By Seth Millstein for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Kathryn Carley for Maine News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration
From decapitating whales with chainsaws to shooting puppies to false claims of immigrants eating cats, this election has featured an unusual amount of animal-related news. The public’s reaction to most of these cases has been outrage, and rightly so. However, these reactions also reveal a moment in our culture: inconsistencies in our moral values as they pertain to animal life and unsustainable food systems are more visible than ever, and perhaps, more conflicted.
It is, of course, entirely reasonable to be horrified at the prospect of people kidnapping and eating family pets (which didn’t actually happen), or someone shooting a puppy dead in a gravel pit (which did actually happen). And yet every day, billions of animals in factory farms suffer and die at the hands of humans, and there’s nary a peep of outrage from the general public. Cows, pigs, chickens, fish and other livestock are every bit as capable of feeling pain as dogs or cats, but as this election has shown, only the latter tug on most Americans’ heartstrings.
The collective cognitive dissonance that allows this to be true appears to be becoming more fraught – but why?
Why Are There So Many Animal Stories Right Now?
The fact that this election cycle has featured so much animal news is largely just a coincidence. But it’s not entirely coincidental.
Plant-based meat, cultivated meat and other alternative proteins have grown in prominence and visibility over the last several years. While this is a very promising trend from an environmental standpoint, it’s also created a notable backlash among some meat-eaters.
Several Republican governors have signed laws banning the sale of cultivated meat in their states, even though cultivated meat isn’t being sold in the U.S. mass market yet. One of them, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, warned that cultivated meat is part of a plan by “elites” to end animal agriculture, and surrounded himself with cattle farmers while signing his state’s bill.
Furthermore, there have been a lot of headlines in recent years claiming that veganism is on the rise. It’s unclear whether this is actually true, as polling on the subject is murky, but nevertheless, these claims have made meat-eating’s environmental impact and animal cruelty more prominent topics in the overall cultural zeitgeist, and this may also have played a role in the flurry of animal-related news in this election.
Speciesism, Defined
Recently, Moo-Deng the baby hippo has taken the world by storm as an adorable meme and respite from political news. Her presence is also a perfect encapsulation of the cognitive dissonance at the root of speciesism. Moo-Deng lives at a zoo in Thailand, and looks a lot like a small pig – her name even means “bouncy pork.” She encapsulates the different standards we have for different animals: in her case as a baby hippo, being kept in captivity is okay – but being slaughtered like the baby pigs she so resembles would be an outrage.
The double standard regarding different animals is what’s known as speciesism. David Rosengard, Managing Attorney at the Animal Legal Defense Fund, defines speciesism as “treating two animals differently based solely on their species.”
“Not their size, or their intelligence, or their socialization, or whether they’re wild or domestic,” Rosengard says, “but simply based on their biological species.”
This is different from treating two species differently because one has more advanced cognitive abilities than the other, or one is more similar to humans than the other, or any number of other criteria. Speciesism ignores all other relevant criteria, and pegs all of a creature’s moral worth to their species.
Speciesism is deeply embedded in Western attitudes towards animals, and this was illustrated perfectly when, early in the 2024 election cycle, a potential vice presidential nominee revealed to America that she once shot and killed a puppy.
Vice Presidential Prospects Shooting Animals
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem was rumored to be on Donald Trump’s shortlist of potential vice presidential nominees. A rising star in the Republican Party who once gifted Trump a model of Mount Rushmore with his face on it, Noem wrote and published a memoir in May – a common rite-of-passage for aspiring presidents and vice presidents.
In her memoir, Noem made the curious decision to boast about the time she shot and killed the family puppy, Cricket. As Noem tells it, Cricket had “ruined” a hunting trip by scaring away all the birds that Noem and her associates were planning on shooting. Although Cricket was “having the time of her life,” Noem was “livid” at the 14-month-old dog for spoiling the hunt.
Shortly thereafter, Noem writes, Cricket got into a neighbor’s yard and killed one of their chickens. This was the last straw, she says; Cricket was now behaving “like a trained assassin,” and needed to be dealt with. So, Noem took the puppy to a nearby gravel pit and shot her dead.
“I hated that dog,” Noem writes. She says that after killing the dog, she realized that one of the family’s billy goats needed to be offed as well, as he’d been acting “nasty and mean,” and so she “dragged him out to the gravel pit” and shot him as well.
It’s worth unpacking the many layers of animal slaughter in Noem’s story. Noem was initially upset that her puppy prevented her from killing birds; she then became angry at her puppy for killing chickens, and decided to kill the puppy in response. This, in turn, inspired her to kill a goat.
Noem’s chances of becoming vice president evaporated overnight once these passages leaked. She drew near-universal condemnation for the dog-killing incident, and did herself no favors by doubling down after the fact, telling an interviewer that perhaps President Biden’s dog should be put down as well.
The outrage was unsurprising, because although it sometimes feels like nothing is off-limits for politicians these days, bragging about killing puppies is still something of a taboo. And yet the response to Noem’s ill-advised tale also revealed the inconsistencies embedded in the general public’s attitude toward animal-killing.
For instance, there was no uproar over the fact that Noem was hunting birds in the first place. There was also much less focus on the goat’s death than the dog’s – and the chicken who died at the hands of Cricket elicited no sympathy at all. Noem’s story is full of dead animals, but only the dog’s death made people upset.
