THE MEAT FREE MEDIA INTERVIEW

“Open Your Eyes” is Sydney’s only Animal Rights radio program. Tune into 2RRR 88.5 FM on Saturdays between 1pm to 2pm. This is Meat Free Media at its best.

Open Your Eyes: Today we are speaking with Claudette Vaughan who is an animal rights activist. Can we start by you letting us know what it means personally to you to be an activist? Claudette: There are many different hues and degrees of activism in our movement.

(Left to Right) Kelly, Jessie, Claudette and Teresa at no-kill shelter

For myself, I can say that I am an animal rights activist as opposed to an animal welfarist and believe me, there is a huge dichotomy between the two viewpoints. Currently in the animal rights movement we have a vigorous debate between rights v new welfarism, as well there must be.

Animal rights activists recognise there is an Animal Holocaust going on in the world today. We recognise non-human animals are not our property and they must not be treated as such. Therefore some of us lobby to extend this idea of legal personhood for all animals on the basis of their sentience. Animals have one right and that is the right not to be treated as property. If we can change this concept alone then we will change the whole dynamics of the world in which non-human animals currently and dangerously reside in.

This idea of “legal personhood” is not as difficult as some people have made it out to be. For centuries women were treated as the legal property of their husbands in the bonds of marriage. They were given no rights at all in the eyes of the law. So in the modern-day animal rights movement some of us want to turn this situation around for animals. In the eyes of the law we are turning a “thing”— (property) into a “person” (holding autonomous rights.)

Open Your Eyes: You have a very strong interest in your own area of interest but how would you define “activism” itself?

Claudette: Activism is anyone one is prepared to work for the freedom and rights of another. Some of the campaigns we are working on include the dogmeat and catmeat industry in China and stopping the slaughter of Australia’s national emblem, the kangaroo. Many vested interests are involved in keeping the general public ignorant for non-human animals. In our activism we initiate ideas and challenge the mindset that uses the quick and convenient answer to everything—“if it moves, kill it” to confront these exploiters.

What else? I support shelters for animals that have been abused and neglected. This comes directly out of having met too many people, mainly women, who want to act as a foster home or permanent home for cats and dogs that are being euthanased at an alarming rate in the death camp “pounds” in this country. Apart from lack of humane education in schools, the root cause of the problem is the breeding laws for animals in this country.

No-kill shelters are not encouraged by governments that refuse to spend money on “alternatives” to the killing pounds they currently have in place around the country. And I am not only talking about companion animals. Look at the statistics for the racing of Greyhounds for instance. Owners of Greyhounds can produces hundreds of new-born Greyhounds for the purpose of finding that elusive “big winner”.

Where does “surplus stock” go to? It is a question not being addressed and it needs to be. The Greyhound Industry must be abolished as it has been in other countries.

Open Your Eyes: You’ve raised many and varied different questions that people are asking of animal activism around the world. Do you think society has a certain view of what activism is?

Claudette: The general public and the media know all about sexism when it rears its ugly head, about racism when it does like-wise but the term “speciesism” is not a common enough word on everybody’s lips at this point in time. I think our movement needs to dedicate itself to conducting whole campaigns on this subject alone and drill it home until the person on the street who does not know the first thing about “animal rights” will know what it means to be a ‘speciesist’. It will be up to individuals in our movement not to water down this concept to accommodate short-term interests. Educate not accommodate is the way forward.

Still after all these years too many people think we are crazy to talk about ‘animal rights”. They can’t seem to grasp this idea as a whole. They mix it up with the same kind of rights that humans are entitled to but that’s not what we are about. Obviously, non-human animals don’t need identical rights given to humans like the right to a decent wage etc.

They need the one right not to be the property of their enslavers. Whether we like it or not, they have a right to Be—due to their sentience, to exist without human persecution, degradation or interference from their tyrannical rulers, us. This is the reason why we totally reject speciesism. This concept is the basis of the modern-day animal rights movement.

Take exotic animals in circuses for example. If we can really look at these beautiful, feeling sentient creatures who experience dislikes and likes and have emotional lives then we would never allow them to do the degrading tricks that a certain mindset allows them to do today.

Circuses are archaic practices and their days are numbered. I’ll be cracking open the vegan champagne and dancing on their tombstone when they close that last door for good. Look, I know there are plenty of parents out there that want their children to experience elephants in roller skates and lions jumping through fire hoops but this 19th century practice that has had its day.

