“A Humane Revolution” By Nicholas Kristoff
“A Humane Revolution” By Nicholas Kristoff
Ringling Brothers, a giant U.S. circus company, recently retired its circus elephants, sending them off to a life of leisure in Florida. SeaWorld recently said that it would release its Orca whales and would invest millions of dollars to rehabilitate them. Meanwhile, Walmart responded to animal welfare complaints by saying that it would shift toward using eggs from cage-free chickens, following similar announcements by Costco, Denny’s, Wendy’s, Starbucks and McDonald’s in the U.S. and Canada.
This is a humane revolution, and Wayne Pacelle, President of the Humane Society of the United States (an animal defense organization), has been at the forefront of it. By alternatively pushing companies to do better and cooperating with companies that do so, consumers helped create corporate changes with a huge impact: Walmart and McDonald’s can shape the living conditions of more animals in a day than an animal defense organization can do in ten years.
There is also a lesson, I think, for other causes, from the environment to women’s empowerment to global health: The best way for nonprofit organizations to get large-scale results is sometimes to work with the “misbehaving” corporations themselves to change behavior and supply lines, while attacking them only when they resist change.
Critics sometimes see this as moral compromise – negotiating with evil rather than defeating it. But I see it as practicality. For example, Pacelle is a vegan (a person who doesn’t eat any animal products) but he cooperates with fast-food companies to improve conditions in which animals are raised for meat. “Animals jammed into cages cannot wait for the world to stop eating meat,” Pacelle told me. As the humane economy asserts its own power, logic and decency, the economy based on animal cruelty is passing away,” says Pacelle.
Abuses still continue, and slaughter of animals like elephants persists. Yet there is a business model for keeping grand animals like elephants alive. One analysis suggests that a dead elephant’s tusks are worth $21,000, while the tourism value of a single living elephant over its lifetime is $1.6 million. So, countries follow self-interest when they protect elephants, just as McDonald’s pursues self-interest when it changes toward eggs from cage-free chickens. This consumer-driven, humane revolution is on its way, but much remains to be done.
Essay question: Should consumers negotiate with companies to effect humane treatment of animals, or should they just oppose and protest against those companies?
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