"I am pleased both personally and as a professional philosopher to have shown that philosophy and rational argument can make a difference."
In 1975 a 29-year-old Australian philosopher named Peter Singer published Animal Liberation, the book that is often credited with launching the animal rights movement. Since Animal Liberation was published, Singer has written or co-written nine other books, including Animal Factories (with Jim Mason), Practical Ethics, and How Are We to Live? Singer also has edited or co-edited nine additional books, including In Defense of Animals, Animal Rights and Human Obligations, and The Great Ape Project (with Paola Cavalieri), which is reviewed in this issue. Born in Melbourne, Australia, Singer was educated at the University of Melbourne and the University of Oxford. Currently he is professor of philosophy, co-director of the Institute of Ethics and Public Affairs, and deputy director of the Centre for Human Bioethics at Monash University, Melbourne. He also has taught at five other universities around the world, including the University of Oxford and New York University.
Singer has been married to Renata Diamond for 26 years. They have three daughters. When he is not writing, teaching, lecturing, or traveling, Singer enjoys bushwalking, swimming, and growing fruits and vegetables.
Recently, Singer was in the United States to promote The Great Ape Project. Animals' Agenda visited with him in the offices of St. Martin's Press, publisher of The Great Ape Project, in New York. Kim W. Stallwood
AGENDA: You recently co-edited The Great Ape Project with Paola Cavalieri. What do you hope this book will accomplish?
SINGER: I hope it will help to build a bridge between us and other species. We're asking that the community of equals, as we call it, the community of beings for whom we accept the same ultimate, basic rights, should cease to be the species homo sapiens and should become the great apes as a whole. If we were to accomplish that, and people were to accept that all species of great apes are not items of property, but are beings with rights, equals, if you like, persons in the full sense, both legally and morally, that would be a historic expansion of that community of equals. Once that community ceases to be identical with the species homo sapiens, a lot of other possibilities open up. We're making a case for one rather narrowly defined group at the moment, but we don't disguise the fact that cases may be made for other species as well.
AGENDA: Why do you think the public is going to be more receptive to the idea of bringing great apes into the human sphere of ethics first as opposed to any other species?
SINGER: For a number of reasons. One is that because of the work that's been done by Jane Goodall-- and the apes' ability to communicate through signing--we now know so much more about the apes and about their emotional and social lives in which we recognize ourselves very directly. People who see the great apes on film or hear reports of their signing can recognize themselves and recognize the interests and desires of the apes as rather like theirs. Because of that close likeness we identify more immediately with the apes.
Secondly, we are not embedded in a culture that ruthlessly exploits the great apes in a large-scale way--as we are embedded in a culture that exploits pigs and chickens and so on. So the kind of psychological opposition people have to considering an idea that would force them to change their diet--and the much more tangible opposition of industries prepared to put millions of dollars into fighting us--isn't going to be there in the case of great apes.
AGENDA: What's the current status of the declaration that people can sign in support of including the great apes in the community of equals?
SINGER: Quite a number of people have written to us from England, where the book has been out for more than eight months. In Australia about 1,200 people have signed up as supporters. We were also pleased to have endorsements from a well-known author like Douglas Adams and a distinguished biological scientist like Richard Dawkins, who did not previously have a track record of support for animal liberation causes. And I just had a letter from a woman who works with Carl Sagan. He's indicated that he's supportive of it.
AGENDA: What's the next stage for The Great Ape Project?
SINGER: We've already had letters of support from people in 30 countries. We want to build up national groups in each of those countries. Then we want to think about helping particular great apes whose conditions of imprisonment are blatantly ones of deprivation and torture. We would try to get them into a sanctuary or reservation where we can provide for their needs. At the same time we would keep in the forefront the idea that The Great Ape Project is not simply rescuing animals from inhumane conditions, it's really trying to extend the community of equals. We might go to people in politics, trying to get resolutions of principle on this matter. We might go through the courts. I'm having some discussions with lawyers in America about those possibilities. And eventually we might go to the United Nations, trying to get them to pass a declaration on the Great Apes akin to the declarations on the rights of children or the women or the disabled.
AGENDA: Next year will mark the 20th anniversary of the publication of Animal Liberation. What were your original goals when you wrote the book and have they been accomplished?
