This past spring we helped to organize a small informational gathering on veganism at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, called “peaceable eating.” Mercy for Animals gave a presentation on the egg industry showing that not only regular eggs but also “free range” eggs are part of an industrial system that treats the chickens very poorly in many ways. We then showed a video called “Wegman’s Cruelty” which makes the point very well through images.
The response after the presentation and the video by one of our AMBS professors has had me thinking for quite a while about the use of video and imagery in making a case for veganism. This particular professor told me that everybody can agree that the way the animals are treated is just aweful and something ought to be done to make sure they are treated well. But he could not agree that using nonhuman animals for food is in itself a problem. It is the treatment that is the problem, not our use of nonhuman animals for our own purposes.
I have wondered whether the video (and perhaps the initial presentation) did not reinforce that presumption in this friend and professor.
When I taught at Goshen College in the peace and justice department this past year, I spent three days on the subject in a course, and I showed a video to the class (Earthlings). A large portion of the class became vegetarian or vegan as a result and I think the video definitely helped in that process, but only because it was part of a larger, drawn out argument that treatment is not the issue. I argued that it is our exploitation and use of animals itself that is part of the problem (speciesism), and that animal rights advocates have actually very little to show for their efforts at reform over the last few hundred years. I also used Gary Francione’s arguments that most of us agree that we should not unnecessarily inflict suffering or death on any creature, but that the only way we do so to nonhumans is for unnecessary reasons. The video, within that large, sustained study seemed to have made sense. Still, I wonder. I wish there were a way to show how the use is a problem through video so that I am not simply feeding into our culture’s desensitized reaction to graphic violence.
The professor who was not convinced at our small gathering did not stay for the presentation that followed, which was by Nekeisha Alexis-Baker. Her presentation focused on the similarities in the way Black people, women, and animals have been used and how the three groups’ expoitation are actually intertwined quite often. Had he stayed for that presentation, perhaps his questions could have been different. We have uploaded Nekeisha’s video to the speciesism page (and in this post). She has given this presentation at Calvin College, AMBS, and at two universities in Sweden this summer.
