‘The Omnivore’s Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals, and Ourselves’

While animal advocacy has made strides to eliminate greyhound racing and the exploitation of elephants and other animals in circuses, etc., it has not had the slightest impact on the public’s view that killing and eating animals is 'natural' and therefore right. The basic ideology around human supremacy and the centrality of animals in the human diet has been left virtually untouched by the movement. There has been simply too much equivocation in the movement about whether it’s wrong to exploit and kill animals, rather than only in 'factory farms'. If we are serious about protecting nonhuman beings from human violence, then we must be honest in naming the problem, which isn’t 'factory farms', but human domination, human colonialization, human enslavement, human killing of our fellow creatures.

KIM STALLWOOD: John Sanbonmatsu has become one of the most important advocates for animals who frames animal justice as integral to a progressive agenda of social change. Whether you agree with him or not, or your political views are compatible, John’s work is important for everyone who cares passionately about animals. He offers a clarity of analysis and a sparkling vision that’s as provocative as needed. John’s latest book, ‘The Omnivore’s Deception: What We Get Wrong About Meat, Animals, and Ourselves’, refutes arguments made by Michael Pollan and many others in favour of “enlightened” omnivorism. Further, as the book’s publicity states, it exposes the “fraudulent notion that we can go on raising and killing nonhuman beings for food without wrecking the earth, inflicting terrible suffering on animals, or ruining our souls.” Here, Kim Stallwood interviews John about his lastest book:

KS: The title, The Omnivore’s Deception, responds to Pollan’s best-selling book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Why is it important to refute arguments made by Pollan and popular authors like him when it comes to advocating for vegan living and animal rights?

JS: In the summer of 2006, a friend of mine told me that she was reading a new book called ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History in Four Meals’, by the journalist and bestselling author Michael Pollan. My friend assured me that I would find in Pollan a sympathetic “ally” in the animal cause. But I knew, having by then read reviews of Pollan’s book, that The Omnivore’s Dilemma was going to do more to hurt the cause of animal advocacy than probably any other book of the century. And I was right.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma came out at a critical time in the animal economy, when a variety of powerful business interests and cultural forces had already converged to create a new narrative around animal exploitation through the myth of “humane” and “sustainable” animal products. What the movement had lacked up until then, however, was a book that could provide intellectual scaffolding for this nascent “common sense” in American society. And Pollan’s book provided it, in much the same way (though on a much, much greater scale) that Singer’s Animal Liberation provided the animal movement with its own intellectual foundation.

Pollan’s book was a critique of the environmental and communitarian losses that had accompanied industrialized animal agriculture, but it was also an attempt to smother any lingering public doubts about the moral virtues of meat-eating. Pollan attacked animal rights directly and at length in his book, and he also personally killed dozens of animals with his own hands—killing chickens on Joel Salatin’s farm, and shooting a pig in a forest—in order to write about his experiences.

Here, let me take a step back for a moment to give context to Pollan’s intervention. The animal economy today is the greatest system of mass violence and injustice in the history of the world. It is not only morally abhorrent—in fact, radical evil—but contraindicated with the ecological survival of life on Earth. Now, for such a vastly dangerous and unjust system to be maintained, it must be continually legitimated. We know this from the history of social oppression, that every system of power must constantly be shored up and justified. This justification or “legitimation” must occur at all points of the system, culturally, politically, and intellectually. That is why vegans are the butt of jokes on late-night TV, and why the public is bombarded with countless advertisements of happy chickens and pigs dancing their way to the barbecue, and why even now some philosophers of mind still deny complex consciousness to nonhuman animals. In fact, it is essential that no one question the chief premise of human civilization, which is that all the other beings of the Earth are unworthy of life and were put here to serve our interests and needs and desires. Because if we seriously questioned the stories we tell ourselves about the worthlessness of animal life, the whole system would crumble…

Because of Pollan’s outsized cultural influence—and because no one in the media ever criticizes his work—I decided to entitle my new book The Omnivore’s Deception. By “deception,” I mean three things. First, the animal industry deceives the public each day by obscuring or papering over the violence at the heart of the food system. Second, prominent critics like Michael Pollan, author Barbara Kingsolver, and animal behaviorist Temple Grandin are deceiving the public by telling them that they can have their meat and their conscience, too. And third, that we deceive ourselves by refusing to acknowledge or take responsibility for the vast cruelties we inflict on other beings. My book is an attempt to expose all three modes of deception, in the hopes of disrupting the animal economy’s central “legitimation” mechanism…

KS: In the conclusion, you write, “Isolated legal victories and piecemeal reforms alone, however, won’t end the animal economy. The broader structure of violence and ecological desolation described in this work will endure so long as we continue to view nonhuman animals as our slaves and commodities.” What’s your position on the abolition vs. incremental approach to animal rights?

JS: The truth is that the animal advocacy movement has failed. It has been 2,500 years since followers of Pythagoras founded vegetarian cults, more than a century since Henry Salt published Animals’ Rights (1892), half a century since Peter Singer published Animal Liberation, and 35 years since Carol Adams published her groundbreaking book, The Sexual Politics of Meat. Yet more animals are being exploited and killed each year for food than ever before, and per capita meat consumption, already at a record high, is increasing…

While advocacy has made strides to eliminate greyhound racing and the exploitation of elephants and other animals in circuses, etc., it has not had the slightest impact on the public’s view that killing and eating animals is “natural” and therefore right… And I can tell you that the basic ideology around human supremacy and the centrality of animals in the human diet has been left virtually untouched by our movement. Some part of this dismal situation is due to the poor choices of the animal advocacy movement itself. There has been simply too much equivocation in the movement about whether it’s wrong to exploit and kill animals “as such,” rather than only in factory farms…

Both welfarism and “incrementalism” have failed as strategies. To say this is not to suggest that a more radical, abolitionist approach would yield victories in the short term. But if we are serious about protecting nonhuman beings from human violence, then we must be honest in naming the problem, which isn’t “factory farms” but human domination, human colonialization, human enslavement, human killing of our fellow creatures… It’s a mistake to promote veganism only as a healthier, more sustainable “lifestyle,” rather than as a moral imperative of the very first order. As I say in the Introduction to The Omnivore’s Deception, though most people think of animal rights and the question of meat as a trivial matter, the way we treat the other beings of the Earth is, on the contrary, the most important issue of our time…

KS: How do you envisage a society that made animal liberation possible? How different would the political discourse be and the cultural representation of animals be?

JS: This is such an important question, and the most challenging one of all. As things now stand, perhaps 98% of all humans consume animal products and are furthermore hostile to veganism and animal rights, while virtually every institution in civilization is rooted in the systematic oppression, enslavement, and ecological war on other animals… we need a concrete strategy of social change, a way to bring about a qualitative shift in the way humans organize their societies and daily lives. To that end, we must seek a convergence between the movement of animal advocacy and a wider movement for a new society, one based on democratic, egalitarian, feminist, ecological, and post-capitalist principles. The Wobblies spoke of “one big union”; in our epoch, we need one great movement in defense of all life on Earth, human and nonhuman alike.

I have been a vegan for over 30 years, and I encourage others to become vegans whenever I can. But the life-destroying system we face will never be vanquished simply by convincing everyone to “go vegan.” The problem is much too complex for that. We need new movement organizations, political parties, and forms of culture that aim to found a new kind of civilization. And we must build these movements and institutions right now, while we still can, before the darkness that we see spreading across our planet extinguishes all light and hope. SOURCE…

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