Someone asked us what are our thoughts about Martin Balluch’s presentation against intervention in nature, given during the International Animal Rights Conference held earlier this month. Unfortunately the presentation is not publically available, so we will address two posts he wrote in the past about suffering in nature called: ‘Most wild animals are happy most of the time!’ and, ‘Wilderness and wild animal suffering (again!)’.

Arguments against intervention in nature are of course not new, with many raising the concern that humans would cause more harm than good if they will intervene. However, this is not exactly Balluch’s point. While making his case against intervention in nature Balluch heavily nourishes nature idealization, falsely idealizes autonomy in nature, and falsely claims that most of the beings in nature are happy. We’ll address these 3 claims in the following post.

Most wild animals are happy most of the time

Balluch argues, based on his personal experience traveling in what he calls nature and according to him “seeing animals in the wild, and they almost always seem content and happy”, that most wild animals are happy most of the time. However that obviously doesn’t prove that statement, as Balluch can see only, or at least mostly, big and healthy animals living in accessible areas. To make such a statement seriously, he needs data not anecdotal personal observation. His statement is based only on what his eyes can see and it ignores everything he can’t.

Balluch holds an idealized and a very partial view of nature, which causes him not only to ignore most of the horrible parts of the lives of animals in nature, it also causes him to ignore most of the animals.
Usually the idealized image of nature is consisted of adult individuals of large herbivore mammals pasture in a green field. However, there is nothing ideal in the lives of adult herbivores considering the constant social stress of many, the constant fear of predation, the harsh weather, the hunger, the thirst, the diseases, the frequent injuries from successful escapes from predation, and the excruciating pain of unsuccessful escapes from predation. And more importantly, herbivore mammals dying in adulthood are by no doubt extraordinarily exceptional and utterly unrepresentative of life in nature.

Most of the sentient beings on earth never reach adulthood, but live for a short and extremely brutal period. In most cases, lives of nothing but suffering.
This fact is particularly relevant for the case against nature as an ideal since this mass scale horror is mainly driven by one of nature’s most fundamental elements – the reproductive strategy.

The two main reproductive strategies are called K-selection and r-selection. To put it simply, K-selection is putting all the energy on maximally preparing individuals to survive the environmental conditions, while r-selection is putting all the energy on the maximum number of individuals and minimum investment (in many cases none) in each individual.
Of course these strategies are combined in some way or another among different species, but generally that is the main framework.

Basically, the higher the value of r, the lower the value of K. So every single case of reproduction of r-selected species ends up with numerous individuals who will die shortly after.
Since the population of these species is more or less the same from generation to generation, then on average, only one offspring will survive to replace each parent.

Of course not all the individuals of each reproduction will live long enough to become sentient (consumed while still in the egg at a very early stage for example) and there are those who argue that some never become sentient, no matter their age, because they are simply non-sentient. However, given that most animals practice r-selection, including invertebrates of course (by far most of the animals on Earth) and many vertebrates such as fishes, amphibians and reptiles, and given the enormous number of reproductions and the enormous number of reproduced beings, nature is not only far from being ideal, it is full of suffering on every level.

The philosopher Oscar Horta thinks that the existence of r-selection leads to the inevitable conclusion that there is far more suffering than happiness in nature. He gives an example to prove his point:

“Consider just one example regarding a certain species of animals, the Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua). These animals can lay from a few thousand to several million eggs. Let us suppose that they lay 2 million each time. It is estimated that in 2007 there were around 33,700 tons of Atlantic cod in the Gulf of Maine bank alone. An adult cod can weigh up to 25-35 kg. Assuming they have an average weight of 33.7 kg, there would be around a million of these animals (the average weight I have proposed is too high, though on the other hand I am assuming, for the sake of simplicity, that these animals are all adult animals). Assuming the cod population remains stable, on average only two of the eggs that a female cod lays in her life end up developing into adults. Thus, a total of 2 trillion eggs laid will fail to become adults. Assume each egg has a 0.1 probability of developing into a young, immature fish, a codling, and that there is a 0.1 probability that codlings are sentient. Finally, assume that on average they suffer for just ten seconds before they die.

All of these are extremely conservative assumptions. Yet they entail that each time these animals reproduce we can expect that 200 billion seconds of suffering is experienced (and these are only the cods in the Gulf of Maine). Since there are 31,556,926 seconds in a year, this amounts to 6337.7529 years of suffering. If this continues over an average human lifespan (that is, six decades), the number of years of suffering generated would be 380,265.174. All this for a very specific species in a very specific area.”

Oscar Horta’s terrifying illustration is extremely important for several reasons:
Even non-negative utilitarians must infer that nature can’t be morally justified.
It further refutes the idealistic view of nature.
It further induces the moral need to act against it.
It further refutes the idealistic view of a vegan world which is many activists’ moral ideal.

The kinds of lives that the absolute majority of sentient beings on earth are forced to live, are of nothing but suffering. And that is a much more accurate view of nature’s true nature.

To positively view nature one must wear extraordinarily optimistic lenses when looking at individuals from K-selected species, and simply cover the eyes when looking at individuals from r-selected species.

Balluch argues that his main claim that most wild animals are happy most of the time, is not solely based on his observation but is also inferred from evolution. He argues that: “Being happy and content is a vital ingredient to procreate and to live safely and long. Hence, evolution will produce animals, who are mostly happy under normal circumstances.”
Only that evolution doesn’t work like that. Evolution is about adaptation not happiness. Nature is indifferent to happiness. Evolution is a descriptive mechanism not a system that has values. Nature has no goals, let alone that beings in nature would be happy. Beings in nature evolved to survive and reproduce, and so if they manage to do so, there will be more of them. That has nothing to do with happiness. It barely has anything to do with the welfare level of beings in nature as many of them can reproduce even with very low level of welfare. Reproduction is an indication of the ability to survive under specific living conditions, not of happiness. And Balluch’s focus on reproduction as an indicator is actually very ironic considering what was just explained regarding the two main reproductive strategies and the predominance of r-selection. So, if anything, the predominance of r-selection is a very strong indication of the opposite argument – that most of the being in nature suffer most of the time, with trillions experiencing nothing but suffering.

Nature Chauvinist

Balluch’s statement regarding evolution mentioned above, as well as other statements like: “In the evolutionary arms race between predator and prey, the prey animals are always one step ahead, otherwise the ecological balance could not be upheld”, reveals that Balluch is first of all a nature chauvinist. He is supposedly concerned about the autonomy of the induvial animal, but actually talks about populations, species, ecological balance and nature itself, as if these are morally relevant entities and not merely abstract notions.

To say that something is natural doesn’t add any moral value to it. It only says that it evolved spontaneously through time and improved or didn’t interrupt the reproduction of its beholder.
Nature is indifferent to the suffering of its residents.

Something can be good or bad regardless of it being natural (the notorious naturalistic fallacy).
Some things are bad despite that they are natural, like reproduction, and some things are good despite that they are not natural, like contraceptives.

Natural processes are not moral entities, sentient beings are. If intervening in a natural process can help sentient beings who are affected by this natural process, we are morally obligated to intervene, not to abstain.
Refusing to do so is placing non-moral entities above moral entities. And it makes no moral sense.

Thinking of nature as impeccable is not only ignorant of the scope of suffering in the wild but it is also, maybe unintentionally, confusing abstract terms such as species, with moral entities which are the individual members of the species. A species is just a convenient term to define individuals of similar biological traits, with no ethical relevancy.

Stating that nature can fix itself as long as humans don’t interfere is overlooking individuals and focusing on species and ecosystems. Species may manage in the wild as long as humans don’t interfere, but that is “thanks” to the mass reproduction mechanism that makes many individuals in each breed, of which only one on average will reach adulthood. Under this cruel natural mechanism individuals are sacrificed. The species may get stronger but the individuals live brutal, strugglefull, stressful and violent lives. For the species to flourish all it takes is that a sufficient number of its members reach reproduction age, no matter out of how many born each period, and what kind of lives they endure.

In a way morality and the naturalistic perspective are in contradiction. Morality strives for making the world a better place, while the naturalistic view strives to leave it as it is.

In addition, even the ones who think that nature always knows best are in favor of interventions in many cases. Just to name a few: medications, vaccinations, pre-birth genetic tests, abortions (for every possible reason), glasses, wheel chairs, hearing aids, sun screens, sun glasses and etc.
Arguing that it is morally acceptable to interfere with nature only when it comes to humans is speciesist. Surly all the other species would be happy to receive the various benefits of human medicine and technological aids.
Since the treatment of nonhuman interests in a similar situation must be the same as it is in the case of humans, interventions in nature for nonhumans must be morally obliged just as they are when it comes to humans. Either we can argue that any intervention in favor of any species is immoral, or that any intervention is moral. Otherwise it is speciesism.

Arguments against intervention in nature are absurd when coming from activists, which their main activity is promoting a mass scale intervention in nature as a moral solution. They can justly argue that it is morally justified given the cruel alternative, but they can’t argue that intervention in nature is just morally wrong in principle, while promoting the symbol of intervention in nature – agriculture.
So, activists approve many interventions in nature, and therefore they can’t principally argue against it.

Moreover, it is very hard to define what is a natural phenomenon in this world. If a crow attacks a nightingale in an activists’ garden we assume they will not stand by.
If these activists would see a wild boar attacking “their” dog we are sure they would interfere for the sake of the dog. Probably so would most if during a trek they encounter a wolf attacking a rabbit. They would do it because they see sentient beings in need and they feel they can help them. That’s all it takes. Someone who suffers and someone who can help. In our world there are trillions of someones who suffer, and only a few who are willing to help. That’s why the few who do, must act in order to help them all, and make sure that no one else would be in need in the future.

Autonomy

Obviously Balluch is aware that there is a lot of suffering in nature, so in order to protect his idealized view of it, and the supposed autonomy of animals living in the wild to prefer it, he keeps making claims against civilization, as if intervening in nature necessarily means human civilization, or that if human civilization is terrible then nature is good.

Balluch specifies all kinds of harms involved with human civilization, from killing mice while producing wheat, to building houses and roads, using electricity, plastic bags, or consuming anything practically, as well as all kinds of harms caused to humans by civilization such as depression, loneliness, alcoholism, cigarettes, illnesses, loss of purpose and etc. We couldn’t agree more and wrote about it in several places (1,2,3). However, the fact that living in civilization is horrible, and is bad for humans, or even if it is indeed worse than living in the wild, doesn’t make nature good. Both options can be terrible.

Indeed they both are. We know that for many animal rights activists nature represents perfection, a romantic and virtuous ideal we should aspire to, something that ought to be reverently preserved and never criticized. But the truth is that nature is where trillions of sentient beings suffer from hunger, thirst, diseases, parasites, injuries, extreme weathers, rape, infanticide, violent dominancy fights, the constant fear of being attacked, actually being attacked, and only rarely die from caducity.

Balluch also argues that every human, including vegans, causes more suffering than any wild animal. We are not sure that this claim is absolutely accurate but we agree that humans in general, vegans included, are causing a lot of suffering to many many nonhuman animals, probably more than the vast majority of animals in nature. However, the fact that human civilization is horrible doesn’t mean that nature isn’t. Balluch may make a strong case against civilization but merely by that he doesn’t make a strong case in favor of nature, or against intervention.

Only had the case for intervention been that human civilization is good or better, this line of argumentation would have made sense. But this is not the main argument for intervention in nature. The main argument is that activists should be obligated to preventing suffering no matter to whom, by whom and where it happens. What makes animals worthy of moral consideration is their subjective ability to experience, not the objective conditions of their lives (such as to what species they belong, where they live and their relations with other species) or their relations with humans.