SINGER: My goals were to bring about a situation where we give the same consideration to the interests of nonhuman animals as we give to our own. That would mean a society that ceases to exploit animals, ceases to discount their interests, and ceases to sacrifice their major interests for the much more minor interests of our own. Obviously that goal has not been accomplished at all. What has been accomplished is this: first, a movement now exists that didn't really exist in 1975, so there is an organizational base from which to work for the accomplishment of those goals. Second, there have been some changes in the severity of our exploitation of animals in a wide variety of fields. In this country there has been a move away from testing cosmetics on animals, and apparently there's been quite a significant drop in the number of animals used in laboratory experiments, according to the report from the Tufts' University Center for Animals and Public Policy. There's also been a significant impact on the fur trade.
AGENDA: Are you surprised at the growth of the movement and the growth of all these issues during the last twenty years?
SINGER: That's hard to say because I didn't know what to expect. You've got to remember that the book was written in the early 1970s when a lot of things seemed possible that perhaps people have become more cynical about now. My expectations ranged all the way from having mass support for goals such as getting rid of factory farming, which seems to me to be absolutely indefensible. But that hasn't come, so in that sense the book hasn't reached my expectations. Yet in more pessimistic moments I thought, 'Ah, well, this is too utopian. It's going to cause a flap, then be forgotten.' But that hasn't happened, either. So I guess the book's success has been somewhere between my more optimistic and more pessimistic expectations.
AGENDA: What do you think is the most difficult challenge facing the animal rights movement now?
SINGER: To maintain the momentum that was built up during the 1980s. We took our opponents, to some extent, by surprise. At first they laughed at us. They didn't take us seriously. That allowed us a sympathetic hearing with the media and made it relatively easy to get a lot of attention. It's now become harder. Our opponents have cleverly exploited this idea that the movement is full of terrorists or fanatical extremists. There's a real danger to the movement in getting painted into that corner.
AGENDA: How do we avoid that?
SINGER: First, by making it clear that we do not support any violence toward human beings. Second, by showing that we are prepared to talk to our opponents and to work with them to devise concrete ways that will allow them to do the things they want to do without exploiting animals. We have to show that we are not anti-science, but we want to see ways in which scientific research can be achieved without the exploitation of animals. We are not anti-farmer, but we want to see ways in which farmers can make a living and produce food without exploiting animals.
AGENDA: Where do you think the message of animal rights has not gotten through, and what can we do about it?
SINGER: In the United States the message about food and farm animals has not got through effectively. The United States is well behind Europe, not that Europe has reached the state we want to see, but there's a lot more awareness in Europe of the fact that food animals live in miserable conditions that do not satisfy their needs and that it's not impossible to change this. More ultimately, the ethical argument, the anti-speciesism argument, has not got through enough with most people. It hasn't been taken seriously enough perhaps, or it hasn't been understood. We have to keep hammering away at the fundamental philosophical point that animals have interests and the fact that animals are not of our species is not a reason for ignoring or discounting those interests.
AGENDA: How would you rate the movement's effectiveness in relating the issue of the interests of animals toward the interests of women and minorities?
SINGER: From my experience there is a fairly solid and reasonably active group of feminists who are concerned about the animal movement, ranging from, I guess, ecofeminists who take a broader view of feminism and nature, to some of those who have written specifically about the animal movement, like Carol Adams. We've been less successful in involving minorities in the movement. Obviously we ought to try more, at the same time we have to understand that they may have their own priorities. Because a lot of their problems have not been met, they would naturally see them as more urgent.
AGENDA: How far should we compromise when we seek legislation for animals?
SINGER: I'm prepared to support any legislation that reduces the suffering of animals or enables them to meet their needs more fully. I'm not prepared to bargain away the more far-reaching goals of the movement for the sake of those reforms. In other words, I'm prepared to support, say, the European move to get rid of the battery cage for hens, even though raising hens is obviously still compatible with a fair amount of exploitation. I'm not prepared to say, 'If this happens, I will give up any sort of suggestions that we need to go further.'
If you could get hens out of cages and into free-range or deep-litter systems, you might switch to other priorities because hens would not be among the most severely exploited animals. But it's important to see these reforms as stepping stones on the path to further goals, not as the be-all and end-all of the campaign.
