How Veganism Can Help Save the World (Farsi Edition)

By Kamran Nayeri, Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism, June 12, 2014 

Photo: Kamran Nayeri

Farsi Edition Critique of Political Economy, translated by the Telegram channel "We animals." November 26, 2021 For a PDF copy click here. 

The Feral Cat Colony on Darby Road: Part 1

By Kamran Nayeri, November 19, 2012

Our Place Is Where We Are Loved by Jan Yatsko

This essay is about cats, mostly feral or "strayed," that I came to know since I moved to my new home in Sebastopol, California, in August 2011.  It has been hard for me to write about them for reasons that will become obvious to the reader.  The essay will appear in three parts. This is part 1.  It is dedicated to all domesticated animals that live their lives at the mercy of the master who we often call "owner" as if these animals are mere commodities as we once sanctioned human slavery by buying and selling human beings (and in some parts of the world, still do).  I hope it will touch the reader's heart and mind as all other good writings in the literature on animal liberation have done for me.  As Henry David Thoreau noted wisely, enslavement of other animals also enslave us. Without animal liberation there can be no human emancipation.  

When I lived in Atenas, Costa Rica, I met wonderful individuals, mostly women, who operated Fundación Ateniense de Ayuda a Animales Abandonados (Atenas Foundation for Helping Abandoned Animals) on volunteer basis.  They conduct ongoing public education including by setting up a stand at the Friday's farmers market (La Feria) and teaching school children. They also provide free  neutering and spaying of dogs and cats.  Until a good home is found for abandoned dogs and cats, these volunteers offer their own homes as temporary shelter for these often sick and mistreated animals.  This organization is registered in Costa Rica as a non-profit (Cedula Juridica #3-006-542026).

A friend, an artist and Atenas resident, Jan Yatsko used her talents to create the painting "Our Place is Where We Are Loved"  (see above) and donated it to the Atenas Foundation for Helping Abandoned Animals.  All of the proceeds from the sale of this painting will go towards food, medicine and veterinary care.  The painting features Canela (Cinnamon) an abandoned and sexually abused female dog with a big loving heart.  When the abandoned and orphaned kittens were placed near her, she started to produce milk and took care of  them until they were adopted.  Canela was also adopted and now the painting that captured her story is looking for a good home. 

The unframed painting 15" X 20" in an acrylic wash on professional grade watercolor paper.  Cost is $300 dollars + shipping within the US.  Interested people can contact Jan Yatsko for more details at janyatsko@ice.co.cr. Everyone is encourage to visit Jan's website at www.janyatsko.com.

Thank you.

Kamran Nayeri

*     *     *

The Feral Cat Colony on Darby Road

Mooshi goes to Sebastopol

At 4:30 on August 20 a year ago, I got up from my makeshift bed on the floor of my emptied out bedroom in Montclair, Oakland, put the laundry basket over Mooshi who was still sleep in her bed, pushed a flattened cardboard book box under her bed and used plenty of dock tape to secure the basket on it.  I then put Mooshi in the back of the Prius and drove an hour and half to Sebastopol, 70 miles northwest of Oakland, California.

The sun was rising when we arrived in our new home. I was certain that Mooshi would like her new house that sits on two acres of land in the countryside 3 miles from downtown Sebastopol, a town of about 8,000 people. But how quickly would she adjust?

I first met Mooshi in the parking lot of Ann Head Building complex, part of the University of California at Berkeley, in spring of 2003. Anna Head Building is located at the northeast corner of a large UCB parking lot (which is now turned into a student dormitory).  Mooshi’s stunning beauty—a calico coat with vivid colors of longish hair and beautiful large and intelligent green eyes that made her she look like some Norwegian Forest cat—made me fall in love at the first sight. It became apparent very soon that Mooshi was feral and lived under the building.  I soon began providing her with water and then food on regular basis every day of the year. A cautious cat, it took us a while to get to know each other but eventually we became best friends.  Every morning Mooshi was waiting for me to arrive at work and provide her breakfast. When she was not there calling her name was enough for her showing up. Most days Mooshi would be sitting on top of the forgotten balcony on the second floor just below my office’s window to watch the parking lot as people were heading home.

Mooshi in her home in Sebastopol, 2012

I learned from others that Mooshi was the sole survivor of a litter born across the street sometimes in late 1999 or early 2000. I have no idea how Mooshi’s mother and siblings perished. Perhaps luck was a factor but Mooshi’s intelligent and caution certainly helped her survive. For example, in dry winter days she spent the mornings sitting on top of the hood of newly parked cars to keep warm.  I could see her getting off a car that was parked for a while and jump on top of the hood of a car that recently arrived. She enjoyed watching people, cars and other animals from a safe distance. And she still does. She was also very agile and a great hunter. I called her Mooshi after seeing her one morning with the tail of a mouse briefly hanging from her mouth. In Farsi, “moosh” is the word for mouse.

By 2006, I was looking for another job and had to take Mooshi home. So, I spent months trying to catch her—after all this time I could not, and still cannot, pick her up and hold her in my arms.  She just does not like it. My coworkers, their spouses, people from UCB Animal Control office tried for months to help me catch Mooshi.  Nothing worked.  A woman from animal control with a kind heart for animals gave me a net with a very long handle to catch Mooshi. The idea was to place something tasty on top of the net and then pull it up to catch her.  It did not work.  The husband of a coworker who was suppose to be very good with animals tired to make Mooshi familiar with his scent by leaving his dirty shirts near her food and water dishes. After a few days, he tried to crawl over to Mooshi and grab her.  It did not work. Finally, the Animal Control Office lent me a raccoon trap. For this to work I had to stop feeding Mooshi for as long as it takes for her to walk into the trap for her food.  It tool 10 days of not eating her food—something very hard for both of us. But on March 7, 2006 at about 3:30 p.m. Mooshi walked into the trap.  A coworker with a SUV drove us to the veterinary office.  They ran test for serious infections but fortunately found her to be healthy except for infected teeth. They extracted two infected fangs and some bad teeth and let me take her home. Poor Mooshi was very groggy when I took her to the bathroom that became her room for about a week and [laced her on the towels laid down on the floor of the bathtub.  After a week of regaining her strength and coming out of the initial shook of finding herself in an entirely new place she was well enough to move to the smaller bedroom of the house. I began spending more time with her although she was mostly hiding under the bed.  At night, she tried a few times to break through the glass of the window and jump out.  After about six months, I let Mooshi go out.  When she found a hole under my neighbor’s house she crawled in—looked like home to her. However, after a few hours she came out and I was able to get her back into the house.  After a few times, she was finally at home in the sense that she would go out and come back in on her own accord.

This experience made Mooshi to bond with me more than to where she lived. So, after just three days in her new house on Darby Road she was feeling at home. In fact, Mooshi was actually happier living on two acres of land well populated with gophers!  She spent the next six months gopher hunting. The fact the she never had any success did not matter—it was still a lot of fun and exercise.

Darby Road as a neighborhood

I settled in Sebastopol, California, after a five-year quest to live in Cuba and when that seemed impossible in Costa Rica.  There were different sets of reasons for each of these. But a common factor was the suffering of domesticated animals prevalent in those countries and elsewhere in Latin America (I have also seen it in Mexico and Venezuela). Once in Trinidad, Cuba, I found a blind dog dying of starvation/dehydration under the cocktail table I had sat by to enjoy live music.  In Atenas, Costa Rica, where I wished to settle down dogs that are lucky to belong to someone are tied to a post on a short metal chain 24 hours a day for almost all of their lives—they are used as burglary alarm.  In Ensenada, Mexico, it was not uncommon to find dogs with open wounds or dead by the side of the road, hit by a car.  I limit my observation to dog abuse as the Latin culture is a “dog culture!”