Balluch argues that we should respect animals’ choice of autonomy and freedom instead of protection from the dangers in the wild.
But animals don’t really choose freedom over protection. The absolute vast majority of animals in the wild have no choice. Many social animals for example are forced to live in very hierarchal structures in which they have no freedom but have protection of the group. For Balluch’s claim to make sense he needs to show that most animals choose freedom over group protection. We doubt that he is familiar with even one example of such case. How many fishes or birds choose freedom over protection? If anything, individuals in the wild always waive freedom for the sake of protection, and even that is relevant only if they really have a conscious choice on the matter.
And that is the case among animals living in groups, most animals’ freedom sums up with whether they are going to be devoured by this being or the other. Most of the beings in the world not only don’t reach adulthood so to become autonomous, they don’t even reach a day old in nature.

Where is the autonomy of the trillions of animals who are devoured every day in the wild? They are all individuals, and they are all suffering. They all need help. All the time. Nature is the realm of violence and power, not of autonomy.

Constantly dealing with fear, thirst, hunger, diseases, parasites, and whatnot, is not really to be autonomous. There is no freedom in nature.
Every single second somewhere in the wild world, defenseless and frightened babies are left alone because their mother has to go search for food, a turtle is burned alive as she can’t out run the flames of a fire, a bird’s feet are frozen to a branch since he couldn’t find shelter from the harsh weather, a baboon monkey is in ongoing stress as an higher ranking female takes food out of her mouth and eats it herself, a nestling is thrown off the nest by the other siblings so they can get more food, a coyote is experiencing severe hunger as the rabbit he chased managed to escape instead of being torn apart, a female dolphin is being raped after she couldn’t outswim a male or even a few of them who gang rape her, a badger drags his rotten legs with infectious wounds resulting from constant fights, a zebra is dehydrated but can’t approach the ponds as the lionesses might be on the prowl, a lizard is being slowly devoured by a fungus that spread through the organs, a weak robin chick starves to death because his parents don’t feed him as it makes more sense energetically to invest in his stronger siblings.

Having said all that, and despite that obviously we have no doubt that we are morally obligated to do so, we don’t think that intervention in nature is the solution, and for two main reasons.
The first one is that although what is required is technological developments, the ideas of intervention in nature are still social ones. Meaning, society must be convinced that it should commit itself for the sake of animals in nature. It would take a whole web of institutions, on the political, academic and economic levels, to revolutionize the way humans see practically everything in this world. That is when they haven’t yet even made the much more basic step which is stop observing nature as their resource but as other beings’ home.

Even if you believe that a species which is still so far from eradicating poverty, hunger and war not to mention racism, misogyny  and ageism, a species that hasn’t even ended slavery yet, and even expands it, and of course a species that invented and constantly intensifies factory farms, will someday seriously address the suffering of animals in nature, it will take a lot of time and we all know what time means in this world.

What part of the history of the human race makes anyone believe that this species is capable of making moral decisions?

Currently not only that humans are not even willing to take responsibility over animals’ suffering that they are directly causing, but the number of the victims is constantly increasing.

What makes the expectation, that humans would someday care for animals’ suffering in nature despite that currently they don’t even feel morally obligated to care for the animals which are tortured directly for them, even more ridiculous, is how they deal with climate change – what is supposed to be in their eyes the biggest problem their species ever faced. Gladly, so far humans are far from dealing with the issue in a proportional way. They are willing to worsen the state of the planet even if it hurts their children, so they can maintain their lifestyle. So expecting that they would recruit to help animals in the wild is absurd.

Don’t confuse the last argument with the infamous claim that there are more burning issues at stake. Except for factory farming, we don’t think that there are more burning issues than suffering in nature. It is humans who think that there are many issues (factory farms are not an issue for them at all) which are more important but don’t bother dealing with them either. We have no reason to think that societies that have invested billions to precede other societies in the race to the moon (a project with very low scientific aspects and zero ethical aspects) instead of dealing with malaria for example, would ever seriously deal with helping animals in nature.

How can we seriously expect a society which hasn’t even made the first crucial ethical step, to make the last one? And all the more so when even most of the activists are against making it?

The idea of intervention in nature is all in all, a social one. It is immoral to wait for society to change, definitely not when it is certain that even if these ideas would be implemented, it would be far from helping all the sentient beings on earth. And that brings us to the second fundamental problem.

The second problem is that despite the profound understating of nature’s true nature by the intervention supporters, their conclusion is that we have a moral obligation to thoroughly study ecosystems so we can help some animals in some of them. The suggesters understand perfectly well that in this world suffering is inevitable. Such an understanding must establish a moral obligation to thoroughly study not only specific ecosystems so we can affect them and hopefully reduce some of the suffering of some of the animals, but the whole globe so we can affect it and hopefully end all the suffering of the all the animals.

The intervention supporters argue that we are morally obligated to help in every case we are sure we can help more than harm. It sounds reasonable, but that also means that we must accept the suffering in all the cases which we can’t be sure we can help. Suffering is so inherent in this world that even the ones who truly care about every suffering being, accept much of the suffering as obvious. Accepting suffering mustn’t be reasonable.
Helping the ones that we are sure that we can, is the moral thing to do only after giving up the option of helping all of them.

Intervention supporters are calling to study the issue and lay hopes on that future humans would be more caring and ethical and so would act to promote technological solutions for reducing suffering.
We are calling for present activists to realize that there is no substantial reason to lay hopes on future humans and there is no moral reason to let trillions of sentient beings suffer until the good humans from the future would show up, and therefore we all must look now for technological solutions to stop all the suffering.

The human society is not and will not be nonhumans’ salvation but their oppression. On the other hand, individual humans can be nonhumans’ saviors, but only if they stop laying their hopes on their species and realize that it is up to them only. Up to you.

On the occasion of the tenth World Day for the End of Speciesism held today, we wish to republish our post about this day from 8 years ago, as it is relevant today as it was then.

Marches, rallies, and protests took place yesterday in several locations around the world calling to end speciesism. However, unfortunately, what seemed on the face of it as a more radical version of advocacy (especially in light of the rise of consumer oriented approaches, and the notorious reductionism trend) was found to be not much more than more of the same.
As usual, activists are asking humans to stop consuming animal derived products, and “urge parliaments and the courts to create and enforce a new legal status for animals that stops them from being considered as property and recognising them as sentient beings whose interests must be protected by the law”.
As we broadly explained in the posts Non-Violence Approach and Reclaiming the Power We Should Have Never Given to Humans, the mere position of asking the abusers to stop abusing is in itself speciesist. It’s perpetuating the speciesist reality in which one species makes all the calls for all the other species, especially when the case is of systemically exploiting them. The self-evident frame of thought is that it is humans’ decision how to treat the rest of the species. And when humans leave the conversation about their abuse and choose to keep abusing, as most humans do, that’s what will happen. Merely asking them to stop abusing is letting them continue to torture. Continue reading →

In his article The Problem of Speaking for Animals Jason Wyckoff argues that animal advocates face a special case of “the problem of speaking for others”, mainly because when it comes to nonhuman animals “nearly all humans occupy a position of privilege and so nearly all speakers and their audiences will be situated in “discursively dangerous” positions.”

In the spirit of postcolonial theoretical work, mainly using Edward Said’s Orientalism as a model, Wyckoff refers to human knowledge system – according to which nonhuman animals are regarded as resources and objects of study – as dominionism. In his words: “The norms and conventions of our speech and actions, the structured and unstructured social institutions that emerge from (and are constituted by) these norms and conventions, and the knowledge claims that are legitimated (or even more strongly, made true) by this entire context constitute a system of knowledge about animals that I am calling dominionism“.
Therefore, Wyckoff argues that when speaking about, and even for nonhumans, humans are largely confined to a conceptual framework that is dominionist, anthropocentric and speciesist.
Again in his words: “Orientalism and dominionism are both knowledge systems in which the conceptual framework available for the articulation of knowledge claims—including claims that certain groups are systematically wronged—undercuts the possibility of political representation, since in both cases the framework offers only conceptual resources that reflect and reinforce relations of domination and subordination.”
Speaking in a more practical sense the problem is that, naturally, human social institutions, as well as humans’ views and actions on the individual level, are constructed from the perspective of human beings, and so, predictably serve humans’ interests. Therefore he argues that “within such an institutional structure, there is simply no room for the perspective of animals“.

Being aware that it is, in his words, “difficult if not impossible to see how justice in human-animal relations could be achieved without human advocacy on behalf of animals“, Wyckoff suggests that animal advocacy should challenge the legitimacy of the Dominionism discourse by adopting a new framework and a new lexicon because: “words do things in the world; they, and our utterances of them, have an ideological dimension. One way in which to engage in ideology critique is to make explicit one’s refusal of the standard categories. Two sentences, one containing the word flesh and the other containing the word meat instead, may, under strict interpretations, say more or less the same thing, but utterances of them will have different impacts nonetheless. A critical discourse should involve a conscious effort to disrupt the dominant social schemas that comprise the resource paradigm“.
Wyckoff suggests that expressions such as “meat is not food” or “animals are not livestock” – “make vivid both the contingency and the normativity of the relevant classifications“, meaning, he thinks that it may cause the listener to confront the usual assumptions about humans’ position relative to animals.
In addition to adopting a new lexicon he recommends one particularly clear principle:
“animal advocates should not engage with institutional animal exploiters on the latter’s terms. No partnerships should be made with them, no agreements with them sought. We should, for example, refuse participation in campaigns to employ “humane slaughter” methods and withhold praise for measures—such as “enhanced cages” for hens—that may produce marginal welfare gains while leaving intact the resource paradigm“.

Although we agree that animal advocates should use the word “flesh” instead of “meat”, and say that “meat is not food” and that “animals are not livestock”, and we definitely agree that animal advocates should not engage with institutional animal exploiters on the latter’s terms, we highly disagree that these suggestions, or any other for that matter, can ever solve the profound problem of speaking for others, or can seriously challenge the dominionist, anthropocentric and speciesist conceptual framework.

That is the case since the very situation of humans representing animals’ interests, and of humans judging whether actions done to nonhumans are in accordance with the norms and laws humans and humans alone have shaped, is in itself utterly dominionist, anthropocentric and speciesist, and since this utterly dominionist, anthropocentric and speciesist situation, is inevitable.
Humans and humans alone have the power to make rules and to apply them on everyone else, so dominionism, anthropocentricism and speciesism are inherent to an interspecies system where only one species makes and enforces all the rules.

Even if one day humans would be finally willing to consider nonhuman animals interests equally, at any given moment it would be humans who would make the decision whether to make a decision based on animals’ interests, or to distort if not ignore their interests, and it will always be according to human interpretation of other animals’ needs and desires.
And even if it was possible for humans to read nonhumans very well, eventually everything is depended on humans’ willingness to implement their interpretations of animals’ needs and desires. It is always humans’ decision. They can choose to respect animals’ needs and desires or not. Humans can choose to force their own interests on others or to try and be considerate of others’ interests as well. And even then it will always be based on humans’ subjective interpretation of what others prefer, and never on the objective preferences of others.

In his article The Problem of Speaking for Animals Jason Wyckoff argues that animal advocates face a special case of “the problem of speaking for others”, mainly because when it comes to nonhuman animals “nearly all humans occupy a position of privilege and so nearly all speakers and their audiences will be situated in “discursively dangerous” positions.”

