
(Beth Clifton collage)
Home-grown speciesism
by Ed Duvin
I have not written for publication on animal rights and animal sheltering since 1993, as I had largely achieved what I set out to accomplish and it was time for new voices to be heard.
Having joined the animal rights movement in 1979, after working in the civil rights and anti-poverty causes, I turned my attention to long-postponed challenges in other areas of social justice.
I never thought of it as leaving the animal rights movement, as I see all injustice as one monster with many heads. Although not active, my heart remained in the struggle for animal rights––an indelible commitment that I could never abandon.
Much has been written about the shelters transitioning to no-kill, the latest being Susan Houser’s book Prodigal Pets, and the comprehensive review entitled “Orphans abandoned” by ANIMALS 24-7, both adroitly depicting the period of my direct involvement.
(See Orphans abandoned: Prodigal Pets by Susan K. Houser.)


Combat boots
It needs to be stressed, however, that my efforts––along with those of numerous others––would have been largely futile, were it not for all the pioneers who paved the way.
Many were mercilessly ridiculed as “little old ladies in tennis shoes,” but they were neither intimidated nor discouraged by those who deprecated their efforts on behalf of our nonhuman family.
I have never presumed expertise on animal sheltering, as my sole objective was to challenge the prevailing ethos.
I was heading an ethics institute when I wrote my essay “In The Name of Mercy,” summarized in Prodigal Pets and “Orphans abandoned,” and found the “loving them to death” mantra incomprehensible among humane organizations.


“Systemic deficiencies”
The deeper I delved into sheltering, the more heartsick I became due to systemic deficiencies falling woefully short of professional standards. My findings threatened many, resulting in a file full of death threats. I understood, as shelter workers loved animals and only knew what they were taught by leaders suffering from a lack of vision.
To be clear, my criticism was passionate, but I refrained from ad hominem attacks on shelter workers. Indeed, my focus over the years has been on principles, not personalities.
I say that absent any self-righteousness, but I found it more efficacious to focus on moral imperatives than to become embroiled in personal disputes.
After publication of this guest column, however, which goes light-years beyond sheltering, many old friends will likely be sending arrows my way! That’s fine if it leads to more constructive discourse on some highly sensitive issues.


“Flawed and often morally inconsistent”
The animal rights movement, not unlike our troubled culture, is polarized to the extent that critical analysis and independent thought have become foreign words.
For example, the founder of one prominent activist organization adheres to practices vis-à-vis feral cats and other companion animals that I perceive as lethal hubris. My understanding of that organization’s rationale is that a humane death is preferable to a life of uncertainty and suffering.
By that standard, none of us should have a pulse, as all animals––human and nonhuman––face lives of uncertainty and suffering.
Yet, this same organization was instrumental in bringing animal rights to the forefront. One aspect of what it does, and has done, does not justify the other, but the contrast portrays an all too common portrait of our species: flawed and often morally inconsistent.


What has been the historical effect of domestication?
That same lack of critical analysis of moral consistency applies in all aspects of animal advocacy, with even our mission statements often written in the most amorphous terms.
Ideological disparities and interpersonal disputes often supplant our raison d’etre–our reason for being. For me, in every cause I have had the privilege of serving, my motivation remained constant: putting ourselves out of business.
Here is where the tomatoes start flying, as that translates into rejecting anthropocentrism––the shameful view that humankind is the central and/or most important component of existence. Absent that unfounded predicate, who or what grants us the entitlement to domesticate other species, even with benign intentions?
What has been the historical effect of domestication in this nation and across the globe? It has proven beneficial to humans, who have used other beings in every conceivable fashion that serves our narcissistic needs.


(Beth Clifton collage)
“Is there dignity in domesticating other beings?”
Over the years, animals have provided transportation, labor, food, entertainment, clothing, tortuous laboratory testing, and yes, loving companionship. But domestication has served as speciesism’s version of slavery, as even our precious companion animals are living unnatural lives in fulfilling our needs.
We recently lost two giants in the quest for justice, former Congressional Representatives Elijah Cummings of Maryland and John Lewis of Georgia, both of whom devoted their lives to the struggle for human dignity.
Is there dignity in domesticating other beings? As Cummings and Lewis fought to liberate their sisters and brothers from exploitation, is there not an imperative for us to do the same––striving to end domestication that subordinates other species to our needs and desires? Not only has our self-absorbed species threatened the planet’s survival, but we ordained ourselves to have dominion over other beings. From the perspective of speciesism, that is nothing less than forced enslavement.


