Kim Stallwood

This is a collection of investigative reports I published in The Animals' Agenda.

My Animals and Society Institute colleague Bee Friedlander remembers The Animals’ Agenda magazine and gives an update on its future. “The magazines take up quite a bit of room on a bookshelf in my office,” Bee writes, “but I keep them there as a constant reminder that a valuable resource to the animal advocacy community needs to be inventoried, digitalized, and indexed.”

So it’s for good reason that expanding the availability of the magazine has been on my agenda of things to do. Enter Carolyn Smith, a long-time animal advocate who has fond memories of Agenda, and who has been looking for a volunteer opportunity with an animal organization near her home in Ann Arbor.  She’s a former librarian and has both edited and indexed books. When I showed her the magazines, she immediately agreed to take on the project.

As the magazine’s last editor I’m thrilled to learn that it will become available at ASI’s Web site. Meanwhile, the two anthologies of articles I published from The Animals’ Agenda are still available from Lantern.

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The agreement struck between The HSUS with Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland and the Ohio Farm Bureau to stop the ballot initiative scheduled for this November which was to promote humane standards and prevent cruel factory farming practices is causing outrage in the state’s farming interests and raising questions by animal advocates. The core argument in support of the agreement, as made by Wayne Pacelle of The HSUS, is the

agreement in its collective form that constitutes the single biggest ever animal welfare package I’ve seen in our movement. It represents a pathway forward for much stronger animal welfare in a state that has lagged badly on this set of issues. All parties also recognize that it is not the end of the discussion, but the beginning.

The agreement achieves the following:

• A ban on veal crates by 2017, which is the same timing as the ballot measure.
• A ban on new gestation crates in the state after Dec. 31, 2010. Existing facilities are grandfathered, but must cease use of these crates within 15 years.
• A moratorium on permits for new battery cage confinement facilities for laying hens.
• A ban on strangulation of farm animals and mandatory humane euthanasia methods for sick or injured animals.
• A ban on the transport of downer cows for slaughter.
• Enactment of legislation establishing felony-level penalties for cockfighters.
• Enactment of legislation cracking down on puppy mills.
• Enactment of a ban on the acquisition of dangerous exotic animals as pets, such as primates, bears, lions, tigers, large constricting and venomous snakes, crocodiles and alligators.

David Cassuto, professor of law at Pace Law School, wonders if the deal is strong enough and gives too much away.

Compromise, by definition, is never ideal. Still, this agreement, wherein pig gestation crates can remain in use until 2025 and existing battery cage operations can remain in operation indefinitely, gives up a lot. A heartbreakingly large amount. Sometimes, not nearly enough is just not nearly good enough.

Whereas Erik Marcus thinks it’s a smart move.

In short, it’s a smart compromise for both sides. All things considered, HSUS would have been foolish to reject the offer that was on the table.

My take is that in the real world of politics when deals are struck between competing interests to find common ground to move forward finding the right compromise and agreeing to it is pivotal.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion as to whether this agreement compromises too little or too much. One encouraging sign, however, is reading the comments of agricultural interests who are condemning the agreement as a sell out suggests to me that in the long term this will be a significant and positive development for animal protection in Ohio and throughout the U.S.

Cliches abound in politics. The art of the possible. All politics is local. The devil is in the detail. And so on. Who wouldn’t want more gains from agricultural interests? But I wasn’t a member of the negotiating team. All I can do is comment and wonder what would have I done? Nonetheless, I think Wayne’s comments here are insightful and resonate well with me. 

As a movement, if we do not sit down with our adversaries and try to solve problems, we will never succeed. Instead, we will be wrapped up in an endless cycle of wins and losses and polarizing political campaigns. At times, we must pursue such campaigns when lawmakers or industry slam the door in our face and reject the common good. But, in the end, we need not only to change laws, but also to understand human nature and build on our shared concerns and values. That’s what happened yesterday in Ohio. Serious-minded dialogue with our traditional political adversaries occurred, and resulted in a good set of outcomes. Ultimately, we will need them to change and to view animals in a more sensitive way if we are going to achieve our goals. At the end of the day, our work is more about human behavior than animal behavior and more about solutions than political victories.

