Recently, ARZone invited me to be a guest in their podcast series. The recording was arranged to take place at 10pm on a Sunday evening. Not the best day and time for me! But the only time available given those involved live in the UK, Ireland, the United States and Australia. So, it had to be convenient for everyone involved. Praise the Lord for Skype!

The ARZone folks you will hear in this podcast include Carolyn Bailey, Barbara DeGrande, Tim Gier, Ronnie Lee and Roger Yates. Ronnie and Roger are old friends and colleagues of mine. Please forgive the silly banter between us.

Anyway, my podcast on ARZone is published here and I invite you to take the time out to listen to it. I need to tell you though it is a two-hour conversation! So, you will need, at least, a pot of tea or coffee beside you and some vegan sandwiches or biscuits. Here’s a list of some of the topics we discussed in no particular order:

• Vegan campaigning
• Political organising for animals
• Vegan public educational campaigns vs. political animal rights campaigns
• The radicalisation of British animal welfare organisations in the 1980s, including the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection
• The cultural history of veganism from post-World War Two stoic asceticism to current trends in urban vegan chic
• A sense of community among animal rights people or lack of
• Personal transformative moments, including mine
• The importance of studying other social movements
• Why are there not more vegans today?
• Why ‘animal lovers’ are a potential source of animal rights supporters
• How I got involved with animal rights, including working in a chicken slaughterhouse
• The European Union ban on the battery cage
• Steve Wise and his legal strategy
• Are vegans special people?
• Why meat, eggs and dairy are the new tobacco
• Traps to avoid and not let yourself fall into, including psychological trauma
• Is the British animal welfare/rights movement making progress?
• Buddhism and animal rights
• The Hastings Vegan Dining Club
• Professionalising the animal advocate
• Animal rights 75 years from now
• And why I’m guardedly optimistic……..

But be prepared for the odd outbreak of cheap, vulgar British humour!

A big part of the fun of Our Hen House is listening to Mariann Sullivan and Jasmin Singer banter and bicker with each other.

The good folks at Our Hen House, Mariann Sullivan and Jasmin Singer, recently interviewed me and our chat, which ranged over a number of issues, was published as part of Episode 97. You can listen to it here.

Our Hen House is a fantastic resource for anyone who cares about animals. It’s fun, upbeat and always interesting. But there’s a serious side, too. The Our Hen House Web site is also a rich source of information and resources on animal rights and vegan living.

In our conversation we explored such issues as the Animals and Society Institute, similarities and differences in animal rights and veganism between the UK and USA and gay rights and animal rights. I also spoke about my four key values — truth, compassion, nonviolence and interbeing — which I explore in my forthcoming book, Animal Dharma.

I recommend listening to this episode not only for my interview but also for all the other interesting features it includes. And while you’re at it, I suggest checking out previous podcasts.

The Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona held toward the end of October the first conference on animal law in Europe. The organiser, Professor Marita Candela, kindly invited me to speak. I wrote about the conference on the blog of the Animals and Society Institute. Also, I had posted onto the same blog a report of two Animal Studies conferences I had attended earlier in the month. They were both excellent.

The text of my talk in Barcelona, Animal Rights and Public Policy, is available to read here.

On my return from Barcelona, I began immediately to move to a new office. This involved moving the office I had set up at home and materials I had put into storage into one location. The bulk of the stuff I moved belongs to my archive. The collection now consists of some 2,000 plus books, six four-drawer filing cabinets of papers of various kinds, audio-visual materials and artefacts (e.g., badges/buttons, display materials, artwork). It’s great to have all this material under one roof. I use my archive as a resource for the work I currently do for client organisations and the books I am currently writing and researching. Further, I plan to catalog further and digitise my collection to make it more widely available. Presently, my collection of books is catalogued here. With the dotage years approaching more quickly than one would like, I will prepare at some point a Request for Proposals from interested parties (e.g., universities, archives, organisations) who may be interested in acquiring the collection. It is a truly unique collection which I would see form part of an institution that uses for educational and research purposes.