“The less we tamper with Nature, the better”
Unlike the aforementioned organization that might seek these same ends––ending domestication of other beings––I find their means antithetical to every humane principle.
I advocate protecting and cherishing each animal presently under our care, while seeking an end to the breeding of future generations.
Would some species likely perish? Tragically, yes, just as we’re losing some 8,700 species a year in the wild according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.
Through the larger lens of biodiversity, however, the less we tamper with Nature––even with good intentions––the better.


(Beth Clifton collage)
“Our goal should be ‘wild and free'”
Will any organizations have the courage, or even inclination, to expand their mission? Will newborns ever see an end to the domestication of other beings? Both are unlikely. Aside from public/commercial resistance, even many animal activists would be loath to end the breeding of certain species––most notably, companion animals.
That said, can we not for once soberly look at what Homo sapiens have created, recognizing that our goal should be to work for a day when other beings are where they should be, wild and free, not commodities to be used for human purposes with impunity.
The domestication of nonhumans began some 15,000 years ago, according to the American Museum of History, and if that remains acceptable to those responsible for the well-being of other species, then shame on us all.


Response from ANIMALS 24-7:
Ed Duvin’s call, above, for “protecting and cherishing each animal presently under our care, while seeking an end to the breeding of future generations,” has many antecedents in the literature of the late 20th century animal rights movement.
Most notoriously, in April 1993, then-Fund for Animals national director Wayne Pacelle, later president of the Humane Society of the United States from 2004 to 2018, and now president of Animal Wellness Action, claimed that Kathleen Marquardt of the long defunct anti-animal rights organization Putting People First had quoted him out of context in a syndicated column.
According to Marquardt, Pacelle at an animal rights event had “succinctly described the official animal rights plan for phasing out pets.”


(Beth Clifton collage)
“One generation and out”
Marquardt quoted Pacelle as saying, “One generation and out. We have no problem with the extinction of domestic animals. They are creations of human selective breeding.”
The remarks created a furor. While the notion of ending all deliberate human manipulation of animal breeding had long been discussed by animal rights theorists as a hypothetical ideal, as an extension of the concept of encouraging a vegan world, this was the first anyone in a leadership role within the animal rights movement had ever heard of ending animal breeding as an alleged plan, official or otherwise.
Indeed, neither then nor now was there any entity entitled to adopt any “official” plan, strategy, ideal, or even vague abstract tenet of belief on behalf of the entire animal rights movement, which was and remains nothing if not highly diverse in goals, campaigns, and even basic outlook on just what should be an animal’s rights.


“Hypothetical scenario”
Pacelle contended that remarks were actually made at a public gathering in response to “questioning which assumed the hypothetical scenario of an immediate end to meat-eating and the dilemma about the future of the surviving farm animals. The gist of my response,” he continued in an open letter, “was that we have no ethical obligation to preserve the different breeds of livestock produced through selective breeding.”
Pacelle’s position, interestingly enough, was almost word for word identical to that of spokespersons for the animal agriculture and biomedical research industries when questioned a few years later about their ethical obligations toward new species of animals created through transgenic experimentation.
Some of those spokespersons also paralleled Duvin’s words, in acknowledging an ethical duty to provide a high standard of welfare to creatures brought into being through experimentation, but not to preserve artificially created species, even cloned re-creations of extinct species, if those animals could not be kept safely and in good health in our present world.


Zoo people agreed, too
Pacelle went on to repeat the phrase “One generation and out” at an April 1994 conference of zoological conservation experts at the White Oak preserve in Florida.
This too was widely quoted out of context by opponents of the animal rights movement, but as the recorded, transcribed, and published minutes of that conference confirmed, what Pacelle said then was that “‘One generation and out’ should be the policy for keeping wild animals in captivity at zoos.”
Instead of trying to breed animals in perpetuity to live in small concrete and steel prisons, Pacelle argued, zoos should focus on helping to preserve species by protecting those animals’ wild habitat––and many of the assembled leaders of the zoo community agreed, at least in principle, with that.


