By Mihika Chechi, VRG Intern
When considering the many different social justice movements that exist in the world today, the animal rights movement stands out to many as being one of the most controversial. After all, there are innumerable philosophical questions, political connotations, and even internal disagreements pertaining to the topic of animal activism: “Do humans have an intrinsic responsibility to ensure the welfare of animals?” “Is factory farming an issue and can it ever be addressed effectively at the policy level?” “Should the animal rights movement focus only on the needs of domesticated animals?” Debates over hundreds of questions such as these often become the focal point of the animal rights movement, both among its observers and its members.
In some ways, these subtle nuances can positively diversify the movement in terms of which people choose to participate in it and why. Yet, these differences can also act as barriers to the congruence of the animal rights movement overall, by creating factions within the movement that hinder progress by working independently.
One particular division in the animal rights movement that I’m interested in exploring is that of public perception of animal activism in different countries, and whether this plays a role in how people advocate for the cause and how the public reacts. To explore this topic in greater depth, I interviewed Dr. Simon Brown, an academic with experiences in both the UK and the US whose research has often centered directly on issues concerning animals.
Q: To establish a brief background on you, what former professional or academic experiences do you have in relation to animals and animal welfare?
A: “I am a researcher in philosophy. My research focuses on understanding animal minds and on the ethics of our treatment of animals. I am currently a Research Officer in the Animal Sentience group at the LSE. Before that, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Foundations of Mind at Johns Hopkins. As part of those jobs (and as a grad student), I have spent quite a bit of time collaborating with various scientists studying animal minds and animal welfare, and I have also taught several undergraduate and graduate courses on animal minds and animal ethics. I grew up in the UK, moving to the US when I started my Ph.D. program in NYC in 2013; I was vegetarian from about 2005 and have been vegan from about 2018.”
Q: In your opinion, what differences have you noticed in the approach to animal rights in the UK and the US on the part of activists? Additionally, what differences have you noted in terms of how society perceives animals and responds to the animal welfare movement in each region?
A: “I’m not sure I’ve noticed huge differences in animal activism itself between the countries, mainly because I think activism is extremely varied in strategies and message in both countries anyway, and should be. My view is that a successful movement will require a combination of radical, extralegal elements, and more mainstream, popular elements, pursuing a number of related issues which speak to different people more immediately and draw them into coalitions that make progress wherever it can be made. That said, here are some possible differences, [on] which I’d need to do some more careful research to actually confirm:
- I don’t know of any big open rescue cases happening in the UK in the way that they have in the US, possibly because the legal situation would be rather different. There is a much larger and more disruptive climate movement in the UK (XR/Just Stop Oil) and an associated movement called Animal Rising/Animal Rebellion, which I don’t think has an exact counterpart in the US, where the more radical pro-animal groups like DxE tend to be a bit more separated from the climate movement, and many of the big climate groups are in my experience much more reluctant to criticize animal agriculture. But from my understanding, Animal Rising is pulling away from the climate issue to focus more fully on animal rights, so there may be convergence there anyway.
- I’m also not aware of a vegan lobbying group trying to get the UK government to cease agricultural subsidies in the way that AFA does in the US, but that’s partly because there is less lobbying generally anyway, or it happens in a slightly different way. There is less money in politics than in the US (especially post-Citizens United). Things are very complicated by Brexit at the moment: the EU set the Common Agricultural Policy which determined subsidies etc. (although the UK had its own animal welfare laws). The UK government has still not really made it clear what will replace that. The UK government likes to claim that we have the best animal welfare laws in the world and many of the public believe this (in fairness, they are some of the least bad welfare laws). However, many of the trade deals being negotiated post-Brexit may require (or in some cases already have required) the UK to allow imports of cheap meat that is produced under much lower standards of welfare (and food safety). But this is controversial and mostly unpopular, partly because the UK often describes itself as a nation of animal lovers.
- Another big difference institutionally is that the US federal system means that there are many more opportunities for activists to try to get animal welfare legislation passed in local jurisdictions, e.g. the recent laws about pigs in California and the subsequent supreme court battle: I’m not totally sure what powers the Welsh and Scottish governments would have over animal welfare if they chose to diverge from England, but generally it’s entirely set by Westminster, at least as far as I can see.
- In my experience, vegan options are more widely available in the UK than [in] the US (especially the US outside the big metropolitan centers), and are often better quality. Veganism gets a (slightly) more sympathetic hearing in the UK media than the mainstream US media. Veganism is a protected lifestyle under UK law, so vegans have similar rights to having their veganism respected by workplaces, etc.; e.g. Jews who keep kosher or Muslims who keep halal have their lifestyles respected.
- There is more veganism and vegetarianism in the UK establishment than in the US establishment, e.g. the king seems to be somewhat sympathetic to plant-based diets for environmental reasons, and my sense is that senior politicians, etc. are more likely to be vegan than their US equivalents. This possibly relates to a sense of noblesse oblige and a commitment to the conservation of traditional landscapes amongst some of the aristocracy which can lend itself to environmentalism and a sense of responsibility for animals, as opposed to the more rapaciously egoistic and capitalistic ethos that tends to be more explicitly favored by US elites. But this is just an impression.”
