A DIRECT AFFRONT
The Patty Mark Interview by Claudette Vaughan

Patty Mark has been part of the Australian animal rights landscape for well over 30 years now. She instigated the first ever open rescues seen here after which others followed suit. Voila! Direct action was born in this country. She has gone into battle against all kinds of opposition over the years and, it has to be said, has shown tremendous courage in the face of it from farmers, politicians, police, the RSPCA and others who oppose rights for animals. We are very proud to showcase a small part of Patty’s phenomenal work here today at the Abolitionist.

Abolitionist: It shouldn't be underestimated that you and the rescue teams unflinching resolve in bringing to Australian's attention, albeit the world's attention, through undercover footage the atrocities occurring in the modern factory farm today. Please talk about this.

Patty Mark: Openrescue is in its infancy and a fundamental tenet of animal justice. The openrescue of sick and dying animals neglected in factory farms is only one piece of the speciesism puzzle but I believe it’s a central one that will facilitate all the other pieces quickly falling into place. To be successful in making real changes for the billions of animals raised for food every year openrescue needs to be grassroots, common practice and occurring continually worldwide until the status quo ‘wakes up’.

It’s exciting to see openrescue teams forming during the past year in both New Zealand and Czechoslovakia as well as those working, albeit sporadically, in Australia, the USA and parts of Europe. Until openrescue, both in theory and practice, becomes mainstream within the animal movement, we are only dipping our toes in the water to test the temperature. Of course before we even get to the water we should know how to ‘swim’… and that means being a vegan.

When there is a ‘disaster’ like a flood, hurricane or earthquake there is a groundswell of support and assistance to help those in need. What is happening to animals inside factory farms and abattoirs is every single bit a ‘disaster’, maybe not a natural one, but a human one. It is up to animal activists, those humans who deeply understand how wrong and cruel animal farming is to activate the rescue chain. Our movement must make non human animal rescue just as valid and expected as human rescue.

We must not be willing to casually walk past a factory farm or abattoir anymore than we would stroll by a derailed train crammed full of people trapped and suffering. We need ‘animal paramedics’ ‘animal red cross’, trained animal rescue team members on the ground and in the sheds giving aid and succour whenever possible. Besides saving a few of the 55+ billion animals we 6.5 billion humans kill each year to eat, openrescue is also a tactic to throw open the doors on how low humanity has sunk in its dealings with other beings.

Openrescue to me is confidence that speciesism is wrong. It is being willing to do for a sick hen lying trampled and dying on the wire bottom of a battery cage what we would do for a child lying on the road after being hit by a car… we would go and help them. Openrescue is about being kind and helpful to anyone who is suffering and ‘alone’. And it’s about showing others that not only is it ‘ok’ to go and help, it’s the right thing to do. An openrescue team member must always be non-violent, bio-secure, respectful of all others, competent and helpful (not to mention trained in peacefully getting through electric fences, past guard dogs, around security alarms and through locked doors!)

Abolitionist: Many animal activists have sacrificed a lot to do rescue work. Why do you still do it Patty?

Patty Mark: I continue to do rescue work because I know the animals are waiting. And they are waiting in darkened stinking sheds or in rusty steel cages, some with broken bones, bleeding wounds, sick bodies and tormented minds unable to help themselves. As long as I'm physically able to gain access to their brutal imprisonment I want to be there for them. And in this grasping self-oriented world we live in, it’s an amazing feeling of solidarity and purpose to be working alongside people who care so passionately for the well-being of others.

Abolitionist: I don't think many people would realize how fraught with difficulties undercover rescue work is Patty. For example when the police are involved which they frequently are the atmosphere can get heated to say the least especially when asking for their assistance in seeking help for the defenseless, the powerless and the voiceless.

Patty Mark: Police are humans, and like all humans some are compassionate and concerned about the welfare of others, some don’t seem to care one way or another and some are hardened, hostile, aggressive and unfit for their role. Police are expected to be highly trained, disciplined and not take sides in disputes, but to uphold the law. I’ve come across all kinds of police officers in my years of rescue work. Some are heroes, like the sergeant who helped us transport 52 sick and dying broiler chicks to a vet in the middle of the night, others are speciesist and think the law only relates to humans and how dare we waste their time with “chickens”, while others get angry and hostile, ignore their responsibility to uphold the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and abrogate their duty of care.

