Consumption and Responsibility

Exploring the lack of responsibility for animal suffering felt by those who consume animal products.

Those involved in animal rights advocacy for any period of time will at some point notice a strange phenomenon. People who consume animals can watch footage of animal slaughter, can agree that this treatment is horrifically cruel, then still go on to consume more animals who were likely slaughtered in exactly the same way. It isn’t usually the case that these people view that treatment as unfortunate but ultimately necessary either, many will agree that it is utterly indefensible, but will simply never connect the dots between their own behaviour and the cruelty they observe. For most people, their reaction to witnessing these acts are not so different from their reaction when watching bombs fall on some far away country, what they see upsets them, they know in their hearts that it is cruel but they don’t personally feel to blame, they are not the ones committing these acts, and have no reason to feel personally responsible.

As vegans we understand how flawed this thinking is, we know that through the act of purchasing animal products, these people create the demand which results in, and in fact necessities, the cruelty we see on screen. Getting the observer to recognise their part in the cruelty they are witnessing is no easy task however, people have a vested interest in not knowing this, and there are several powerful psychological and social factors at play which allows us to disavow ourselves from the cruelty we see, despite the obvious role we have to play in it. Often simply pointing out the fact that this is exactly how the animals they consume are slaughtered is met by either disbelief or outright derision. The marketing of supermarkets and suppliers has a role in this too, consumers see the fields of grass and pigs roaming in the sunshine on their packet and assume that the animal in that clip must have lead a completely different life than the one they consume, and that these clips must be from the worst of the worst facilities, places who supply stores the consumer themselves would never buy from, as demonstrated in this exchange:

edited screen

A large part of this has to do with the fact that, while most people understand the concept of supply and demand, they do not seem to apply that knowledge to their own consumption of animals. This is never revealed more clearly than in the response to when someone stops consuming animals, arguments like “what difference will it make?” and “the animals will die if you eat them or not” will be familiar to any vegan, and these arguments demonstrate that people do not intuitively grasp how their own consumption has played a part in that animal dying, or how lowering your own personal demand could possibly have any impact at all. Paradoxically, people see their own purchasing of the animal product, and the act of butchering the animal to provide that product as two separate, almost completely unrelated events. This of course is not rational, but is a collective illusion that almost everyone collectively agrees to, which makes it easy, and comforting, to continue with the pretence. When a lie is complete, the one telling it is convinced of it as well.

It may be thought that this can be solved simply by sharing facts and statistics instead; it is easy to deny that the suffering of an individual animal is not your responsibility, as technically it isn’t, it is unlikely indeed that you consumed any part of the animal being you see suffering on screen. Facts and statistics present a different problem however, since numbers tend to be divorced from narrative and individual stories, making it hard to empathise with. This is especially the case when we are dealing with numbers of deaths which are higher than we would be discussing in literally any other context. Sixty billion land animals per year is an incredible number, and when we include fish and we get into the trillions it just becomes almost impossible for your average person to even conceptualise what that many deaths looks like. These are numbers that cannot even be counted to in anything close to a human life time, and however much we would like to believe otherwise, compassion does have it’s limits. We cannot feel responsible for the deaths of trillions of animals, or even the thousands of animals an individual will consume in their lifetime, it is just too difficult of a concept for us to grasp, and it is too much for any of us to let ourselves feel.

A diffusion of responsibility takes place between the act of slaughter and the act of consumption. There are so many steps in the chain, so that being the one at the end of that long process who eventually consumes the product feels a world way from being the slaughterhouse worker who wields the blade which actually kills the animal. Even though the consumer is the one who ultimately funds the breeding, exploitation and slaughter of the animal, and is the one who ultimately benefits from it, most would be extremely put out by the suggestion that the responsibility is in any way theirs. Arguments arise that we cannot blame consumers for the actions of corporations, or that consumers can’t control how an animal is slaughtered, but these become redundant when we realise that for most people, this act of consumption is a choice made among many other alternatives. Responsibility rests with us precisely because we could have done otherwise, but chose not to, even being aware of what the consequences of that decision would be.

The challenge for us as activists then, is to help those we advocate to understand their personal responsibility in what is happening to animals. I won’t pretend to have the answer to how we can counter this problem, but it’s important that we all understand it is a problem. It is so tempting to assume that all you need to do is show people how absolutely awful animal agriculture is and how cruel slaughterhouses are, that all we need to do is show people these awful clips and images and they’ll surely become vegan, because how could anyone do that and not want to fight against it? We all need to be mindful of that the fact that showing people this treatment is wrong, and getting them to understand that they are responsible for that suffering, are two separate, and equally difficult challenges. As meat eaters we all knew more than we cared to admit what goes on in all these awful places, we just didn’t, or wouldn’t, understand the part we played in the suffering of those animals. If all we do is show people the cruelty of animal agriculture but never help them make the connection between their own purchases and that cruelty, then all we have is a lot of people who all know that horrible things happen to animals and feel very sad about that fact, but see no reason at all to change.

I suspect that there is no one way we can advocate which is more likely to make people understand the responsibility they have for the suffering they are observing, but it is something we should all be mindful of when advocating. Whether it is making use of footage from local slaughterhouses, using personal stories from animals in sanctuaries or inviting someone to actually observe animals being unloaded to be slaughtered, we must make sure that the person we are talking to not only understand that what they are seeing is wrong, but by funding it and creating demand, that they themselves are at least partly responsible for what they are seeing. However we choose to advocate, this knowledge of the disavow which most people have when it comes to their own role in animal suffering, as well as our role in helping people break that separation between the act and themselves, should be at the forefront of our advocacy.

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