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The transcript of my chat on the Animal Rights Zone is now available at their Web site. ARZone supports the “abolitionist approach to animal rights” and ”believes non violent, creative vegan education is the only effective approach in ending the commodification of nonhuman animals.” You need to join ARZone to access the Web site, which is a Ning (an online platform where people create their own social networks), and read the transcript. We had an interesting discussion. I applaud ARZone’s commitment to thoughtful debate with their series of guest chats.

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I will be the guest on the Animal Rights Zone on Saturday, June 19. The Animal Rights Zone is dedicated to fighting for animal liberation and an end to speciesism. It is a Ning, which is an online platform where people create their own social networks. You must register to participate in the Animal Rights Zone. 

I look forward to seeing you there!

My live chat takes place at this time (depending upon where you are in the world):

USA

3pm — Sat 19th — Pacific Time

4pm — Sat 19th — Mountain Time

5pm — Sat 19th — Central Time

6pm — Sat 19th. — Eastern Time

UK

11pm — Sat 19th — UK Time

Australia

8am — Sun 20th — Australian Eastern Standard Time

Everyone else … please consult this Web site.

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Changes have been made to my Web site to bring more into focus the two books I’m currently working on. My first book, Animal Dharma, explores what it means to care deeply about animals and discovers how we can live peacefully with ourselves and others by proposing four key values: truth, compassion, non-violence and interbeing, the interrelatedness of all. Links to audio extracts (MP3 files) will be added soon. This is book is more than two-thirds finished. My second book, The Animal Rights Challenge, which is in development, examines the animal rights movement, assesses society’s response and proposes a strategy framing moral and legal rights for animals as part of a progressive agenda for social change. This page also includes a speech I made to the London Minding Animals Conference in 2008 as it introduces the issues I explore in The Animal Rights Challenge. I welcome your comments and feedback.

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The moral and legal status of animals is not an isolated issue as it clearly exists and relates to the society in which it exists or doesn’t, as the case maybe. Regrettably, the animal welfare/rights movement has yet to succeed in effectively placing a concern for animals in a larger and progressive context.

This point was brought home to me again this morning as I caught up with reading Felicity Lawrence’s excellent article in The Guardian, Meat packers united, which explores the terms and conditions of employment for those who work in chicken slaughterhouses. Yes, as an animal rights activist I want to see all places where animals are exploited and killed for our selfish and inessential needs closed down; but I also care about those, who are very often disadvantage, who work in them. As someone who worked in a chicken processing plant in 1973 I know how dehumanizing (to put it mildly) this work is.

Lawrence’s article explores well the efforts of unions to organize workers, often migrants, and the benefits to these businesses when they look after their employees. The food we eat is produced by a complex web of producers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers. Straightening this out so that not one group of people (or animals, for that matter) remains abused is a challenge. Vegans aren’t exempt because we should be concerned about the conditions in which our food is grown and produced as well as by those who are employed to produce it. Lawrence writes that “abuses and tensions were not confined to the meat sector but likely to apply to all sectors using low-paid migrants, from construction to cleaning, catering and social care.”

It’s not only the unions that are demanding improved standards in how food is produced. More enlightened retailers (Lawrence cites Marks & Spencer) increasingly are asking for scrutiny, accountability and, if necessary, change. Lawrence’s article is recommended as a way to glean quickly insight into the UK situation. Clearly, cheap food isn’t cheap at all because costs are either not being met appropriately or they’re being avoided and passed over onto someone else, as in environmental clean-ups which society often ends up paying for.

Nonetheless, I like Lawrence’s conclusion.

The new industry phrase for this approach is moving on from “lean manufacturing” to “people-centric lean manufacturing”. It may strike others as reinventing the wheel to discover that treating workers decently actually pays.

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In a historic move for animals in Australia, the Tasmanian Minister for Primary Industries and Water, Bryan Green, today announced his government’s plan to place restrictions on the time pregnant sows are allowed to be kept in stalls from 2014, with a full ban coming into effect in 2017. This puts Tasmania ahead of the rest of the country, where pregnant pigs will lawfully be permitted to be confined for the duration of their 16 week pregnancy until at least 2017.

Read more from Australia’s Voiceless.

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Philosopher Peter Singer makes sense in Religion’s regressive hold on animal rights issues. He begins by saying,

Last week, the chief minister of Malacca, Mohamad Ali Rustam, was quoted in the Guardian as saying that God created monkeys and rats for experiments to benefit humans. Activists had been protesting against his approval of an Indian company’s proposal to build an animal research laboratory in his state. They said that Malaysia has no regulations to protect animals in laboratories. His answer was the reference to God’s purpose in creating animals.