This double standard can also be seen in reactions to the other party’s vice presidential nominee being a hunter. Kamala Harris’s decision to tap Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate was broadly celebrated, and Walz has emerged as an unusually well-liked politician, with a staggering +37 favorability rating.
Walz, like Noem, is a proud hunter. He says that he used to keep a shotgun in his truck so he could hunt pheasants after football practice, and as Governor, he presides over his state’s annual deer and fish openings – celebrations to mark the beginnings of the hunting seasons for those respective animals.
Needless to say, Walz’s hunting bona fides have elicited no shock, anger or outrage among the general public. In fact, the fact that he’s a hunter has been characterized by some as a political strength, as it ostensibly makes him more appealing to rural and moderate voters.
The Fake Story of Pet-Eating Immigrants
Trump ultimately tapped Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate, and this led to another perfect encapsulation of speciesist attitudes among American voters.
In September, Vance falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were kidnapping and eating people’s dogs and cats. This was a complete lie – Vance admitted to creating stories “so that the American media actually pays attention.” But that didn’t stop Trump from parroting it during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in,” Trump warned. “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating – they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
The story was thoroughly and immediately debunked by Springfield officials and the media at large.
Nevertheless, Republicans expressed outrage at immigrants for eating pets (even though no pets were eaten), and Democrats slammed Republicans for falsely accusing immigrants of eating pets. The only point of agreement between the two sides was that killing cats and dogs for human consumption is an especially immoral thing to do.
“Culturally, Americans see dogs and cats as special,” Rosengard says. “There is a history of eating all kinds of animals in the United States, but in the modern American experience, dogs and cats have largely been thought of as companion animals, not as animals you eat.”
The False Claim Harris Wants to Ban Red Meat
During his time on the campaign trail, Vance also claimed, again falsely, that Harris wants to ban red meat.
“She even wants to take away your ability to eat red meat,” Vance said in August. “That’s how out there she is. That’s real. The fake news will fact-check it. They will fact-check it true. She actually said that.”
They did not “fact-check it true,” however, because it wasn’t true. What Harris actually said is that she supports changing the Dietary Guidelines For Americans to recommend Americans eat less red meat; this would not “take away your ability to eat red meat,” however, as nobody is required to follow the federal government’s dietary guidelines in the first place.
Nevertheless, the fact that Vance fear-mongered about this in the first place illustrates just how deeply Americans value carnivorism. He perceived, correctly, that voters would be aghast if they lost the right to slaughter and eat the animals they think of as food.
The most ironic part of his claims, however, is the fact that according to his wife, Vance “has adapted to” her vegetarian diet at home.
The Many Animal-Related Foibles of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
No analysis of the role of animals in the 2024 election would be complete without touching on Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who became embroiled in a number of animal-related mini-scandals over the course of his now-suspended presidential campaign.
During his time as a candidate, several reports came out revealing that Kennedy had, at various points in his life:
These incidents generally elicited more bewilderment and mockery than outrage, yet even some of those reactions had a speciesist bent to them.
The dead bear incident attracted considerable media attention, but what drew less attention was what Kennedy was doing when he found the dead bear: he was “falconing,” or using a trained bird to hunt wild animals – usually squirrels, rabbits and other small mammals and birds – in their natural habitats.
The fact that Kennedy staged a bizarre scene involving a dead bear drew a lot of attention and criticism. The fact that he was killing woodland creatures for sport earlier in the day drew none.
The dog/goat incident, meanwhile, again illustrated the double standards that we apply to dogs versus other animals. The idea of Kennedy eating a dog was initially appalling; the revelation that he was “merely” eating a goat diffused the situation entirely, and the outrage disappeared immediately.
How Speciesism Is Reflected in the Law
In theory, animal cruelty is illegal in the United States. But anti-cruelty laws, both on the federal and state level, contain many exceptions, caveats and carve-outs that place significant limits on what, exactly, constitutes an “animal.”
For instance, the Humane Slaughter Act is a federal law that requires livestock producers to render animals unconscious before killing them, in order to minimize their pain. And yet, in addition to being poorly enforced, the law does not apply to poultry or fish, even though birds and fish most definitely feel pain.
The same is true of the Twenty-Eight Hour law, which places limits on how long livestock animals can be transported without stopping for rest, air and food. While the law’s intent is commendable, it also contains many exemptions, one being that, as with the Humane Slaughter Act, it doesn’t extend any of its protections to poultry.
And then there’s the Animal Welfare Act. This law is primarily aimed at improving the wellbeing of animals who are experimented on in medical labs, as well as cracking down on illegal animal fighting. But the law provides no protections whatsoever to farm animals, millions of whom suffer just as much in their environments as the animals in laboratories or cockfighting rings.
Many states have enacted laws that extend additional protections to animals. The strength of these laws varies wildly from state to state, however, in large part because some have a very restrictive definition of what an “animal” is.
“Some states will say that ‘animal’ is limited to vertebrate, non-human living creatures,” Rosengard explains. ” Other states will say that an animal is every mammal, bird or fish, except commercial poultry. That’s got to be rough for birds in farms, because suddenly they don’t count as animals, so none of the animal cruelty law applies to them.”
The Bottom Line
This election cycle reminds us that speciesism runs deep in American political culture. The double standard and cognitive dissonance around animals is mirrored in our laws, which offer protections to some animals but not others, regardless of their capacity for pain or suffering, and often on a completely arbitrary basis.
Seth Millstein wrote this article for Sentient.
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