Sebastopol, a town of 8,000 people, seemed to offer some of the qualities of Vinales, Cuba, and, Atenas, Costa Rica. I found a house with an open-space architecture and two acres of land for an affordable price outside of town in a valley that is made up of homes with acreage and apple orchards and vineyards.

The house at the end of the Darby Road appealed to me because it is a quite place facing a meadow engulfed by dense growth of oak and other evergreens that surround a big creek; together they serve as a wildlife corridor.

Darby Road slopes down at about 15 degrees from Burnside—a road that snakes around the top of the hills—surrounded by rows of apple and oak trees, shrubs and weeds, including blackberry bushes.  A deep creek runs parallel to it on the left of the road as one drives down the hill, leading into the big creek.  About 1000 feet from the big creek, Darby Road turns left to become still narrower and much more private.  This part of the road is legally privately held, although people take their walks there or walk their dogs. There are only seven houses on this section of the road.  My house is the last just before a locked gate that makes Darby Road a cul-de-sac.  There are homes on either sides of Darby Road as its slopes down towards the big creek. Most are on private side road. There is a huge apple orchard belonging to a middle-age couple, the Valentios, who are small farmers. They operate machinery such as a giant tractor and a big truck. But manual labor—like preparing the trees, pruning, picking apples--and other more demanding work—are done by seasonal workers of Mexican heritage during the spring and fall seasons. Apples are sold for making juice.  There is also a small five-acre family owned pinot noir farm.  A non-descript building opposite of the small vineyard that is known as the “Apple Shack” is home to some half-a-dozen young male Mexian-American farm workers.

There is considerable number of wildlife such as coyotes, deer, wild turkeys, quarrels foxes, rabbits, gophers, moles, rats and mice, weasels, garden and gopher snakes, lizards, a couple of dozens of regional and migratory birds (quail families live under the blackberry bushes), many garden and house insects, and plenty of various grasses, shrubs, and trees that create a very lively surrounding.  My neighbors have cats and dogs, chicken and ducks, and goats. There is also a rescued horse and donkey.  Neighbors talk about “a bobcat” that lives in the woods surrounding the big creek that has taken their chickens. There is also rumor of mountain lions in the area. But coyotes come here and I once saw one walking briskly past the gate to the neighbor’s apple orchard towards the big creek.  Some nights, I wake up from their howl as they are just outside of my window.

The feral cat colony

One morning a few days after I arrived, I was driving to town when I noticed two small orange cats running towards my car from the right hand side of the road. This portion of Darby Road is surrounded by apple orchards with blackberry and other bushes on both sides of the creek to the one side and blackberry bushes that serve as a wall to hide a quite house on the other. It also serves as the location for loading and shipping apples in late summer and early autumn. Rusting disabled farm trucks and machinery, heaps of worn out tires and wasted wood made it clear that it was also a dumping ground.  The cats were coming from a location near a flat bed truck that was half sunken into the soil and partially covered by blackberry bushes. A rusting shell of an old truck stood 100 feet further some 20 feet away from the road.

I pulled the car to the shoulder and stopped. When I stepped out the cats came running to me robbing their faces and sides against me. I immediately noticed than one of the orange cats had a large open wound above her right eye.  They both looked very small, very thin.  I thought they were kittens. I quickly figured out that they are starving.  They wanted food.

I returned home and brought back several cans of cat food with me and a few dishes and a fork. It took them no time to swallow whatever I served. Meanwhile, I noticed that a black cat has also appeared, and in the distance, a calico cat.  The black cat came closer and let me pat him.  I had to get more food.

Thus began my relationship with the feral cat colony on Darby Road.  The first couple of weeks the cats devoured anything I gave them and licked dishes clean.  They were very much undernourished and both orange kitties appeared seriously sick.  The orange kitty with the wound over her right eye was by far the friendliest.  She actually wanted me to pat her as much as she wanted to eat her food. The other orange kitty sounded as if she suffered from an upper-respiratory infection.  She was also skittish but being so starved she allowed met to touch her while she was eating.  I was so busy with these two cats that the black cat and calico cat simply ate their food in a distance.

Orange Kitty Number Two

After the immediate problem of severe malnutrition was alleviated as the cats began to simply eat their food as opposed to swallow it as fast as they could, I decided to take the orange kitty with the open wound to a veterinarian.  I thought that a raccoon or a fox might have bitten the cat and the wound was not healing due to microbial infection.  The idea occurred to me as a raccoon and a fox did indeed appear at feeding times at the beginning.  Apparently, some kind-hearted neighbors threw food for the cats allowing other animals to eat them.  The raccoon and the fox must have learned that they can share in the cat food being left there never mind that it was served during the day and by the road where people drove by. I was hoping a regime of antibiotics might heal the cat’s wound and if the cat did not have a serious transmittable disease, I could take her home. So, I borrowed a trap from a neighbor, made an appointment (subject to being able to trap the cat) with the nearest veterinary practice-- Analy Veterinary Hospital—and on a Thursday morning placed a small amount of food on a plate deep inside the trap, set the trap, and waited for the orange kitty with the wound to show up. She usually came first. However, the second orange kitty that usually did not show up early and sometimes at all showed up and walked directly into the trap so I closed it manually. 

We registered the cat as the Orange Kitty Number One.  The cat was very docile. Dr. Baldwin was able to examine her without any difficulty.  The tests for feline leukemia and feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) were negative. She was given a slow-release antibiotic shot to treat her upper respiratory infection and release to me to take home.  I also learned that she was female and spayed, probably between 9 to 11 years old—an old age for a feral cat. Almost all her teeth and half her tongue were missing probably due to a blow to the head either by an accident (e.g. a car hit her) or by someone kicking her in the head.  I learned later that she was also almost deaf—whether she lost her hearing due to the trauma to her head or she got into an accident because she could not hear well will remain an unknown.  The notion that someone could have brutalized the cat is not so far fetched.  George, a male orange cat, apparently orange cats are often male, that spent his last two and half years of his life being taken care of by my housemate and I in Montclair, Oakland, carried a booby gun pellet in his body—an X-Ray taken just before he died showed it.  Apparently, a neighborhood kid target practiced using George. 

I took the orange kitty home.  I named her Sayda, a woman’s name in Gillaki languae.  I had prepared the larger bathroom and walking closet for her. 

The next day, I easily trapped the other orange cat. My neighbor who came to help feed the other cats was amazed at how trusting this sweet cat was. We signed her in as Orange Kitty Number Two.

Dr. Baldwin had no trouble examining her either. However, she almost immediately suggested that the wound that did not heal was probably advanced skin cancer.  To examine her further, she had to use anesthesia.  I left the cat with her and went to sit by the phone at home. A call came by mid-day.  Dr. Baldwin told me that the cat was bleeding under anesthesia probably because she had eaten rodents with rat poison.  Rat poison is a potent anticoagulant—it kills rodents by causing severe internal bleeding. She said she would do her best to save her.  A little later she called to say that bleeding had stopped but lab results have come in showing she is infected with FIV. She thought that explained the wound. Because the wound was not operable and the cat seemed to be in late stages of skin cancer and feline AIDS she recommended that I give her permission to end her life while she was under anesthesia.  Her suggestion was a rational choice—the cat probably would not have lived much longer and would die a painful death. She could also transmit the FIV to other cats. I fought back tears as I I give her “my consent” while thinking whom am I to put someone who I just recently met to death?

I left her a message for my neighbor who had helped me in the morning about this tragic outcome. When she came to comfort me I could not hold back my tears no more. I lost a friend that I had not yet quite known.  The little sweet cat had made a warm spot in my heart for the rest of my life. All the pains of my decision to put down Nuppy, one of my closest friends and perhaps my most important teacher, in 2008 returned to me.