With no immediate travel plans and the move out of the way but not all the unpacking and sorting, my focus turns increasingly to working on my book, Animal Dharma, and meeting the needs of my clients, including those I volunteer for.

My message to the world about food is that there is nothing better than a vegan diet. It is compassion in action for the animals, embraces environmental protection, facilitates world development and helps to prevent hunger, and is good for our own health.

I have been a vegan since 1976 after working in a chicken slaughterhouse. Whatever inconveniences I have personally felt over the years pale into comparison when the benefits are considered.

There is no reason why everyone cannot be a vegan.

Kim Stallwood Busy Minding Animals

Our European Director, Kim Stallwood, is busy organizing and participating in a variety of activities related to international efforts on behalf of animals. He sends this report:

Minding Animals International functions as a bridge between academia and advocacy. MAI consists of a network of more than 2,500 academics, artists, activists and advocates, dedicated to the study and protection of all planetary life through the advancement of Animal Studies. It organized a highly successful conference in Australia in 2009, and the next will be in Utrecht next year.

As the volunteer deputy CEO of MAI, I will be attending a meeting of its board in London on October 6. My ASI colleague, Ken Shapiro, also serves on the board but is sadly unable to attend. I’m honored to represent ASI’s interests in MAI.

Also, I will be attending two one-day conferences immediately after the board meeting. They are Animal Citizens, which will be held at the London School of Economics, and Animal Ecologies in Visual Culture, which is organized by Antennae, the online journal of nature in visual culture.

On October 24-25, I will be speaking about Animals and the Law at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

Kim will keep us updated on his activities, and can be reached directly at kim.stallwood@animalsandsociety.org.

The IASJ’s mission is to open the realm of social justice to animals and hence advance animal protection. Therefore, the IASJ’s core strategic aim is:

To embed animal protection as a core policy goal of the UK Government, international governments and intergovernmental organisations, utilising and developing applied research as a primary tool to achieve this.

The IASJ’s priority programmes will involve research and advocacy in three crucial areas:

1. Animals’ legal/political status
2. Institutional representation for animals
3. Policy Strategies for Animal Protection

As one of the founding group, I look forward to establishing the IASJ to further the mission of advancing animal protection through policy research.

Institute for Animals and Social Justice from Kim Stallwood on Vimeo.

At the time of writing there isn’t a comment on the Commons debate on the Web site of Amazing Animals, a company which it states “trains and supplies animals to the film, TV, still photography and live event industry.” You would think that this would be something of interest to them. You would think that they would want to speak out. But they didn’t. Perhaps they believed they didn’t have to.

How the Great British Circus spoke out but Amazing Animals didn’t are just two developments in an extraordinary narrative which formed the backdrop to the successful June 23 Commons debate which adopted unanimously a motion calling for a ban on wild animals in circuses.

The cross-party motion was proposed by Mark Pritchard, Conservative MP for The Wrekin, with the support of Bob Russell (Liberal Democrat) and Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour). It directed the Government to “use its powers under section 12 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 to introduce a regulation banning the use of all wild animals in circuses to take effect by 1 July 2012.” The motion was passed unanimously; however, from the first minutes of the debate no one could have predicted that this would be the outcome. (Read the debate here.)