My own view is to show respect to police officers at all times even when they aren’t doing likewise and to always stand firm, no matter how the police treat you, in insisting that cruelty to animals is against the law and it’s their responsibility to uphold the law.

Abolitionist: Most people in life will say they are opposed to causing unnecessary suffering to animals but many of those people still wear wool, leather or fur. Can you talk about the importance of veganism as a fundamental a priori for change to occur to animals lives and as a fundamental for the continuance of the animal rights movement?

Patty Mark: The single most important action any activist can take for animals, themselves and our environment is to follow a vegan lifestyle. Animal activists have a huge responsibility as role models to live the life that we need others to live to ensure animals can live their lives. To do anything else doesn’t make sense. Imagine if the Pope had numerous mistresses and twenty children, or if Nelson Mandela decided to enslave Asian children to clean his house and prepare his meals, or if Al Gore drove a limousine to KFC to buy a bucket of factory farmed chickens while leaving every light on in his house and the hot water running in his spa bath. Who would take the work or opinion of these people seriously?

It would be as wrong for an animal activist to encourage people to eat free range eggs instead of battery eggs as it would be for a human rights activist to endorse salaries for immigrants of one dollar for a 10 hour workday, or for a feminist to turn a blind eye if a rapist wears condoms, because let’s face it, ‘we’ll never stop rape’. It is the job of the animal rights movement to clearly state what happens to animals when people persist in finding ‘other/alternative’ ways to keep using and killing them. Why would we want to point people in the direction of still causing pain and suffering when they don’t have to?

For instance drinking cow’s milk means baby calves have their heads smashed in with a hammer and their throats slit. Their mothers suffer even more and for a much longer time. Baby after baby is taken away from mother cows so someone can have a slice of cheese on a meat patty that was probably made out of the mother cow’s mother. Dairy cows are slaughtered when only five years old when their economic productivity declines, they are totally exhausted and many are sick with mastitis. Dairy is the crème de la crème of cruelty, there is no doubt that having cow’s milk in your coffee or cheese on your pizza causes more suffering and pain to animals than eating meat. Not only that, it’s full of fat and it’s environmental dynamite.

Fred Pearce, an environment consultant for New Scientist magazine and author of When the Rivers Run Dry : Water--The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century calculated that it takes 4,000 glasses of water to produce one glass of milk. A longer shower is the least of our worries in drought stricken Australia, the real water guzzlers are people addicted to dairy and meat.

It’s important to understand that being a vegan isn’t about being elite, virtuous or “holier than thou” – those brickbats often thrown at vegans who some people consider are ‘pesky know-it-alls who want to force their ideas on everybody else’. Veganism is about taking personal responsibility for our actions – any of which cause horrific pain and bloodshed to others, contribute enormously to global warming and increase obesity in the west and hunger in developing countries. A vegan lifestyle is the baseline for human rights campaigners, environmentalists and animal activists anywhere and everywhere.

Abolitionist: You support Professor Francione's abolitionist stance, so in your own words Patty, how has his work impacted on your life and the work you do for animals?

Patty Mark: Animal activists can be extremely grateful to Gary Francione for his on-going articles, books and discussions regarding strategies and outcomes in the animal movement. I was a slow starter on the vegan path as I worried about appearing too extreme and radical, not to mention how hard it was to give up cheese. Then after I saw the torment of cows and their calves being separated and listened to the agonised screams of dairy cows as their horns were chopped off (to prevent injuries to workers in the milking sheds) and seeing their blood spurt three metres from the wounds, I went vegan. I did this because I didn’t want to be responsible for what was happening to these animals, not because of any master plan in place to shut down the dairy industry.

Around this time (some fifteen years ago) my work focussed on banning the battery cage and encouraging people to eat free-range eggs instead. I never thought about or considered the lives or deaths of ‘free-range’ animals much less the ‘property status of animals’ and how this legality is the linchpin of speciesism and what keeps all animals underfoot on the human treadmill.