My only consolation was that of the two sisters I was able to save one.

Sayda

Sayda turned out to be a vocalizer.  She cried when she used the box, ate her food and she sometimes in the middle of the night.  That worried me.  At the same time, she ate with gusto, a good sign of her desire to live and get stronger.  She also began to enjoy some other comforts of living at home instead of under the blackberry bushes.  Within a few days, she began sleeping in her doughnut shaped bed.

About a week after Sayda came into the house a friend who I had not seen for about about two decades came for a weeklong visit from Iowa.  I had prepared the loft for my visitors. To make sure he could sleep well I spent a number of hours each night sleeping with Sayda in the walk-in closet. This seemed to comfort Sayda as she sometimes curled up in my armpit and fall sleep and sometimes slept just above my head on the carpet. She also learned to enjoy being brushed—and she does need it as her fur forms mats. Sayda’s acceptance of my companionship was fostered by the small size of the closet and the bathroom.  Each time I reached out to touch her initial reaction was to recoil. But once she was touched she relaxed and sometimes even purred softly.

Sayda in her walk-in closet on my bedding, October 2011

After my friend left, I began to leave the bathroom door open so Sayda can walk into the large living room full of light coming through large picture windows. Sayda did come to the door but would not cross into the living room. After a while, I brought her in my arms to the living room to sit by my on the sofa. This was fine as long as I sat by her.  As soon as I moved to do something elsewhere in the house Sadya ran back to the closet.  She did not feel safe in open spaces. 

Meanwhile, Mooshi was curious about this visitor (Moosh is curious and very intelligent).  Whenever she tried to stick her head inside Sayda’s turf she was hissed at and chased away by Sayda. As much as Sayda is docile towards humans she is aggressive towards other cats. Of course, she is bluffing with her small body and bone structure.  I still do not understand how small cats sometimes bully large ones; female cats bully male cats, etc.

After a few weeks living in the walk-in closet and the bathroom, Sayda discovered the loft.  The shape of the loft follows the A-frame structure of the house. The ceiling slopes on both sides. On has to be careful not to hit one’s head against the downward sloping ceiling when walking laterally. On each side where the ceiling become particularly low wooden moveable walls encase spaces that can be used as storage. The front and back of the loft face huge picture windows with beautiful view of the meadow and woodland on one side and the neighbor’s large garden on the other. 

One day, I could not find Sayda in her closet. As the bathroom door was always left open I figured she must have gone somewhere. Sometimes, she would go to my bedroom and hide behind or under the bed.  However, I could not find her anywhere on the main floor. So, I began looking in the loft.  I finally found her hiding in a dark corner of the attic. From that day she made the loft her turf.  At night she ventured downstairs to use her box, which was still in the master bathroom.  Once I realized Sayda is going to stay upstairs I took her box to the attic so she did not need to come downstairs to use it. 

Sayda spent the next couple of months hiding behind and under the bed or in dark corners of the attic.  I was no longer able to touch her or brush her. She would runs away.  So, she was putting up with me while in the closet. There was nowhere to hide there.

One night frustrated by Sayda’s behavior, I laid on my belly on the carpet facing her under the bed and talked to her for about 10 minutes.  I asked her why is she playing this game. Are I not the same person who held her, fed her, brushed her?  Why is she now acting as if I am a threat to her? I told her that she should accord herself more comfort. Why spent most her time day and night under the bed as opposed to elsewhere in the loft? I then went downstairs to go to sleep for the night.

I do not know what might account for it, but the next day I found Sayda sitting on the carpet by the bed and not under it.  She never went back to sleeping or hiding under the bed. 

A couple of month later I had a similar monologue with her this time telling her that I have lost my patience with her not ever coming downstairs.  There is sunshine there and she could be in the company of Mooshi and Sunny (I will tell her story in Part 2) and me.

Sayda on her Iranian rug cushion on the main floor of the house. spring of 2012

The next day, Sayda came downstairs and sat on an Iranian rug cushion a couple of feet away from my workstation.  Ever since Sayda comes downstairs every morning after her breakfast and remains there catching the sun light as late as the mid-day.  Sometimes she also comes down at night to sit with the rest of us as I watch a movie or relax on the sofa listening to jazz with Sunny on my chest or legs.

Sayda has also ventured outside a few times.  However, it is clear she feel very unsafe because she is almost deft and is constantly surprised by people and animals showing up in her field of vision blurred by cataract.   

For the first 8 months Sayda’s health seemed to vacillate between poor to somewhat better. Her appetite was not great and seemed to vacillate.  She had formed a large mat on her back that obviously bothered her.  She seemed unwell and showed obsessive/compulsive behavior by licking fur off behind both her back legs and by licking the carpet.  She also exhibited behavior as if she was constipated or had problem passing down her food.  One day all of the sudden she stopped eating. This went on for a few days. I got worried.

One morning when she was sunbathing downstairs, I put a laundry basket over her, slipped a flattened book box under her and taped the basket over it secure. I took her to the veterinary hospital.  Dr. Cloninger found no mass in Sayda’s intestines. But she did find her to suffer from a blood infection common to feral cats.  She gave her a strong shot of antibiotic and sent her home with a two-week regiment of antibiotic. I put the pills in treat-like pill pockets and Sayda eat them gladly. 

Within a few days she felt better except for the onset of diarrhea.  I gave her probiotics for cats.  After 10 days, I called Dr. Cloninger and she agreed to stop the antibiotics.  Sayda’s appetite and behavior improved, She actually put on a little weight—she is still very small.  She does not show obsessive/compulsive behavior and she is not sleeping as much—although she does sleep a lot.  I figure this may be normal for a deft cat.  Also, she has lived about 10 years as a feral cat—most feral cats die within a few years. She is an old lady with disabilities and trauma of a hard life that limit her abilities to enjoy the pleasures of everyday life. Sayda still has nightmares and wakes up crying loud. Only when I rush upstairs to talk to her does she calms down and perhaps fall sleep again.

All the same, Sayda is now part of our household.

To be continued: Part II: Lulu, Calico and Sunny

On the Value of the Great Hamster of Alsace's Life

By Kamran Nayeri, June 15, 2011

On June 9, it was reported that the European Unions’ highest court has issued a ruling to protect the Great Hamster of Alsace, also known as the European Hamster. There are an estimated 800 Great Hamsters in France, the only wild hamster species in Western Europe.  France may be fined up to $24.6 million if its urbanization and agricultural policies are not adjusted to protect the hamster. Outside of France, the Great Hamster’s habitat includes parts of Eastern Europe, Russian and Kazakhstan.

The Great Hamsters grows as long as 10 inches, with brown-and-white face, white paws and black belly.  The hamsters had been in sharp decline; in 2009 an estimated 200 were left.  At that time the European Commission filed a lawsuit against France upon urging of a French conservation group Sauvegarde Faune Sauvage (Safeguard Wildlife), in Wittenheim, in Alsace, France.

The Great Hamster likes grass and crops like alfalfa, but these have largely been replaced by corn, which is not ripe in the spring when the hamster awakens from six months of hibernation, eager to eat and mate. It must make longer and more hazardous journeys as its grazing area shrinks because of new highways and housing developments.

Farmers have generally considered the hamster to be a farmyard pest, and before it was protected they flooded its burrows and used poison and traps to kill it. Some trapped and killed the hamster for its fur.

Jean-Paul Burget, president of Sauvegarde Faune Sauvage told the New York Times in a telephone interview that “we are very happy,” and that “European rules must be followed.” France “now must work to raise the population of hamsters up to 1,500,” which would be enough to preserve the species, he said, and the prefecture of Alsace “must stop some urbanization projects and restore” older agreements to grow certain cereals that hamsters eat.

What is the value of a hamster’s life?

