Beyond Covid-19: get ready to end animal exploitation
Remember, mourn, and be angry—but above all prepare. Let’s be ready to put an end to the exploitation of animals, which will be the cause of the next pandemic, writes Dr Alex Lockwood.
What more is there to say about the 100,000 human deaths in the UK caused by this nightmare coronavirus pandemic? Of course, there is more, as this is the figure from 7th January—likely today it is around 120,000.
Yes, there is more: the knock-on human deaths from cancelled operations, or people not wanting to go to hospitals and dying at home from heart-attacks. The more than 35,000 long-Covid sufferers, or the impact on mental health, lost years of lives, lost livelihoods.
There is more to say about government incompetence and corruption, Boris Johnson’s deadly flaw of never wanting to make hard decisions because above everything, he needs to be liked. Even in April 2020 when he was warned there would be 100,000 deaths if lockdown was lifted, the government did not listen. In April I attended my step-father’s funeral over Skype. And now we have well over 100,000 deaths.
The first recorded case of coronavirus in the UK occurred a year ago this week. It was only a few days later PM Johnson gave his infamous speech of how other countries were panicking, and that Britain, ‘world-beating’ as ever, could shoo off this pesky bug and take economic advantage. Johnson was to prioritise “freedom of exchange … and emerge as the supercharged champion”. It is the speech of a man who knows nothing, cares for nothing.
There is more than the human toll. How many animals were killed? More than the 17 million mink in Denmark. (Who don’t even get to rest in their graves?) More than the millions of farmed animals in the US, who were “depopulated” (shot, gassed, and drowned) because they had become economically unnecessary as demand for ‘meat’ disappeared. Yes more, more of course. Many millions we don’t see or hear about—including the trafficked wild animals who are weakened and sick, and vectors of viruses.
And there are the bats, who were most likely the victims of human destruction of their habitats, direct and via climate change. Those bats who likely got sick with the virus because they were weakened by hunger because their homes and food sources were cut down, deforested, encroached. And who then got eaten by local people in Wuhan.
How fast did people try to pin this problem on the “Chinese virus” and their ‘wet markets’ which “launched” the virus, before realising that animals—the bats, the pangolins, the pigs—were easier targets for blame, because they don’t speak back?
Between February and April there was a moment when our focus was on the origins of the pandemic. This brought into the global media frame the causes of pandemics in general.
People were talking about the link between harming animals and the pandemic. There was an up-swelling of understanding of the fact that zoonotic pandemics are happening faster and with more regularity. From the Spanish Flu in 1918 (from an animal farm in Kansas) to Ebola, SARS, MERS, avian flu, the 2009 swine flu, and now Covid-19.
People could see through the veil normally thrown over global industrial agriculture. It was known that nearly all major global pandemics have come from the same source: human dominance and exploitation over-farmed and wild animals and their habitats.
We spoke of what to do. The open letter from global health and science leaders at Eat Forum who put it bluntly: “No protection from pandemics unless we fix our food systems.”
Academics Jan Dutkiewicz, Astra Taylor and Troy Vettese insisted that “the Covid-19 pandemic shows we must transform the global food system” and argued:
“Our short-term priority is the development of a vaccine for Covid-19. But we must also start thinking about more radical measures to address the roots of this crisis. We need a more resilient food system that puts less stress on the planet and on public health.
“This requires three interventions. The first is ending subsidies to industrial animal agriculture and taxing animal products to incorporate the cost of environmental and public health externalities, with the aim of the industry’s eventual abolition.”
Back in March, I wrote “This outbreak happened because people kill and eat animals” trying to find some way of framing the message quickly and easily that could circulate. A ‘Get Brexit Done’ or ‘Make America Great Again’ for ending the exploitation that causes pandemics.
There were many, many, many attempts to bring this narrative of the pandemic to the fore, particularly Viva! and their 3-in-4 campaign, Surge’s white paper, and the Pause the System campaign led by people from Animal Rebellion.
But can we say that we controlled or steered the narrative about what we do, long-term, about this pandemic or the next one? (There are many other aspects to the pandemic, of course, in terms of controlling spread and encouraging collaborative human efforts to behave in more responsible and hygienic ways. This Socialist Resistance post from April 2020 still remains one of the best easy-to-grasp summaries.)
What I know is this: we tried. But we need more resources, more strength in depth, more communications infrastructure to lead the narrative and steer it towards our goals.
So what do we do? The thing is, the next pandemic is already on its way. It could be much more deadly. But its causes are certain to be the same: animal agriculture, trafficked animals, destruction of animal habitats, weakened wild animals. It is up to us to act, and leverage this moment to save animal and human lives.
Don’t be deterred. We have the will and the ability. Let’s build the resources. Here’s a blueprint of six things we can begin now to be ready. We can lead the narrative next time and move us closer to the end of the exploitation of animals.
