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"I received a question: isn't it better to be a non-vegan who rescues than one who does not? Yes. And it's better to be a serial murderer who does charity work on Thursdays than a serial murder who does no charity work at all. But that does not address the morality of murder or the inconsistency of murdering while doing charity work! My point is that those who rescue animals but who continue to eat them necessarily (even if not explicitly) regard the moral value of the animals they save as greater than the moral value of the ones they eat.  Please understand that I think that doing rescue work is fantastic and I have great respect for those who do it. (I have done TNR/fostering.) Many rescue folks work 24/7 helping unfortunate animals who will otherwise be killed in shelters or otherwise come to a horrible end. It is precisely because I do have a high regard for those who rescue/foster that I raise these issues. Rescue should not be just a matter of which animals are our "favorites." If someone were to rescue dogs but trapped and poisoned cats, we would surely find that odd. But the same analysis applies to those who do any sort of rescue work but then consume animal products.

Thanks to the 562 people who have signed the petition to FARM to ban H$U$ from the (so-called) "animal rights" conference. Please read the thoughtful comments. As expected, Paul Shapiro and the well-financed corporate butchers of H$U$ delivered a slick and sleazy presentation that bemoaned animal eating, a position not normally offered elsewhere, bemoaned pig confinement, while having a mass murderer of pigs employed as a director, and while conducting experiments on wild horses with drugs made from pig eggs, and bemoaning battery cages for chickens while promoting the egg industry's agenda for battery cages for chickens. Down with H$U$, the meat industry's self-appointed voice for "animal rights"!!! TAKE BACK THE ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENT FROM THE BUTCHERS OF H$U$!!! No one elected Wayne Pacelle and H$U$ to be a voice for animals or animal rights activists!!! Hey Hey Ho Ho, H$U$ has got to go!!! http://www.change.org/petitions/farm-farm-animal-rights-movement-ar-2012-ban-hsus-from-the-2012-animal-rights-conference

"Finally, it should be understood that it is unlikely that any significant change in the status of animals as property will come about as the result of legislation or court cases until there is a significant social change in our attitude about animals. That is, it is not the law that will alter our moral thinking about animals; it must be the other way around. It was not the law that abolished slavery; indeed, the law protected slave ownership and the institution of slavery was not abolished by the law but by the Civil War. The present-day world economy is far more dependent on animal exploitation than were the southern United States on human slavery. Animal exploitation is not going to be ended by a pronouncement of the Supreme Court or an act of congress-at least not until a majority of us accept the position that the institution of animal property is morally unacceptable. "

"No mainstream group has adopted ethical veganism as its exclusive, or even a, central focus. An ethical vegan would not support any animal exploitation. Therefore, to say that ethical veganism is a SIC is to fail to understand the nature of ethical veganism or the fact that SICs rest on distinguishing among various forms of animal exploitation and promoting the notion that some forms are worse than others and, by implication, that other forms of exploitation are morally desirable or morally acceptable. One can, of course, use the expression "veganism" to apply only to diet in the sense that one who does not eat any animal products may be considered to have a vegan diet. This use of "vegan" is more restricted than the notion as I have developed it in my abolitionist theory. Promoting a vegan diet is more like an SIC than is promoting ethical veganism and the abolition of all animal use. But the practical reality is that if people rejected eating any animal products, we would see a rejection in all sorts of other animal use. The most significant form of animal exploitation--the form that "legitimizes" all the others--involves using animals as food. If you dislodge that use, you dislodge all others."

"Fourth, all of the philosophical/legal writing that I have done over the past 20+ years relies on an expansion of the liberal doctrine of equality. My work does not presuppose any religious or spiritual belief or require any such beliefs to come to the conclusion that we have no moral justification for exploiting nonhuman animals. My work relies on reason and rational argument. But there are many reasonable and intelligent people who do not agree with my view and yet have no substantive response to my arguments. I suppose that what separates us-and what caused me to become interested in animal ethics in the 1980s-is the sense of kinship that I feel with nonhuman animals. And I would suspect that this sense of kinship was and is related to my longstanding acceptance of Ahimsa, or the principle of nonviolence, as my foundational spiritual belief. "