The European Union ruling on the Great Hamster is an acknowledgment of its value.  In monetary terms, if France destroys the hamster population and is fined the full $24.6 million, each hamster is valued at $30,750.  International standard for the average monetary value of human life was $50,000 in 2008.

Orthodox economic theory commonly values human life by taking into account a person's willingness to pay or willful market choices. Willingness to pay is estimated by asking how much an individual would be willing to pay for good health outcomes (or to reduce bad health outcomes).  Alternatively, such economists estimate value of life by looking at a person's purchasing choices.  Clearly, this measure of human life is closely and positively correlated with socioeconomic (class) and income status.  Strangely, this ideologically driven theory is common practice for measuring value of life.  (You can place a dollar value on your own life using this bourgeois methodology by using this calculator).

Putting monetary value on human and non-human life precede modern-day capitalism. It origins are in private property.  Like animals, the value of life of a slave was determined by his/her utility to the slaveholder.  Abolishment of slavery has now replaced socio-economic status as the measure of value of human life.  But non-human life continues to be valued as property and whether and how it has utility. Animals that have become human property (farm animals, pets, etc.) are valued as private property.  Wild animals’ lives are valued according to the pressure exerted by animal rights and conservationist movements that hope to reform bourgeois institutions to better “manage wilderness.” 

Species cleansing

Because the Great Hamster also lives outside of France, its decimation there would not make it extinct.  However, what the French, and before them other Western Europeans, have been doing is to gradually destroy the Great Hamsters population through destruction of its habitat “passively” (that is by urbanization and replacing grasslands and Alfalfa with corn production) or actively (that is, by flooding its burrows, poisoning, or tapping to kill it).  It is difficult not to see the parallel between these and acts of ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing typically involved ethnic or religious prejudice, often related to economic interests. So is Species cleansing.  Ethnic cleansing is justified by prejudice (racism or religious bigotry), the view that one's own race or religion is superior to the victim's. So is species cleansing; it is justified by speciesism, the view that humans are superior to other species and their lives and interests matter more. Other species are presumed not to have a "soul" or are incapable to have an interest in their own lives or that if they do, it is of inferior status. 

Ethnic cleansing has come to be considered crime against humanity and sometimes the criminals are prosecuted. Consider the following cases.  


The Ex-Bosnian Serb army General Ratko Mladic was captured just recently to face charges of ethnic cleansing of Muslims through mass killing of thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the aftermath of the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

Critiques of Israel argue that Zionist policy to force Palestinians out of their land before and especially after the establishment of the state of Israel is a form of ethnic cleansing.

The world recalls with horror the Fascist Germany’s policy of extermination of Jews as the most reprehensible form of ethnic cleansing.


Species cleansing is not considered a crime and the public at large remain largely insensitive to it, except in some cultures and for particular animals (i.e., dogs and cats in the western world). 

While the European Union’s highest court put a monetary value on the collective lives of the Great Hamster of Alsace, it is not charging the French with species cleansing. Further, the court and conservationists who sued France subscribe to some form of management of the hamster population that would accommodate French capitalism.

In fact, barring a desire to avoid bad press the French government could literary get away with destroying the Great Hamster in its territory if they are willing to pay the fee.  In some parts of the world, this would be called “blood money,” a reference to how the rich can get away with murder if they are willing to pay the victim’s family monetary damage. Except, of course, the monetary fee in the case of the hamster would go to another group of humans. 

The terrible fact is that human tyrannical rule over nature and other species continues despite of the nod to the right of the Great Hamster to maintain a minimum presence in France.  Even a list of how the existing human society routinely kills, exploits, torment or undermine other animals would be too long to fall outside the scope of this brief essay.  Let’s just recall that we are in fact in the early stages of the sixth great mass extinction of species.  Its causal factors include habitat degradation or destruction, urbanization, agriculture, logging, mining, and fishing.  Climate change is fast becoming by far the more serious threat.  These are various activities engendered by capitalist accumulation on the world scale. The ideological basis that justify this assault is the anthropocentric worldview and speciesism ingrained in the subconscious of the humanity for thousands of years.

Animal Liberation

Fortunately, there are encouraging philosophical, scientific  and political developments that point to the possibility animal liberation--animal liberation is closely tied to human emancipation-one is impossible without the other, as humans are themselves animals.  In the short term, these development may mitigate some the worse crimes committed against animals.

Darwin’s profoundly revolutionary theory of evolution dismantled the foundation of the anthropocentric worldview by showing that humans are not qualitatively different from other animals.  More recently, biologists have demonstrated that many animals possess what we consider human qualities. Like us, they possess a variety of sensory, cognitive, conative, and volitional capacities.  They see and hear, believe and desire, remember and anticipate, plan and intend.  What happens to them matter to them.  Like us they can experience physical pleasure and pain.  They also are capable of fear and contentment, anger and loneliness, frustration and satisfaction, cunning and imprudence. These and a host of other psychological states and dispositions collectively help define the mental life and relative wellbeing of many animals.


For almost four decades, some philosophers concerned with moral theory have focused their attention on animal rights, most notably Peter Singer (1976), Tom Regan (1981) and Gary L. Francione (2008).  

While we can learn much from these advances of human knowledge about non-human animals, it is clear that some  biological research to demonstrate qualities of various species may be considered unethical by some philosophers of animal rights.  Do we really need to examine each and every scientifically to determine if they are to be granted the right to be free of harm by human society? 


At the same time, philosophical advance regarding animal rights depend in good measure on scientific knowledge gained by biological research.  While philosophical pursuits of better moral theories satisfy our own desire to intellectually ground our moral actions, is it really necessary to postpone a imagining and creating a world where humans can co-exist with non-human animals without inflicting harm to them? 

Ecological socialism offer the possibility of imagining and gradually building a better world on Earth where human fulfillment through a process of de-alienation will come about in tandem with animal liberation.  The wisdom of our ancestors who held views closer to an ecocentric worldview can offer some guidance.  Today, Bolivians recall their ancestral belief in Mother Nature and her rights in seeking solutions to the world’s ecological crisis. There are similar notions in Eastern philosophical heritage.  Consistent with these is the work of Deep Ecologist philosophers.  Their formulation of the Eight Point platform offers an inspiring framework for thought and action in the direction of an ecological socialist future.  

The first three points of the platform state:

1.              The wellbeing and flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value, inherent worth). These values are independent of the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes.

2.             Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.

3.             Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.

Man's Dominion: The Case of Thompsons' Private Wildlife Reserve

By Kamran Nayeri, February 5, 2012

A lion gunned down, one of 49 animals killed by the police

Man’s Dominion over nature has characterized Our Way of Life for thousands of years.  Speciesism—the ideology of human superiority—is essential for our "civilization" based on class society and our domination of nature.  Speciesism, like racism or sexism, must be overcome in the process of human emancipation. While racism, sexism, and class domination must be overcome to do away with pathologic social relations, speciesism must be overcome to reunite our way of life with the rest of nature. The latter has become of immediate concern due to the planetary ecological and environmental crises such as global warming and catastrophic climate change.

A particular aspect of Man’sDominion is the way humans have abused wildlife in all kinds of manners from fishing and hunting (for "sports" or for commercial interest) to enslavement and abuse animals for “entertainment” (e.g., zoos,circuses, sadistic shows such as bull fighting, cock fighting, etc.).  With the development of world commerce, trade in wildlife has become a lucrative business just as slave trade did earlier (see, for example, here).  While the recent animal rights movement has scored some gains for animal welfare human tyranny against other animals surpasses whatever humans have done and are doing to one another and animal liberation remains a much elusive goal.  

The following story illustrates the point: an Ohio couple of dubious social character had managed to assemble a private reserve of 69 large mammals, including those classified as "endangered species" and abused them in captivity.  Except for occasional slap on the wrist, their activity has been largely legal as trade in wildlife is a legal international practice and animal abuse in routinely ignored.    

