To eat animals, or not to eat animals, that is a question.
If you’re like most people, which is to say you’re not in the Animal Rights movement, you’ll have no idea what the title of this essay is about: WTF is “welfarism” vs. “abolitionism” ?
You know what these 2 “isms” mean in general, but not how they apply to humanity’s treatment and use and our ancient practice of eating animals. In a nutshell, the ongoing debate in the animal rights movement is whether to be “realistic” and pragmatic by advocating for gradual improvement in the treatment and conditions of “farmed” animals. To shut down large, “factory farms” which, the reasoning goes, are more abusive, cause more suffering, and generate more land and water pollution, than smaller, localized, decentralized animal operations. This is welfarism.
And now you can intuit that abolitionism means advocating for shutting down ALL animal factories, regardless of size, because all abuse and kill animals, whether you call them factories or farms. The reasoning is that since all initiatives inevitably get watered down as they move through society, it’s best to advocate for the end goal, which is to end completely our practice of using animals for any purpose, which includes the most obvious one: eating them.
This issue could easily be an essay of 10,000 words. But instead, for a lay audience in this digital and video age, watch this short, compelling, documentary film, Animal Rights, posted by Ethical Vegan Education, to dive right into the issue:
• READ MORE about eating animals
• READ MORE about the movement to “Ban Factory Farms”
• READ MORE about the term “Animal Holocaust”
• READ MORE about the how eating animals exacerbates the climate crisis