Scapegoats and Holy Cows: Climate
Activism andLivestock
Until recently, Greta Thunberg kept a filmed appeal to stop eating meat and dairy as the first item of her twitter account: she’s been a vegan for half her life, so that’s not surprising. Her message begins with pandemics[1] but swiftly segues to climate change, as might be expected. The film was made by Mercy for Animals, which she thanks.[2]
The film remained top of her twitter account for months. She has several million followers, so the value of the advertising she gave this little-known not-for-profit must run into millions of dollars. As opposition to livestock has become a major plank in climate activism, it’s worth looking at how the world’s biggest climate influencer chooses to influence it.
Greta Thunberg’s 2021 Mercy for Animals film: “If we don’t change, we are f***ed.”
Mercy for Animals is an American NGO with the stated purpose of ending factory farming because it’s cruel to animals, a fact with which few would disagree. There are other reasons to shun food from factories as opposed to the open air of course, not least because some of the meat it produces is subsequently heavily processed with unhealthy ingredients and then shipped long distances. The reason it remains so profitable is obviously because its meals are cheap and those who can’t afford expensive free range or organic have little other option.
There is no doubt that factory farming is an industrial process which pollutes. There’s also no doubt that an average Western, especially urban, diet contains a lot of unhealthy things, including too much meat. But whether or not folk who eat sensible amounts of local, organic meat and dairy, and try to stay fit and healthy, would have any significant impact on the planet’s climate by changing their diet is another matter, which I’ll come back to.
Mercy for Animal’s beliefs go much further than opposing animal cruelty. It believes in speciesism or rather anti-speciesism, the idea that humans have no right to impose their will on other animals or “exploit” them. It’s a view shared by a growing number of people, especially vegans in the Global North. Thunberg goes as far as believing that only vegans can legitimately, “stand up for human rights,” and wants non-vegans to feel guilty.[3] Even more radical is Google founder, Larry Page, who reportedly thinks robots should be treated as a living species, just silicon- rather than carbon-based![4]
Whatever novel ideas anti-speciesists think up, no species would evolve without favouring its own. Our ancestors would never have developed their oversized brains if they hadn’t eaten scavenged or hunted meat, and we have always lived in symbiosis with other animals, sometimes to the benefit of both. It seems likely that the wolf ancestors of dogs freely elected to live close to humans, taking advantage of our hearths and ability to store game. In this, the earliest proven instance of domestication, perhaps each species exploited the other.
Having visited many subsistence hunters and herders over the last half century, I know that the physical – and spiritual – relationship they have with the creatures they hunt, herd or use for transport, is very different to that of most people (including me!). Most of us now have little experience of the intimacy which comes when people depend at first-hand on animals for survival.
Hunters, for example, often think they have a close connection with their game, and it’s based on respect and exchange. A good Yanomami huntsman in Amazonia doesn’t eat his own catch but gives it away to others. Boys are taught that if they are generous like this, the animals will approach them to offer themselves willingly as prey. Such a belief encourages strong social cohesion and reciprocity, which couldn’t be more different to Western ideals of accumulation. The importance of individual cows to African herders, or of horses to the Asian steppe dwellers who, we think, started riding them in earnest, can be touchingly personal, and the same can be found all over the world.