Q: What factors (cultural, historical, political, environmental, etc.) do you think might contribute to these subtle differences?
“A few unique historical factors have shaped people’s understanding of animal agriculture in the UK. One is the history of British food, which was notoriously bad especially after rationing due to WWII, making people very open to other cuisines, and in particular Indian cuisine, given the strong links to India thanks to the history of Imperialism — which tends to be much more amenable to vegetarian and vegan diets than traditional Northern European cuisines are (interestingly, there’s also a link going in the other direction: Gandhi seems to have developed many of his most distinctive views because he was hanging out in vegetarian restaurants in London as a law student and meeting a certain set of people; on the other hand, notoriously the 1857 uprising in India was partly caused by the East India Company not respecting Muslim and Hindu aversion to eating pork fat. There’s a very complicated story to be told about the relationship between Britain, India, and animals).
There’s a long history of vegetarianism in the UK: it’s where the Vegetarian Society was founded in 1847, and the movement had interesting links with other important social movements over the subsequent century: utilitarianism, feminism/suffragism, abolitionism, etc. But it was generally quite marginal and restricted to quite radical circles. It has been growing a lot more in the last decade or two.
There are two big events in British animal farming from around 20-40 years ago [that] shaped a lot of the public’s perceptions negatively. One was BSE/Mad Cow Disease, where cows were infected with a new disease, probably as a result of cows being fed pellets that included material from other cows, which was pretty horrible for the cows but also turned out to cause an incurable and painful death for humans who ate the infected beef; this was sort of covered up initially, and led to British beef being banned in many places, prompting a counter-campaign to save British beef farming by buying British. The other was an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in 2001, which infected quite a lot of farm animals around the country – but unlike the current avian influenza issue for factory-farmed chickens, which has largely gone unnoticed by the general public, this outbreak had huge effects, as every time a farm detected a case of foot and mouth, they had to quarantine and kill their entire herd and burn it. So the entire countryside was blanketed with checkpoint/lockdown-type areas and huge piles of burning animal carcasses, which were rather noticeable.
One huge difference between the countries is in hunting. In the US this is mostly about a couple of people going out and shooting deer or whatever. In the UK it means fox hunting, which involves a large number of people, many upper class on horses wearing special costumes, who have a pack of dogs that chases down the fox and rips it apart. This was banned in 2004, but there are still loopholes and poor enforcement which allow groups to get away with it. Opposing them are groups of activists called saboteurs, who try to actively disrupt the hunt, often by putting themselves in great danger. Fox hunting is incredibly contentious, and intersects with several other divisions in British society, especially class (it is associated with upper-class people, who feel entitled to trample over everyone else’s land in pursuit of the hunt) and a rural/urban divide. I think this plays out rather differently in the US, where hunting is less of an upper-class activity, and class is seen very differently in any case.
There’s also an issue about badgers being killed by dairy farmers who believe they spread TB; the government mostly sides with the farmers, but there have been high-profile campaigns to save the badgers, famously led by Brian May from Queen. I don’t think there is any equivalent of this in the US.
The role of sheep in UK landscapes is complicated and contested, especially in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, which are much more dominated by sheep farming, partly because they have mountainous regions which are harder landscapes to farm anything else. In Scotland, the introduction of sheep was associated with the Clearances, which remain a sore wound for some to this day. In Wales, national identity is now partly formed around sheep. But most of all, the famous landscapes of these countries which people love and identify with are often quite barren mountains. There’s now a rewilding movement [that] claims that if sheep weren’t there, these landscapes would be forested with rich rainforests, and that we should return to such landscapes, perhaps by paying farmers to transition into something more like park rangers, and that the result would be much better for biodiversity and the climate. Needless to say, this is still a pretty marginal movement, but it is growing.”
Q: Based on your own experiences and your observation of any differences in the general perception of animals, what advice would you give to animal rights activists hoping to make a significant impact in both the UK and the US? What kind of work would be most effective in both regions?
A: “I think the main advice would be that we need a diversity of tactics to reach different people who are at different stages in their vegan journeys, so focus on your strengths and the people you are likely to be able to reach, whether you are good at gentle persuasion or more confrontational tactics which may not pay off immediately but will get people thinking, whether you are better at in-person discussions or social media, or more academic or more simplistic kinds of messages: don’t spend time criticizing other activists (e.g. for being too confrontational or not confrontational enough), focus your energy on doing the kind of activism in which you personally will be able to help the animals the most, given your skills and the people you are personally in the best position to reach. Don’t try to tailor just to a country (that is pretty broad), but to specific people or groups within that country, whether that’s based on age, religion, class, education, culture, connection to animal agriculture, or to particular foods, etc., or even what an individual person is telling you about why they personally aren’t vegan yet.”