*     *     *

On February 1, mass media reported on the “accidental” death of a leopard at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.  The leopard was killed when a zookeeper smashed it under a heavy metal door when closing the cage.

The 2-year old leopard was one of six animals that survived a carnage when Zanesville, Ohio, police killed 49 animals, including 18 Bengal tigers (an endangered species), 17 lions, six black bears, a pair of grizzlies, three mountain lions, two wolves and a baboon last October.  Terry Thompson, 62, the owner of the private reserve in Zanesville had let them loose before fatally shooting himself. Mr. Thompson was recently released from prison after serving one year on federal weapons charges. He had been cited for animal abuse and neglect in the past.

A gross necropsy of the leopard revealed that he suffered a number of pre-existing conditions including injury and malnourishment that weakened his bone, broken bones in his back and tail that had not properly healed.

Reportedly, many animals on the reserve were malnourished, neglected and abused, including a brown bear, two lions, two Celebes macaques, and two other leopards.  Their conditions were not properly assessed because of a legal dispute over whether Marian Thompson, Mr. Thompson’s widow, who had helped “care” for the animals, should retain ownership.

In the meantime, the state has directed that the rescued animals be quarantined until it is clear that they do not carry serious communicable diseases. The examination of the animals was ruled out because they had to be sedated, which can be fatal to unhealthy animals. Meanwhile, medical histories of the animals are unknown because the Thompsons did not provide records. 

How Veganism Can Help Save the World

By Kamran Nayeri, June 12, 2014

1. Introduction
In 2011, more than 58 billion chicken (more precisely, 58,110,000,000), nearly 3 billion ducks(2,917,000,000), more than billion pigs (1,383,000,000) were slaughtered worldwide. Other farm animals slaughtered for food numbered in hundreds of millions each: 654,000,000 turkeys, 649,000,000 geese and guinea fowl, 517,000,000 sheep, 430,000,000 goats and 296,000,000 cattle (Meat Atlas: Facts and Figures About Animals We Eat, Heinrich Böll Foundation, January 3, 2014, p. 15).

The great majority of these animals are raised in industrial farms under horrendous condition (see, for example, how chicken, pigs, sheep and cattle are raised in American industrial farms).  

Of course, consumption of non-human animals as food is not limited to farm animals. In 2011, over 156 million tons of seafood (capture and aquaculture) was consumed worldwide (FAO, “World Fisheries Production,” accessed June 2, 2014). There is also “exotic food” that in the United States includes alligator, alpaca, armadillo, bear, beaver, bobcat, caiman, crocodile, camel, coyote, capon, dove, frog, iguana, kudu, lion, llama, monkey, muskrat, opossum, otter, ostrich, pale, quail, turtle, venison and zebra meat (see, for example, this marketplace mail order for exotic food).  Other countries and cultures have their own choice of meat. In China, Korea and the Philippines cats and dogs are eaten.  Japanese prize whales as food.  The French eat horse meat. In Africa, bushmeat is treasured.  

In contrast, vegetarianism and veganism are spreading slowly across the world (John Davis, World Veganism: Past, Present and Future, 2010-2012).  Young people and an increasing number of older people are taking up vegetarian or vegan diet for a healthy life style, some for ethical reasons as well.  In the U.S. 4% of men and 7% of women describe themselves as vegetarians; in European Union it is 2% and 10% respectively. However in India, because of the influence of Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism, 30% (375 millions) of the population are vegetarians (Meat Atlas, 2014, p. 56). 

Even if one interprets this trend as a fad, it differs from most other current fads as it is directed to an essential human activity that has become both a key industrial sector of the world economy and a fetishized orgy of eating all that can be eaten. While, of course, a significant part of humanity goes without adequate access to nutrition.  

Moreover, those who take up vegetarianism or veganism often consume locally produced food that use organic, agroecological or permacultural methods and employing “fair labor practices.”  Vegetarians and vegans tend to be critical of agribusiness conglomerates that practice high-input large-scale intensive monoculture that use chemicals or genetically modified crops, bust unions and super-exploit workers. These facts should make present day veganism of interest to anyone concerned with radical social change.  

However, in his recent letter written in response to my criticism of his claim that the Great Recession was caused by natural limits to growth, ecological socialist Saral Sarkar takes a skeptical attitude towards vegetarianism and veganism. 

Criticizing my proposition that “…ecological socialism and anarchism or any other emancipatory movement should be based … on a positive world movement to reintegrate ourselves with the rest of nature,” Saral writes:

“That is too much for even the best eco-socialist or eco-anarchist. I wrote to you in my comments on an earlier essay of yours that going back to a hunter-gatherer way of living (that is what is required to reintegrate ourselves with the rest of nature) is for the time being impossible/unimaginable. It may be possible or even necessary after a great collapse, when human numbers have gone back to perhaps just one million or two. But for today, we should concentrate our discussion upon what is imaginable in the next 100 years. Even a theoretical ethical discussion must take note of the limits to what is technically possible and what not. One may then go further and issue ethical commandments: e.g. eat vegan or at least vegetarian, use for lighting only lamps that need only vegetable oil etc. But of what use are such discussions today? Such discussions (and possible decisions) have nothing to do with the question whether there are limits to growth or not. They may be carried on separately. The crisis we are facing today have little to do with such questions.” (All emphases in bold letters are mine, the italic is Saral’s emphasis) 

The entire set of propositions in the paragraph above are flawed, individually and taken as a whole.  

First, Saral objects to my proposition by asserting that it requires “going back to a hunter-gatherer way of living.”  But how could any ecological socialist deny that reintegrating humanity in the rest of nature is both desirable and necessary to overcome present-day world crisis?  Is not our estrangement (alienation) from nature the problem?  If Saral denies the need or desirability of such de-alienation he should simply explain himself instead of claiming that it requires a hunter-gatherer existence. I have never suggested this leap in logic. Why does Saral suggest it as if it is my point of view?  What I have proposed is a return to ecocentric world views similar to those of our forager ancestors but have offered modern ecocentric world views such as Deep Ecology and Darwinian evolutionary theory as examples from philosophy and from science. I have never held that there is either one ecocentric world view or that there is a best one.  What I have argued is that an ecocentric worldview is necessary for transiting to ecological socialism.  And I can vouch for its desirability the more I make progress in opening myself up to the rest of nature.  If Saral disagrees with the need or desirability for ecocentrism—and I will show below that he actually does disagree with it—he should simply explain and motive his point of view to move our discussion forward.

Second, Saral’s proposition that veganism or vegetarianism falls outside the“limits to growth paradigm” tells us more about his own interpretation of the causes of humanity’s problems than the alleged irrelevance of veganism for the emancipatory movement.  We know that Saral’s ecological socialism is inspired by the Club of Rome’s limits to growth simulations.  As I have argued earlier (see, Part 4 of my “Limits to Limits to Growth perspective”), as informative as these simulations are about the problems of the present day capitalist civilization they really are technical arguments without any explicit social theory, moral philosophy or policy prescriptions.  

Furthermore, it is  not really hard to see that the carnivore diet violates these technical boundaries that Saral surely respects.  Take, for example, global warming.  “Depending on how you count, livestock are responsible for 6 to 32 percent of greenhouse gases. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), it’s 14.5 percent. (Meat Atlas, p. 34, see, also EPA, Agriculture gas emissions).  For another example take fresh water scarcity: 70% of all fresh water is used in agriculture, one third of it for livestocks. So clearly, veganism if practiced universally will alleviate the problem of global warming and fresh water shortage. Why should Saral dispute its relevance to natural limits to growth “paradigm” and postpone a discussion of it for 100 year? 

