By WOLF GORDON CLIFTON, ANIMAL PEOPLE
This editorial and organisation are endorsed by The Greanville Post
As winter sets in across the Northern Hemisphere, it’s easy to let a sombre perspective about the animals’ cause take hold. Here in the Pacific Northwest, the daylight steadily dwindles to just six hours per day of dim grey, the Sun often cloistered from direct view behind thick sheets of rain clouds. Seemingly swallowed up by darkness, one's thoughts more naturally turn toward disappointment than hope. But for activists dedicated to creating a brighter future for animals, it’s always important to cultivate a sense of optimism. I am writing to share my thoughts as to the promising future of animal protection, in the hope that they will help lift your spirits as well.
Sir Paul McCartney is famous for his assertion that, “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian.” Kim Bartlett, the founder and president of ANIMAL PEOPLE and my mother, began her career in animal advocacy with much the same conviction. If people only knew how animals are treated, she believed, that would motivate them to give up meat and fur and pass laws to abolish cruelty wherever it existed. Yet while animal rights advocacy has seen many victories in the forty-six years since Kim first became involved, the overall situation for animals remains unacceptable.
It turns out the glass walls metaphor is inadequate for understanding the complexities involved in creating awareness that leads to individual and social change. Not only is it necessary to install the glass walls where solid walls exist, you have to make people look at what's going on when they would rather look away. In societies where the sight of animals being killed is commonplace, people are already aware, but their minds employ various coping mechanisms, including “denial.” It is safe to say, though, that for First-Worlders, the distressing sight of animals being slaughtered is remote enough that when we do glimpse the animals suffering, we are disturbed enough to believe it should be stopped.
Even though the horrors animals experience in factory farms and slaughterhouses are now widely known by the public, the percentage of vegetarians within the United States has not grown significantly in decades, and worldwide meat consumption continues to increase. Despite the fabulous success of anti-fur campaigns during the 1980s, fur has made a fashion comeback in the years of the new millenium. Although the number of people who actually hunt is at an all-time low, the U.S. hunting lobby is more influential than ever, with the Department of the Interior recently creating an “International Wildlife Conservation Council” (sic) for the specific purpose of promoting trophy hunting abroad.
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hat are we to make of this seeming discrepancy between public knowledge of animal suffering and inaction to prevent it? And more importantly, what can we do to resolve it? The Chinese philosopher Wang Yangming (1472-1529 C.E.) offers some heartening insights. Yangming was sympathetic to animal suffering, defining virtue as feeling “unable to bear” the pain or fear of animals about to be slaughtered, and describing how, by learning to love all beings – humans, animals, and plants alike – he discovered his own humanity.
"It turns out the glass walls metaphor is inadequate for understanding the complexities involved in creating awareness that leads to individual and social change. Not only is it necessary to install the glass walls where solid walls exist, you have to make people look at what's going on when they would rather look away..."
More pertinent to the problem at hand, Yangming taught the unity of knowledge and action. To know something in one’s heart is to act in accord with that knowledge, just as to see a beautiful color is to love it, and to smell a bad odor is to hate it: “True knowledge and action… are ‘like loving beautiful colors and hating bad odors.’…As soon as one sees a beautiful color, they have already loved it. It is not that one sees it first and then makes up their mind to love it.…As soon as one smells a bad odor, they have already hated it. It is not that one smells it first and then makes up their mind to hate it.”
When it came to matters of right and wrong, Yangming also said, “Those who are supposed to know but do not act simply do not yet know.” Confronted every day with willful ignorance and persistent hypocrisy in humans’ behavior toward other creatures, it may be tempting for animal activists to dismiss this teaching. Yet evidence suggests he may be right. Marketers have long followed the Rule of Seven – the adage that potential customers must be exposed to an advertisement seven times before they consciously think about buying a product or service. This is of course not universally true, and empirical tests have come up with optimal repetitions both lower and higher than seven. Yet the core principle of the Rule of Seven is scientifically sound: having merely been exposed to something is not the same as knowing, let alone acting, upon it, and it can take many reiterations of an idea before it fully seeps into one’s consciousness.
Change for animals on a societal scale has taken much longer to accomplish than any of us would have hoped, but change is well underway. Knowledge and action are finally coming together.
In October, I attended Compassion in World Farming’s "Livestock and Extinction" conference in London. The primary purpose of the conference was to draw attention to the impact of livestock farming on the environment, and especially its role in driving climate change. According to the United Nations, emissions from farm animals constitute nearly 15% of greenhouse gas production. Factoring in related emissions from sources like land clearance and the machinery used to raise, transport, and slaughter farm animals, the Worldwatch Institute traces more than half of all greenhouse gas pollution back to animal agriculture.
Unfortunately, persuading environmentalists – not to mention politicians and the general public – to acknowledge the connection between livestock and climate change has been a prolonged battle against an ominously ticking clock (not to mention proliferating factory farms in the developing world). It was too inconvenient a truth to warrant even a passing mention in Al Gore’s seminal 2006 documentary. Since that time, the rising temperature of the Earth’s oceans has already depleted California fur seals’ food sources, causing mass starvation; devastated coral reef ecosystems worldwide; and driven its first mammal species, the island-dwelling Bramble Cay melomys (a rodent), to extinction beneath the rising waves.
