Animal Rights Community Online

[Diana]

 Movement for the Abolition of Meat

[Andrea Argenton]

They also have a mailing list in English here:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/meatabolition/
I was a subscriber but left it after a while since I had some reservations on some issues debated there.

[Diana]

Thank you Andrea, for the link. I do not like yahoo mailing lists. So user unfriendly as compared to message boards.

However, I did ask my questions on the French mailing list (as well as on Comiti's blog) and got a long friendly answer back. But a most curious answer indeed. The person said that nowhere is it written that it is necessary to mistreat or kill animals. But I'm not an idiot. I can read in black and white that it says: Because sentient beings shouldn't be mistreated or killed unnecessarily, which automatically implies that it is sometimes necessary to mistreat or kill them. If it is NOT implied, then why the heck did they choose to put in the word "unnecessarily". I mean, they didn't just write that text in five minutes without giving it much thought.

I can understand the killing part maybe when it comes to euthanising a mortally ill animal in great pain and suffering (just as I can understand the euthanisation of human animals in times of terrible pain or discomfort), but it is surely never necessary to MISTREAT an animal. Therefore I believe that the people behind this campaign (or movement as they prefer to call it) are Singerian types of utilitarians.

However, this person that wrote to me is just one of the many people interested in the project and is not one of the "leaders". I would like to have Comiti reply, and hope that he will see the message I left on his blog (which I read afterwards, and saw a most interesting discussion between the movement's leaders and James, Gary, Karen and others.)

[jubjub]

I don't know anything about this "movement," but the phrase you're worried about is actually ambiguous. "Mistreated or killed unnecessarily" could mean "mistreated (unnecessarily) or killed unnecessarily" or it could mean "mistreated (at all) or killed unnecessarily." Maybe they mean the latter.

[Diana]

You're right. If they are not saying that it's okay to mistreat an animal, then they should perhaps change their wording.

[Dave_81]

I think the Movement for the Abolition of Meat is problematic in several respects. As a moral matter, I don't think it makes sense to distinguish meat from dairy and eggs; the production of latter involves as much suffering (if not more) as the production for the former, and all the animals end up in the same slaugtherhouse. Moreover, as a practical, campaigning matter, I don't think it is helpful to distinguish meat from dairy and eggs, because this sends the message that dairy and eggs are relevantly different from meat, and this encourages the continued consumption of dairy and eggs. If I remember correctly, the Movement for the Abolition of Meat argued that they were campaigning against meat for political reasons. But if the politics is speciesism then it seems arbitrary to focus on one area of speciesist exploitation, rather that speciesism per se. They replied, if I remember correctly, that their campaign was like the human anti-slavery movement. Just as the anti-slavery movement was not opposed to racism per se, but rather only the property status of slaves, so the Movement for the Abolition of Meat is, for political reasons (although I am exactly sure what those reasons are), opposed to one area of speciesist exploitation. But it seems more apt to analogize the abolitionist movement to the anti-slavery movement, since the abolitionist movement is trying to abolish the property status of animals, which is the the major legal impediment to the eradication of speciesism.

[panthera]

I remember reading that site before and couldn't deal with the meat/milk issue. I don't like not supporting the abolition of meat, but I won't do it this way. I was glad to see the comments.

[animalrightsmalta]

Re: Movement for the Abolition of Meat

[Dave_81]

[jubjub]

I just looked at their website a little more closely. I was struck by this:

"In France, the law forbids the unnecessary killing of a cow, a pig or a chicken."

Is this true? Is anyone here familiar with this law? What does it actually say?

[animalrightsmalta]

[jubjub]

Yeah, no kidding. But sometimes people pass laws that apply to things they don't intend them to apply to. (For example, a lot of American towns forbid trucks over a certain weight from driving on certain roads. Most of the big SUVs are over that weight too, but nobody seems to care about that.) I just think it would be interesting to point out to people, if there really were a law that implies that slaughtering animals for food is already illegal.

[animalrightsmalta]

[Dave_81]

The problem is obviously that what is taken to be an acceptable or a "necessary" use of an animal is determined by the institutional status of the animal. You can't eat a cat or a dog because the places they occupy in our relationships confer on them an emotional surplus value; but you can eat a pig or a cow because they don't occupy a place in our relationships and so are considered to be merely conditionally or extrinsically valuable property.

[Andrea Argenton]

I also found embarassing a proposal which was made on the English mailing list around the end of October, i.e. the idea of inviting "personalities" to a launching event; the list included Newkirk, and when it was pointed out that it was strange indeed for a movement which advocates meat abolition to invite a person who gives awards to slaughterhouse designers, fast food chains and so on, those actions of PeTA were passionately supported.