Third, as Saral’s adopted “paradigm” of limits to growth is merely technical we can understand why he views veganism as an “ethical commandment;” because it does not follow from the findings of the simulation models.  But that tell us more about limits to limits to growth “paradigm”and Saral’s own conception of ecological socialism than the actual reasons why people become vegan: their own health, welfare of farm animals, and for the environment that is being poisoned by the meat industry and species and ecosystem diversity that is being reduced daily (think of emptying oceans of many fish species). Clearly, these concerns are valid (Saral has not objected to them so far and I doubt if he objects to them at all). So, why call veganism an “ethical commandment” that has nothing to do with the “crisis we are facing today?” 

Thus, the problem with Saral’s misjudgment lies in part in his limits to growth paradigm.  However, there is one more foundational conceptualization in Saral’s theorizing that contributes to such poor judgment. It is his humanist anthropocentrism.  Allow me to explain.

2. Ecocentric ecosocialism or anthropocentric ecosocialism? 
In the opening chapter of his Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism (1999), Saral offers foundational concepts of his version of ecological socialism.  Included is a discussion of anthropocentrism and ecocentrism on pages 10-15. There he adopts humanism as his own standpoint. Humanism, including socialist humanism, is a variety of anthropocentrism. Thus, Saral writes:

“Since we are humans, our main (not our only) concern is the suffering of humans…This might be called anthropocentrism. But the reason for this anthropocentrism is very simple. It is because we are humans that we are anthropocentric. No philosophising is necessary, and no religion or mythology—no species wants its own extinction or increased suffering.” (ibid., p. 10). 

But the argument that humans view the world as humans so their worldview must of necessity be anthropocentric is flawed. In “Anthropocentrism versus Ecocentrism Revisited: Theoretical and Practical Conclusions” (SATS: Northern European Journal of Philosophy, volume 14, number 1, November 2013, pp. 21-37), Teea Kortetmäki finds two “conceptual confusions” to defend anthropocentrism.  One is the conceptual confusion “that is used to defend anthropocentrism is the view that as we can have only a human viewpoint, we are always anthropocentric.” (ibid. p. 32).  

Let me explain why Saral’s position is “conceptual confusion.”

First, it trivializes anthropocentrism that is in fact an historical and philosophical worldview as I have explained in “Economics, Socialism and Ecology: A Critical Outline, Part 2.”  

Second, it turns a historical phenomenon into a biological, natural one. As anyone who has read my earlier discussion of Saral’s writings knows; from his explanation of the Great Recession to his discussion of the population question he naturalizes the issues under discussion, perhaps because of his adoption of limits to growth as his “paradigm.”  Yet, as I document in “Economics, Socialism and Ecology; A Critical Outline, Part 2," a key conceptual progress in anthropology is the realization that the transition from ecocentrism to anthropocentrism is central understanding our history.  For millions of years our forager ancestors held ecocentrist world views. Anthropocentrism emerged as the ideological basis for the Agrarian Revolution thousands of years ago and became institutionalized by the rise of class societies and civilizations. 

Third, there are modern day counter examples including Darwinian evolutionary theory and Deep Ecology that provide scientific and philosophical basis for ecocentrism respectively. 

Thus not only it is possible for humans to embrace ecocentrism, to do so is essential if we are to initiate the process of de-alienation from nature, part of the process to transcend the capitalist civilization and all vestiges of class society and to end the 10,000 year old war against nature, so that we can begin to healing our bonds with it.  Ecocentrism is not an option but a necessity for transition to an ecological socialist society or any other social formation that hopes to exist in harmony with the rest of nature.

In Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism, Saral engages in some discussion of James Lovelock’s Gaia theory and Deep Ecology and at time seems to feel at peace with them. However, Saral’s discussion involves other confusions and concludes with affirmation of his humanist anthropocentrism.  Thus, after admitting some scientific confirmation of the Gaia theory he writes: “But in matters relating to us humans and our societies, it cannot replace anthropocentrism.” (ibid., p. 11).  Saral also alludes to the animal liberation literature and Deep Ecology as other sources for ecocentrism.  He does not discuss the former and his discussion of the latter is mired in confusion (e.g., his discussion of Deep Ecology its reference to “species” as if it means “animals” only; or interpreting the evolutionary and ethical reference to “equality” among species to mean having equal power; see the quotation below).  He begins with the Deep Ecology’s proposition that arguments for human superiority are frivolous, a view that actually can be based on Darwinian evolutionary theory; that is, it has scientific basis. But he concludes: 

“One thing is clear: only at the beginning of our evolution were we really equals of other species. At present, this equality is only a wish and a theory. In practice, it is only a moral duty of ours. Even so, let us not arrogantly think the whole of the rest of nature is at our mercy. The enemy bacteria that we thought  we had eradicated—those that cause cholera, malaria, plague—are all coming back, and we have to kill them, otherwise they will kill us.” (p. 13).   

Though obviously sympathetic to ecocentrism, Saral’s theory of ecological socialism remains anthropocentric.  

However, anthropocentric ecological socialism will lead to wrong policies (as Saral’s paragraph quoted at the opening of this writing clearly demonstrates). Ecological socialism can only be meaningful if it is squarely based on ecocentrism. Let Kortetmäki explain what this ecocentrism is and how it would differ from anthropocentrism in everyday policy decisions we must make:

“In contrast to anthropocentrism, ecocentrism is then characterized by the carnality of ecosystems or biosphere, varying degrees of egalitarianism between species and valuing the nonhuman species, ecosystems and life itself regardless of its use-value for us.  Reasons for environmental concern arise not only out of human interests, but also from seeing the biotic community as having moral standing in itself.  The difference from anthropocentrism is obvious when we consider the notion of ‘sustainability’ in an ecocentric sense: as all life forms and their flourishing are valuable in themselves, exploiting nature cannot be called sustainable when it threatens the flourishing of other life forms and species, though not yet human flourishing.  This argument has practical implications also to climate policy: at the moment some emission mitigating practices (for example, producing certain types of biofuel crops) can be accepted by anthropocentrists due to their carbon emission mitigating impacts, but ecocentrism cannot accept a practice that so greatly reduces biodiversity in the crop area and, in addition, is merely a short-sighted tool that does not advance changing the unsustainable practices that actually cause the problems.” (Kortetmäki, 2013, pp. 33-34). 

3. Anthropocentrism and political economy of food
Political economy of food deals with how food is produced, transported, retailed and consumed in the capitalist economy (For a pictorial history of the meat industry in the U.S., see, A History of the Meat Industry).  Radical political economy of food addresses larger issues neglected by mainstream analysis such as the wellbeing of workers in the industry, its impact on peasants and small farmers, issues of hunger and food security, its effects on the environment and health, and perhaps even ethics of raising and slaughtering industrial farm animals.  Dealing with these topics are outside the scope of this writing.  Here I merely like to point to the fact that radical studies of the present-day food system show that no radical social transformation is possible without building an alternative food system from the ground up (see, for example, Peter Goering, Helena Norberg-Hodge and John Paige explain in From the Ground Up: Rethinking Industrial Agriculture, Zed Books, 1993, Vandana Shiva, The Violence of Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics, Zed Books, 1992, Michael Pollen’s Omnivore Dilemma, The Penguin Press, 2006). 

There are valid concerns with healthy diet and food safety (see, for example, “Meat Consumption and Cancer Risk,” ,”Antibiotics, the Meat Industry and Superbugs,” “Film Review: Forks Over Knives,” and The China Study) and environmental sustainability and ethics (Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 1975, Gary L. Francione’s Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation, 2008).  