1. Start building an animal protection pandemic alliance
We are all allies, and we have a common goal. We can and do collaborate. Many organisations such as PETA, Animal Equality and Animal Aid came together with environmental and welfare groups to stand on common ground to ask for ‘A Better Deal for Animals’ in recognising animal sentience in UK law post-Brexit (even though this was a welfarist and not a rights stance). If we can agree on 80% with others, then that’s good enough. We need to work together and do it now, proactively, so we are prepared with our ask for when the next zoonotic pandemic arrives. People, reach out to other groups.
2. Have proposals ‘shovel-ready’
Many of the successful responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, and previous government and legislative responses to crises, have been taken up and put into motion not necessarily because they were the best ideas, but because they were ready to go. In a positive light, this ‘shovel-ready’ concept was part of many organisations’ contributions to the Green New Deal response as the government scrabbled round to find economic ideas to build out of the first lockdown. In a much less savoury way, political connections were also ‘shovel-ready’ in that at least 50% of the PPE deals (over £11billion) being handed out to Tory mates in a process of “Waste, Negligence and Cronyism” reported the New York Times.
Sadly, this is how systems work. He was an unsavoury character as economic adviser for Reaganism and Thatcherism, but right-wing economist Milton Friedman understood how change happens. Those of us working for justice could do with stealing some free marketeer ideas. Friedman said: “Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.” We know we don’t have as many resources as the powerful status quo interests. So we need to be smarter.
3. Gather evidence
Outbreaks and evidence are all around us, all the time. The goats in the Netherlands getting sick and making people living nearby sick; the current UK-wide controls on birds; the avian flu spreading around the world right now. Let’s gather a central repository, with one of the organisations with resources or funding taking a lead, supported by all the others, or an academic department. Academics, you have to be activists! Get the grants, direct your research into work that is going to bolster the movement and give organisations on the ground all the research they need to put campaigns into action.
4. Research, build and test our messaging
My partner (a corpus linguist and narrative strategist) and I (a writer, and narrative theorist) began to do a tiny part of this work back in March and April alongside Pause the System, to identify which narrative frames were going to get through the media gatekeepers and influence the public; our very cursory, preliminary suggestions were to focus on health rather than factory farming. Remember: we’re not always talking to ourselves, nor should we be. After leading on narrative during the 2019 October rebellion, I’m excited to see Animal Rebellion’s continuation of the use of linguistics in their messaging strategies. We need to do this properly, with all the tools available to us, to ensure our messaging moves people to action - and not just preach to the choir. Download the worksheets from the Centre for Story Based Strategy. Read Don’t Think of An Elephant by George Lakoff. Absorb the framing narratives produced by PIRC and NEON. Don’t just think your ideas are creative. Get language-smart. Will the key messaging frame next time be antimicrobial resistance and the overuse of antibiotics in industrial agriculture? Test it now.
5. Build our communications not as messaging but as infrastructure
Another thing the political right has done very well for decades—and are now pursuing even more strongly in the UK with the launch of the right-wing GB News—is investing in the think tanks, media organisations, and public intellectuals to gain media control, and so control the status quo narrative. Because in the end, we can have the best message and the most emotive call to action, but if no-one is listening, so what? Every activist who wants to protect animals should be media trained; every funder with money should invest in building a pro-animal communications infrastructure, not just through social media or on vegan-oriented platforms but in the mainstream. We need to invest in communications intelligence.
6. Don’t wait until the next pandemic to push the Overton Window
The Overton Window is the range of politically possible ideas and policies acceptable to speak about in public discourse. What is accepted? What feels possible or probable? If by the time the next pandemic arrives we’ve been too busy planning and perfecting and not actively seeding, watering, digging, and growing the groundswell then we’ll already have missed the boat. We need to act now: as if the next pandemic is upon us. (And with the coronavirus mutations, it may already be). Everything above needs to be done now, continually. “Fire, Aim, Ready,” as the Spartan entrepreneur Joe De Sena puts it—what are we waiting for?
This week the World Economic Forum published its Global Risk 2021 report. Top of the list for impact, above climate change and economic failure? Infectious diseases. If we think there’s no way left for us to take control of the narrative in this pandemic, then we need to plan our strategies now to make sure we control the narrative of the next one. Our ideas—a plant-based food system, particularly—are the ones that must be kept alive and available so that what seemed impossible before the pandemic becomes inevitable.
As Surge says, worse is on the way. Let’s take action now. Get involved.
Dr Alex Lockwood is an academic and author of the vegan memoir The Pig in Thin Air, that makes the connection between climate change and the food we eat. He is writing a report for The Vegan Society on the policy we need for a UK plant-based food system.
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