione) That is nothing new. The welfarists have been proposing legal reforms for more than 200 years now. Those reforms have not amounted to much. In fact, we are using more nonhumans in more horrific ways than at any time in human history. The only difference is that there is a new generation of young advocates who do not know about the history of the movement and many large welfarist groups that are happy to keep those advocates in a state of ignorance. The welfarist groups now claim to want abolition as a long-term goal, but they promote conventional welfare reform (I call these people the “new welfarists”). They often use the language of rights and abolition, but they pursue the same sorts of reforms that welfarists pursued in the 1950s in the United States.

(Defensanimal.org) Are the legal reforms compatible with the aims of the abolitionist movement?

(Gary L.Francione) As a general matter, no. In fact, these reforms are inconsistent with the abolitionist movement. For the most part, these reforms merely make animal exploitation more economically efficient and socially acceptable. As a result, the reforms reinforce the property status of animals, and that is the antithesis of the abolitionist position. For example, many welfarist groups in the United Stares, including PETA, are proposing that the gassing of chickens replace the electric stunning method.And they argue that gassing will result in better meat quality, fewer worker injuries, etc. That sort of reform does not get us closer to abolition; it increases producer profit and makes the public feel that it is behaving in a more “humane” way.

(Defensanimal.org) On a worldwide scale, could we say that a strong abolitionist movement is in existence, or do you think that the main objectives of the big animal rights groups relate only to increasing animal wellbeing, but without wanting animals to cease to be human property?

(Gary L.Francione) I think that an abolitionist movement is just beginning to emerge. Until fairly recently, the large welfarist corporations have controlled communication and have effectively suppressed the abolitionist movement. The internet has now made it possible for advocates to communicate and to form communities outside of the structure imposed by the large groups. For example, groups like www.defensanimal.org are now able to bypass the large groups and engage in significant educational efforts using the internet. My partner, Anna Charlton, and I have a website, www.AbolitionistApproach.com, which contains presentations on animal rights, abolition vs. regulation, animals as property, and animal law. These presentations are in English and French, but will soon be available in Spanish, German, and Portuguese. I also have a blog available at that site. We are getting thousands of visitors to the site. We will soon start a podcast. All of this would have been impossible a few short years ago.

As I said above, the large groups sometimes use the language of rights and abolition but they generally just promote welfare reform. They are not addressing the property problem.

(Defensanimal.org) What strategy do you think that an association that is fighting for the interests of non-human animals should follow?

(Gary L.Francione) At this point, the only thing we should be doing is engaging in creative, nonviolent vegan education. As long as most people are eating animal flesh and animal products, there will never be any real progress. We must make veganism the baseline position of the movement. We should also be educating the public about the relationship between speciesism and other forms of discrimination, such as racism, sexism, and heterosexism.

(Defensanimal.org) Do you think that speciesist language is one of the main elements that maintains and foments discrimination against other animals?

(Gary L.Francione) Yes, of course, but we must understand that although speciesist language reinforces speciesist attitudes, that language reflects speciesist thinking, which is not going to disappear because language changes. In the United States, people do not use racist epithets the way they did, say, in the 1940s or 1950s, but this is still a very racist country. We need to change thinking. We still think like racists even though our language may have changed. We should be careful not to use speciesist language, but we should also not delude ourselves into thinking that this will have any magical effect. Speciesist language merely reflects speciesist thinking, which does not disappear because we develop politically correct ways of talking.

(Defensanimal.org) Do you think that the priority, in eradicating speciesism, should be to achieve an education system for children in which they are taught not to discriminate against other animals – or do you think that there are other more important areas?

(Gary L.Francione) Educating children is crucial. The problem is that most parents are speciesist and they object to their children being educated about veganism and species discrimination. I think that we ought to be focusing on the public generally, with an emphasis on students at the secondary level or at university.

(Defensanimal.org) Do you think that every animal with a central nervous system, and therefore with the capacity to feel, should stop being considered as human property. And why?

(Gary L.Francione) My theory rests on sentience alone .If a being is sentient and has conscious awareness, then we ought not to treat that being as our resource. The reason for this is that as long as sentient beings are treated as property, their interests will necessarily be discounted and they will, in effect, be treated as “things” that exist outside the moral community. Given that most of us already accept that animals have moral significance, we are committed to not treating them as property. This is a complicated issue, and is explored at length in my book, Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? and in my forthcoming book, Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation.

I do not know if insects are sentient; I err in favor of not killing them. I avoid stepping on them and when I find them in my house, I either let them stay or, in the case of larger spiders, wasps, etc., I catch them and put them outside.

(Defensanimal.org) What legal rights do you think we should seek for non-human animals? If we stopped considering them as the property of humans would this be enough to defend their interests, and to what extent should we respect the things that they build or produce?

(Gary L.Francione) I argue that we should stop bringing domestic animals into existence altogether. We should care for those presently in existence but we should not facilitate or cause more to come into being. This includes dogs, cats, and other nonhuman “companions. ”As far as wild nonhumans are concerned, we should leave them alone and not interfere in their world. We should not encroach on their habitat.

(Defensanimal.org) What was your personal experience in the process of changing from a speciesist person, to a non-speciesist person?  What event, or book, or experience inspired you to defend the abolitionist thesis?

(Gary L.Francione) I became a “vegetarian” in 1978 and still ate dairy and eggs. As I recall, I do not think I even knew what a vegan was back then. In 1982, Ingrid Newkirk, whom I had met when we were living in Washington, D.C. and who had recently started PETA with Alex Pacheco, gave me a copy of a book called Fettered Kingdoms, written by a British person named John Bryant. Anna and I read that book, which argued that we should eat no animal products, and we became vegans immediately and never knowingly ate another animal product. Unfortunately, I met John Bryant in London in the late 1990s. He told me he was no longer vegan. I was very disappointed.

By the early 1990s, it was clear to me that welfare reform would never lead to abolition and it was then that I started developing the argument that led me to write Animals, Property, and the Law in 1995, which argued that animal welfare standards would never provide significant protection for animal interests as long as animals were economic commodities, and Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement in 1996, which argued that welfare reform would not lead to abolition and that we needed to embrace an abolitionist agenda.

(Defensanimal.org) What do you think is necessary in order for the majority of humans to become vegans, and to stop being speciesist? What do you think would be the best way of ensuring that humans act in an ethical way towards the other animals?

(Gary L.Francione) I think that most people “care” about animals on some level. The challenge is to get them to see that their actions are inconsistent with their belief that we really do have moral obligations to animals.