Today's meat industry is a highly centralized capitalist industry with relatively few giant firms operating worldwide. Among the top ten are the following firms listed with their “home country” and latest available revenue figures: JBS (Brazil, $38.7 billions), Tyson Food (USA, $33.3 billions), Cargill (USA, $32.5 billions), Vion (Netherlands/Germany, $13.2), BRF (Brazil, $12.7 billions), Nippon Meant Packers (Japan, $12.8 billions), Smithfields Food (USA,  $13.1 billions), Marfrig (Brazil, $12.8 billions), Danish Crown AmbA (Denmark, $10.3 billions) and Hormel Food (USA, 8.2 billions). 

Closely tied to these is the animal genetics industry that literary manufactures prototype animals for meat. The largest are Charoen Pokphand Group (Thailand), EW Group (Germany), Genus (U.K.), Groupe Grimaud (France), Hendrix Genetics (The Netherlands), Smithfield Foods (U.S.) , and Tyson Foods (U.S.).

Industrialization of meat production, distribution and retailing has spread a culture of meat eating to the entire population in the industrial capitalist economies and more recently to middle class layers of the rest of the world.  It has done so by making meat more available to the world and by reducing its market price. Thus, according to the National Chicken Council, dressed chicken was retailed in the U.S. for $6.48 a pound in 1930 (in today’s dollar) but retails these days for $1.57 a pound.  

Why such a drop in price of chicken? 

“Costs came down partly because scientific breeding reduced the length of time needed to raise a chicken to slaughter by more than half since 1925, even as a chicken’s weight doubled. The amount of feed required to produce a pound of chicken has also dropped sharply.” (“Industrial Farming and Your Diet”, March 12, 2014)  

Poultry Science journal has calculated that if humans grew at the same rate as modern chickens, a human by the age of two months would weigh 660 pounds! 

Among the scientific techniques used to raise farm animals in increasingly cramped spaces is the intensive use of hormones and antibiotics. 

Meanwhile, there has been a rapidly expanding mega-retail chains, conditioning, responding to and consolidating demand from the expanding middle classes worldwide.  

Thus, the rapid rise in meat consumption worldwide even though consumption of meat in the West has stagnated or declined due to recent awareness of health and environment issues and a sense of compassion for the farm animals. 

“Meat, a luxury in many parts of the world only 10 or 20 years ago, is now a part of the daily diet for a growing number of people in developing countries. Big supermarket chains such as Walmart from the USA, France’s Carrefour, the UK’s Tesco and Germany’s Metro are conquering the globe. Their expansion has sparked huge investments by domestic supermarket companies. The process has been well researched. The first wave began in the early 1990s in South America, in East Asian tiger economies like South Korea and Taiwan, and South Africa. Between 1990 and 2005, the market share of supermarkets in these countries rose from 10, to 50 or 60 percent. The second wave, in the mid-to-late 1990s, focused on Central America and Southeast Asia. By 2005, supermarkets accounted for 30–50 percent of the market share there. The third wave began in 2000 and washed over China and India, as well as big latecomers such as Vietnam. In only a few years, supermarket sales in these countries were growing by 30 to 50 percent a year. 

“Why this huge shift? It is not only due to the rising purchasing power of the middle classes, but also to more fundamental changes in society. In Pakistan, for example, cities are expanding so quickly that traditional methods of supplying meat and dairy products cannot keep up with the demand. The city of Lahore is growing by 300,000 people a year. The result is product shortages and poor quality, factors that drive the middle classes into the supermarkets, says the Express Tribune, a Pakistani daily. Working women, who are still responsible for cooking for their families, have no time to go from shop to shop to check the meat quality or haggle over prices. (Meat Atlas, p. 16)

Of course, none of this would have been possible without the prevailing anthropocetic culture that justifies a carnivorous diet and the violence that goes along with it.

4. The Anthropocentric culture and treatment of non-human animals
Almost all the animals served on the dinner plate have long been considered sentient, that is, they are shown to have feelings and capable of experiencing pain and suffering (see, Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 1975). Clearly, systematically raising or capture of trillions of non-human animals to kill for food each year exceed all accounts of genocide  committed in human history—unless, of course, one trivializes these animals’ lives and magnifies our own.  And yet, all political currents, almost all intellectual traditions, including Marxists, and most world religions are silent or otherwise complacent in this abominable violent culture.  

Our culture prettify animal slaughter and meat eating.  As a child growing up in Tehran, Iran in the 1950s, I vividly recall a poster framed on the wall of butcher shops of an angel delivering a sheep to prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) who looked about to sacrifice his son (presumably Ishmael) to God.  The suggestion was evident even to a child: Why not sacrifice the sheep?  Thus, the idea that killing other animals is better than killing humans or eating other animals is fine but cannibalism is a sin.  Meanwhile, the half butchered skinned carcass of a cow or a sheep hanged from a nail secured on the butcher shop’s ceiling.  I also recall seeing how the butcher slaughtered a sheep, her legs tied with a rope and the blood running into the street’s gutters.  Of course, with the “progress” of modernity in Iran it was increasingly rare to see such violence in public. Instead, I recall when riding the city bus on a particular route there was a stop called Koshtargah (Slaughterhouse). Those days, the slaughterhouse was inside Tehran.  These days slaughterhouses are moved into far corners of rural areas hiding the violence that goes on inside every moment.  Today, worldwide “…ten corporations slaughter 88 percent of the total number of pigs. The global capacity of the companies is hard to believe: Tyson Foods…slaughters 42 million chickens, 170,000 cattle and 350,000 pigs – every week.” (Meat Atlas, p. 14)

In the 1980s, some of my fellow socialists worked on the “kill floor” of the American slaughterhouses.  This was part of our strategy to root ourselves in industrial unions to build a fighting labor movement capable of taking power and ushering in the socialist alternative. It never occurred to anyone involved how a working class that does not object to such violence against other animals would be capable of ending all violence we have endured in class society.

How do we account for our complacency?  I suggest it is our alienation from nature.  We can empathize with fellow human beings (unless they belong to the “other” group with which we are in conflict). But we cannot empathize with hundreds of species that we kill to eat.  If my argument for human alienation from the rest of nature is correct—that it is helped cause and became a consequence of the Agricultural Revolution--it is that alienation that explains common acceptance of the blood thirsty society we call civilization.  

In Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism Saral points to two traits of human beings that he suggests are unique to humans: to kill other human beings and altruism of taking care of our sick and old.  If it was not well known in the 1990s, it is commonly understood now that other species kill members of their own species (e.g., chimpanzees, lions, even not-neutered domestic male cats fighting for turf for food and females) and that other species are capable of altruist behavior (see, the wikipedia entry).   However, is it not amazing that Saral did not notice what is truly a unique trait of us humans: the very violence we commit daily on such colossal scale to support our carnivorous habit?  Similarly, no other species commit anything like genocide.  Again, key to understanding this behavior is alienation.  In the case of other species, it is alienation from nature. In case of genocide or other systematic act of oppressing and exploiting groups of humans it is social alienation. African slave trade was part of the primitive accumulation of capital that helped institutionalized capitalism not only in Western Europe but also the United States.  Germans participated in or kept silent when fascists systematically sent 6 million Jews to their death. A century later, Turks still deny genocide against Armenians committed by the Ottoman empire.  Most white South Africans tolerated or actively participated in the Apartheid regime.  Jewish people who fled fascism in Europe colonized Palestine and have systematically driven out or oppressed millions of Palestinians. These criminal acts have been/are only possible by claiming moral superiority for the oppressor and relegating the oppressed to a subhuman status. We do the same to non-human animals to justify their subordination, oppression, exploitation and systematic killing. 

