On the Road to Liberation: Do Animal "Welfarist" Laws Lead to More Suffering and Death?

Francionists (this term is defended in the next blog entry by the way) often try to show that animal “welfare” laws, such as those abolishing factory farming, will lead to more animal consumption, since consumers will feel better about consuming meat involving less cruelty. Thus the Francionists actually try to resist anti-cruelty. There is something to the consumption-increase prediction, except, the Francionists look at this fact in isolation rather than by considering different scenarios for future animal law, with all of the different phases such as factory farming, animal “welfarism,” and abolition of speciesism. We need to compare different futures using phase analysis. That is precisely what I do in the following. I recommend printing this out single-sided, although that costs the environment a bit more paper, since you will need to refer to the figure illustrations and the table at different points.

Here is a new document adding much more detail and clarity to my assertions in my essay “Animal Rights Law”:

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FURTHER READING ON ANIMAL RIGHTS INCREMENTALISM

A Selection of Related Articles

Sztybel, David. "Animal Rights Law: Fundamentalism versus Pragmatism". Journal for Critical Animal Studies 5 (1) (2007): 1-37.

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Short version of "Animal Rights Law".

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Sztybel, David. "Incrementalist Animal Law: Welcome to the Real World".

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Sztybel, David. "Sztybelian Pragmatism versus Francionist Pseudo-Pragmatism".

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