Yet while the effects of climate change become stronger every day, so too does mainstream knowledge that livestock is a leading cause, and with it, meaningful action to mitigate the coming crisis. The Livestock and Extinction conference brought together activists, scientists, industry leaders, and politicians from across the world in common recognition of the facts, and received heavy media attention, including not just one but two supportive articles in The Guardian.
Household name environmental groups, including the World Wildlife Fund and Sierra Club, have in just a few short years gone from completely ignoring animal agriculture to actively promoting vegetarian, vegan, and/or meat-reducing lifestyles. And most promising of all, governments are beginning to listen. From New York City declaring Meatless Mondays in public schools, to China announcing plans to cut its meat consumption by half by 2030, political leaders are turning against the livestock industry in defense of people, animals, and the planet.
Heartened by such examples of knowledge spurring action worldwide, we at ANIMAL PEOPLE will, with your help, continue to do everything we can to raise awareness of animal protection issues among activists and the general public.
Tackling another vitally important, yet still under-acknowledged issue concerning agriculture, animals, and the environment, ANIMAL PEOPLE recently launched an international social media campaign titled “Palm Oil is Not Cruelty Free.” Forests in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America are being rapidly destroyed to clear land for the production of palm oil, a cheap vegetable oil commonly used in food, cleaners, biofuel, and various other products. Countless wild animals have lost their lives as a result, including orangutans burned to death in forest-clearing fires and elephants poisoned for setting foot in plantations that used to be their territory. By alerting animal advocates to the fact that palm oil, while technically vegan, causes massive suffering to wild animals in its production, we hope not only to inspire personal avoidance of palm oil products, but to help catalyze activism against palm oil deforestation.
Come January, we have plans to re-launch our video news series, ANIMAL PEOPLE World News, whose initial pilot season ran in early 2017. The new and improved series will consist of biweekly episodes approximately 10 minutes each, succinctly reporting current events that pertain to animal protection. To receive updates by e-mail whenever a new episode is released online, please contact me at wolf@animalpeopleforum.org and I will add you to our electronic mailing list.
With hope for a bright future,
—Wolf Gordon Clifton, executive director
Wolf Gordon Clifton serves as Executive Director for Animal People, and editor in chief of its main organ, Animal People Forum. 
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Much enjoyed the article & thanks. Problem is: How do you convince a population that whacking cows, pigs, and chickens is abominable and wrong, when they don’t think twice about lynching niggers, dropping napalm on gooks, or letting poor kids starve. My best friend from high school always said that mankind is a cancer on the universe, and I’m afraid that the longer I live, the more firmly I believe that it’s true. The only small ray of hope is that there are a few cancer fighting cells in the universal body (you, me, and the GP staff and contributors,… Read more »
“Problem is: How do you convince a population that whacking cows, pigs, and chickens is abominable and wrong,…”
You teach children ahimsa: non-violence to any living beings, NOT how to kill, as they are in the many christian youth hunting ministries throughout the USA. You stop supporting the cruel religions that insist on the human supremacy of judeo. christian dominion: judaism, christianity & islam. You teach them the reverence of life of
AHIMSA…
Just as trickle down economics does not work, trickle down compassion does not work. For both you must begin at ground zero. For animals this means discarding the human supremacy of dominion. It means prioritizing compassion to animals. For economic causes it means prioritizing the needs of the disenfranchised.
As the author indicates, an mind-boggling amount of work needs to be done to save animals from human tyranny. And this urgent fight is ridiculously complicated by the woeful state of human affairs, including the waste we see every day in the use of our global mass communications, on stupid things or shameless lies, instead of messages focusing on ethical things like helping nature and the animals, attaining real democracy, etc., etc.
Thank you for posting this. A very good, balanced snapshot of where we stand.
This article is an apology for judeo.christian dominion. The gains described are easily revoked with the on-again, off-again gains of in dominion nations , For example. Foie gras was banned in chicago, then the ban was revoked. It we want meaningful gains we must turn to a m ore compassionate ethic, that of AHIMSA: not-violence to any living being. In India where ahimsa is understood and to some extent guides societies view of animals the import, sale and production of foie gras is banned in every state. The ban will not be revoked. The piece-meal patches of dominion will never… Read more »
All this information is the window dressing of dominion, meant to create an illusion of progress where there is none.
The author tells us that we must force people to look at the cruelty that goes on inside of slaughterhouses… He tells us that the catch phrase “if slaughter houses had windows, no one would eat meat.” is not enough. He is right to an extent… Glass walls are irrelevant. Making people look is irrelevant, so long as people believe the genesis view of animals, aka dominion: Genesis 9:1-3 “The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all… Read more »
The endless diversions of dominion… the claim that caring about the environment will instill compassion. First and foremost the issue is the sanctified and tolerated slaughter and exploitation of judeo.christian dominion… that human needs always trump the the rights of animals, even to exist. The fallacy of attending a conference funded by the meat industry will put and an end to slaughter is misguided: “In October, I attended Compassion in World Farming’s “Livestock and Extinction” conference in London. The primary purpose of the conference was to draw attention to the impact of livestock farming on the environment,” Data has shown… Read more »
The author cites the Sierra club as moving forward… The sierra club is a pro-hunting environmental organization the insists on the right to kill animals. Progress will not emerge from this paradigm… Derrick Jensen, a radical environmentalist takes great pleasure in hunting, as a means of preserving the wildernesss. This is the double-think of dominion, that will serve only the right to destroy and exploit animal lives for human benefit.