Of course, our focus is on food. But how many other ways are there that we abuse non-human animals? Each year hundreds of millions of “laboratory animals” are systematically subjected to what amount to torture and large majority finally killed. This is done in the name of human welfare (however, evidence is mounting to the contrary. For example, recent research show that animal models in laboratory medicine are not generalizable to humans. See, John J. Pappin, “”The Failing Animal Research Paradigm for Human Disease,” May 20, 2014). Less benevolent is the military use of animals. U.S. military uses live pigs for shooting practice and dolphins to detect underwater explosives. It’s use of sonar hurt whales and dolphins. How about the “pet industry?”  Not only dogs and cats are bred to fit human fancy (think about “toy dogs” or “Persian cats”), but each year a “residual” of untold hundreds of millions that have gone feral are estimated to be put to death worldwide. There is also a growing “exotic pet” industry. In the United States they include African wild dogs, armadillos, Asian small-clawed otters, bears, bobcats, coyotes, dolphins, foxes, giraffes, hedge hogs, lemurs, lions, lynxes, monkeys, penguins, porcupines, raccoons, sloths, tigers, wallaroos, wolves and zebras (for a marketplace for exotic pets see here).  Bullfighting and cockfighting are consider entertainment and in the case of the former, a tourist attraction.   Hunting and fishing are considered "sport" supported by large industries.  More socially acceptable are the zoos and circuses.  But animals suffer in captivity and circus animals are routinely mistreated (“trained”) to preform tricks.  Let’s not forget roadkills.  These are animals who have managed to cope with human population expansion (“development”) but remain at risk of getting hit when they cross a road. We also routinely exterminate other animals simply because they are inconvenient or at cross purpose to human activity as in gardening and in agriculture.

As humans increase in number and expand geographically we occupy more living space on Earth. Increases in our per capita consumption, including of fresh water and land drive other species out of existence.  Tens of thousands of chemicals are released into the environment allegedly at levels safe for humans but without any consideration of their toxicity for other species. The same is true of human waste. The anthropogenic climate change, ocean acidification, and nitrogen and phosphorus release into the environment all threaten untold number of species. 

We have turned the planet into our play ground that is in effect depleting it of biodiversity that is the basis of life itself.  I submit none of this is possible without an anthropocentric culture that regards the rest of nature at best as “our natural resources.”  The problem of production and consumption of food is one aspect of how present-day civilization views the rest of nature. 

5. History of food, lifestyle choices and emancipatory world views
Never our species consumed so much meat as we do today in the industrialized capitalist.  Estimated current per capita meat consumption in kilograms for industrialized capitalist countries/regions follows: beef (U.S. 26.5; Australia 22.9; Canada 20.2; New Zealand 19.1; EU 11.1; Japan 6.8); pork (EU 32.4; U.S. 21.1; Australia 20.0; Canada 16.7; New Zealand 15.5; Japan 14.9); chicken (U.S. 44.4; Australia 38.8; Canada 32.6; New Zealand 31.6; EU 20.8; Japan 12.8); lamb (New Zealand 8.8; Australia 8.4; EU 2.0; Canada 0.9; U.S. 0.4;  Japan 0.2). While the rest of the world consumes much less meat, their meat consumption is increasing fast due to the expansion of the middle classes.  (Meat Atlas, p. 47). That is, on average in a year an American eats an estimated 26.6 kilograms of beef, 21.1 kilograms of pork, 44.4 kilograms of chicken, 0.4 kilograms of lamb.  That is 92.5 kilograms or 203.5 pounds of meat a year!  

For millions of years our forager ancestors relied on gathering food from plants. Paleontologists know this because of the wear and tear of teeth of such foragers that can be only caused by plant fiber.  

However, it is also true that eventually humanoid foragers ate meat as well; first as scavengers and then as occasional hunters.  

“During the 400 millennia in which Homo erectus evolved into Homo sapiens… gathering did lose some of its importance, perhaps because of climatic conditions (the period concerned is 430,000 to 40,000 BC), only to recover it again as game became scarcer.” (Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, A History of Food, Blackwell, 1992, p. 72). 

Still, an increasingly carnivorous diet with high calorie animal proteins contributed to population growth, emigration and spread of our ancestors across the world.  An increasingly varied diet contributed to more developed intellectual capacity.  With the discovery of fire, cooking food became possible. There is still dispute about a gender division of labor in food gathering and hunting (ibid. pp. 39-40). But there is no dispute that proportion of plant food vs. meat varied by geography and across time.  Where little greenery existed, more meat was consumed and vice versa.  Still, for hundreds of thousands of years hunting provided almost everything to the foragers: the principal food, clothing and tools and instruments like the fat-burning lamps. (ibid., p. 72)  But, hunting itself went through a period of expansion and then decline as the game became scarcer. 

Stock-breeding emerged from hunting.  The earliest indications from archeology is from the region that is now the Negav desert north of Siani some 30,000 years ago where gazelles and fallow deer were herded.  For practical and cultural reasons (there was aversion to eating scavenger animals like hyenas who Egyptians tried to eat) herbivores rather than carnivores were herded, tamed and then domesticated. (ibid. p. 94) As stock-breeding took hold, hunting for food was gradually given up. 

Except for herders who relied heavily on their animals for food and for fishing cultures, meat was never a large part of the diet of most people until recently.

So, given what I have outlined above why should an ecological socialist or anyone who adheres to an emancipatory vision for humanity refuse to become a vegan?  Is there no relationship between lifestyle choices and our worldview?  

Instances when modern humans or our ancestors were mostly carnivores are few and relatively brief: several hundred thousand years when hunting predominated among hunter-gatherers, among herding and fishing cultures throughout history and in the industrial capitalist societies and among the middle classes worldwide. From what we know from archeology, anthropology, history and nutrition science, there is no grounds for meat eating being integral to human life.  For millions of years hunter-gatherers lived on a vegetarian diet and today hundreds of millions of people live on vegetarian and vegan diets and enjoy  active and healthy lives.  In fact, there is considerable evidence that a vegan diet is healthiest for people and a carnivorous diet can cause serious illnesses. 

At the same time, bioethics and moral philosophy, the animal rights movement, Deep Ecology and some religions like Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism hold that it is immoral to enslave and/or kill other animals for food.  

Ecology and environmental science tell us that industrial agriculture and the meat industry that provide the bulk of meat, dairy and seafood worldwide are destroying the ecosystems and poisoning the environment. 

Given all this, becoming vegan and advocating veganism become an obvious choice. 

Of course, anthropocentric ecological socialists like Saral, may still feel not quite convinced. But if we advocate reducing wasteful world consumption, as Saral does, veganism should be among his top policy choices. 

As Saral know well, ultimately, all species live off energy that arrives on Earth via sunshine.  Through photosynthesis green plants (primary producers) convert solar energy into sugars. They consume about half of it for their own livelihood. What remains is called Net Primary Productivity (NPP).  The NPP is the basis for all animal life. Herbivores eat plants to gain energy for their livelihood (primary consumers). Finally, some carnivores live off herbivores (secondary consumers).  Some omnivores eat secondary consumers (tertiary consumers).  The final link in the food chain is the decomposers that live off the organic matter of plants, herbivores and carnivores.  In each step in the food chain about 90% of the energy is lost. 

Thus, by going vegan much more food will be available for humanity. If we get rid of the capitalist production, distribution and consumption of meat, dairy and seafood and adopt a vegan diet, not only there will be more food per capita produced, it will require fewer resources, making more vital resources available to other species.  By adoption of cruelty free permacultural methods (even the best permaculturists can be anthropocentric, see, my Book Review: Gaia’s Garden, March 15, 2012), methods that mimic how nature works, by producing locally and by involving the community in growing their own food, we will be taking key steps to a simpler, ecologically, environmentally and ethically more sound and more communal way of life.  In the process more of us will also adopt an ecocentric worldview. That would be the key requirement for an ecological socialist society.  In the 1970s, we used to proclaim that women liberation is human liberation. Today, we should also proclaim that without animal liberation there would be no human emancipation. And live our lives accordingly.