AGENDA: You're involved with ANZFAS: the Australian and New Zealand Federation of Animal Societies. Can you tell us how that movement has evolved? And do you see parallels between their evolution and what you're aware of that's happening in this country or in Europe?
SINGER: ANZFAS evolved as an attempt to get the various Australian animal rights, animal liberation, and animal welfare groups together because we have a federal system where we need to make representations to state government on specific issues, but we also need to have a voice at the federal level for a number of other issues. We felt that there were few groups representing the movement at a national level. When the national government would call for submissions on any particular issue, there would be 40 different groups that might make submissions, but none of them had the expertise or the time to research the issues properly. So we invited the groups to join our federation, which would represent their concerns at a national level. They might still put in submissions if they wished, but we would have the expertise to look at this sort of thing properly. About 45 different organizations joined. The ones that stayed out were either the SPCAs, who basically felt they had their own national organization and state branches, and a few of the most hard line anti-vivisection groups. ANZFAS hasn't been able to keep the entire movement together, that would be unrealistic, but it's kept the solid middle body together. That includes animal liberation groups as well as some shelters and so on.
ANZFAS has put members on various government committees in the department of primary industries, committees that are developing codes of practice for the keeping of hens and cattle. I think it's done a very useful sort of work. I don't really know of anything similar in other countries. I don't think there is anything drawing the movement together in the United States.
AGENDA: There's nothing here in the United States. In fact, we're proposing that something like that should be formed here. I'm not aware of anything similar in Britain. Does ANZFAS have its own budget, its own staff? Where does it get its funding?
SINGER: ANZFAS gets its funding partly from member society subscriptions, but they're pretty low because the idea is to keep in as many member societies as possible. It also has its own individual members who joined in order to give it direct support, and it has a couple of larger donors who have given it money from time to time. Our government now gives some money directly to bodies who represent movements at political levels. These are called administrative services grants. The government recognizes that the existence of ANZFAS means that if it [the government] wants to consult with the animal movement, it can do so with one request, one letter, rather than having to find 45 different bodies and go around to them.
AGENDA: Does ANZFAS get active when there's a general election or in other statewide elections?
SINGER: It has at times, but that took a major amount of funds. In the last couple of elections it hasn't been as active. It really is struggling with the work load it has. Essentially it has a full-time executive director, a secretary, and a part-time assistant.
AGENDA: Why do you think cooperation and unity among organizations and individuals within the animal rights movement is notoriously difficult to accomplish?
SINGER: This is not a movement that is going to attract large numbers of people who conform to what others say. That might be one factor. Otherwise, I don't think it's a whole lot worse than other voluntary movements, where there are splits and friction, too. People fighting for a cause they passionately believe in get upset when things don't work or when people do things in a way that they see as not being right. But we shouldn't think we are a whole lot worse than any other groups.
AGENDA: The opposition seems to be much more willing to band together to fight us. How come they are and we're not?
SINGER: Don't forget that they're not passionately committed to an ethical cause. They're basically concerned to keep us off so they can continue to make their profit. In that sense, there's less of a sense of commitment and dedication, almost desperation, which, I think, gets people to be a little short fused with each other.
AGENDA: Is there a similar counter initiative in Australia?
SINGER: Yes. There's a group that calls itself, rather misleadingly, the Animal Welfare Federation of Australia, which consists of circuses, animal experimenters, factory farmers, and so on. They haven't made a very big impact fortunately. The scientists in Australia, the animal experimenters, do not present a united front of opposition. In fact, the leaders of the animal experimentation issue within our United Health and Medical Research Council, the equivalent of your National Institutes of Health, do not join the Animal Welfare Federation. They are very willing to talk to the animal rights movement, to recognize that there is a need for reforms and for getting fairly stringent codes in place and so on. In that sense we've had a less polarized debate. And you could say that the Animal Welfare Federation of Australia has actually split the relatively small number of extremists who think that animal research should be absolutely unfettered and don't want to talk to us from the majority of more moderate scientists who recognize the serious ethical issue there.
AGENDA: In the United States companion animals have received increased attention from people in the animal rights movement, particularly with regard to solving the overpopulation problem. Yet some animal rights people think that having a companion animal is exploitative, per se, while others disagree. Do you think it's possible to live with an animal and not be part of an exploitative situation?
