Wayne Pacelle is the head of the Humane Society of the United States. He is very slick, sophisticated, and runs HSUS as if it is only about animal welfare. I don’t believe it for a second. HSUS works diligently to make meat raising more expensive and morally marginalized, without vocally pitching the animal rights dogma. It’s a tactic, not a true belief in the principle of animal welfare.
Toward that ultimate end, Pacelle has explicitly embraced human exceptionalism. From an article in Prism, an evangelical magazine, “A Call to Compassion From Our Brothers the Animals:”
Wayne Pacelle, CEO and president of the HSUS, explains why it encourages animal welfare instead of animal rights: “I think it’s a recognition that we are special and exceptional,” he says. “All these creatures are at our mercy…The rights language suggests that that there’s something inherent in them, and I think it’s more about us.”
Well, I can agree wholeheartedly with that. Human exceptionalism is why we have duties to animals. That is what I preach here every day and indeed is the core thesis of my book A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy. (Funny, I missed that rave review from Pacelle.) Indeed, that is the core animal welfare principle. We have a right to use animals instrumentally, so long as we balance the human benefit with the best and proper methods for attaining humane care.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t for a second believe Pacelle means what he said. He’s an old animal rights radical, a belief system predicated on the concept of “speciesism,” which explicitly holds that HE is unwarranted discrimination against animals. Moreover, while HSUS implicitly endorse humane meat, I perceive it as obfuscation. Indeed, HSUS’s VP stated in 2006:
For all of us, our goal is to reduce the greatest amount of suffering for the greatest number of animals. We don’t want any of these animals to be raised and killed. But when we’re talking about numbers like “one million slaughtered in the U.S. in a single hour,” or “48 billion killed every year around the world,” unfortunately we don’t have the luxury of waiting until we have the opportunity to get rid of the entire industry.
Oops, that let the cat, er chicken, out of the old bag.
And speaking of cats, back in his more candid days before becoming head of HSUS, Pacelle said he would prefer see no more felines or dogs born. Asked by the author of Bloodties: Nature, Culture, and the Hunt, “What about pets, Wayne? Would you envision a future with no pets in the world?” Pacelle said that would be his personal preference. which is a classic, if rarely expressed, animal rights view (Animal rights activist, Gary Francione, has a similar outlook). From page 266 of Bloodties:
“I wouldn’t say I envision that, no. If I had my personal view that might take hold. I don’t want to see another cat or dog born. It’s not something I strive for, though. If people were very responsible, and didn’t do manipulative breeding, and cared for animals in all senses, and accounted for their nutritional needs as well as their social and psychological needs, then I think it could be an appropriate thing. I’m not sure. I think it’s one of those things that we’ll decide later in society. I think we’re still far from it.”
“Decide later,” meaning that ending pet ownership comes at the culmination of the animal rights multi-generational campaign to end all domestication, not now. Besides, dog and cat lovers donate millions to HSUS and PETA, and it wouldn’t be prudent to openly advocate that ultimate goal.
Pacelle also analogizes between slavery and the instrumental use of animals (pp 253, 259)–a classic animal rights approach. And, of course, he says on page 251–contrary to the title of his current book, that he doesn’t actually feel “bonded with any nonhuman animal” and “There is no special bond between me and other animals.” Ah yes, discussing fauna in relation to humans as “other animals,” a way of subtly erasing the moral distinction between us and them–another classic animal rights meme. Pacelle certainly won’t be caught being that candid these days about what he really believes!
Oh well. The next time animal rightitsts yell at me about the hubris of human exceptionalism, I’ll tell them to go complain to Wayne Pacelle.
September 1st, 2011 | 4:10 pm
I assume this is the point of the Humane Society University (http://www.facebook.com/humanesocietyuniversity)
to teach, rather indoctrinate, more impressionable young folks to truly care less for animals than for the political manipulation process. Who knows, maybe they’re creating more Michael Vicks in the process…
September 1st, 2011 | 4:43 pm
Un Oh.., Wayne’s a’comin’ for my Schipperkes.
Regan Hauschen Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 2:16 am
@Terry Ward, Why don’t you get some real dogs! Like the kind that will bite a bear in the butt and make it climb and we’ll shoot it out and roast it. Than eat it together like frends should.
September 1st, 2011 | 6:40 pm
Calling HSUS propaganda disingenuous is too kind. HSUS is an organization of charlatans who should have been prosecuted for fraud years ago. Pacelle believe in human exceptionalism? hardly.
“If we believe in evolution, then we believe that humans come from other animals and the differences between us and them are differences of degree and not kind,” Wayne Pacelle, Washington Post August 9, 2004, Vegan in the Henhouse.
September 1st, 2011 | 8:21 pm
Billions of animals are crowded into cages so small they cannot turn around, mutilated and castrated without anesthesia, and killed in such fast-paced industrial slaughterhouses that they are often skinned and scalded alive. All of these hypothetical/abstract questions about human exceptionalism and animal rights vs. welfare are practically of little importance. We need to stop torturing animals on a massive scale if we have any compassion and decency at all. In the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “Animals, too, are God’s creatures… Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible.”