In the spirit of postcolonial theoretical work, mainly using Edward Said’s Orientalism as a model, Wyckoff refers to human knowledge system – according to which nonhuman animals are regarded as resources and objects of study – as dominionism. In his words: “The norms and conventions of our speech and actions, the structured and unstructured social institutions that emerge from (and are constituted by) these norms and conventions, and the knowledge claims that are legitimated (or even more strongly, made true) by this entire context constitute a system of knowledge about animals that I am calling dominionism“.
Therefore, Wyckoff argues that when speaking about, and even for nonhumans, humans are largely confined to a conceptual framework that is dominionist, anthropocentric and speciesist.
Again in his words: “Orientalism and dominionism are both knowledge systems in which the conceptual framework available for the articulation of knowledge claims—including claims that certain groups are systematically wronged—undercuts the possibility of political representation, since in both cases the framework offers only conceptual resources that reflect and reinforce relations of domination and subordination.”
Speaking in a more practical sense the problem is that, naturally, human social institutions, as well as humans’ views and actions on the individual level, are constructed from the perspective of human beings, and so, predictably serve humans’ interests. Therefore he argues that “within such an institutional structure, there is simply no room for the perspective of animals“.

Being aware that it is, in his words, “difficult if not impossible to see how justice in human-animal relations could be achieved without human advocacy on behalf of animals“, Wyckoff suggests that animal advocacy should challenge the legitimacy of the Dominionism discourse by adopting a new framework and a new lexicon because: “words do things in the world; they, and our utterances of them, have an ideological dimension. One way in which to engage in ideology critique is to make explicit one’s refusal of the standard categories. Two sentences, one containing the word flesh and the other containing the word meat instead, may, under strict interpretations, say more or less the same thing, but utterances of them will have different impacts nonetheless. A critical discourse should involve a conscious effort to disrupt the dominant social schemas that comprise the resource paradigm“.
Wyckoff suggests that expressions such as “meat is not food” or “animals are not livestock” – “make vivid both the contingency and the normativity of the relevant classifications“, meaning, he thinks that it may cause the listener to confront the usual assumptions about humans’ position relative to animals.
In addition to adopting a new lexicon he recommends one particularly clear principle:
“animal advocates should not engage with institutional animal exploiters on the latter’s terms. No partnerships should be made with them, no agreements with them sought. We should, for example, refuse participation in campaigns to employ “humane slaughter” methods and withhold praise for measures—such as “enhanced cages” for hens—that may produce marginal welfare gains while leaving intact the resource paradigm“.

Although we agree that animal advocates should use the word “flesh” instead of “meat”, and say that “meat is not food” and that “animals are not livestock”, and we definitely agree that animal advocates should not engage with institutional animal exploiters on the latter’s terms, we highly disagree that these suggestions, or any other for that matter, can ever solve the profound problem of speaking for others, or can seriously challenge the dominionist, anthropocentric and speciesist conceptual framework.

That is the case since the very situation of humans representing animals’ interests, and of humans judging whether actions done to nonhumans are in accordance with the norms and laws humans and humans alone have shaped, is in itself utterly dominionist, anthropocentric and speciesist, and since this utterly dominionist, anthropocentric and speciesist situation, is inevitable.
Humans and humans alone have the power to make rules and to apply them on everyone else, so dominionism, anthropocentricism and speciesism are inherent to an interspecies system where only one species makes and enforces all the rules.

Even if one day humans would be finally willing to consider nonhuman animals interests equally, at any given moment it would be humans who would make the decision whether to make a decision based on animals’ interests, or to distort if not ignore their interests, and it will always be according to human interpretation of other animals’ needs and desires.
And even if it was possible for humans to read nonhumans very well, eventually everything is depended on humans’ willingness to implement their interpretations of animals’ needs and desires. It is always humans’ decision. They can choose to respect animals’ needs and desires or not. Humans can choose to force their own interests on others or to try and be considerate of others’ interests as well. And even then it will always be based on humans’ subjective interpretation of what others prefer, and never on the objective preferences of others.

Given that conflict of interests will always exist, humans’ interpretation will always be biased. If we’ll take for example humans most favorite animal – dogs, they prefer never to be alone, be outside and play as much as possible, and get their most favorite food all the time. But few dogs really live like that. And many live horrible lives. And if it doesn’t happen with humans’ most favorite animal, why would, and how could, it ever happen with fishes and chickens or frogs and raccoons?

Even if humans weren’t so biased when it comes to others’ needs, let alone when these needs must be fulfilled by humans themselves, their ability to interpret animals’ needs is anyway highly questionable. When it comes to other animals it is highly unlikely that humans would be able to really understand them and act accordingly even if they really wanted to.
And it is highly unlikely that humans would ever really want to.

Even if you truly believe that humans would someday truly consider taking the interests of nonhumans seriously, it is wrong to entrust animals’ fates to humans’ hands, and it is wrong to experiment with interpretations of their interests at their expense.
But way before that, at no moment in history had humans proven that they could ever consider taking the interests of nonhumans seriously. So far, at every moment in history they have proven the opposite.

It is not only that humans are cruel masters that makes this world so dominionist, anthropocentric and speciesist, it is the very fact that they are the masters and always will be. And a history of thousands of years is more than enough to realize that this is not merely a theoretical built-in injustice, but a built-in power structure that practically allows humans to torment trillions of sentient beings for thousands of years, with no sign of it ever ending.

Dominionism, anthropocentricism and speciesism are impossible to eradicate because they are everywhere and in everything. Every aspect of humans’ lives is bound with dominionism, anthropocentricism and speciesism. Not just factory farming but any type of farming is a case of dominionism, anthropocentricism and speciesism. The levels of discrimination and abuse obviously largely differ, but excluding nonhumans from a particular area, clearing the native vegetation and planting plants that suit humans’ desires and not necessarily the needs of the native residents of the region, fencing the area, constantly poisoning nonhumans in it, changing the composition of the soil, dividing the nearby lands with roads to the farms, plundering water from other habitats, making noise with heavy machinery, crushing nonhumans with heavy machinery, polluting the area with humans’ waste of many kinds and etc. are all unquestionably forms of dominionism, anthropocentricism and speciesism.

So challenging human dominionism, anthropocentricism and speciesism must not only go way beyond animal advocates’ lexicon but way beyond animal advocates’ holy grail – veganism. Human dominionism, anthropocentricism and speciesism don’t end with turning each human vegan. And it shouldn’t even begin there, but with turning each one back to living like any other ape in the forests and the savannahs. Obviously that is not the world we wish and advocate for, but at least it would be more coherent and consistent with challenging human dominionism, anthropocentricism and speciesism (as it would reverse many elements of the human occupation of this planet).
Dominionism, anthropocentricism and speciesism are inherent to every human activity. Even if you insist that a vegan world may be possible one day, you can’t seriously think that humans would be convinced to voluntarily go back to living like any other species, limited to a relatively bounded geographical area, living off the surrounding, and with a population that would include several million members only. That would be much closer to seriously challenge dominionism, anthropocentricism and speciesism, but it is extremely far from what is being demanded of humans, or even thought of, even by the more radical animal advocates.

Animal advocates focusing on factory farms, justly thinking that they are the greatest manifestation of dominionism, anthropocentricism and speciesism, are postponing the inevitable. At some point they are bound to realize that domination, discrimination and suffering is everywhere and in everything. At some point they are bound to realize that it is impossible to end dominionism, anthropocentricism and speciesism by social means.
This world can never cease to be dominionist, anthropocentrist and speciesist, yet dominionism, anthropocentricism and speciesism should nevertheless somehow be ceased. Dominionism, anthropocentricism and speciesism are not less of an arbitrary discrimination, not less unjust, not less violent and not less cruel because they are even theoretically unabolishable. The only way to end dominionism, anthropocentricism and speciesism is to end the species. And the only ones who will ever consider doing it are you.

Peter Singer, along with co-author Yip Fai Tse, argue in an article called AI Ethics: The Case For Including Animals, that considering many Artificial Intelligence systems’ significant impacts on nonhuman animals, with the total number of animals affected annually likely to reach tens or even hundreds of billions, AI ethics needs to broaden its scope to deal with the ethical implications of this very large-scale impact on sentient beings.

Singer and Tse divide AI systems’ impact on animals to three different types. The first one is AI systems that are designed to interact with animals such as ones that are already being used in factory farms, or drones that target and murder animals as part of “population control”.
The second one is AI systems that unintentionally interact with animals such as self-driving cars, systems that currently are not designed to protect animals on the road (perhaps except dogs, cats, and animals large enough for a collision to cause serious damage to the car and its occupants).
The third one is AI systems that impact animals indirectly without interaction such as video recommendation algorithms that may ban videos showing cruelty to animals. This they argue, may lead to a reduced demand for such videos, and so change the viewers’ behavior towards nonhuman animals.

Although there is some potential for suffering reduction due to AI use, for example by using AI systems to screen chemicals for toxicity instead of humans exploiting nonhumans in painful experiments, AI systems that are being commonly used in factory farms are most likely to reduce the production costs of factory farming, and therefore increase animal consumption and by that increase suffering.

The case of self-driving cars is more complex. Although regardless of whether driven by a human or an AI, as long as cars drive along roads, animals will get hurt, many animals and many of them very severely. Singer and Tse write that: “Not all the animals struck or run over by a car die immediately. Some of them might have only their lower bodies crushed, some others will have internal injuries and may even manage to drag themselves to the side of the road, or into nearby bushes, where they may suffer from their injuries over hours or even days before dying or, if very lucky, surviving. A study headed by Fernanda Delborgo Abra estimated that in São Paulo State (Brazil) alone, 39,605 “medium” and “large-sized” mammals were killed on roads by vehicles per year. This study ignores “small mammals,” birds and other animals. Another study by Loss et al. estimated that roughly 89–340 million birds were killed in the US by vehicles on roads each year.”

They think that self-driving cars may be a great opportunity to end the ethical problem of “road kills”. However, they realize that for that to happen AI systems “needs to be able to identify that it has caused harm, record the data related to the harm, and report it to stakeholders. This is easier said than done. To make an AI system have this ability by design, it seems that the developers of the system have to be able to forecast a certain range of possible harms that the system can cause, and constantly review uncategorized data gathered by the system (e.g. video footage, sounds, signs of harm such as DNA, blood stain, body parts of animals, etc.) to check if there are types of harms that were not identified before. This could involve the participation of people who are experts on animal welfare issues, such as ecologists, conservation biologists, veterinarians, ethologists, animal cognition scientists, and animal activists.”

So they lay their hopes and are calling for AI systems to be designed in a way that consider their impact on nonhuman animals. But they realize that this is not going to be easy:
“The most obvious human stakeholders are the developers (including the staff, teams, companies). But they might not have enough incentive to identify and reduce, and where possible avoid, all harms caused to animals by their AI systems. Hence to make the framework more credible and more ethical from a practical standpoint, we may need to report to further stakeholders, such as government regulators (especially those concerning animal welfare), animal protection organizations, scientists in the fields we mentioned in the last paragraph, the AI product’s owners, and, in the case of companion animals, the owners of the animals, and in the case of farmed animals, both the producers of the animals and the consumers of the animal products.”

And therefore express their worry regarding their hope that “if we establish a norm that it is okay for self-driving cars to simply drive like humans with regard to hitting animals, while potentially having capabilities to better protect animals, the opportunity for an early end to the ethical problem of “road kills” may be missed. Once this norm becomes the status quo, it might be much harder to change than it would be to develop a new norm before AI systems are the dominant way of directing cars.”

And regarding factory farms they say that: “For facilities hidden from public view, such as factory farms, unannounced audits by officials from regulatory bodies should be carried out. Unless the reporting mechanism extends beyond the developers of the AI, we are not optimistic that the moral responsibility for AI systems’ harm to animals will be sheeted home to those who are in a position to alter the systems to reduce this harm.”

And they go even further arguing that:
“Even if accountability is extended in the manner just described, it will likely be difficult to ensure that all the relevant harms, including some indirect ones, are given sufficient weight. Consider the design, manufacture, and sale of AI systems for use in factory-style production of animals. Those making these AI systems could argue that AI will not only make food cheaper and safer for humans but will also bring benefits to the animals themselves. AI may provide early identification of diseases and injuries suffered by the animals, and thereby reduce animal sufferings, and they could reduce or eliminate the sadistic brutality to animals occasionally shown by factory farm workers. Although this is possible, given that industrial animal production is driven by profitability in a competitive marketplace, rather than by consideration of animal welfare, we consider it more likely that if AI can more closely monitor the health of animals, this will also enable producers to respond by crowding even more animals into confined spaces, thus making their enterprises more profitable, even if the increased crowding results in great stress and higher mortality for the animals.

The larger problem is that if AI reduces the costs of factory farming, it thereby strengthens an industry that is morally objectionable. This might help factory farming to remain viable longer, or even to grow further, and therefore to give rise, in the future, to huge numbers of animals being created to lead miserable lives. Companies that contribute to making the factory farming industry more resilient and better able to resist replacement by less cruel and more sustainable alternatives are acting unethically. They are prolonging the existence of a moral catastrophe on a vast global scale.”

Another concern they are raising is that algorithms, including those used in AI systems, “contain, and therefore propagate human biases such as racism, sexism, and ageism. These biases were learned from human generated data. Human generated data also contain biases based on species membership, and these speciesist biases will, through AI systems, have consequences (mostly negative, we believe) on huge numbers of animals.

For example, data about humans’ diet carry significant speciesist biases. As the consumption of meat is widely accepted and a common theme of human conversations, a lot of speciesist language data can be learned by AI systems and then propagated through their use. For example, typing the words “chicken” or “shrimp”, leads Google, Youtube, and Facebook to give search prompts and search results like “chicken/shrimp recipe”, “chicken/shrimp soup”, “chicken curry”, and “shrimp paste”, indicating that the systems reflect the mainstream human attitude that it is acceptable to regard these animals as food for humans.”

They lay their hopes on that “By working with experts in animal behavior and animal cognition, AI developers could learn to associate the sounds, facial expressions, and body movements of animals with the feelings the animals are experiencing, much as humans who live with companion animals are able to do.”
But why would something that humans had never bothered doing suddenly happen with the AI systems they are developing?

And indeed they are not very optimistic about AI systems being developed to deal with some crucial moral questions that will guide them to address and consider nonhuman animals as well: “leaving these questions to be decided by human designers in a commercially driven field makes it very likely that existing mainstream human values on the treatment of animals will be implemented. If the resulting AI system does not entirely ignore the interests of animals, it is likely to discount those interests in comparison to similar human interests.
If the system is trained to do what humans currently approve of, and to avoid what humans currently disapprove of, then since mainstream human values are speciesist, so the AI system will learn to be speciesist, even if we do not explicitly program a speciesist ethic into it.”

As if humans are not a big enough trouble as it is, AI may cause an even greater problem for nonhumans. AI is a very powerful tool placed in the hand of a very powerful species which is also extremely cruel. And that’s another reason to hurry up and get rid of humanity as soon as possible and before they further develop more means of causing nonhumans more suffering.

Like many human holidays and celebrations, Easter is another day humans have turned into an exploitation event.
And in this particular holiday the exploitation is quite diverse.

Being a significant symbol of the holiday, many humans purchase rabbits for their children for Easter, which is obviously appalling conceptually and practically.
The Easter Bunny origin is in pre-Christian fertility lore. Rabbits symbolize fertility and new life during the spring season in human culture. But these are the actual lives of rabbits in human culture:

Even more humans celebrate Easter by consuming pigs’ thighs.

And many children spend the holiday playing with eggs, despite that the egg industry is the farthest thing from a child’s play, and is actually hell on earth.

And not only during Easter, but all year round and all over the world, millions of humans imprison millions of hens, to use their eggs for their idiotic amusement.

It is expected that nearly 1.5 billion chicken wings will be consumed during the Super Bowl weekend.
Let’s take a closer look at the miserable life of each of these 750 million victims.

The Suffering Begins At Birth

None of these hundreds of millions of chicks will ever experience maternal care. Under natural conditions the mother hen is fiercely protective of her chicks, sheltering them under her wings for their first months of life. In the chickens flesh industry, a few hours-old chicks are thrown into prisons. Motherless from day one, the chicks must fend for themselves in huge windowless sheds with up to 100,000 other birds. Humans have broken their ties with their own mothers and their natural environment.

Under natural conditions, chickens live in complex social structure and have complex communication. They spend about 50% of their time foraging for food and have strong sense of personal space. But in the sheds, the chicks are denied any normal social structure, adequate resting periods, the opportunity to dust bath, the ability to forage, fresh air, sunshine, natural diet and space.

As the birds grow, the space for each individual decreases. At some point each bird has only 20x20cm of floor so they must push their way through a solid mass of other chickens to reach food and water points. Many are left starved.

Violent Body Invasion

Humans severely cripple billions of sentient beings every year for the sake of maximum flesh in minimum time. Today’s meat chickens have been genetically altered to grow three times faster and three times larger than their ancestors. Pushed beyond their biological limits hundreds of millions don’t even reach 6 weeks of age which is when the whole flock is slaughtered.

Naturally chicks reach maturity at 18 weeks of age, when they weigh less than 1kg (2.2lb). A human child reaches maturity at 18 years of age weighing about 60kg. By 1976, exploited chickens reached 1kg just after 6 weeks rather than 18. So picture, for comparison, not an eighteen-year-old but a six-year-old child weighing about 60kg.
Today, because of the intensive selective breeding by the chickens industry in the past 25 years, the six-week-old chicken weighs up to 2.6kg.

Picture a six-year-old child weighting 156kg. Terrifying!
Now try to imagine this child walk. Hideous and cruel for a child, but a reality for a six weeks old chick.

Tibial Dyschondroplasia (TD)

Forced to grow three times faster than normal chickens through dietary, lighting and mainly genetic manipulations, the chicks suffer from painful skeletal and metabolic diseases. One of the harshest is Tibial Dyschondroplasia (TD), in which the young leg bones of the growing birds develop crippling fissures and fractures.
The combination of forced rapid growth and excessive weight causes chronic, painful lameness and abnormal posture. The bird’s body grows too fast for the bone plates to accommodate. Consequently, the birds develop angular bone deformities and Spondylolisthesis (“kinky back”), in which the vertebra snaps and puts pressure on the spinal cord, causing paralysis. The birds can only move by using their wings for balance.

Several decades ago, 1.2% of chickens suffered from Tibial Dyschondroplasia. Today, 50% of the chickens suffer from this human-created disease.

In addition to TD, studies have shown that 90% of birds have a detectable abnormality in their gait. Other pathological leg conditions which have been found in chickens are: Rotated Tibia, Rickets, Angular Bone Deformity and Chondrodystrophy (“slipped tendons”).

Sick Lives

Though they live only a few weeks, the chicks suffer old-age illnesses such as heart attacks, as their hearts and lungs are unable to keep up with the fast growth of their body muscles.

The strain on their cardiovascular system is enormous, causing “congestive heart failure” which causes ascites ­- pooling of blood fluids in the abdomen.
The high oxygen demand of rapid growth in the modern chicken combined with restricted space for blood, which flows through the capillaries of the lung, results in an internal accumulation of yellow or blood-stained fluid in the abdomen.
Cardiac arrhythmias have been found in chickens as young as 7 days of age!

The faster a bird grows the higher the incidence of leg problems. The birds spend 40% less time walking because of legs weakness and chronic pain.
Humans severely disable billions every year to squeeze a few more cents out of the soar body of each “little money unit”.

The unnatural growth rate of chickens combined with the lack of space to move or exercise, force the birds to rest on the wet, dirty, ammonia-ridden litter. This leads to painful breast blisters and hock burns. Foot and breast lesions and ulcerations are also frequent.

The health problems of the chickens are so severe that if they were allowed to live on, instead of being slaughtered at 6 weeks, most would die before reaching the age of puberty, at 18 weeks.

Chronic Hunger

The chicken industry has virtually bred animals which are simply not viable. They are unable to reach adulthood because of the related problems of crippling leg and heart diseases.
Generally, it doesn’t concern the industry, because the vast majority of the birds will be slaughtered before reaching adulthood. But the industry is in a bind, some of the birds must reach adulthood to be the breeder flocks, those that are to produce the future generations. These birds must not only survive, but also remain sufficiently healthy to breed.

If these chickens were fed normally, most would die before puberty and the survivors would suffer from reduced fertility. To avoid this, the industry has to find a way of slowing down the fast growth rates of the breeders (growth rates which have been imposed on the breeders to ensure that their offspring put on weight as quickly as possible). The industry’s “solution” is to feed breeders severely restricted rations – in some cases, just 25% – 50% of what they would eat if given free access to food. Chickens in the breeding flock are chronically hungry, frustrated and stressed. The birds are highly motivated to eat all the time and display abnormal forms of oral behaviour such as stereotyped pecking at non-food objects and excessive preening. They are literally going mad of hunger.

And despite the severely restricted rations, male breeders still experience chronic orthopaedic problems, which cause chronic pain.

Dimmed Lives

The effort to make more and more money over the chicks broken and deformed body, leads to various manipulations. One example regards the lighting. Artificial lighting in the chicken sheds is carefully controlled. Initially, lighting is bright to accustom the chicks to the location of food and water and encourage maximum eating and rapid growth. This lighting is then dimmed (to a level of 2-5 lux) in order to discourage aggression and fighting between chickens. The chickens endure a gloomy lighting all day long.

Filthy Lives

Farmers usually rear five or six batches of chickens a year. Two or three weeks are needed between batches to allow the sheds to be fumigated and cleared of the litter. The litter is not changed or cleaned, during the chickens’ time in the shed, and so becomes increasingly wet and greasy and covered with the bird’s faeces. It is estimated that 80% of the litter by weight consists of faeces by the time of slaughter. Stress and disease are inevitable under these conditions. Strong ammonia fumes can lead to Keratocon-Junctivitis, a painful eye condition leading to blindness. Heart attacks, chronic respiratory disease, kidney syndrome, a wide range of bacterial and viral infections lead to high mortality amongst flocks.

The Brutal End

Their last day is probably the most traumatic one. The chickens are violently grabbed while asleep, in the middle of the night, by humans who are yelling at them while pitching and stuffing them into the crates, in which they will be transported to the next stage of human atrocity – the slaughterhouse.

Teams of catchers “depopulate” the sheds as quickly as possible, carrying four or more birds upside down in each hand. The chickens are held by just one leg. Their well-being is of little importance as the catchers “must” yield 400-500 chickens per hour. This brutal process is referred to by the industry as “harvesting”.

As a result of the brutal yanking of chickens from their prisons to the transportation trucks, their hips are often dislocated, causing immense pain.

During the journey the birds experience sudden jolting movements, vibration, loud noises, deprivation of food and water and overcrowding. The birds also suffer extreme cold or heat and high levels of humidity especially due to trucks’ bad ventilation. All contribute to the already inconceivable stress and horror.

Long delays can occur between arrival at the slaughterhouse and unloading. This intensifies the stress imposed by the transport. These delays occur when birds arrive too late to the slaughterhouse. They are then left in the containers on the lorry to be slaughtered on the next day. In many cases these delays are accompanied by poor weather conditions, such as extreme heat or cold.

Once they arrive to the murder factory, the chickens that survived so far are yanked from the crates and shackled onto a conveyor belt by their feet, while still alive.

In cases that the bird’s legs are too big for the shackles, the workers break them to fit them in.

The conveyor carries them into the slaying room where their heads pass through an electrified water bath intended to stun them. As they pass along further, an automatic knife cuts their throat, and then they proceed into a scalding tank to loosen their feathers before plucking. Unfortunately some birds miss the electrified water bath and are therefore still fully conscious when they reach the automatic knife. Some birds may also miss the knife and are then lowered into the 50-degrees scalding tank while still alive. Some regain consciousness inside the scalding tank, which means that they will be conscious when the plucking knives tear their bodies.

What emphasizes speciesism and humans’ alienation more than anything, is the farming regulation – “40 kilogram per meter”.
One expression that unfortunately describes the relationship between human and nonhuman animals, in the most accurate way.

This relationship is devastating to all nonhuman animals. To more than 150 billion animals per year.
This relationship has got to end.

Considering how severe the effect of food production, any type of food, is in terms of suffering, food waste, must be given much more attention than this important issue currently receives. And a new study aiming to separate animal flesh waste from the rest of food waste, reveals that food waste is even more important than realized.

Few people know that about a third of the produced food around the world is going to waste. Some during the production phase, some during transport, some while being stored in retailers, and some in households. And until now almost no one knew how many animals are being tortured for their entire lives until they are murdered so they can be consumed by humans, without ever being consumed by a human, since somewhere along the way their flesh has been thrown away. A new study conducted at Leiden University in the Netherlands, that tried to figure out how many individual animals end up being thrown away after being exploited all their lives, concludes that the number is about 18 billion animals of the 75 billion pigs, chickens, turkeys, cows, goats, and sheeps raised for food around the world. The study counted animals who were never consumed, for any reason and at any point in the supply chain, that is animals who died on the farm due to the horrendous living conditions, on the transportation truck on the way to be murdered, during one of the various processing stages after they have already been murdered, or in warehouses, grocery stores, restaurants and households.

The importance and pioneering of this study is the isolation of animal based food waste from the rest of the food waste, as well as figuring out which stages, which countries and which exploitation industries are responsible for most of the “waste” of animals.
Unsurprisingly, due to the fact that chickens in the flesh industry are of breeds humans have manipulated to grow incredibly large, incredibly fast, which not only means chronic pain, but often also leads to leg deformities and other health issues that cause death at a very early age (like heart attacks and starvation or dehydration due to the inability to walk and get food and water), the chickens flesh industry is responsible for the vast majority of animals being tortured and murdered for humans consumption without any human consuming them. It is estimated that about 16.8 billion chickens per year endure extreme suffering and then being thrown away as waste. The second most “wasted” animal is turkeys, then pigs, sheeps, goats, and cows.

Besides the obvious practical aspect there is also an important symbolic aspect to these dire figures and that is how cheap nonhuman animals’ lives are to humans if one in every four nonhuman animal individual is not even consumed by humans.
Humanity is so careless about nonhuman animals, that not only are efforts to reduce animal “waste” not conducted, so far there hasn’t even been an effort to figure out how many individual animals are being “wasted” every year.

Which brings us to another extremely depressing aspect of this study, which is its suggestions as to how to reduce animal “waste”. According to the study it is possible to spare billions of animals from enduring the most extreme suffering without even reducing the amount of animal flesh that humans consume. It is argued that these horrible figures could be reduced by 7.9 billion individual animals if the different world regions would achieve the best currently observed efficiencies across the global Food Supply Chain, and by 4.2 if the ‘United Nations: Sustainable Development Goal 12.3’ was implemented to a minimal extent, or 8.8 billion if implemented to a full extent.
Grocery stores, restaurants, and food manufacturers can do a lot to reduce food waste if they’ll pay more attention to the subject. Besides obvious measures such as hygiene and refrigeration, or donating more unsold food, standardizing expiration labels on foods bought at the grocery store for example can make a big difference in waste by consumers who some confuse the label “best if used by” with “expires on”.

In addition, humanity is supposed to have another incentive to reduce food waste in general, and animal based food “waste” in particular, and that is its significant impact on the planet they see as their own. All animal products use more land, water and emit more GHGs than almost all plant foods. Experts from institutions such as the UN and the University of Oxford have stated that Western countries need to dramatically reduce meat in their diets in order to combat these issues. A study published earlier this year found that plant-based diets resulted in 75% less emissions, water pollution, and land use. In other words, humans should care about food waste, and animal food waste in particular, considering that animal based food has a much stronger environmental impact than plant based food, not only because of the suffering they are causing to nonhuman animals but because by that they are also harming other humans, including their own future generations. But humans are so myopic and self-involved that even the future of the planet they view as their property, is not really in their interests.

And finally, as if the fact that about 18 billion animals are tortured and murdered every year for human consumption without even being consumed by any humans is not shocking and depressing enough, the study did not include the dairy industry, the egg industry with its inherent “waste” of billions of male chicks, or the number of fishes who are tortured and murdered without being consumed.
The researchers have also pointed out that they couldn’t find reliable data regarding the geese, ducks, pigeons and camels industries, so individuals from these industries are also not counted. Obviously, if they were, the figures would have been even more extremely depressing.
But even without counting everyone who needs to be counted, the fact that every year, the number of individual sentient beings that humanity produces, tortures and murders and are not even consumed by them is more than double the number of humans themselves, is sufficient to conclude that it is a case of obvious speciesism to not at least consider the option of getting rid of humans for good.

Despite the diplomatic hype, COP28 is not an historic success and is not at all a breakthrough. As expected, the 28^th climate convention, like all previous ones, has ended without a final paper stating the obvious which is the end of fossil fuels (finally mentioning fossil fuels in a final agreement for the first time after 27 climate conventions is not a success). And similar to previous climate conventions it has been a failure in all other aspects as well. Some exclude the COP21 held in Paris and regard it as successful, however as we elaborated in our critical review of that convention, COP21 was in fact also another failure of humanity to seriously address what it considers to be its greatest challenge. In another post we tried to explain why it is so. Therefore regarding COP28 we want to focus on a seemingly positive change.

Clearly, animal food industries should have been in focus during climate conventions decades ago considering that one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to the food industry with flesh and dairy accounting for most of it (as well as for many other environmental harms), and considering that dairy production alone emits more greenhouse gases than global aviation, and considering that in the latest IPCC’s Special Report on Climate Change and Land, scientists wrote that animal flesh and dairy do more damage to the environment than any other food, or in their words: “meat was consistently identified as the single food with the greatest impact on the environment”; yet it didn’t happen.
It took 27 climate conventions, and decades of knowing and deliberately ignoring, but on the face of it, it seems that finally there is a formal recognition of the animal food industry’s contribution to climate change.

However, after reading The Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, And Climate Action that was signed during COP28 and doesn’t mention any specific action nor animal based agriculture’s emissions, not to mention, recommending plant-based diets; and after considering the development and use of a tool such as Global Warming Potential Star (GWP*) – a new method of measuring methane emissions that will practically allow animal based agriculture to keep the exploitation business as usual even if someday there will be a general requirement of emission reduction from the agriculture sector; and considering the fact that this convention had the highest ever number of lobbyists in general as well as specifically of animal exploitation industries (there were four times the number of industry-affiliated lobbyists compared with last year’s summit and that number may be even much higher as it relies on delegates openly disclosing their connections to fossil fuel and their interests to the organizers), then clearly, exactly like the words ‘phase out of fossil fuels’ have never been agreed on in any final agreement of any climate convention, the words ‘phase out of animal agriculture’ will never be agreed upon. Exactly like no previous convention has reached an agreement on the obvious needed decision regarding fossil fuels, same would go for animal agriculture.

That is despite that at least technically speaking, it’s supposed to be much easier to phase out the animal based food industry as all it takes is to stop consuming animal based products and maintaining a plant based diet, than to change the entire energy industry. But actually it is much harder because while humans don’t care about the energy source that is charging their phones, they care a lot about the food they are eating. That is of course care in the sense of wanting it to be familiar and tasty, not care in the sense of caring about the dire effects their choices have on others. So it’s a much tougher change and way more demanding of humans. Humans are not emotionally attached to their energy source, but they are deeply attached to their favorite food. Unfortunately they are not at all emotionally attached to the ones whom their food is made of.

Maybe agriculture will play a part in climate conventions at last. But unfortunately it is highly unlikely to last. If decades of acting on the issue including 28 conventions have yet to produce an agreement about the obvious thing to do in terms of the energy industry, there is no chance it will ever happen regarding the food industry.

Terrible news affecting billions of animals was received last week.
Two years after EU policymakers declared the most ambitious plan ever by any government to phase out some of the cruelest practices in factory farming, this legislation, along with a suite of other reforms that would reduce the suffering of potentially billions of farmed animals, have been dropped.

A leak from earlier this year outlined the EU Commission’s plans for the world’s most comprehensive farm animal welfare reforms to date. In addition to legislation to phase out cages for farmed animals across the EU’s 27 member states, the Commission planned to put a ban on the routine mutilation of hundreds of millions of animals every year such as piglet castration, to stop some of the currently common and legal murder methods of about a billion farmed fishes, shortening the transport of live animals, to stop the practice of slaughtering day-old chicks, to stop the sale and production of fur, to reduce the crowdedness in the chicken industry, and stopping chickens from growing at such rates that essentially they can’t stand up because their legs can’t support their own weight.

Such a reform in EU would have possibly induced and bolstered momentum for similar changes in other countries as well. That is especially so considering that both animal advocates and farmers have been pushing for the new standards to also apply to food imported from outside the EU, which could reduce the suffering of hundreds of billions of animals all over the world.

Regardless of your personal views on welfare reforms, considering our general views and what we think animal activists should do with their precious time, the crucial point we want to make here is more about the reasons such legislation has failed, and about the lesson we think should be learned from the fact that a unique process has initiated this act and yet it failed.

Commission officials admitted that the legislation had been dropped due to pressure from the powerful European meat lobby, and concerns over rising food costs due to inflation, extreme weather, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Again it is made so clear how a handful of powerful key players in the human political game can so tremendously affect the lives of billions of sentient nonhuman animals.
As always, the fate of billions of sentient beings is determined by economic and political interests, not ethics.

And this story also has a depressing aspect from supposedly democratic sense.
This legislation proposal came about as a result of what’s called a European Citizens’ Initiative, in which EU citizens can propose a policy directly to the Commission so long as they collect at least 1 million signatures in support of it. The Commission doesn’t have to adopt the proposal, but it at least has to formally respond to it. A coalition of animal groups has managed to gather more than the required million signatures, and so the Commission agreed to craft the legislation.

Olga Kikou, Head of Compassion in World Farming EU and substitute representative of the ‘End the Cage Age’ European Citizens’ Initiative said that “After years of strong citizen engagement and clear-cut commitments, the Commission is now betraying EU citizens who believed in what was promised in 2020,” and added that “The farm animal revolution that everyone was expecting would have diminished the suffering of hundreds of millions of animals every year. It has fallen victim to political games and those who espouse business as usual.”

Obviously this is far from being our main concern here, however this should function as an important reminder of how the world really works.
Even when something that may turn at least some parts of the lives of at least some animals into at least a little bit less horrifying, it is being trampled by factors and motives that has nothing to do with the victims themselves, who as always, are treated as pawns in a cruel game where their lives are being absolutely controlled by others.

Activists must not confuse accepting reality for what it is and acknowledging reality for what it is. This is our world and us activists are the last who should paint a prettier picture. We are also the last who should accept it. We can choose to keep fighting to marginally scrape the edges of this exploitative world, only to see how one political move after another revokes all the little gains we have made, or we can choose to fight all the maladies at once by looking for ways to destroy it.

Fish farming, usually euphemized as aquaculture, is already the most rapidly growing exploitative industry, and the consumption of factory farmed fishes already exceeds the one of caught fishes, and it is about to get worse.

An unfortunate breakthrough was achieved at a Spanish government-run research center, where the first successful breeding of Atlantic Bluefin Tuna took place. Up to now, farming of Atlantic Bluefin Tuna has relied on catching young wild fishes and fattening them in open-sea cages, but now that the inhibiting dependencies have been removed, this industry can expand.

The breeding facility will supply fertilized eggs and juvenile Tuna to the newly created commercial firms, which will either continue the breeding cycle on land, or use a combination of land-based tanks and sea cages.
At least two companies already plan to build an industrial farm of land-bred Tuna, and they would be the first to use only tank-bred Atlantic Bluefin stocks of fertilized eggs or young Tuna.
One of the companies plans to establish its own breeding program and sell young fish to “grow-out” farms for fattening and sale, next year, with the goal of selling about 45 tonnes of juvenile Atlantic Bluefin Tuna by 2025, and 1,200 tonnes by 2028. The other one aims at producing fishes by late 2024. And they would probably be followed by other companies soon.

The Bluefin Tuna is a highly migratory species with complex behaviors and migration patterns. Farming these fishes so intensively would cause many welfare issues such as high stress, frustration, disease, and, ultimately, poor immunity.

And not only that more Tuna fishes are going to suffer, and to suffer even more than they do now, an increase in farmed Tuna would mean more fishes being caught from the oceans to feed them.

Usually “solutions” offered by humans end up hurting more animals or hurting animals more severely, and in many cases both. One of these cases is fish farming.
In a former post we discussed how as a consequence of the reduction in marine animals capture from the oceans in the last few decades, humans hurt marine animals even more severely by intensively farming billions of them. A lifetime of dense confinement in waste filled water, exposure to diseases and other bodily harms due to genetic manipulation are forced upon the fishes as a direct result of the decision to switch to farming. The other, less known, result is widening the scope of abuse even further. As a consequence of farming fishes, many of which are of carnivorous species, even more fishes are captured from the oceans, to feed the fishes confined in the farms.

It is estimated that every year between 450 billion and one trillion fishes are purposely caught specifically to be grind up into fishmeal and fish oil, which are mostly used as food for other animals humans rear for food, mainly farmed fishes.

Virtually any fish or shellfish in the sea can be grind up into fishmeal and fish oil, but they are usually produced from small marine fishes that are considered not suitable for direct human consumption.

These sentient beings, hundreds of billions of them, are even more invisible than the hundreds of billions of sentient beings that humans directly consume.

If fishes that humans consume are not even counted by the industry as single “items” but in kilograms and tones, and even among the animal liberation movement their misery is rather concealed, probably because activists know how little empathy fishes raise among humans, when will come the time of the fishes that are eaten by the fishes humans eat?

This horrible development is another example of how economic decisions such as trade agreements, which we wrote about in some former posts, and technological “advances” are much more significant in terms of animals’ suffering than the movement’s efforts.
Despite what might seem as a strengthening of the movement in the last couple of years, along with the much greater increase in the number of consumers and the much greater increase in the consumption of each consumer (which by far exceeds the increase in the number of vegans and in the consumption of vegan products by none vegans), internal changes in the industry also make the world a worse place all the time.

Earlier this month some disappointing news was published.
Beyond Meat’s latest financial report revealed that its net revenue dropped by 30.5 percent in the second quarter of 2023. Compared to the same period in 2022, revenue decreased from $147 million to $102.1 million. And in the US, the largest economy in the world, Beyond saw year-on-year sales fall by 40 percent. The following morning, Beyond Meat’s stock dipped by more than 20 percent.
This report was followed by media coverage suggesting that plant based “meat” was just a trend.

Although indeed this news is a bit concerning, it is a different publication which should make us really worried. Just a few days after the news about Beyond Meat, an article titled: “Price-, Taste-, and Convenience-Competitive Plant-Based Meat Would Not Currently Replace Meat” was published by Rethink Priorities, and it has some extremely depressing well based statements.

The articles’ main argument goes as follows:
Plant-based and cultivated meat are both a major, maybe even the greatest, source of optimism for reducing, and according to some even ending, animal farming.
These hopes rely on the assumption that what primarily drive food choices are price, taste, and convenience. Therefore, the price, taste, and convenience (PTC) hypothesis assumes that if plant-based meat is competitive with animal-based meat on these three criteria, the large majority of current consumers would replace animal-based meat with plant-based meat as there would be no remaining reason for them not to. However, price, taste, and convenience do not mainly determine food choices of current consumers; social and psychological factors also play important roles. Therefore a majority of current consumers would continue eating primarily animal-based meat even if plant-based meats were PTC-competitive.

Obviously, the article doesn’t suggest that price, taste, and convenience don’t play a role in food choices, but that these are not the only or even the primary factors:
“Of course, there is no dispute that PTC are important factors in people’s food choices, but research in food psychology demonstrates these are not the sole or primary factors. Intuitively, this fact is apparent when considering basic consumer behavior: any given grocery store likely offers thousands of cheap, tasty, and convenient products, and yet, consumers decide to purchase only some of these products, without gathering any information on the large majority of them. Presumably, consumers do so by relying on factors well beyond PTC. Indeed, the psychological literature has identified myriad influences of food choice spanning psychological, biological, physiological, situational, and socio-cultural factors in addition to product characteristics (Köster, 2009). Furthermore, a rich literature on the psychology of meat consumption has identified factors particular to the consumption of meat and animal products. For example, people feel a peculiar personal attachment to meat (Graça et al., 2015), believe that meat is necessary for health, feel that meat consumption is socially normative, and perceive meat as a nice and natural component of a healthy diet (Piazza et al., 2015).”

The reason this article is rather convincing despite counter-arguing a rather intuitive hypothesis, is that it is well research based. Author Jacob R. Peacock, counter each assumed primary factor in humans’ food choices with studies that suggest differently. He starts with the Price factor and argues that according to the two existing cross-price elasticity studies of plant-based meat sold in US grocery stores, one found that plant-based meat acts as a complement for cows’ and pigs’ flesh and a substitute for chicken flesh, while the other found basically the opposite, with plant-based meat acting as a substitute for cows’ and pigs’ flesh but a complement for chicken flesh, but more importantly and relevantly is that both found that any effects of changes in plant-based meat prices seem to have only very small effects on animal-based meat sales.

Peacock also argues regarding the price factor that: “a lower price may lead some consumers to treat plant-based meats as inferior goods—or cheap substitutes—rather than a better deal. This effect might contribute to the lower popularity of margarine, which was designed as a substitute for butter at the time of its development in the 1880s (Dupré, 1999). Alternatively, consumers simply may not treat the two products as substitutes.”

Regarding the Taste factor, Peacock argues that it seems that in order for plant-based meat to be considered “the exact same product” and “indistinguishable”, it needs to pass a blinded taste test of some sort.
However, he argues, “blind taste tests may lack external validity, as, outside an experimental setting, plant-based meat consumers will never be blinded. Instead, consumers will be informed of what it is they are eating, as is necessitated by food labeling laws, allergies, dietary restrictions, and ethical norms.”
And then he mentions several studies showing that even plant- and animal-based meats which are indistinguishable in a blind taste test might still be experienced differently in an informed test: “In Sogari et al. (2023), 175 American consumers were randomized to blind and informed conditions, tasted four burgers (Beyond Burger, called “pea protein”; Impossible Burger, called “animal-like protein”; “hybrid meatmushroom” burger; and “100% beef” burger), and then ranked their preference for each burger. Informing participants of the burgers’ identities (for example, “pea protein burger”) caused a statistically significant drop in the Beyond Burger’s rank from third to fourth most liked, while the Impossible Burger remained first. In Caputo et al. (2022), 86 American consumers were randomized to blind and informed conditions, tasted four burgers (Beyond, Impossible, hybrid meat-mushroom, and 100% beef burger), and then participated in an experiment to measure willingness-to-pay for the burgers. Differences in willingness-to-pay between conditions did not reach significance given the small sample size; however, the point estimates suggest information caused willingness-to-pay to increase for the Impossible Burger by $0.91 and decrease for the Beyond Burger by $0.22 and the beef burger by $0.77. In Martin et al. (2021), 102 French consumers sampled both an animal and plant-based sausage, first blinded and then with packaging information, and marked the strength of their preference on a scale ranging from animal-based (−10) to plant-based (10). After seeing the packaging, a statistically significant shift in preferences in favor of the plant-based sausage was detected (from −6.2 to −4.3), although consumers still strongly preferred the animal-based sausage.”

Regarding convenience he argues that there is a lack of clarity on what exactly constitutes convenience equivalence, and the little evidence that might be relevant does not find a meaningful impact of increased convenience on animal-based meat usage. The little evidence he refers to is the following two studies: “Some work has focused on availability within grocery stores, moving plant-based meats to the (animal-based) meat aisle from devoted ‘vegan’ aisles. A non-randomized study of 108 grocery stores found the move increased sales of plant-based meat but did not decrease sales of animal-based meat (Piernas et al., 2021). Another smaller non-randomized study of nine stores found a very small increase in plant-based meat sales and no evidence of an effect on animal-based meat sales (Vandenbroele et al., 2019).”

Peacock mentions another kind of studies that according to him weaken the PTC hypothesis and these are Hypothetical discrete choice experiments, which are studies in which the participants are asked to imagine hypothetically picking a plant- or animal-based burger from a menu. One of them, conducted across 27 countries, asked its 27,000 meat-eating participants to assume plant-based meat and animal-based meat “tasted equally good, had equal nutritional value and cost the same”, and yet most of them preferred the animal based burger. As disappointing as these findings are as it is, Peacock claims that it is actually worse since according to him “the design of this study likely increases these estimates: the addition of “equal nutritional value” likely increases the attractiveness of the plant-based meat; the environmental framing and questions used earlier in the survey might increase social desirability bias; using a text description rather than pictures of the possible items and broad non-specific question wording might elicit more hypothetical bias; and participants are forced to choose one or the other of animal-based meat or plant-based meat.”
In addition, he argues that “Hypothetical choice and self-reports of diet change likely tend to exaggerate the extent of meat reduction: one comparison found that in a hypothetical choice, 59% of meals selected were meat-free, while in actuality, sales data found only 36% of meals to be meat-free (Brachem et al., 2019, p. 22).”

Peacock argues that: “The strongest evidence of actual behavioral impacts of PTC-equivalent plant-based meats likely comes from a study introducing Impossible Foods’ plant-based ground beef to a University of California Los Angeles dining hall (Malan et al., 2022). In this study impossible ground beef was introduced at two stations in the dining hall. On Thursdays, students had the option of receiving prepared burritos with either Impossible ground beef, animal-based steak, or veggies, while the build-your-own entree line offered Impossible ground beef every day alongside animal-based ground beef.
In this study, price is entirely equivalent since students pay for dining hall access for the entire semester, not individual meals. With regards to taste, Impossible ground beef specifically has not been subjected to any public taste tests. However, as reviewed above, the Impossible Burger, which is made of similar ingredients, has been found to taste equivalent in some studies. Convenience is likely equivalent as well since the burritos are prepared for students by dining hall staff, and the build-your-own entree line is self-serve for both animal- and plant-based ground beef.

The study measured how many beef-containing meals were distributed at the intervention dining hall, where the Impossible ground beef was available, as well as distribution at two other dining halls as controls. In addition to making plant-based meat available, the study employed several co-interventions designed to reduce meat consumption (Malan, 2020). These included environmental education, low carbon footprint labels on menus, and an advertising campaign to promote the new product, all of which have some evidence demonstrating their effectiveness (Bianchi, Dorsel, et al., 2018, p. 11; Brunner et al., 2018; Jalil et al., 2019; Osman & Thornton, 2019). Thus, the study’s results cannot be entirely attributed to the addition of plant-based meat options to the intervention dining hall’s menu.

In the ten weeks after adding the Impossible burrito to the intervention dining hall’s menu, 26% of burrito purchasers chose the Impossible, 7% the veggie, and the remaining 67% the steak burrito (Malan, 2020, Table 12). Consistent with previous results, in a scenario that ensures price, convenience, and potentially taste competitiveness, the portion of consumers selecting the plant-based meat option remains modest.”

These are very disappointing and worrying results. And it gets worse. The veggie burrito comprises 15% of selections in the absence of the Impossible burrito and with the Impossible burrito available, this share declines to 7%, suggesting the Impossible burrito partially replaced the demand for veggie burritos rather than animal-based beef.

Another crucial factor to consider is that this study was conducted with college students, and at the University of California, meaning among those who are more likely than average to select plant-based meats, so among the general population these results are likely to be even worse.

In addition argues Peacock, “many, if not most, of the reviewed studies likely included numerous and sometimes extensive additional co-interventions also designed to increase sales of plant-based meat and/or decrease sales of animal-based meat, like promotions, ad campaigns, and environmental information. These will presumably reduce in intensity over time, as might their effects.”
And he adds that “these early studies may represent novelty effects and tap into consumers’ curiosity to try something new. One survey identified “I like to try new foods” and “I’ve been hearing a lot about them and was curious” as the two most popular factors in a self-report of why customers tried plant-based meats (A Consumer Survey on Plant Alternatives to Animal Meat, 2020, p. 5). This effect would also be expected to fade over time. Indeed, this decline may already have been observed. In 2019, sales of the Beyond Taco at the fast-food chain Del Taco declined from 6% to 4% of the sales mix (Maze, 2019), and across two samples of Burger King stores, sales of the Impossible Burger declined from 30 per day per store to 20, and from 32 to 28, in the weeks following introduction (Shanker & Patton, 2020).”

Peacock concludes his article with the following inference:
“Collectively, these results show that the PTC hypothesis, in its current form, is likely false. The underlying premise of PTC as key determinants of food choice is not supported by evidence from cross-sectional surveys on consumers’ self-reported determinants. The little available evidence thus far suggests PTC do not individually significantly reduce animal-based meat usage. HDCEs find that a minority of consumers select PTC-competitive plant-based meats instead of animal-based meats. (Miller (2021) adduces two countries where plant-based meat selection nears two-thirds when health equivalence is also assured. However, the study design is especially subject to hypothetical and social desirability biases and likely yields estimates that unrealistically favor plant-based meats.) Data from introducing plant-based meats at particular restaurants suggests that they draw only a modest portion of customers. Finally, a controlled experiment introducing high-quality plant-based meat to a dining hall—at equal price and convenience to animal-based meat—shows that most participants did not choose plant-based meat. Across six lines of evidence, it is clear that the empirical evidence opposes the PTC hypothesis.”

Considering that plant-based meat is a great source of optimism among activists, but that these hopes rely on the assumption that what primarily drives food choices are price, taste, and convenience and this assumption is false, this optimism is actually very questionable.

Beyond Reach

All these findings further prove that rationality can’t beat motivation. Given that animal based food is directly linked to public health complications as the animal agriculture industry is interconnected with foodborne illness, diet-related diseases, antibiotic resistance, and infectious diseases; and given that animal agriculture plays a major part in environmental destruction including pollution, land use, water use, deforestation, and greenhouse gas emissions; and of course given that animal agriculture is the cruelest thing ever in history, there is nothing more rational than ending it, let alone once humans can enjoy the same taste at the same price and the same convince. But humans are not rational, and they are not ethical.

Some activists have decided to give up on turning to humans’ moral fiber and appeal to their taste buds instead, believing that the best way to get humans to eat less animals is by giving them what they want, meaning juicy delicious burgers, sausages, ground “meat”, and more, without the exploitation. Never before did humans need “to give up” so little in order to not actively support industrial animal abuse, but still, the utterly vast majority maintain their violent and oppressive habits.

Not the enormous food waste, not the enormous water waste, not the enormous pollution, not climate change, not obesity, not diabetes, and not the risk of a heart attack or cancer, and now not even when it is the same product with the same look, texture and taste, have made veganism mainstream.

Every new plant based product that successfully imitates an animal derived one, doesn’t prove that there is no culinary need for any animal based product, but the opposite. It is not by chance that the most popular plant based burgers are also the ones who “bleed”. And it is not by chance that many humans want their food to bleed, or that they find plant based “meat” products disgusting before they have even tasted, smelled or seen them. It is what these products symbolize that disgust them, and it is what animals’ flesh symbolizes that attracts many of them.

Meat is not a mere gastronomical preference and food in general is definitely not a mere energy source. It is deeply imprinted in human society and culture, so just asking humans to switch the animal derived raw materials of their food to a plant based one, even if it has the same look, texture and of course taste, for many it is not enough.
If eating meat was only a preferable energy source, then it would have been much easier to convince humans to simply change it, especially once there are culinary equivalent options. But no matter how many times vegans are telling humans that converting their diets into a vegan one is only a raw-material swap, clearly it is not at all just that. It is a much more profound and deep change, for most a self-determination one. Veganism is not a raw-material swap since food is not fuel. Humans eat for great many reasons, for reasons of community, rituals, family, expressing their identity by eating that and not this, and of course for pleasure.

For billions of humans food is comfort, a gesture, entertainment, an enemy, a profession, a hobby, a weapon, it can break barriers, it takes so much TV screen time and so much space on book stores shelves, it defines cultures, and in many cases the last mean of mothers to get in touch with their children. It involves so many taboos and determinations of who belongs to the group and who does not, it unifies and distinguishes between ethnic groups and cultures. Unfortunately food is much more than taste and nutrition.
And meat particularly, is very unique among foods. All along history meat has been and still is very highly valued by humans, by almost every single culture. Meat’s value is incomparable to any other food, and in no proportion to its nutritional significance, therefore, in his book Meat: A Natural Symbol the anthropologist Nick Fiddes suggests that this special status of meat results from the fact that it embodies humans’ dominance over nature and the other animals. Animals symbolize power and nature, and so eating other animals is the ultimate symbol of humans’ power, of their superiority over other animals, and their triumph over nature.
Meat is a dominance and power symbol and humans take pleasure in the power and the predominance, as well as in the taste. Obviously nowadays they can get the same taste from equivalent plant based products, and they can most definitely get the required nutrients from other sources, but the social aspects of meat eating are much stronger and much more significant than its nutritional values, and even its taste.
Meat’s symbolism is far from being the only reason humans eat meat, but it is definitely a significant one, and so it is highly important to acknowledge that.

The fact that humans have never had to “give up” less than they do now thanks to the abundant plant based products, which are amazingly identical to animal based products, but they still choose the violent versions, and even more so, the fact that most are not willing to try the plant-based option over the torture based option despite that it tastes the same, costs the same and is as available, is extremely worrying.

When humans run out of excuses as to why they don’t stop consuming animal based products but they still consume animal based products, activists run out of excuses as to why they still insist on trying to convince them to stop instead of making them stop.

Last week, as Ukraine’s Nova Kakhovka region was flooded due to the explosion of the Kakhovska hydroelectric power plant, the Kazkova Dibrova Zoo was completely submerged under water along with about 300 animals. Owner of the zoo, Olena Navrotska, in a statement, said that all animals in the zoo died as a result of the catastrophe. In a separate statement, the animal rights organization UAnimals said that “only swans and ducks could escape” from the zoo that housed species of monkeys, raccoons, donkeys, ponies, nutrias, various birds, porcupines, marmots, turtles and many other animals, who apparently did not survive.

This horrific event shouldn’t only be a reminder of what may happen in cases of catastrophes when so many animals are confined in cages, but that so many animals imprisoned in cages is in any case already a catastrophe.

Lunatic Asylum

Humans’ gruesome tradition of imprisoning nonhumans in cages for display goes back 5,500 years, with kings across the world demonstrating their power and wealth.

Despite the modern justification of a concern for animals, the purpose of zoos was never changed. Zoos are still collections of “interesting items”, demonstrating humans’ power and domination. Animals in zoos are treated like a stamp collection. The more species the better, especially if they are large animals from foreign places that the public would be willing to pay money to watch. The “specimens” are arranged in cages to make it easy to observe them from close range, at all times, despite how extremely stressful it is for the animals.

Zoos talk a lot about their essential scientific research, their total commitment to wildlife conservation, and their vital role as educators. Meanwhile, people do what they have always done – they go to the zoo to be entertained.
The expectation of the visitors is that the animal would please them. Humans demand to be taken notice of and they are insulted to find that usually the animals ignore them. They expect the animals to entertain each and every one of them. The mentality is of: “come here and say hello! Do something cute”. The ugliest examples of humans demand for attention include teasing, banging on cages and throwing things at them.
Zoos foster the assumption that humans are the center of the universe.

Animals in zoos are deprived of their normal and natural behavior.
Tigers can’t run, birds can’t soar the sky, monkeys can’t swing from the trees, and elephants can’t roam over large areas.
Animals which would naturally roam tens of miles a day, tread the same few paces in a small cage.

Zoos confinements deprive the “prisoners” of their most basic behaviors including exercise, social interaction and bathing.
Animals that naturally live in large herds or family groups are often kept alone, or at most, in pairs. Foraging and mating behaviors are virtually eliminated by regulated feeding and breeding regimens. The animals are closely confined so they lack privacy. Solitary and shy animals live in cages with viewing from all sides.

Complex behaviors and deep instincts that have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years can’t find any outlet. The result is boredom and stress. The animals show signs of mental disturbance through abnormal behaviors. Sometimes they become apathetic and just sit in one place, but the most common abnormal behavior is repeated movement: rocking from side to side, pacing up and down or round and round, waving or circling the head, over and over again.
Animals in zoos tend to over groom themselves, grooming to an excessive extent, pulling out hair or feathers, often leaving bald patches, irritated and torn skin.
Self-inflicted physical harm, such as biting or chewing tail or leg, or hitting the head against a wall are all also very common.
Such obsessive and repetitive behaviors, including self-mutilation, are very common among zoo animals and are a result of no mental stimulation or physical exercise and a chronic frustration and boredom. This stereotypic, self-destructive behavior is called Zoochosis.