When I first came across an interview with Gary Francione, around the year 2000, it was like turning on a light in a dim room. Contemplating the enormous impact of the property status of animals that Francione so clearly defines, was in one moment overwhelming and frightening, and in the other, a relief - like finally finding out the cause of a life-threatening illness and what needs to be done to cure it. Francione’s discussions on abolition and the importance of veganism is akin to having an x-ray or mri in setting a broken bone or treating a cancer. Rather than encouraging makeshift and provisional ‘solutions’ animal activists now have a road map against speciesism that clearly defines the route that the crow flies. It’s just that we humans aren’t as adept at getting from point A to B as crows are!

This is perhaps why all the various methods and approaches of campaigning come into play. For instance, many good activists work tirelessly to promote campaigns that help some animals for some of their lives, like banning dry sow stalls for pregnant pigs while encouraging group pig housing on straw instead or banning battery cages for laying hens while asking consumers to switch to barnlaid or free-range eggs. When these campaigns are successful many of the animals involved will suffer less before they are brutally slaughtered, and less suffering is better than more suffering. But we need to realise this is the long way around to make the world a safe place for animals rather than a slightly more bearable place for them during the short time we allow them to live.

It is our responsibility and our biggest challenge to find ways to chip away at the specieist monolith while never selling any animal out. This is where a vegan baseline and abolition principles will have us flying as high as the crows! The long hours, hard work and millions of dollars the animal movement spends to promote animal products like free range eggs and meat is much better spent promoting veganism. It’s simple and straight to the point.

Abolitionist: As non-speciesists how can we get people to think and act differently towards other species?

Patty Mark: First of all I think we have to accept that there are ‘animal people’ and other people. And there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason what makes some people able to empathise with other species and their ability to feel pain and pleasure, while most people, let’s face it, shudder at the very thought that animals could be on the same page as humans much less the same line! Even with ‘animal people’ there are those who favour some animals more than others or care about them for specific reasons like they are cute, cuddly, friendly, endangered or wild, not because they are individuals with their own lives to live.

I am one of twelve children from the same parents with the same upbringing. There are two vegans, one vegetarian, two swingers (vegetarian to meat eating) and seven committed meat eaters. None of my siblings would be ‘cruel’ to animals and many of them have loving relationships with dogs and cats, and would never ever consider eating a dog or cat, yet they don’t blink to eat a chicken or a pig or a cow. Perhaps this is a typical cross section of people we need to reach. Some easily understand, others would like too, but it’s sometimes too difficult for them to change, while others refuse to give an inch.

What we must do, as I’ve said earlier, is to live the life we need others to live. The more of us who show by example that living without killing other beings is easy and healthy, the quicker we will achieve our goal of animal liberation.

Abolitionist: Your undercover footage over the years has sent out the message, "Hey, this is the way your meat is produced" and it asks the question: Do you wish to be a part of that cruelty? What have been the reactions from people watching undercover footage?

Patty Mark: I’m not aware of anyone ever, after viewing activists’ undercover footage of abattoirs and factory farms say, “Oh how nice, isn’t that lovely, we can be so proud that those animals are so terrified and so tightly crowded in those dim sheds, unable to hardly move, some bleeding and being eaten alive by the other animals gone mad”. There are no smiles, there is no laughter, there is no holding heads high when people look at undercover footage of animals in factory farms or abattoirs. There lies the conundrum - people hate what they see, but love what they eat. The solution is getting the footage out there and keeping it before the public eye as often as possible.

Abolitionist: In this religious issue please let me ask you: Are humans put on this planet to love and must we love our enemies?

Patty Mark: I’m not a religious person at all, though I was taught for twelve years by nuns and priests and spent countless hours of my youth inside a church praying for ‘goodness’ and less suffering in the world. That good old Golden Rule does, however, sum up to me what needs to be done while we have our few seconds on this planet…whether we do it out of love, respect, duty or for whatever reason doesn’t matter. It just matters that we do it!

‘Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.” And others means everyone.

website: www.alv.org.au