I gave a speech to the Animal Ag Alliance in Arlington yesterday. It was covered by the Washington Times. From the story:
The agriculture industry is under attack from a powerful, popular and well-funded lobby - animal rights groups, which want to see it die completely, said two speakers at the Animal Agriculture Alliance 9th Anual Stakeholders Summit in Arlington, Va., Wednesday. “You are not dealing with people who want to reach acommodation with the agricultural industry about what is proper animal husbandry,” Wesley Smith, author of the 2010 book “A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement,” told the audience, which comprised primarily members of the animal agriculture industry. “Their intent is that you have no pigs, that you have no chickens … in fact the agenda is to do away with all animal domesticity, which they see as a multi-generational project.”
He noted the irony inherent in veganism, a practice in which one consumes no animal products, because of the large number of rodents and snakes that die in grain silos and in grain fields during harvest. “Nobody on this planet … eats unless animals die,” he said. “Veganism is just as much “murder” as eating meat is.”
Smith distinguished between the terms ‘animal rights’ and ‘animal welfare’ and said groups that claim to be involved in the former are not concerned about the treatment of animals, but rather in furthering ther agenda of equating animal and human worth via the proponence of legal rights for animals. “They do not believe we should look at the human benefit” of using animals for drug testing, food or clothing, Smith said, adding that foremost on American animal rights’ groups agenda at the moment is to allow animals to sue humans directly. He told the story of a Swiss court case in which a lawyer represented a fish that had been caught and consumed in an animal abuse case. The fisherman had been accused of taking too long to reel in the fish.
That part about veganism is murder, too, always riles animal rights activists. (Of course, animal can’t be “murdered.”) They claim that intent is the key. But there is no denying that vegan diets also result in the killing of countless animals–with what might be called reckless disregard for their safety, which if done to humans would be just as much murder as intentionally killing specific people–and, I would add, in ways far more painful than the humane slaughter of food animals. If animal rightists were consistent, they would protest combines and demand hand harvesting to save the field mice and snakes.
April 29th, 2010 | 2:38 pm
Wes: “If animal rightists were consistent, they would protest combines and demand hand harvesting to save the field mice and snakes.”
They’d have to hand harvest from helicopters. So they won’t step on any innocent worms.
April 29th, 2010 | 4:55 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Vince Humphreys, Lisa, Rubin the Rabbit, Vera, Vera and others. Vera said: My Speech to Animal Ag Alliance Covered in Washington Times …: The agriculture industry is under attack from a p… http://bit.ly/biSRzt [...]
April 29th, 2010 | 6:55 pm
[...] My Speech to Animal Ag Alliance Covered in Washington Times … Teen Ink: 'Animal Cruelty Must Stop'Fighting Crime by Fighting Animal Cruelty | [...]
April 29th, 2010 | 8:06 pm
[...] post: My Speech to Animal Ag Alliance Covered in Washington Times … Posted in Animal | Tags: agriculture, Animal, anual, anual-stakeholders, die-completely, [...]
April 29th, 2010 | 11:44 pm
The animal industries have a vested interest in not making any improvements, because if they do, the logic goes, they will have conceded much valuable territory to animal rights activists. This is about making money, for them, period. i doubt that they care at all about the welfare of the animals they expliote and kill, unless their public relations are adversely affected, then the croccidile tears create rivers.
Wesley, you point to the alledged inconsistency of the vegans, who still end up contributing to the deaths, of rodents and snakes, since to harvest the grain, these animals are killed. Perhaps this is true. if so, a way should be devised to limit or eliminate this. this does not alter the legitimacy of not eating other animals.
Finally, yes, many of the zealous animal rights activists use inappropriate words like “murder”, when referring to animals being killed. I think that a better approach might be, to assert that when a pig, probably more intelligent than your dog, that you rightly love so much, has her throat slit, so you can have a ham sandwitch, “immoral or illegitimate killing might be right.
One more thing, please you a more narrow brush when referring to animal rights people. They don’t all reject domestication. I, for one, believe that domestication is essential for certian animals survival, and as long as they’re given all that that animal needs to survive and be happy, it’s legitimate. I disagree with Gary Francione here, but I pretty much agree with everything else he asserts regarding animals rights, the complete rejection of violence for example. Although, Francione has his own inconcistencies: he believes in abortion up to the moment of birth, which is, to put it mildly, outrageous.
