I woke up this morning with these thoughts in my head regarding Open Rescues, where individuals break in to businesses that depend on exploiting animals for their profits, and make off with some of the worst-abused animals to rehabilitate them at animal sanctuaries:
Animal rescue deals with a symptom of animal use, not the cause. Some animals are rescued, but the rationale which is used to justify testing on animals, crowding animals into barns to raise for our food – it is not questioned in a broad way by animal rescue.
It also makes heroes, and victims. The rescuers are the heroes, and the animals are framed in terms of perpetual victimhood, waiting for rescue. We hear talk about the ‘poor animals’. Already domesticated, or captured from the wild, these ones are poor; but we make them more so by framing them in demeaning terms. Over the discussion of ‘poor animals’, I prefer conversations that question whether or not we have the right, the reason to wield unequivocal dominance over animals and the ecosystems from whence they come.
As well, the rescuers aren’t making the connections with people in the businesses that they raid. If they left passionately worded manifestos articulating why they could not countenance the abuse and use of animals going on at that location, why they felt they must step in and remove the animals, and explain to the people being ‘robbed’ of their ‘property’ why that is happening, then perhaps we would see some movement. Heartfelt explanations might have the power to move, to intrigue the workers at the facilities whose place of employment has been smashed and overturned, whose livelihoods are enmeshed in cruelty and dominance – and who therefore must feel threatened and defensive in response to animal rescue actions.
Instead, animal rescues that I have seen have already assumed everyone in the business to be the enemy – walls are spray painted with messages like “Vegan Power” or “ALF Strikes Again”. This seems defeatist. The rescuers have decided that there is nothing they can do to change the minds of the people. Not just the people they are ‘stealing’ from, but the public in general is assumed to not have the capacity for understanding. They reach for an easy sound bite, a quick flash, a condemning report of property damage on the 6:00 news, without wondering whether the broader message is getting through – or maybe instead being damaged by these actions.
Certainly, some lives are being saved. There is that. Nothing breaks a sensitive heart more than seeing birds so badly crippled by fast weight gain that they cannot stand on their own legs, or pigs with lacerated ears and sad eyes; or rabbits damaged by laboratory testing, dogs and cats with parts of their skulls missing or their legs partially dissected. And nothing brings tears of relief like seeing the same animals, months later in an animal sanctuary, with feathers re-grown, wounds healed, and a new attitude of curiosity about life. We see the liberated animals in the grass for the first time, breathing the fresh air, hobbling happily on their crippled legs, hunting for crickets or snuffling around for treats.
But are more lives being sacrificed for those that have gone free – are the farmers and experimenters not buying new animals to fulfill their needs for profit off the backs of others? Is the rationale for meat-eating, or for experimenting on animals, any less deeply embedded in the general psyche of society because of these rescues? As long as there is the perceived justification for such uses, they will continue regardless of the rescues that are undertaken.
Maybe it even mollifies people – well, there are vigilante animal people out there, and they’re removing the worst cases of animal abuse, so we don’t have to worry about it … anyways, most farmers and most laboratories aren’t that bad, right? The action of animal rescue doesn’t intuitively make connections to the whole system of dominance against animals – except perhaps to those who are already attuned to the message of animal rights. But we have already reached these people. How do we make the message more general? How do we get people to give up their KFC, their infinitely rabbit-tested cosmetics, their leather?
And should we stop animal rescue? I don’t know. To me it seems unfair to rescue a few animals, only knowing that they will be replaced with even more animals who will have to experience exactly the same abuse and slavery. Removing some animals doesn’t decrease demand for their use.
So what we need to work on is the root causes. The root causes of industries which exploit animals? Pharmaceutical and cosmetics companies, and meat and dairy producers, and the public’s demand for the products which come from them. So how do we work on the root causes of domination and abuse of animals? Educate people about the drawbacks and incompleteness of animal testing, for example, to challenge the idea of the necessity of vivisection and experimentation on animals. Advocate veganism and challenge the necessity of meat-eating and animal husbandry. Draw links to environmental and ethical issues regarding global land use issues and human consumption of natural resources. Without the demand, there would be no industries. Without the industries, no open rescues would be required.
And then we could have meaningful discussions about what else we can do for the animals – and not just the domesticated ones: like the bees, the wolves, the tigers, the orang utans, the whales, the fish … all the beings which belong to this earth whose habitats and existences are threatened by our human interference and violent intrusions. And many of these animals are threatened by habitat loss from animal agribusiness and land-use decisions, which reinforces the need to tackle the meat and dairy industries head-on and to advocate for a vegan paradigm shift.