SINGER: It's certainly possible. At present, of course, there are many companion animals who have no future except to be killed or to live fairly miserable lives as strays. I don't see any sense in criticizing people who take in those animals and give them the best possible lives they can and treat them as much as they can as equals, as you would treat a human companion. I certainly don't think people should go out and buy companion animals. Ultimately, we may have a society in which we phase out those companion animals whom we have to kill other animals in order to feed. It's not an ideal situation to have companion animals who are carnivorous by nature. But we don't live in a society that's vegetarian, so that's a long-term solution. At the present stage I think it is possible to have a companion animal in an ethical way.
AGENDA: Would your goal, ultimately, be a society in which people, after having somehow solved the present surplus-animal problem, would ideally live without companion animals?
SINGER: No, I wouldn't say that. I think there may be species who can benefit from living with us and with whom we can live in a symbiotic relationship. If we solve the problem of having to exploit other animals in order to feed companion animals, then I don't see a problem about the possibility of those interspecies relationships.
AGENDA: Do you have interspecies relationships at home?
SINGER: We have a cat who was given to us by a friend who had taken the cat in as a stray. We've also had some rats that have come to us in other ways, and they've been companions as well. There's still one of them around.
AGENDA: Do you ever become overwhelmed with so much animal suffering and misery in the world?
SINGER: I wouldn't say overwhelmed. There are always opportunities for feeling that you're making some impact. One can, I guess, get a certain feeling of desperation about how hard it is to keep making that impact, and there are times when I get depressed about the difficulty of making progress. For me the greatest way out of that is to go back to being with people who are trying to make a difference. That is part of a long tradition, and I'm not just thinking about the animal tradition. I'm thinking about a broader, civilizing tradition, an attempt to produce a more humane, just society. That tradition has included the slave trade reformers and the prison reformers and people all the way back to Roman and Greek times. That tradition clearly is never going to die out, and I feel consolation in knowing that the tradition is here and is a strong one.
AGENDA: In the second edition of Practical Ethics you talk about your experiences in Germany and Austria. You spoke about how opponents to the views you expressed in Practical Ethics campaigned to close the conferences at which you were going to speak. And at one point you were actually physically assaulted.
SINGER: I had my glasses smashed, that's right.
AGENDA: What kind of impact did that have on your thinking about the legitimate forms of tactics that animal advocates should use?
SINGER: This was a fairly distressing experience. And quite an ironic one given my family background. My parents were Jewish refugees who came to Australia from Vienna in 1938 after the Nazis took over Austria. Given that three of my four grandparents died in Nazi camps, I saw it as deeply ironic that because I mentioned the word euthanasia, which is a word that the Nazis used for something quite different, I was denounced as in some way supporting a fascist or Nazi platform. There was an amazing depth of ignorance in these people. Many of them did not know that I had written anything on animals. In fact, they would ask the opposite questions. 'Why have you committed your life to promoting euthanasia?' Which obviously is not something I've done.
This incident strengthened my commitment toward free speech. It strengthened my belief that rational debate and exchange of ideas are really the way forward because you can see that there's just so much ignorance to be overcome. To some extent what happened to me in Germany has made me a bit uncomfortable on some occasions in the [animal] movement because I think there are elements in all movements which are, perhaps, not sufficiently open to the possibility that some of the things they're saying are a bit simplistic and not well-founded. And we can only change that by encouraging a freer debate and not trying to impose a group mentality on the movement as a whole.
AGENDA: What are you most proud of accomplishing?
SINGER: Oh, I think writing Animal Liberation. I've changed a few things in the second edition, but basically it's a book that's stood the test of time. The other thing I'm pleased with is that people keep coming up to me and saying, 'Your book changed our lives. We've abandoned exploiting animals and are involved in the movement.' I am pleased both personally and as a professional philosopher to have shown that philosophy and rational argument can make a difference.
(This concludes part one of our conversation with Peter Singer. Part two will be published in the May/June issue of The Animals' Agenda.)
Write in support for the declaration in The Great Ape Project to: The Great Ape Project, 4062 Washington Street, Apt. #2, Roslindale, MA 02131.