And concludes with,

If we are concerned about the exploitation of human workers in countries with low standards of worker protection, we should also be concerned about the treatment of even more defenceless non-human animals. At present, the only hope of reversing this trend seems to be pressure on companies not to test their products in countries without good animal welfare regulations, and pressure on research institutions not to have links with such countries. But to unravel the connections and make them clear to consumers is, unfortunately, going to be a difficult task.

But it seems that stupid comment of the day award needn’t necessarily go to chief minister Mohamad Ali Rustam who said God created monkeys and rats for experiments to benefit humans but to Wesley J. Smith, the latest in a line of apologists for animal exploiters and reds-under-the-dog-beds scare-mongers. He takes Singer to task for not using the opportunity of his op ed to state his opposition to violence. Because Singer didn’t, Smith concludes that, 

Singer has spoken against violence in the past, but not very robustly. This piece would have been a good time to bring that crucial point up with ringing clarity. Too bad he preferred instead to use most of his column as a jeremiad against religion. Indeed, I think it tells us clearly where is priorities lie. 

It seems that you can’t speak out often and loudly enough against violence for those who are blind to the violence they condone toward animals regardless of whether it is sanctioned by religion or anything else.

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This policy paper explores how US policies and practices regarding intensive animal agriculture are contributing to a worldwide environmental crisis.

The Animals and Society Institute (ASI) publishes a series of Policy Papers on specific animal issues and their impact in the public policy arena. Six Policy Papers have been published since 2006:

• Dog Bites: Problems and Solutions by Janis Bradley, which was made possible with the generous support of the Animal Farm Foundation and is now in its second printing.
• Animals in Disasters: Responsibility and Action by Leslie Irvine, PhD, University of Colorado, Boulder. This policy paper was made possible with the generous support of The Humane Society of the United States.
• Elephants in Circuses: Analysis of Practice, Policy, and Future by G. A. Bradshaw, PhD.
• Human-Animal Studies: Growing the Field, Applying the Field by Kenneth J. Shapiro, PhD.
• Dolphin-Human Interaction Programs: Policies, Problems and Alternativesby Kristin L. Stewart, JD, PhD and Lori Marino, PhD
• The CAFO Hothouse: Climate Change, Industrial Agriculture, and the Lawby David N. Cassuto

The Policy Papers are available for purchase through the ASI Web site.

The paper by David N. Cassuto, a professor at Pace School of Law and the director of the Brazil-American Institute for Law and Environment, is the latest to be published. It explores how industrial livestock operations contribute significant amounts of greenhouse gases while receiving little criticism but extensive financial incentives. Professor Cassuto writes,

When one factors in the environmental and social costs of factory farming (which consumers pay in the form of taxes, subsidies, clean-up costs and more), the price of those products increases dramatically. Nevertheless, agribusiness has made full use of its advantageous political and legal position. Few traditional farms remain; factory farms have married themselves fully into the nation’s infrastructure even as the realities of climate change make that relationship unsustainable and potentially catastrophic.

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Michael Markarian, president of the Humane Society Legislative Fund, blogs about Measuring the Benefits of Ballot Measures and refers to a peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization. The study, The Effect of Proposition 2 on the Demand for Eggs in California by Jayson L. Lusk, Oklahoma State University, shows how publicity about California’s Proposition 2 in 2008 increased consumer awareness about animal cruelty in industrial egg production, dramatically increased the demand for cage-free eggs and decreased the demand for eggs from caged hens.

Californians recently passed Proposition 2, barring the use of cages in egg production in the state. Because most consumers are unknowledgeable of egg production practices, the appearance of Proposition 2 likely served as an information shock that potentially affected consumer demand. In this paper, we use scanner data to investigate the market effects of Proposition 2 by studying whether and how consumer demand for eggs changed in the months leading up to the vote in San Francisco and Oakland. Results indicate that demand for the types of eggs associated with higher animal welfare standards, cage free and organic, increased over time and in response to articles on the proposition whereas demand for other types of eggs fell. These results coupled with the finding that cage free and organic egg demand was virtually unchanged in a location unaffected by the vote, Dallas, suggests that Proposition 2 had a significant effect on consumer preferences for eggs – increasing demand for cage free and organic eggs by 180% and 20%, respectively.

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