April 30th, 2010 | 11:36 am
We live on a ranch in Colorado – we raise our own meat and enjoy our rural life – when confronted with the vegetarian argument my husband always replies: “and what? you think carrots don’t scream when you rip them out of the ground?” Silly, I know but then folks who don’t understand where there food comes from often are…
April 30th, 2010 | 1:25 pm
In response to the comment ”and what? you think carrots don’t scream when you rip them out of the ground?” No, no I do not think carrots scream. They lack pain receptors and thus don’t ”feel” anything.
Veganism at its core is a life adopted in respect for other sentient beings. I was raised on a farm where my family raised cattle. There is a respectable way to do so. However, the huge corporations that provide 90% of the beef in this country for the most part utilize CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feed Organizations) to grow these cattle. A great movie to check out for more information is ”Food, Inc.”
I don’t think others must adopt my lifestyle, and I do not agree with many acts of extreme animal activists. However, gaining knowledge about many unjust happenings in the food industry can only benefit you.
May 1st, 2010 | 9:26 am
I am always totally amazed at the naivety or willful ignorance and hate mongering rhetoric of those folks who malign the Capitalist meat industry which is subject to reducing animal suffering through animal welfare laws. Yet those same hate mongers refuse to accept the fact that the Capitalist Crop Production industries are driven by even more collateral deaths with NO ANIMAL WELFARE PROTECTION. The suffering for animals left wounded in all facets of heavy machinery drop management or shot and trapped for invading crop fields is resolutely ignored by those same vegans as small interferences. Then there is 40 billion dollar pesticide spray industry complete with pollution levels never before seen by man who kills hundreds of billions of sentient being. One should also note how the rodentcides are applied to kill off small mammals & birds which infest our food storage facilities, & grocery stores. Those rodentcides take upwards of 50 hours to slowly bleed an animal to death without any concern for that suffering death by Vegans who hate monger a beef killing facility that instantly causes black unconsciousness and death inside of a minute..
The capitalist meat industry is supported by animal welfare laws while the capitalist crop industry has no such laws even though it isobvious that much more death & suffering is found in the vegan diet despite their pretence to not weighing that truth because that knowledge would knock them off thier highhorse. .
May 1st, 2010 | 9:14 pm
In the Washington Times? Wow, has being written up in Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s rag become something to boast about? How depressing.
May 3rd, 2010 | 10:10 am
For a peek at how the animal rightists really think, consider the story of a woman who runs an animal “sanctuary” in Central Texas. She had lived in a small town on 16 acres before she moved into larger and slightly more rural digs a few miles away. The buyers of her house and land paid the price of the land alone because the house and everything else were covered in animal waste, including the corpses of all kinds of animals from cats (30 in the freezer in the basement) to donkeys (cadavers and skeletons found in the overgrown fields.) She was able to buy more land because she was a 501c and solicited donations from people who would donate sight unseen to the woman who would rescue and rehab (supposedly) any animal in distress. In truth, she fed the animals and did nothing else to care for them. But she raised millions. Her “sanctuary” was a blight and a health hazard to the small farming community. She was known to scream at the garbage men who would routinely pull onto the shoulder of the road to pick up the cans (for their own safety) because they were running over grasshoppers.
About a year after she moved, the buyers of her property were contacted by a lawyer representing her new neighbors: they were suing to get her to conform to basic sanitation and safety laws. She was now onto large cats, lions, etc., in addition to all of the other animals and of course, they were not cared for properly. The buyers agreed to testify to the conditions they found on her former property.
Less than a week later, they received another phone call from her lawyer. He was a well-funded enviro-animal rights lawyer. He told these folks that if they testified against his client, he would drag them through court until they were dead or bankrupt, maybe longer (I’m paraphrasing.) The buyers backed out of the case and the litigants were sufficiently intimidated by the deep pockets and the fanaticism of these people that they dropped the case.
May 4th, 2010 | 11:54 am
“If animal rightists were consistent, they would protest combines and demand hand harvesting to save the field mice and snakes.”
I have brought this up with many vegans and animal right’s activists, and many either avoid the question or say something such as “I couldn’t afford it” or “I don’t have the time/don’t want to.”
Basically, they believe their one life is more important than the lives of billions of small animals that are killed in the production of their food. Isn’t that “specieist”? Would they have the same attitude if it was thousands of young children playing in fields that were regularly ripped to shreds in combines because farmers didn’t bother to flush them out first even though they knew they were there?
May 10th, 2010 | 2:03 pm
What do you think about adding some more illustrations? I don’t want to offend anyone, text is really great. But according to the scientists humans acquire info much more effective when there are some useful images.
Jeff Nixon
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact