Joan Dunayer's Animal Equality: Language and Liberation is an uncompromising examination of the linguistic foundation of speciesism: the oppression and exploitation of nonhuman animals by humans. Dunayer challenges her readers to consider how we use everyday language to describe and talk about nonhuman animals, which allows us to distance ourselves from other species. The result of speciesist language, she argues, is a culture that unquestioningly accepts the mistreatment of animals not only in the factory food and farming industries but in zoos, aquariums, sporting events, research institutions and, most controversially, in the eyes of the law where most animals have no rights or protections.
I spoke with Dunayer about her work and its implications for vegetarians and for families trying to raise children with an awareness about living in a right relationship with animals.
Many people, certainly readers of this website, have adopted the vegetarian or vegan lifestyle as a major step toward reducing the harm and suffering of non-human animals. What is your response to why being vegetarian is "not enough"?
In my view, a vegan lifestyle is enough. A vegan lifestyle is an animal rights worldview put into practice. It honors the principle of doing as little harm as possible. By "vegan lifestyle" I mean a commitment to avoiding products and enterprises that involve needless nonhuman suffering and death. A vegan doesn't eat any food derived from nonhuman animals, wear animal-derived clothes or accessories, buy household products that contain animal-derived ingredients or were tested on nonhuman animals, attend rodeos or circuses with nonhuman animals, visit aquaprisons or zoos, buy or breed nonhuman animals, or contribute to organizations that fund vivisection.
If a vegan also is an animal rights advocate, that's wonderful. But I don't consider a vegan immoral if they don't actively promote nonhuman rights. I ask only that humans be vegan. I've been vegan for more than fourteen years. My diet is healthful, delicious, varied, and easy to maintain. There's no good excuse for not being vegan.
As for being lacto-ovo "vegetarian"-that certainly is not enough. Lacto-ovo "vegetarians" aren't vegetarians. Although they don't eat flesh, they eat animal-derived foods. To eat eggs and cow-milk products is to needlessly participate in the enslavement and slaughter of nonhuman beings. It's morally wrong.
The suffering of "laying hens" is especially horrendous. In the U.S. more than 99 percent of hens exploited for their eggs spend their lives confined to wire cages. On average, each cage holds eight hens. The hens are squeezed side to side on a sloping wire floor. They're crammed in too tightly to lift a wing or even stand comfortably. The cages are filthy with feathers and excrement. From a pit below, mounds of excrement saturate the air with eye-stinging ammonia. Because "laying hens" get no exercise and constant egg production robs their bones of calcium, they suffer from severe osteoporosis. By the time they're killed, most have broken bones.
Birds exploited in egg factories also are debeaked-without anesthetic. A laser or hot blade slices off about a third of their upper beak and part of their lower beak, cutting through sensitive tissue and frequently burning their nostrils or tongue, searing their eyes, or severing their tongue. Debeaking causes both immediate and chronic pain. After debeaking, birds eat less for days or weeks. Many stop eating altogether and starve to death.
When hens no longer lay enough eggs, they're killed-often by being suffocated in a plastic bag, ground up alive, or buried alive. From beginning to end, the life of a "laying hen" is hell. I don't see how humans can eat eggs in good conscience.
The cow-milk industry, too, is abusive. Calves usually are removed from their mother within 24 hours of birth. When separated, both the cow and calf bawl in distress, the cow often for days. As long as they remain within sight or smell of each other, a cow frantically tries to reach her calf. Bred continually, cows suffer the grief of birth and separation every year.
Tie-stall operations keep each cow chained by the neck, for months at a time, in a stall so narrow that she can't turn around or groom herself. Many cows confined to tie stalls become lame. Free-stall systems confine cows to a crowded barn and adjacent dirt or concrete yard, frequently throughout the year. The largest feedlot cow-milk operations hold thousands of cows, year round, in crowded dirt lots; fed from troughs, these cows never see pasture.
When their milk production declines, cows are sent to slaughter. In general, the flesh in fast-food "hamburgers" is from "dairy cows." Even if they don't eat cow flesh, humans who eat "dairy" products contribute to cow slaughter. They also help to sustain the "veal" industry, because most calves killed for their flesh are males and "surplus" females discarded by the "dairy" industry.
Calves reared for "white veal" receive no food except an iron-deficient formula primarily of water, powdered milk, and fat. Deprived of roughage because its iron would darken their flesh, the calves become anemic. Their unnatural diet commonly causes heat stress, bloat, ulcers, and chronic diarrhea (which often is fatal). Because movement slows fattening and toughens muscles (flesh), each calf is chained inside a crate so narrow that they can't turn around or lie with their legs outstretched. Many "veal calves" also are kept in dim light or total darkness all the time except for two brief feeding periods each day. Anyone who eats "dairy" products lends support to this cruelty.
Related to the above question, many lacto-ovo vegetarians (indeed, even some more conscientious flesh-eaters) seek out and promote alternatives to the exploitative factory farming system that you describe in your book. For example, many of us now seek out organic, free range, and smaller family-owned and local farms for not only produce, but eggs and dairy products. What response do you have to these types of choices as they become increasingly available to more and more consumers?
Buying eggs or "dairy" products for human consumption is immoral. Humans don't need to eat any foods derived from other animals. To do so is to needlessly participate in enslavement and slaughter. You refer to "exploitative factory farming." All "farming" of nonhuman beings is exploitive. In many (probably most) cases, so-called free-range hens never go outside; they just aren't caged. If they can go outside, "free-range" hens still aren't free. They're held captive, usually crowded, and almost always killed when their egg production declines. The difference between a caged hen and a "free-range" hen is the difference between a slave with an especially cruel owner and a slave with a less cruel owner. Both are abused. Both are viewed and treated as property. Both are discarded when no longer useful. And what happens to most of the male chicks who are born to hens used as breeders? They're killed. Enslavement and murder are morally wrong, whatever the conditions of that enslavement and murder.
Like many other vegans, I was raised as a flesheater and became lacto-ovo before I became vegan. At most, the period of lacto-ovo "vegetarianism" should be brief, serving as a transition to veganism.
Your argument in the book is one of complete and total abolition of the human oppression of non-human animals-the end of speciesism. This goal takes the reader to some conclusions that most other vegans and animal rights folks have not necessarily reached. That is, that our relationship to non-human animals must not be one solely of "moral consideration," but of granting "legal rights." Can you explain this distinction and what "legal rights" means in practical terms?
Animal rights advocates believe that nonhuman beings have moral rights that must be protected through corresponding legal rights. For example, it's morally wrong to kill a nonhuman being except for extraordinary reasons such as immediate self-defense.
Therefore, it should be illegal to kill a nonhuman being except for such reasons.
As long as nonhuman beings are property, they have no legal rights, just as enslaved "blacks" had no legal rights. Nonhumans need to be emancipated from human oppression. In the U.S. they need to be persons under the Constitution, the U.S. Code, and state laws. Personhood would grant nonhumans all applicable legal rights that humans enjoy, such as protection from battery, unjust imprisonment, and murder. Legally, a nonhuman would have as much right to life and liberty as a human. We humans cherish our legal rights. Other animals deserve the same degree of protection. Full moral consideration entails the granting of legal rights.
If nonhumans had legal rights, it would be illegal for any human to buy, breed, or sell any nonhuman. The number of "domesticated" nonhumans would rapidly decline. Eventually there would be virtually no nonhumans other than free-living, non-"domesticated" ones.
Our primary audience here at vegetarianbaby.com is parents and others concerned with raising children as vegetarians/vegans. As nurturers of the next generation, what should we do? How can we talk to our kids about relating their vegetarianism to the larger issues of animal rights?
First, parents should raise their children as vegans, not lacto-ovo "vegetarians." Second, they should set the example of a fully vegan lifestyle. Among other things, that means not taking their children to zoos, aquaprisons, and circuses with nonhuman animals. They never should buy a nonhuman animal. If they adopt one, they should regard that individual as a member of their family. Finally, parents should make every effort to overcome their speciesism. They should treat and speak of nonhumans with the same consideration and respect that they accord to humans.
Your book created some conversation and even controversy within the animal rights movement. Were you surprised at the response? In what direction has your work gone since the publication of Animal Equality?
My book has created controversy within the so-called animal rights movement. Many people who call themselves "animal rights" speak and act in ways that are incompatible with nonhuman rights. They're afraid to adopt the language of an anti-slavery movement, which I advocate. They want to appear moderate; they believe that speaking out candidly and forcefully for nonhuman emancipation will jeopardize their credibility, status, and fundraising. To large extent, they use the speciesist and euphemistic language of nonhumans' abusers. For example, they label living birds "poultry" and refer to enslaved and slaughtered animals as "farmed." Many people who call themselves "animal rights" also advocate actions that violate nonhuman rights. They engage in "welfarist" campaigns aimed at modifying, rather than abolishing, the enslavement and murder of nonhuman beings. They ask that nonhumans be enslaved or killed more "humanely"-that is, that their rights be violated less cruelly. It isn't surprising that such conservative "animal advocates" find my language and philosophy too radical.
Currently I'm completing another book on nonhuman rights. This book, Speciesism, advances the philosophy that all sentient beings-all creatures with a nervous system-deserve equal moral consideration and the protection of legal rights. Notice the word equal. In my view, all sentient beings have an equal right to life, liberty, and freedom from human exploitation.