Beside the point
ANIMALS 24-7 tends to regard the whole discussion of “one generation and out,” or of “seeking an end to the breeding of future generations,” as rather beside the point.
At issue for us, in any context, is whether the animal is harmed or exploited by the circumstances.
ANIMALS 24-7 argues, for instance, that humans should not breed pit bulls and other fighting dogs, who have no analogs in nature and have been created through extreme inbreeding for the sole purpose of killing other beings, not to eat them but for human amusement.
ANIMALS 24-7 also agrees with many leading animal advocacy organizations, including some associations of breeders, that dogs should not be bred for traits that are delirious to their own health, such as the extremely wide heads and flat faces of many purebred English bulldogs and the abnormally sloping backs and short hips often seen in purebred German shepherds.
But that many dogs are harmed and exploited as result of having been bred and kept by humans, is hardly an argument that dogs should never be bred and kept by humans, when vast numbers of humans keep vast numbers of dogs who plainly enjoy their lives and human companionship.


Reduce & prevent animal suffering in the here & now
Cats, in particular, throughout the past seven thousand-odd years of human history, have notoriously often voted with their feet whether to consort either with specific humans or with humans in general. The advent of spay/neuter has markedly reduced feline freedom of choice in reproduction, but even in the U.S., where up to 90% of the owned cat population may be sterilized, a majority of the cats born are still conceived beyond the reach of human control, and have the opportunity to evade human control if they so choose.
Looking beyond dogs and cats to farmed animal species, “one generation and out” would appear to be an appropriate goal for any animals conceived and raised specifically to be killed and eaten, skinned for fur or leather, or to be experimented on, be hunted, or be used in exploitive entertainments.