Bret Lythgoe Reply:
September 2nd, 2011 at 2:58 am
@Daniel, Excellently, and beautifully put, Daniel. As humans, we are exceptional in our intelligence, and morality, and therefore more is expected of us. I believe that God loves all his creatures, and wants us to not harm them, and show them the respect that they deserve.
You make an excellent point that, sometimes we get too caught up on the abstract. The fact that animals suffer, is enough to motivate all good hearted people, and I believe that all that comment on Wesley’s site, are good hearted (whether they accept animal rights or not) and I believe that Wesley is good hearted as well, and therefore can do their part, however small, in helping stop animal suffering.
Susan Reply:
September 2nd, 2011 at 12:14 pm
@Daniel,
None of your rhetoric believing that animals are constantly brutalized addresses the point of the article which is that Pacelle does not believe in human exceptionalism although he is more than willing to say he does for the almighty dollar.
Bret Lythgoe Reply:
September 4th, 2011 at 5:48 pm
@Susan, do you doubt what Daniel is saying? If so, do you agree that if these things are happening to animals, those causing these things to happen, should stop doing them?
Do you doubt that Wayne Pacelle cares for animals? Do you believe that he’s using animals to make money?
If you believe the latter, I’m presuming that this presupposes that, since you reject people using animals in order to make money, even if many animals are helped in the process ( if what you’re implying is correct that Parcelle’s HSUS is using animals to make money, still, no one can seriously doubt that his organization helps animals, at least to some extent. I believe a lot; but it’s indisbutable that some are helped.), this would logically entail that you would condemn those entities, businesses, that use animals in order to make money from their use, but manifestly do not help them, such as the meat industry?
Lynn Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 12:02 am
@Bret Lythgoe,
How, exactly are animals being helped by HSUS?
They dump all their small animal rescues into underfunded public shelters which generally have high kill rates before the new rescues arrive.
They actively OPPOSE no-kill sheltering.
The horse slaughter fiasco has caused much more suffering to many more horses than being slaughtered closer to home in a regulated facility.
Tell me again, what good things they do for animals.
September 2nd, 2011 | 3:43 am
I believe that HSUS does good work on behalf of animals. And i believe that Wayne Parcelle is a decent man, who wants the best for animals. I also believe that you too, Wesley are a decent man, who wants the best for animals.
But the killing of animals by the billions, ending the only conscious existence they will ever have, should be “morally marginalized”, as you put it.
Can one accept animal rights, and your Human Exceptionalism? Of course one can, as long as one does not make the unwarranted extrapolation that, due to our exceptional traits, we have a right to treat other animals in a way that’s inconsistent with their Rights to live. One Human Exceptional trait we have, is humility. And part of being humble, is accepting that, just because we’re more intelligent, more moral, and of a different species, does not mean that we’re entitled to rights, and other animals are not. They’re entitled to rights, due to their conscious (sentient) states, as are humans. We can debate which rights animals are entitlted to,under the law, and compromise is inevitable, in the implementation of these rights, but there can be no question that other sentient animals are entitlted to rights, in at least some form.
I’m unclear why you describe what are clearly the result of rational, careful thinking, as “meme”, but the fact is this: all humans, and all sentient animals are entitlted to rights, as a consequence of their conscious/sentient states, not because of extraneous factors, such as walking upright, or talking, or having a particular genetic code.
Bret Lythgoe Reply:
September 2nd, 2011 at 3:50 am
@Bret Lythgoe, Sorry for the spelling, “entitled”, is the correct word.
Also, thank you, Wesley, for providing a place to discuss these issues, respectfully, and rationally. I believe that you approach all of these issues in good faith, and you genuinely believe that, by giving animals rights, humans will suffer. I respect your assessment, but I respectfully disagree. i think that, if we approach animal rights carefully, slowly, and in a way that does not infringe on human freedoms (or any other human rights), we can make life better for all sentient animals, as well as humans. I appreciate you allowing other viewpoints. You could just delete any that disagree with you, but you don’t, which is a reflection, I believe, of your integrity, and commitment to open discussions.
Lynn Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 12:09 am
@Bret Lythgoe, Again: What good does HSUS do for animals?
Have you read the legislation they sponsor, lobby for (on the animal lover’s nickel) and often have written all or in part of?
What their ‘animal protection’ legislation does is limit animal ownership. That means fewer homes for animals.
How is that good for animals?
How is it good for animals to put *sound, knowledgeable, conscientious* dog breeders out of business, leaving the field open to the commercial breeders we have been taught to deplore? Their pretense of ‘stopping puppy mills’ is one of the most deceptive of their marketing ploys; ALL breeders are, to them ‘puppy mills’.
HSUS is a vegan animal rights organization and is not in any way friendly to animals. The vegan goal is to eliminate all animal products and animals from human lives. All … food, clothing, companionship, exhibition, working animals. All.
September 6th, 2011 | 12:12 am
The bottom line for HSUS and it’s fellow AR organizations is this: animal ownership = animal abuse.
And now the ‘animal protection’ legislation they are constantly lobbying for makes much more sense. They are trying hard and consistently to prevent animal abuse by preventing animal ownership.
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