Some humans believe that caging animals in a zoo, is somehow for their own good.
They argue that zoos protect the animals from harms.
They see themselves as animal lovers and the zoo as a place that enables people to get to know and love animals.
But the confinement in the zoo harms animals more than anything they might face during their lives. Zoos cannot protect animals. In fact animals need protection from zoos.

Zoos also claim to be educational. But what do they teach us?
Animals, which have become crazy and show unnatural stereotypic behavior are only ‘educational’ in showing how humans can drive animals mad by keeping them imprisoned.
The confinement educates people for relationships based on domination and control.
It teaches hierarchy and speciesism. It teaches how to objectify sentient beings.
Not that humans need these lessons…Humans are natural born exploiters.

The events in Kazkova Dibrova Zoo shouldn’t be a reminder of what may happen in cases of catastrophes when so many animals are trapped in cages, and not even as a reminder of how zoos are in any case a catastrophe of its own, but as a reminder of the mega catastrophe which is human domination over other nonhuman animals. The catastrophe of human domination is demonstrated not just in cases of specific disasters, and not just in the fact that imprisoning  nonhuman animals for their whole lives so humans could be entertained watching them in their cages still exists and is still very popular in 2023, but everywhere around the world and all the time.
Everything in humans’ life has catastrophic impact on others. Humans’ clothes (and not only leather, fur, wool, silk and down), humans’ houses, humans’ cities, humans’ transportation, humans’ entertainment, humans’ energy production, humans’ waste, and of course and most importantly humans’ food. All humans’ food.
That’s why we must dethrone humans from everywhere and forever.

Today is Mother’s Day
While humans are celebrating, billions of nonhumans are violently forced to never experience a mother’s love

For the Grand National Festival starting today in Liverpool, which includes the world’s biggest steeplechase, here is a short reminder of the abuse involved in the horse racing industry.

Horse racing is a very big and highly institutionalized industry. In the US alone its economic scope is at around $10 billion a year. In order to display the fastest horses, the racing industry breeds hundreds of thousands of horses per year on a global scale, and selects the fastest among them.
Most horses start with flat racing which is sprinting along a course at the age of two, which is 3 years before they are fully mature. “Owners” race them early because they want to get a return on their “investment” as soon as possible, despite that racing places an enormous strain on the horses’ under-developed limbs.

The few horses who have speed ability and stud potential would contest in the “classics” and other more valuable races. Slower horses are forced to run in “handicaps” and selling races, where they can be sold to different owners and trainers.

And the ones who are found unfit for these kinds of races, would carry wagons, would be sent to the circus, or as most horses end, would be slaughtered for meat consumption.

Confinement

Horses are herd animals with strong social behavioral needs. But as in every other exploitation system, the horses are denied natural behaviors and have no contact with fellow horses.

The horses are kept in a small stall for more than 20 hours a day, in dark dingy stables, separated from each other.
They develop neurotic stereotypic behaviors, similar to animals in factory farms and zoos, such as wood chewing, box walking (round and round the stall), wind sucking (grasping an object with the teeth and sucking in air), or weaving (swaying the head, neck and forequarters from side to side).
They are deprived of natural behavior such as foraging hay, having straw bedding, and visual and physical contact with other horses.

Acceleration Manipulations

The industry is making tremendous efforts in order to make the horses run faster. The ingenuity is limitless:
They use special instruments to broaden the bronchi in order to widen the horse’s airways.
They use hormones in order to increase the red blood cells (since they carry oxygen).
They inject venom into the horses’ joint to harden it.
They infuse a mixture of carbonated water, sugar and electrolytes in order to increase the levels of carbon dioxide in the horses’ blood and to decrease the lactic acid. They do that to prevent exhaustion.
They use thousands of drugs.
They use oppression and subjugation methods.
They use batteries that are planted under the horse skin which will give the horses an electric shock when they slow down during the race.

One of the most “creative” efforts the industry is making to increase the horses speed is a violent surgical procedure called Tubing. A hole larger than a 2 pence piece is surgically cut into a horse’s neck, into which a metal breathing tube is then placed. The tube is designed to increase the air intake into the lungs with air drawn through the neck, in part bypassing the nose and mouth. The tube often gets blocked with mucus from the horse’s throat, causing severe distress.

Drug Use

The use of drugs in horse racing is extremely common. Exploiters are using any possible chemical to give the horse an advantage over the others so they can increase their profits, no matter how high the price the horses pay.

Pushed beyond their limits, most horses are subjected to cocktails of drugs intended to mask injuries and artificially enhance performance.

Diseases and Injuries

The horses suffer from a wide range of diseases and injuries because they start to train and race, before their body and skeleton are fully developed.

Horses are forced to race with hairline fractures, that without drugs would be too painful to run on. The pain killers effect fades at some point and the horses which spend around 20 hours in the barn every day, are forced to bear the horrible pain for all these hours.

In some cases injured horses are being kept alive so that greedy owners can pump semen and therefore money out of them.

Exercise-Induced Pulmonary Hemorrhage (EIPH)

Due to the excessive exertion demanded of horses in the rigorous training and in the race, more than 90% of them have lung bleeds and breathing difficulties. The severe condition is usually a result of burst capillaries. The tiny blood vessels are ruptured by the acute pressure of blood pumping around the body during strenuous exercise.

Only about 1 per cent of horses show outward signs of bleeding, with blood at the nose. The rest are more difficult to diagnose because they bleed into their lungs without it being obvious.
Researchers at the University of Melbourne have shown that 56% of racehorses have blood in their windpipe, and 90% have blood deeper in their lungs.

Stomach Ulcers

90% of the horses have deep bleeding stomach ulcers within 8 weeks of starting race preparation.
A study regarding horse racing found that in the US, 94% of the horses in races have one or more lesions in the stomach lining and 100% of the horses who had raced in the 2 months prior to the study, had ulcers. When horses continue to race, their ulcers get worse.

Apart from the stress of racing, the major reason for the ulcers is intermittent feeding. Horses are fed only at certain times, so there is nothing to neutralize the stomach acid that damages the stomach lining.

Genetic Manipulations

The thoroughbred horses are “genetic freaks”. They run too fast, with a too large frame, on too small legs. These horses lack fully developed bone structure and muscular systems, and so are more likely to suffer injury. They develop acute lameness and sometimes break a leg in the race.
The cartilage plate, in the shaft of the leg bone, is undergoing too much strain. It causes a tear in the periosteum layer around the bone leading to haemorrhage, acute lameness, shin soreness and scar tissue.

Jump Racing

“Failed” and “retired” thoroughbred racing horses, are commonly further exploited in other types of races such as jumping races. These are even more dangerous and harmful than flat races, with up to 20 times more fatalities. This is mainly since a group of horses are forced to jump a series of one meter high fences, together, at speed.

There are two main types of jump racing, hurdles in which horses jump lightweight frame ‘fences’ with brush tops, and steeplechases in which horses jump a number of higher, more solid obstacles. Both are generally long and very tiring events.

The horses are forced to jump over 10 hurdles in the average race and as many as 20 or more hurdles in the longer races. In The Grand National the horses are forced to jump over 30 fences.
When horses are bunched up as they approach a jump, it can make it more difficult to take off accurately and can lead to error or even a ‘pile-up’. Muscle fatigue, especially in long races, increases the danger of horses to injure themselves when taking a jump. Horses are large, heavy animals and when they fall, they suffer extreme pain, even if there is no serious or long-term damage.

When jumping at speed, the force on the lead foreleg as it hits the ground is 1.7 times the body weight of the horse. Some of the shock of the hooves hitting the ground is absorbed by the spongy bone, which is compressed in the process. The bone becomes weaker in the course of a race as a result of this micro-crushing.
When a horse breaks a leg or a shoulder, the bones may shatter into many pieces, making it impossible for a veterinarian to “repair” them.

‘Wastage’

The cost of restoring a horse to full fitness is high, and it is not necessarily successful, therefore usually deemed uneconomic. Consequently, horses’ injuries get worse. Horses that suffer severe injuries and horses failing to win races are considered ‘wastage’ by the racing industry and are sold for riding, eventing or other uses. The majority are sent for slaughter, either directly through auctions or ‘eventually’ when they have no further use.

Two days ago, headlines about an asteroid that may impact Earth on Valentine’s Day in 2046 were published.
Like in the case of former similar headlines about an asteroid hitting earth, there was a great fuss online among animal activists, many of whom shared their hopes for it to happen. And like in the case of former similar headlines, after realizing that the chances of a hit are very small, and that the chances of a hit, if one would occur, to wipe out the human race are tiny, the wishing activists go back to their conventional activism – shouting that they want animal rights now in another demo, leafleting in the usual street corner, flipping burgers for tomorrow’s meatout, making another persuasive argument to another unpersuaded person, and other humanity alteration project activities.

But how can activists, after all the wishing and prayers that an asteroid would wipe out the earth, go back to their tiny scope of potential influence over a tiny scope of the suffering? How can they approach another human that just might consider stopping his own personal part of the greatest torture enterprise ever in history, when what they really wish for is that an asteroid would hit earth and all the suffering that all humans are causing and would ever cause, would end and for good?

Most activists are hoping for a planetary scale miracle while working on tiny changes in tiny scopes of action (obviously tiny compared with the global oppressive mechanism we all face).
The fact that the problem is so immensely huge that it’s almost impossible to really comprehend, leads too many activists to passively think big but actively work small. We want to change that so activists would think huge and act huge. Think global and act global.

Obviously animal activists wishing for the planet to be wiped out, is not new. Many activists say they would press the ‘red button’ when asked the hypothetical question, but very few are willing to dedicate their lives to create such a button. Very few are willing to stop focusing on their tiny scope of influence, to stop looking for ways to make a few more vegans and start looking for ways to stop all of the oppressors from causing all of the suffering.

Our goal in establishing the E.A.S movement is to turn this hypothetical abstract wish into an actual ideology and goal. Our aim is to upgrade this amorphous popular hope into a popular and firm ideology among many animal activists, switching from prayers for external factors to rescue everyone, to relying on ourselves and other animal activists to do it. Our vision is to form a conceptual, philosophical and substantial practical activistic agenda that doesn’t passively long for a “doomsday” event, but looks for ways to actively bring it.

Valentine’s Day in 2046 can truly be happy, but not because an asteroid would finally wipe out humanity, but because us activists have finally worked towards what we ought to do. Our responsibility is not what we consume or what the tiny fraction of humans we may potentially affect consume, but what each and every one, in each and every place on this planet is doing in every single moment, since the suffering is everywhere all of the time. So put the advocacy leaflets down and pick up a leaflet of a relevant science faculty. ‘Red buttons’ don’t come out of thin air, we need to create them.

Earlier this month it was announced that researchers from China’s Northwest University of Agricultural and Forestry Science and Technology have managed to clone what they proudly referred to as “super cows”. The scientists behind this terribleness are claiming that the three calves who have been cloned so far would be capable of producing about 18 tons of milk per year, or 100 tons of milk in their lifetime, which is nearly 1.7 times the amount of milk the average cow exploited in the dairy industry is currently forced to produce. The program’s lead scientist, Jin Yaping, said that they plan to raise a herd of 1,000 super cows in two to three years.

Cows in the dairy industry are already being pushed to the extreme emotionally and physically in order to produce more milk. The only thing that matters in the industry’s eyes is their milk production levels, and the cows themselves are “a minor interference”. Only that these “minor interferences” are suffering their entire lives. And now they may suffer even more from producing even more milk. Continue reading →