Yet, since the possible extinction of common livestock breeds is unlikely to be anything more than an abstract possibility within the lifespan of anyone alive today, or of any of our immediate descendants, it is also rather absurd to be discussing this hypothetical “what if?” scenario, instead of focusing on reducing and preventing actual animal suffering in the here and now––especially by not eating animals, so that fewer will be bred to suffer.
A worthy return to form, Ed Duvin! Thank you for weighing in again.
Yes, humans tend to mess things up when we interfere with nature. We definitely should not be breeding animals (human or other) with the intention of harmfully exploiting them. As for dogs and cats, at the very least we shouldn’t be breeding them while so many continue to be killed or kept in bad conditions due to the lack of a decent home for them.
Fair enough on all counts. As you know from my no-kill and other writings, I’m also not prone to waste much time addressing hypotheticals, but there’s an inherent value in stating principles in the hope they won’t be repeated. Indeed, we can’t undo most of the horrors of history–from the Holocaust to the untold millions of companion animals who died in shelters for the sole “crime” of being homeless–but we can struggle to ensure that such abominations never occur again. Principles stated in the hypothetical realm are not mutually exclusive with working tomorrow and all the tomorrows to achieve pragmatic-based progress. It was wrong 15,000 years ago to begin the domestication of animals for human use and abuse, and it’s no less wrong today. True, our time is better spent improving the present lives of animals than ruminating about past mistakes, but principles previously violated in the past are instructive as we traverse our way through contemporary minefields. What we fail to learn from the past is a tragedy waiting to occur again.
Happy to hear from Ed Duvin after a very long time. Unfortunately, our species will never stop “breeding” other animal species, including creating new variants to serve our purposes and please ourselves. I put “breeding” in quotation marks because the term is disgusting and obscene. We have no business “breeding” anyone, human or nonhuman. If I had my way, there would be no human beings on the planet. Any benefit we bring is minimal compared with the vast misery that exists because of us. Long ago, when I first joined the animal rights movement in 1983, I heard a then prominent activist say in a group discussion, “We [humans] have dishonored the privilege of sharing life with the other creatures.”
I am a committed animal rights activist, but my activism does not depend on a belief that ultimately we/animals will “win.” We see how hard it is to achieve justice for members of our own species, how fragile and reversible “progress” is. “Justice for animals” is beyond anything remotely achievable. There are good human beings in the world, and good human impulses, but we are not a good species and the Earth will breathe a sigh of relief if, by chance or design, we no longer occupy it.
Thank you, Ed and Animals 24-7, for an important discussion.
Karen Davis, PhD, United Poultry Concerns http://www.upc-online.org
To me, Mr. Duvin’s argument is based on a flawed premise: that we humans caused domestication to happen to animals. As Pulitzer-prize winning author and biologist E. O. Wilson pointed out, “I know of no instance in which a species of plant or animal gives willing support to another without extracting some advantage in return.”
In my book LEAVING THE WILD, I argue that animals suited to life among humans chose domestication as a survival strategy. From a biological standpoint, it proved a huge success. As we’ve altered the world, species of utility to humans thrive while those unable to adapt go extinct.
While I truly believe that every effort to save wild habitat and species need be a moral imperative for humans, I pragmatically realize that domestication is here to stay; it won’t simply go away because a tiny minority of humans abhor its existence and cast our livestock and pets as enslaved beings. Not when people still clamor for a chicken in every pot, and a dog or cat in the home.
Unless human population ceases to increase, animal agriculture likely will greatly diminish and cease one day; it will come down to a choice between using crops to feed animals, or using them to feed people. Efforts to create lab-grown animal protein, including meat and dairy, are already accelerating to accommodate this reality, just as creating artificial textiles has largely already replaced the skins and furs used to cloth us since before the dawn of history.
All that said, I agree with the view of Animals 24-7 editors that our moral obligation is to do everything in our power to reduce animal suffering. We need always ask if our breeding and animal raising choices honor our obligation to minimize animal suffering in the here and now.
These animals give of themselves in body, souls and strength in exchange for our care, provision and protection. It’s a two-way street that’s greatly aided in the adaptive survival of domesticated species.
Practically, we can and should do far, far more to ensure that we live up to a high standard of humane care for our farmyard and household animals. Through societal activism, we can effect change in the reproduction and living standards of domestic animals.
But to hold out a goal of no longer keeping and perpetuating these animals, whose adaptations make them unsuitable to lives without human assistance in some mythical wild that increasingly is going out of existence strikes me as a naive and unattainable goal, at least until humans themselves perish from the earth.
Gavin Ehringer is the author of the book LEAVING THE WILD: The Unnatural History of Dogs, Cats, Cows & Horses.
NOTE: Author/reporter Gavin Ehringer for many years covered the PRCA rodeo circuit. Here’s a link to a 2004 essay he wrote on the subject. Relatedly, many of the animals used/abused in rodeos are also purpose-bred for the arena. For most of these exploited animals, the rodeo arena is merely a detour en route to the slaughterhouse.
https://www.csindy.com/coloradosprings/the-mud-the-blood-and-the-poop/Content?oid=1124891
And a new, prize-winning rodeo documentary short, “BUCKING TRADITION”
https://www.actionforanimals-oakland.com