Shortly after opening the debate, Mark Pritchard stated,

I want to focus on the interesting past few days. On Monday, in return for amending my motion, dropping it or not calling a vote on it—and we are not talking about a major defence issue, an economic issue or public sector reform; we are talking about the ban on wild animals in circuses—I was offered a reward, an incentive. If I had amended my motion and not called for a ban, I would have been offered a job. [Hon. Members: “Ooh!”] Not as a Minister, so those who are competing should not panic. It was a pretty trivial job, like most of the ones I have had—at least, probably, until 30 minutes from now. I was offered incentive and reward on Monday, and then it was ratcheted, until last night, when I was threatened. I had a call from the Prime Minister’s office directly. I was told that the Prime Minister himself had said that unless I withdrew this motion, he would look upon it very dimly indeed. Well, I have a message for the Whips and for the Prime Minister of our country—I did not pick a fight with the Prime Minister of our country, but I have a message. I might be just a little council house lad from a very poor background, but that background gives me a backbone, it gives me a thick skin, and I am not going to kowtow to the Whips or even the Prime Minister of my country on an issue that I feel passionately about and on which I have conviction. There might be some people with other backbones in this place, on our side and the other side, who will speak later, but we need a generation of politicians with a bit of spine, not jelly. I will not be bullied by any of the Whips. This is an issue on which I have campaigned for many years. In the previous Parliament I had an Adjournment debate and I spoke in the passage of the Animal Welfare Act 2006. I have consistently campaigned on this issue, and I will not kowtow to unnecessary, disproportionate pressure.”

Thus, the scene was set for an extraordinary debate in which the plight of wild animals in circuses became also a challenge from Conservative backbench MPs, like Mark Pritchard, to speak out and vote for what they believed in. With the exception of Andrew Rosindell, Conservative MP for Romford, who failed to declare in his speech an association with the Great British Circus, MPs from all parties spoke in support of a ban on wild animals in circuses.

The situation now is that the British Conservative led coalition government is under increasing pressure to ban wild animals in circuses with a regulation written with the authority of the Animal Welfare Act (2006). Time will tell how quickly this will be done. It is estimated that there are less than 50 wild animals in five circuses in the UK.

But the wild animals in circuses debate has far greater consequences. They are all positive, given the cross-party strength of feeling for animal welfare expressed; however, there is still a tremendous amount of work to do to embed animal welfare as key value in public policy. It will now be more difficult for the present government to push ahead with other topical animal welfare issues, including the proposed badger cull and repeal of the Hunting Act. The debate signals a coming-of-age for animal welfare in Parliament. MPs repeatedly made reference to the overwhelming public support for animal welfare. The challenge for the animal welfare movement is to continue to build and transform this public sentiment so that it is focused on the political arena, including at all local, regional, general and European elections.

As I have repeatedly stated here and elsewhere, moral and legal progress for animals will not significantly advance until the animal welfare movement learns to balance the pragmatic politics of animal welfare with the utopian vision of animal rights thereby embedding the values of animal protection into public policy and mainstream politics. The Commons debate on wild animals in circuses signalled a shift in the right direction.

Meanwhile, questions go unanswered. Why did the Prime Minister’s Whips Office institute a 3-line whip on Conservative MPs forcing them to vote against Mark Pritchard’s motion? Further, why, in the course of the debate, did the Whips office abandon the 3-line whip and instruct their MPs that it was now a free vote? The second question may be easier to answer. The Whips office learnt in the course of the debate that Conservative MPs stated their intention of defying their authority. Its withdrawal then prompts a further question: Why was the 3-line whip imposed in the first place? A question that was repeatedly asked during the debate. Later, news reports pointed out that Amazing Animals was based is David Cameron’s Witney constituency. The day after the vote Cameron played down the vote by saying the “government’s position was ‘not a million miles away’ from that taken by Mark Pritchard.” Then, why the 3-line whip? And why such strong-arm tactics against Mark Pritchard? Amazing Animals denies any contact with their MP David Cameron.

One other reason maybe that the Conservatives in the Coalition government with the LibDems wanted the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to establish a licensing scheme for wild animals in circuses so that it set a precedent for a similar licensing regime for hunting wild animals. David Cameron and many but by no means all Conservative MPs and Lords are pledged to repeal the Hunting Act. If this is true, their misreading of Conservative MPs on wild animals in circuses may will be the precedent which unwittingly ensures bloodsports stays illegal and kill badgers allegedly to tackle TB in dairy cows.

