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Thanks for all of your work, Chrystal! I can only imagine how difficult and painful it must be to put yourself in a position like that.

Since you're going into law, I'm curious about what you think about the distinction that many vegans and animal activists make between "animal welfare" and "animal rights." This is very reductive, but some people (Gary Francione comes to mind) completely reject incremental improvements in laws that regulate animal exploitation, saying that laws that improve the "welfare" of farmed animals really only serve to further entrench public acceptance of systemic violence against and exploitation of animals, and our goal ought to be getting everyone to realize that if animals have any moral worth whatsoever, then we cannot exploit them at all. The other point of view is that our best hope to ending animal exploitation is to make small changes piece by piece, since it's probably a lot more pragmatic to get public support this way, and anything that can make the lives of animals less miserable NOW is the best approach.

So, my question is: what do you think about these? Do you think there's a difference between how we ought to view this from an ethical point of view and a legal one?

Thanks again for everything! Undercover investigators like you are very inspiring to me, and I think the world is much better because of the work that you do.

Yep, pretty much! I have very mixed feelings about this issue myself, but I think I'm more or less in agreement with how you see it.

Sometimes that gets lost in the dialogue by people who are strictly opposed to welfare reforms.

100% agreement on this one. In the discussions about it that I've heard and read, there just seems to be so much hostility and mischaracterizing of positions on both sides and talking past one another. On one hand I find the reasoning against welfare reforms very compelling in sort of a philosophical sense, but on the other hand it really seems like such a tragic and counterproductive thing to oppose these improvements for the sake of ideological consistency. I don't know. It's really hard.

Thanks again!

Hi Prof. Singer,

Thanks for doing this! I'm a big admirer of your work, and your discussion of speciesism in Animal Liberation was a large part of what convinced me to commit to veganism a few years ago.

This is something of a broad question, but what is your opinion on the (perceived) conflict between "animal rights" and "animal welfare" as articulated by people such as Gary Francione? As I understand it, the argument goes something like this: while making incremental improvements to the well-being of animals that are exploited by humans, such as farmed animals, might indeed do some small amount of good in the sense that it alleviates some animal suffering, it's morally unacceptable to advocate for these changes, since it ends up further entrenching society's acceptance of large-scale systemic exploitation and violence against animals. Instead of this, we ought to have veganism as a moral baseline, since (as the argument goes), if animals matter morally at all, we must completely reject any exploitation and violence against them that is done for reasons of pleasure or convenience.

I would imagine that as a utilitarian, your view would be that anything that serves to reduce the suffering of exploited animals is a moral good, even if a change does not change their status as a piece of property. Is this accurate? Do you have any particular criticisms of this point of view?

Thanks again!

It certainly does make sense, and like you, I would guess that his answer would be something along those lines. I'm just not sure I find the welfare point of view (if I may call it that) entirely convincing. However, in the end it's very difficult to know which one is truly better for animals overall, so I guess I'm just not certain.