There are several issues related to the position that animals should not be domesticated but should be wild and free.
First, at the present time humans are destroying animal habitats around the world, whether in the oceans or on the lands. Forests are removed to work the soil for crops. Wetlands filled to provide for developments. Habitat in many areas has been made dangerous for wildlife by the activities involved in oil and mineral removal. The expansion of human population and human activities threatens all life on the planet. It seems to me that a major problem for wild creatures, from animals to plants, is human population expansion and the need to provide for that population. In that context, animals being wild and free often means death.
Next, the domestication of animals has also provided for the development of medical cures for animals. When humans can observe and test animals, they can learn what is needed to improve the health of those animals.
The keeping of birds and animals in zoos has provided the public with access and interest in many animal forms which they would otherwise not be able to even know existed. This has led to the monetary support for the conservation of many types of animals and even the prevention of extinction of many species, for example, the California Condor.
As for the domestication of animals thousands of years ago, without that process having taken place, humans today would be living rather similarly to the humans of thousands of years ago. Scientists such as Jared Diamond have shown how the advances made in agriculture and in all aspects of our modern world depended upon the original use of animals: for transportation, for tilling the land, etc. Clearly, without the domestication of animals, humans would not have been able to develop civilization as we know it today. In areas where humans did not domesticate animals, they live today much as they did thousands of years ago, in New Guinea and South America for example.
As a person who loves nature, wildlife, and all living things, from the worms and insects to the robins and raccoons, as well as the horses and cattle, I do not see how the wild or domestic creatures on the planet can survive as long as humans continue to breed with no concern for over populating the planet. That issue seems to be far more serious than whether or not animals are domesticated. Without habitat, animals cannot be wild and free; they will be dead.
While I may have strong feelings and beliefs about what “should” be, I am also very much a realist and I know that what “should” be is not what will ever be as long as human beings inhabit this earth. “…”At issue for us, in any context, is whether the animal is harmed or exploited by the circumstances.” For that matter, very few humans live unfettered and free, as some imagine occurred in some dawn of time for our species.
My personal code of ethics includes treating others as I would wish to be treated. This idea occurs within the teachings of most major religions. It is one I extend not only to my fellow humans, but to all others.
I never understand the environmentalism/animal rights perspective which appears to consider humans as an invasive alien species on a beautiful planet. Other humans, of course––we ethical few are of course exempt from this calculation. As long as it’s for the animals, we environmentalists and animal rights advocates are free to manipulate our fellow humans––turn them into slaves to our ideas and choices––without any notion of their rights to even be aware of our plans, let alone decline them.
Back when I started the National Spay and Neuter Coalition in the 1910’s, shelters were killing 18 million cats and dogs a year. The AVMA had a policy that said spay and neuter clinics don’t work and poor people don’t use them anyway. Peter Marsh, another lawyer, and I re-wrote the AVMA policy and they, after 2 years, finally accepted it. Spay and neuter clinics begin to open. Now, in 2020, we are killing 1.7 million a year. The AVMA owns those needless deaths. Don’t buy a purebred dog or cat when there so many that are in shelters and need homes.
I appreciate your posting of Ed Duvin’s thoughts on animal-breeding followed by yours.
On Responsible Policies for Animals’ web page we define animal abuse as all that human beings do to and with nonhuman animals and their natural homes and ecosystems, based on the most basic definition of “abuse” as maltreatment and the need to differentiate the vast scope of abuse from the minuscule portion of abuse that is cruelty, whose basic meaning includes an intention to cause pain and suffering, whereas intentions don’t affect what is or is not abuse; people often abuse those they love even with good intentions.
I think the Duvin position could be more fleshed out if fully linked to the concepts of liberation and rights, terms that are generally misused in animal advocacy though used to denote purported goals of advocacy. A policy that permits breeding nonhuman animals for human purposes is accurately perceived and understood as eugenics — deemed immoral since the Nazi Holocaust (though not before it) when it is done to human beings — forecloses both liberation, which means freeing from tyranny, and rights, which are policies that prevent or provide recourse against acts of tyranny or tyrannical policy. I consider it nonsensical to speak of an animal-rights movement whose goals do not include complete liberation of nonhuman animals from civilization and establishment of equal rights of all animals that codify and enforce their liberation.
Isolated from those concepts, I think advocating to end nonhuman animal-breeding carries less weight than linked to them as part of a thoroughgoing animal-rights agenda.
These thoughts are more fully elaborated here: https://www.rpaforall.org/literature/rpa-founder-director-david-cantor-on-pet-industries-and-loving-nonhuman-animals/.
After reading this article, I am still unsure on your position regarding the breeding of any ”domesticated” animal?
As ANIMALS 24-7 explained, “At issue for us, in any context, is whether the animal is harmed or exploited by the circumstances.” This is clearly a matter to be examined on a case-by-case basis. In view that “domesticated” animals run the full range of phylums, orders, genus, and species, assuming a uniform position that would cover everything from elephants and whales kept for exhibition to the yeast in beer would be an exercise in sophistry.