What cannot be denied, however, is that animal welfare is increasingly recognised as a legitimate public policy. Further, it’s now up to the animal welfare movement in the UK and Europe to push further at the boundary of the political mainstream.

PS Congratulations to the various animal welfare groups and individuals involved as well as The Independent who was in the forefront of this initiative.

A you're Adorable. B you're a Badger.

I admit to not always joining every Cause on Facebook I get invited to if for no other reason than I’m overwhelmed with email, tweets, etc. and it’s one way to help keep the in-tray under control.

Nevertheless, I, of course, have my favourites.

And one is the cause of Badgers, who are animals I have come to love greatly since moving to Hastings Old Town to live. They are literally our neighbours. It’s a great privilege that we live so close together. In fact, even though Old Townians are, by large, lovely people, I much prefer my badger neighbours over some of the human ones. Badgers are adorable, grumpy, handsome animals who come out at dusk and cause mischief as they forage for food. No, I don’t identify with them.

Of course, with any animal, there’s some loser who wants them killed for [fill-in-the-blank] reason. With Britain’s badgers its dairy farmers who make money from exploiting cows. So, I’m making an exception to my rule on Causes and asking all my friends to support Badgers because, like all other animals, they need all the friends they can get. And if we can’t be friends with animals, well, who can we be friends with?

So, if you’re on Facebook please sign up for the Back off Badgers Cause today! And while you’re at it, please support all other pro-badger initiatives you see anywhere else on your travels.

Thanks!

So, why the gap?

Been busy.

That’s all there is to it.

But if I have to blame any single one thing, well, it will be writing. And when I say, writing, I mean writing, thinking, re-writing, deleting, staring into space, eating, laundry, the allotment, cooking dinner, sleeping and every other activity I do, some of which I’m not willing to share here.

Writing is all I’m ever thinking about. Well, that’s not true. As I left one thing off the list of things I do. Reading. I read an awful lot. But, then, there’s different types of reading. Scanning. Reading selective bits. Looking through reading. And so on. But I don’t get enough time to read what I want to read. Or need to read.

And whoever invented the Internet should be shot.

So, this is why there’s been a silence. Or the appearance of a silence from yours truly.

Because yours truly has been busy. But not here.

And what’s prompted this public apology and vain attempt to get back onto the blogging schedule?

Something I just read.

Here’s the link. If you’re a writer, you’ll love it. If you’re a reader, you will find it interesting. If you’re neither, fix a drink because you need it.

Even if you don’t think so.

Lyndum House in Petersfield where I first began to work for Compassion In World Farming.

On the occasion of a recent visit to Petersfield, Hampshire, I made a point of taking a look at Lyndum House in the High Street.

In 1976 when I first began to work for organisations campaigning for animals, my first days (well, two years) were spent at Lyndum House with Compassion In World Farming.

At this time, Compassion was a very small organisation renting a couple of rooms upstairs in the back of an old building, Lyndum House, in Petersfield’s Hight Street. Working there were Elaine, Compassion’s first and then only full-time employee, and Thelma and Pauline, part-time researcher and secretary respectively. Peter, who donated his time and expertise to Compassion, had also started a company called Direct Foods, whose claim to fame was Sosmix.

My interview with Peter was the first time I was forced to think about what compassion meant.

“Do you have a problem with the word ‘compassion’?” he asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” I replied. “Why?”

“Well,” I recall him saying, “some men are embarrassed by the word.”

“Not me,” I reassured him.

My answer was motivated more by wanting the job than understanding what compassion means. I cannot say that I understood what it meant then but it is a word that I have subsequently grown to respect, becoming one of my four key values.

Peter hired me and my professional career in the animal rights movement began unbeknownst to me. I soon realised from working at Compassion that this is what I wanted to do with my life: stop animal exploitation and secure animal rights.