Livestock liberation (1979)

From the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Were Socialists an endangered species, a society for our protection would soon emerge, for there is no shortage of people ready to deplore the exploitation of, and cruelty to, the four-legged and feathered in our midst. Recently, a group of animal welfare and protection societies combined into the General Election Co-ordinating Committee for Animal Protection (GECCAP). Now is the time, they claim, to "put animals into politics". They asked those interested in animal welfare to seek an assurance from all General Election candidates that they would support action on animal welfare, and to ensure that all MPs returned in the new Parliament were aware of the strength of the animal welfare lobby. 

The next government must accept its responsibility for animal welfare. We hope that MPs of all parties will press the next government to set up an independent Council for Animal Welfare—there is urgent need for legislative reform in all our areas of concern.

But successive legislation on maltreatment of animals has not contained the problem, which spreads and takes on new forms, is global in extent, and ranges from deliberate cruelty and exploitation to indifference and ignorance. Is it surprising that in a society whose basis is the exploitation of one section of humanity by another, that the same attitudes reveal themselves in the treatment of animals? Just as members of the working class are regarded primarily as mere productive and service units—"factory hands", "staff' , "labourers", "machinists", "assemblers", "typists", "domestics", so animals are primarily commodities produced for buying and selling, and the fact that they are able to suffer discomfort and pain becomes secondary to the realisation of profit.

CAGES FOR ANIMALS—BOXES FOR WORKERS

Modern farming has little in common with the cosy image derived from our nursery rhyme books. Capitalism draws all forms of production into its orbit, undermining and destroying traditional methods. Stock rearing has produced the factory farm. Battery hens are kept four or more in a cage 15in x 19in, where they spend day and night on steeply sloping wire floors, unable to stretch their wings and legs. Veal calves are kept in individual cubicles or multiple calf pens where movement is severely restricted. They are maintained on slatted floors and fed exclusively on milk substitute liquid (although their ruminant stomachs crave roughage) so that their flesh will not lose its pale colour. Pigs stand on concrete floors, in total or semi-darkness day and night, and pregnant sows are kept permanently in cubicles unable even to turn around. To prevent epidemics, animals incarcerated in such conditions require routine doses of drugs which can be transmitted to the consumer.

The same callous treatment occurs in the transport of animals for slaughter or further fattening. Cattle sent to mainland Europe or North Africa are crammed into open transporters, exposed to extremes of temperature, for long journeys by road and sea; sometimes left unwatered, unfed. Members of the working class who endure rush hour travel in buses, trains, and underground, will know the feeling. 

But bad living conditions are not suffered by animals only. Look around the world and see the shanty towns, tenements, back-to-back slums, tower blocks, and jerry built council and private housing estates. The majority of the working class live and die in. cramped, overcrowded, unhealthy conditions, lacking privacy or quiet, and often in an environment of depressing ugliness. There are some workers who can negotiate a level of wages that enables them to live in some degree of comfort, rather as the race-horse or pedigree breeding animal may be housed in special quarters. More than a century of agitation and legislation have not however eradicated cramped and inadequate living conditions for the majority of humans.

Yet it would seem a simple matter to provide comfortable living conditions for people—and for animals. The arguments against doing so are couched in accountant's jargon—alternative methods are dismissed as "uneconomic", "too labour intensive", "not viable", "unprofitable". Members of the working class hardly need reminding that resistance to higher wages is the first principle in the code of every employer. Economic self-interest and competition override all finer feelings.

WHOSE BEST FRIEND?

The single largest industry in the world today is the killing industry and enormous quantities of raw materials and human energy are poured into the manufacture of weapons of destruction. In a civilisation where people can be persuaded to don uniforms and fight and kill each other—and where such action is justified and glorified—is it any wonder that there are people who justify killing animals for fun?

Practices involving the needless slaughter of animals include the hunting of threatened species for the luxury fur trade so that Madam can parade in rare pelts. Experiments on animals to assess testing cosmetics and other non-medical products. Some of the experiments in the realms of Behavioural Research are so bizarre one must question whether the scientists concerned require behavioural investigation. Many psychological experiments involve subjecting the animal to severe deprivation, abject terror, or inescapable pain. A "will to live" experiment forced animals to swim non-stop until they gave up and allowed themselves to drown. How relevant is this work to humans?

Most humans feel an affinity to creatures that live and breathe as ourselves, and many humans take a delight in animal companionship. But even in the treatment of pets, where the motive is not profit and exploitation, we find many aspects of the neurosis and sickness of capitalist society. The novelty of a pet wears off and unwanted cats and dogs are callously abandoned. Some pets are used as a status symbol with the docking of tails, the clipping and dyeing of coats, to suit the owner's vanity or whim. Selective breeding takes place, especially of dogs, in order to emphasise some feature which appeals to the eye of the breeder but is biologically damaging to the animal. Guy the gorilla—a social animal—died in 1978 after thirty years in a cage in London Zoo. Was his confinement consistent with a regard for animals?

PUT SOCIALISM INTO POLITICS

Can there be an explanation, a solution? Capitalism is a society where the ownership of wealth production is concentrated in the hands of a minority, and where the ethos of competition and self interest permeates all social relations. Change that foundation to one where production is determined by the needs of society, where economic competition ceases to exist, where the means of production are commonly owned and democratically controlled and people will live in harmony and co-operation—with each other as well as with other species.

There the analogy between the treatment of the working class and animals ends, for while the latter must rely on the goodwill of human society, members of the working class can and must look to themselves to solve their problems by organising politically.

The human race and society are not superior to, or apart from, nature but a product of the universal process of evolution. As the only living creatures on this planet capable of consciously changing the environment and with an insight in to the laws of nature we have a special interest in protecting and conserving the earth which is our means of life. Such an outlook will permeate socialist society—a true respect for our environment and fellow living creatures.

Alice Kerr