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Animal Rights Food Advocacy: Building Bridges Between Species and Causes

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Animal Rights Food Advocacy: Building Bridges Between Species and Causes Animal Rights Food Advocacy: Building Bridges Between Species and Causes Carrie P. Freeman Georgia State University, [email protected] Abstract Through a unique frame analysis of animal advocacy food campaign materials (ex: pamphlets, website content, videos, stickers and t-shirts) at five prominent U.S. animal rights organizations (Compassion Over Killing, Farm Animal Rights Movement, Farm Sanctuary, PETA, and Vegan Outreach), I answer questions, such as: How is the animal rights movement defining core problems and solutions regarding animal farming and fishing? Do their frames appeal more to human self-interest, environmentalism, or altruism toward animals (human and/or nonhuman)? I also make recommendations for what they should communicate to remain culturally resonant while promoting needed long-term social transformation away from viewing other animals and nature as resources. I prioritize “ideological authenticity” in campaigning, framing "go veg" messages not only around compassion, but also around principles of ecological responsibility, liberty, and justice, convincing people it's unsustainable and unfair to farm anyone. To fit with the COCE conference theme of building bridges, my paper emphasizes the frame alignment processes that animal activists used to build bridges between different species and between different causes. For example, they used frame amplification to magnify people’s existing concerns for the welfare of nonhuman animals, humans, and nature to show how factory farming/fishing (meat-eating) is associated with harm to all these entities. Conversely they associated plant-based diets with wellbeing for nature and all animals (humans included). In future food campaigns, I advocate for more of a frame transformation alignment process that goes deeper to focus on animal rights (more so than animal welfare or human health) so that the problems animal rights advocates identify (injustice and unsustainability) align more directly with the solutions they identify (sustainable plant-based agriculture) and they build bridges in the public consciousness not just between dogs and pigs but between humans and the more-than-human world. Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015 Page 2 of 17 Introduction In promoting veganism to a meat-eating public, animal rights activists face a classic communication dilemma that all counter-hegemonic social movements have historically faced. Should campaign messages be more pragmatic and utilitarian (ex: emphasizing reform and human self-interest) or more radical and ideological (ex: emphasizing justice, abolition, and altruism toward all other species)? For vegan advocates, this means deciding between pragmatically meeting people where they are ideologically (ex: messages promoting meat reduction and farmed animal welfare) or taking them further to challenge discriminatory beliefs (ex: messages promoting animal rights, ecology, and veganism). In the book from which this essay is excerpted, Framing Farming: Communication Strategies for Animal Rights (Freeman, 2014),1 I provide a pathway for the latter approach, what I call “ideological authenticity,” where persuasive messages are grounded in the advocate’s ethical philosophy to promote a transformation in speciesist worldviews not just behaviors. Social movement framing literature debates whether appealing to an individual’s self interest is counterproductive to the long-term goal of getting society to be more altruistic toward a new category of oppressed beings (Crompton and Kasser 2009). If activists seek a more altruistic society, should they emphasize altruistic values, even if that might not be the quickest path to effect some changes? For example, if an animal rights organization can convince more people to stop eating animals, or to eat fewer animals, by appealing to legitimate human health concerns, is that preferable to a moral suasion approach that appeals to people’s sense of justice and empathy toward other animals? The former, self-interested health frame might be an easier or more persuasive way to get an audience member to stop/reduce eating animals, but because the frame does not fundamentally challenge humanity’s hegemonic views toward other animals, the new vegetarians may see nothing wrong with supporting fur, leather, vivisection, hunting, or destruction of wildlife habitat. This book arrives at a key moment in the animal rights movement where many agree that billions of intensively farmed animals deserve the movement’s primary attention (Ball and Friedrich 2009; Torres 2008), but internal debates over strategy create a mixed external message about precisely why and how the public is to help end this exploitation. In the book I propose my thesis that the ideal messages are ones that both culturally resonate with people and openly ask for the kind of radical change in speciesist worldview that is necessary to promote all animal rights issues (including ecological concerns) in the long term. In this paper for the Conference on Communication & the Environment, I will emphasize how and why to construct vegan campaign messages that not only convince people to avoid consuming animal products but that do so in a way that promotes altruism toward all living beings and enables people to respect other animals as fellow sentient beings with the right to live free of exploitation (more pro-fairness and pro-environment rather than just anti-cruelty). In this way, vegan campaign messages connect with other anti-instrumental causes and broader issues of ethics, justice, rights, and ecology in promoting a deconstruction of the human/animal and culture/nature dualisms so that humans embrace their own animality and consider establishing a humbler, fairer, and more sustainable place in the world. 1 See the book (Freeman, 2014) for a fuller literature review and details on this indepth study than is reflected in this paper’s excerpted sections. 2 The death toll is even higher when one includes the millions of male chicks killed at egg hatcheries Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015 Page 3 of 17 Literature Review Issues with Animal Agribusiness & Fishing The animal agriculture industry kills over 9 billion land animals annually in the United States alone (Humane Research Council 2011).2 Additionally, an estimated 17 billion animals from the sea are sold for American food, not including the approximately 25 percent additional lives lost and wasted as “bycatch” (Singer and Mason 2006, p. 112). If one includes sea animals in addition to land animals, American omnivores are responsible for the killing of more than five million nonhuman animals every hour of every day. Humans’ food choices are a key issue for all nonhuman animal species because if people continue to breed, grow or capture, and kill other animals for food when it is unnecessary for survival, then the animal rights movement will not be able to gain significant rights for animals in any other area in which animals are commonly exploited (Francione 1996; Hall 2006). When society allows the needless killing of nonhuman animals for food every day, this routine meat-eating ultimately makes nonhuman life cheap in comparison to human life, putting all animals at risk of human exploitation for selfish ends. America’s practice of animal consumption also has negative repercussions for humans globally. While many in America are suffering from lifestyle-based diseases (due in part to diets high in animal-based cholesterol and saturated fat), millions of humans worldwide die of hunger-related causes annually, due in part to inequitable food distribution largely fueled by inefficient animal agribusiness practices that primarily grow/use food crops to feed farmed animals (Pollan 2006; Singer and Mason 2006). From an environmental standpoint, confined animal feeding operations and all the crops required to feed these billions of animals, cause pollution and use significantly higher amounts of resources such as soil, water, land, and energy than does a plant-based diet (Singer and Mason 2006). Magazine editors at the Worldwatch Institute (2004) warned: The human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future – deforestation, erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice, the destabilization of communities and the spread of disease. (12) This indictment is seconded by a United Nations report from their Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO 2006) who described animal agriculture as “one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems” (para. 2), including global warming, estimating that raising animals for food generates 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, proving even more damaging than transportation. While environmental organizations tend to advocate for local and organic foods more so than plant- based (Freeman 2010b), author James McWilliams (2009) argued that the environmental benefits of local and organic foods are exaggerated (or oversimplified), but does see the environmental rationale for greatly decreasing consumption of animals. Vasile
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