4 | Abolitionist Approach to Animal Rights regulate, the institutionalized exploitation of animals Veganism and creative, positive vegan education provides a practical and incremental strategy, both in terms of reducing animal suffering now, and in terms of building a movement in the future that will achieve more meaningful legislation in the form of significant prohibitions of animal use Rather than embrace veganism as a clear moral baseline, welfarists promote flexible veganism or consuming with conscience, which they see as one way to reduce suffering, along with welfarist reforms that they promote as reducing suffering That is, welfarists restrict the scope of animal ethics to suffering; anything that arguably reduces that suffering, including being what Peter Singer calls a conscientious omnivore, represents a morally defensible position Putting aside that welfare reforms not result in significant protection of animal interests, the welfarist position on veganism reflects the view that animal use is itself not morally problematic, which assumes that animal life is of lesser value than human life Abolitionism and Single-Issue Campaigns The abolitionist approach promotes the view that veganism and creative, non-violent education about veganism are the primary practical and incremental approaches that should be pursued In addition to rejecting campaigns that seek to make animal exploitation more humane, the abolitionist approach generally regards single-issue campaigns, such as those involving foie gras or fur garments, as problematic because they reinforce the view that certain forms of exploitation are worse than others For example, the anti-fur campaign implicitly and often explicitly characterizes fur as involving some greater degree of exploitation than does, say, wool or leather But any such characterization would be inaccurate Both wool and leather are every bit as morally objectionable as fur in terms of the suffering involved and the fact that, irrespective of any differences in suffering, all three forms of clothing involve killing animals for human purposes Foie gras is no worse than other animal foods Abolitionism and Domesticated Nonhumans The abolitionist position maintains that if we recognize that nonhuman animals should not be treated as resources, the appropriate social response would be to stop bringing domesticated nonhumans into existence We should care for those whose existence we have caused or facilitated, but we should not cause more to come into existence Representative Web sites are: Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach: www.AbolitionistApproach.com Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a NonVegan World: www.veganfreak.com Further Reading Francione, Gary L 2000 Introduction to animal rights: Your child or the dog? Philadelphia: Temple University Press Francione, Gary L 2008 Animals as persons: Essays on the abolition of animal exploitation New York: Columbia University Press Francione, Gary L and Anna E Charlton 2008 “Animal advocacy in the 21st century: The abolition of the property status of nonhumans,” in T L Bryant, R J Huss, and D N Cassuto (eds.), Animal law in the courts: