The Animal Rights Movement

You wrote the essay, “The Animal Rights Movement is Dead.”   Did the movement set out to challenge the system but instead ended up joining it?

That’s correct.  The sad thing about the power of the dollar is sometimes money corrupts.  When animal rights activists first begin on this path they are altruistic and they want to change the world for the better.  They are the most beautiful people on the planet.   Then the money starts rolling in and a change overcomes them, an addiction to the dollar you might say.  From there on in everything they do is motivated to gain more dollars.   They abandon their original mission and their new mission is to propagate the system that brings them more dollars.  I have seen one group after another become corrupted by this.  They are still wonderful people but they change their ways,  they amend their method of operation,  to raise money and in doing so forget about those animals that they’re trying to help.

I have a way of judging every animal rights issue,  and that is:  Pretend the animals could talk and pretend the animals can hold their own tribunal and judge those who are making an effort to help them.   I would dare wager some of those animals would say “No,  we do not want your help.  You are the guilty ones.”

And that’s what’s happened.  That’s the transition.  Many of the people who started off wanting to help animals are now helping themselves.

You identify ‘compassionate slaughter’ as the illogical trajectory that can’t possibly initiate the kinds of changes the animal rights movement seeks for itself.  Is that correct?

Absolutely.  As a matter of fact I compare animal slaughter to what happened during the Holocaust.  As a Jewish man I can say this.  There were concentration camps such as Treblinka where string quartets played while Jews marched to the crematoriums.  This supposedly was meant to make their death passage easier.  In other words, what is being done today in the animal slaughter business is making an animal’s death easier.  We are relieving the conscience of those people who eat animals,  but we’re still making it easier for animals to die.  This has nothing to do with animal rights.  The largest animal rights organisations are pleased when they get animal legislation passed,  say,  to change the size of a chickens cage,  from 64sq in to 72sq inches.   That’s not a victory for animals.   What does change is the per capita consumption of chickens which increases because its making it easier for people to have a good conscience about eating chicken.  The public are thinking that these chickens’ lives are spent ‘humanely’, further endorsed by animal welfare groups and that’s wrong.  That’s what the Nazi’s did in WW2.   The people who worked in human concentration camps were taken from animal slaughterhouses because Hitler’s Nazi Germany wanted to make slaughter ‘compassionate.’  They didn’t kick people when they were going to their deaths because there would have been riots and people wouldn’t die ‘compassionately’.  It’s the same with animals.   We now make their ramps well lit, make them so they are not so deadly slanted, make them so the animals can feel better while they are marching to their deaths.  ‘Compassionate’ animal welfare laws is an oxymoron.  There’s only one compassion.  Don’t eat them and don’t hurt them.

The Nazi’s actually went to the infamous Chicago slaughterhouse to learn precise methods on how to process their product…

They not only went to the Chicago slaughterhouses, they were very well motivated by our automobile industry, especially Henry Ford.   He became one of their heroes as far as assembly-line slaughter goes.

You have a website www.slaughterhousecam.com

Yes. Please have a look at it.  Millions of animals die every day in America per year. It’s impossible to rescue every animal. Now there’s no more room for animals at animal sanctuaries so what they do is use their considerable money coming in by way of donations to pass laws making it easier for animals to die.

I don’t want that to happen. When an animal dies,  we never really  see what  happens.  I want people to see the look on the animal’s face,  the cries from the animal at the time of slaughter.  If they see this, then they’re not going to eat animals any longer.

On www.slaughterhousecam.com there are photographs of animals in slaughterhouses.  One day I’m going to own a slaughterhouse.   I’m going to have 3 cameras and have the place really well lit and people are going to see live slaughter on the internet.  Nobody who owns a slaughterhouse will let us into their slaughterhouse to take the actual photos so if I own a slaughterhouse, people will see what death is really like and that's something we must all see and feel for ourselves. Then we will no longer eat the animals.

Isn’t slaughtering the individual animal for perceived benefits further down the track the same mentality as a welfarist who wouldn’t dream of doing the same thing if it was a human life or their own child?

No it’s not the same thing.   Welfarists say they make it easier for animals to die. I think that we are all in agreement that one day the entire planet will see the wisdom of eating a plant-based diet. I don’t know if that will take 100, 500, or 1000 years.  Either way, even meat eaters agree that this is a given. What I intend to do is accelerate the process. When people see death, they will reject it. My internet site will create one hundred million or more vegetarians in America and that will be just the start of it.

On another subject: No matter how admirable no-kill shelters are they have a severely limited capacity to house only a very tiny number of animals. Would it not be far better to concentrate efforts at the root core of the problem and target the breeders? This would secure permanent change for nonhuman animals.

I want people to see what happens to animals in shelters so people will become more responsible and sensitive to companion animals.  Go to a shelter and see the love these animals have See the wagging of their tails.  All they want is to be loved. Through no fault of their own many of them should never have been born but this happened by over-breeding and non-existent laws in operation.  It’s up to their human companions to make sure that these animals are loving companions without the ability to reproduce themselves so that humans, who are meant to be the responsible ones, do not just discard them into the woods, as they do with cats who run wild.

Click Here to read the second part of this interview:
A Conversation with Robert Cohen aka NOTMILKMAN: Part Two

Click Here to read Margaret Setter's Review of Robert Cohen's Book:
Milk: The Deadly Posion