Everyone knows that many small children, if they feel safe, have an innate love of getting up close and personal to animals; and projects enabling deprived city kids to interact with livestock on farms can improve mental wellbeing and make children happier.[5]
This closeness to other species is a positive experience for many, clearly including Thunberg: her film features her in an English animal sanctuary and cuddling one of her pet dogs. Those who believe speciesism is of great consequence, on the other hand, seem to seek a separation between us and other animals, whilst paradoxically advancing the idea that there is none. Animals are to be observed from a distance, perhaps kept as pets, but never “exploited” for people’s benefit.[6]
Mercy for Animals doesn’t stop at opposing factory farming. It’s against the consumption of animal products altogether, including milk and eggs, and thinks that all creatures, including insects, must be treated humanely. Using animals for any “work” that benefits people is frowned on. For example, it thinks sheepdogs are “doubly problematic” because both dogs and sheep are exploited. It accepts, however, that they have been bred to perform certain tasks and may “experience stress and boredom if not given… work.” It’s also (albeit seemingly reluctantly) OK with keeping pets as they are “cherished companions with whom we love to share our lives,” and without them we would be “impoverished”. Exactly the same could be said for many working dogs of course.[7]
Anyway, this not-for-profit believes that humans are moving away from using animals for anything, not only meat, but milk, wool, transport, emergency rescue, and everything else. It claims, “several historical cultures have recognized the inherent right of animals to live… without human intervention or exploitation,” and thinks we are slowly evolving to a “higher consciousness” which will adopt its beliefs. It says this is informed by Hindu and Buddhist ideals and that it’s working to “elevate humanity to its fullest potential.”[8]
We all exalt our own morality of course, but professing a higher consciousness than those who think differently casts a supremacist shadow. The alleged connection with Indian religions is a common argument but remains debatable: the sacredness of cows, for example, is allied to their providing the dairy products widespread in Hindu foods and rituals. The god Krishna himself, a manifestation of the supreme being Vishnu, was a cattle herder. The Rig Veda, the oldest Indian religious text, is clear about their role: “In our stalls, contented, may they stay! May they bring forth calves for us… giving milk.” Nearly a third of the world’s cattle are thought to live in India. Would they survive the unlikely event of Hindus converting to veganism?
Krishna tending his cattle.
Most Hindus are not wholly vegetarian. Although a key tenet of Hindu fundamentalism over recent generations is not eating beef, the Rig Veda mentions cows being ritually killed in an earlier age. The renowned Swami Vivekananda, who first took Hinduism and yoga to the USA at the end of the 19th century and is hailed as one of the most important holy men of his era, wrote that formerly, “A man [could not] be a good Hindu who does not eat beef,” and reportedly ate it himself. Anyway, the degree to which cows were viewed as “sacred” in early Hinduism is not as obvious as many believe. The Indus Civilisation of four or five thousand years ago, to which many look for their physical and spiritual origins, was meat-eating,[9] although many fundamentalist Hindus now deny it.[10]
Vegetarians are fond of claiming well-known historical figures for themselves. In India, perhaps the most famous is Ashoka, who ruled much of the subcontinent in the third century before Christ and was the key proponent of Buddhism. He certainly advocated compassion for animals and was against sacrificial slaughter and killing some species, but it’s questionable whether he or those he ruled were actually vegetarian.[11]
Whatever Ashoka’s diet included, many Buddhists today are meat-eaters like the Dalai Lama[12] and most Tibetans – rather avid ones in my experience – and tea made with butter is a staple of Himalayan monastic life. Mercy for Animals however remains steadfast to its principles, asserting, “Even (sic!) Jewish and Muslim cultures are experiencing a rise in animal welfare consciousness.”
Mercy for Animals might look at how racists have supported animal rights over the last hundred years, sometimes cynically and sometimes not: “Concern for animals can coexist with a strong strain of misanthropy, and can be used to demonise minority groups as barbaric, uncivilised and outdated… in contrast to supposedly civilised, humane Aryans… The far right’s ventures into animal welfare is sometimes coupled with ‘green’ politics and a form of nature mysticism.”[13]
Mercy for Animals was founded by Milo Runkle, a self-styled “yogi” who lives in Los Angeles. He was raised on an Ohio farm and discovered his calling as a teenager on realising the cruelty of animal slaughter. He’s now an evangelical vegan who believes an “animal-free” meal is, “an act of kindness.” He’s also a keen participant in the billion-dollar, Silicon Valley industry trying to make and sell “meat and dairy” made from plants, animal cells and chemicals. He’s a co-founder of the Good Food Institute and sits on the board of Lovely Foods. Like others in the movement, he rejects the term “fake” and insists that the products made in factories – which are supported by billionaires like Richard Branson and Bill Gates – are real meat and dairy, just made without animals. The multi-million dollar Good Food Institute is also supported by Sam Harris, a U.S. philosopher who came to prominence with his criticism of Islam, which he believes is a religion of, “bad ideas, held for bad reasons, leading to bad behaviour,” and constitutes, “a unique danger to all of us.”[14]
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