How welfare works, why two centuries of it have left animal use standing, and how to tell a welfare message from an abolitionist one.
Welfare reform asks one question: how should we treat animals while we use them? Veganism asks a different one: do we have any right to use them at all? These aren't two steps on the same road — they point in opposite directions.
Welfare starts from a premise it never says out loud: that animals are ours to use. Once that is accepted, the only question left is how. How big the cage. How quick the slaughter. How “humane” the method.
Every welfare reform, however well meant, works inside that premise. It regulates the use. It never questions it.
Welfare doesn’t ask whether we should use animals. It assumes we will, and asks how.
Welfare is not new. It has been tried, in law and in campaigns, for two centuries.
“Martin’s Act” makes the “cruel treatment” of cattle, horses and sheep an offence. Using them carries on exactly as before. The law protects the animal’s treatment, not the animal.
One spectacle ends. Two centuries later, rodeo, in which riders chase and pin cattle against the arena wall, is Chile’s national sport. One use was removed; the belief that animals are there for us stayed, and so did their use.
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is founded in London, later to become the RSPCA. Its aim is to prevent cruelty — not to end use.
Two hundred years of welfare laws, standards and labels, and more animals are used than at any point in history. Welfare has made use easier to accept, not less common.
When a campaign targets cruelty — factory farming, cages, one particular practice — it sends a message it may not intend: that the problem is the treatment, so the use itself must be acceptable.
Campaign against factory farming and you have told people that farming animals some other way is acceptable.
“Better” products — free-range, high-welfare, “humane” — let people keep using animals with a clear conscience.
Nobody is asked whether animals exist for us. The belief survives every campaign, and the next generation of use is built on it.
A cruelty message argues about how animals are used. Only an abolitionist message asks whether they should be used at all.
The words we choose decide which question people hear. A quick test: does the message ask how animals should be used, or whether they should be used at all?
“End animal abuse”
“Abuse” means misuse. It implies there is a right way to use animals.
“End animal use” or “End animal exploitation”
“End factory farming”
Targets one method of farming and leaves every other way of using animals untouched.
“Animals are not ours to use”
“Cage-free”, “free-range”, “humane”
Asks for better conditions, so the use carries on with a clearer conscience.
“Abolition, not reform”
“Stop animal cruelty”, “Be kind to animals”
Makes it about kindness within use, as if treating them gently were enough.
“Animals are someone, not something”
“Reduce animal products”, “Reduce suffering”
Asks for less, which tells people that some use is still fine.
“Be vegan. Animals are not ours to use.”
Two hundred years of welfare reform have run alongside the greatest expansion of animal use in history. They are not in conflict — they are mutually reinforcing.
Welfare makes the belief comfortable. Comfortable beliefs are durable beliefs.