Open Your Eyes. What advise would you give to people who would like to be more active in their beliefs whether they be for animal rights, anti-war or any type of standpoint they support.

Claudette: My advise to them is “Jump In,” make your mistakes along the way, get your voice heard and stand up and be counted.

We definitely need more people on our side in the animal rights movement in this country. Students, for example, were great in combating and protesting against the racism of Pauline Hansen’s racist political party but where are they on the subject of dissection in the classroom? Why are there so few activists willing to speak out for animal rights? Two notable exceptions are Lucy Fish and Andrew Knight but let’s remember a swallow does not make a summer. En mass students are needed to say a resounding “No” to vivisection and dissection. Their energy will blow the university dictates right out of the water in time. It’s just a matter of time.

True activism in all its form and character is the ability to offer resistance. We must force the exploiter/abuser to play their hand in a different manner to what they are used to—which generally means, getting their own way. No effort for social justice is ever wasted by offering resistance. They might hate us but they can’t ignore us---especially if we keep at them. Water erodes rock over time.

The Animal Rights Movement short history shows a strong social justice movement but we need to strengthen and refresh ourselves constantly. We need to bring in new recruits that will work for the animals and will work for love. Perhaps one day in this country we will see thousands of people demonstrating on the streets for animal rights. As our efforts broaden we should plan on a movement not unlike the American Civil Rights movement as the granting of animal rights gathers more and more momentum worldwide.

Open Your Eyes: How much time do you spend on your activism?

Claudette: I live and breathe animal rights. There is much to do and I love to do it. It is my priority. My raison d’etre. I originally intended to concentrate on factory farming issues only because they are particularly brutal and done behind closed doors. Many people do not have an affinity with factory-farmed animals, they just want to eat them. Activists within our movement have said the general public will change their eating habits once they know what’s going on in factory farming. I disagree. People do know but, like most things, they don’t give a toss.

Welfarism hasn’t helped either. Welfarism says if an animal is fed and quartered then the obligation of the person in charge has been fulfilled. This notion is deeply offensive to animal rightists. It’s like people in our movement supporting vivisection “under certain biomedical circumstances”. Can you be “a little bit pregnant?”---I don’t think so.

In recent times I have diversified my area of animal activism to include in other pressing subjects such as Australian greyhounds being shipped off to Asia and countering the propaganda of the meat and dairy industry.

Open Your Eyes: You actually moved to Victoria for a time to fight the new monkey farm being built in the country town of Churchill. Tell us about that.

Claudette: Yes I did move here for that reason. Antivivisection is an amazingly frustrating area to get involved in because scientists have a veneer of respectability about them. When a scientist says he has to mutilate and destroy a non-animal life “for the good of humanity” “to find a cure for AIDS or cancer” then on the whole, people believe their rhetoric.

It would have to be a naïve or incredibly unsophisticated person in this day and age who is not aware of the corporate takeover of science that leads directly to the corporate takeover of science teaching. There are millions of $$$ involved in grants for universities ---animal experimentation grants—so it is not in the interests of most universities to seek alternatives to killing and mutilating non-human animals.

Believe me, there is no “free flow of ideas” circulating in universities today. Who is reading Francione’s Rain Without Thunder in ethics classes in universities across Australia today? You’d be lucky to find an old copy of Animal Liberation lying around the place.

The modern-day corporate state is ingenious for aggressively maximising its “opportunities”and brainwashing people while simultaneously shedding its responsibilities. Participatory democracy is an oxymoron. I think we all have to be more aware of the role and influence corporations and globalisation play in our lives today.

So our enemies in the vivisection movement drive expensive cars, wear pinstriped suits and have the ear of the public. Our job, as I see it, and to break through that “scientist in the white coat knows best” archetype. We intend to challenge this pseudo-scientific archetype and we intend to do this from an ethical stance.

Anti-vivisectionists fighting vivisection from a scientific standpoint never mention the malevolence within the scientific community because they are too busy falling over backwards trying to convince scientists that they are not “anti-science”. The boardrooms of corporate science has had a taste of what ethical animal activists can do—here I’m thinking of the “Shut Huntington Animal Cruelty”campaign. They hate SHAC, and that’s not such a bad thing.

Open Your Eyes: You certainly have shed a lot of light on many different subjects and we appreciate your time.

Claudette: Thank-you for your interest.