Corine Pelluchon: "Every time we eat it is as if we vote"

"We French only know how to do one thing well: speak."

Word of Corine Pelluchon (Barbezieux-Saint-Hilaire, 1967) who, showing off her passport, has come here to talk about her book.

Professor of philosophy at the University of Paris-Est-Marne-La-Vallée and specialist in bioethics and applied ethics, in a few years she has become one of the leading names in antispeciesism.

His last work in Castilian,

Manifesto animalista.

Politicizing the Animal Cause

(2018, Reservoir Books), resonates more necessary than ever now that this pandemic has changed everything.

Or almost everything.

Before Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix, as producers, released

The End Of Medicine,

a new documentary that aims to show the links between livestock and zoonotic diseases such as covid-19, Pelluchon had already warned of those links.

"Violence against animals is a direct attack on our humanity," the essayist assures by videoconference from her home in Paris, who presides over a portrait of Abraham Lincoln at the top of her library.

“Both Spain and France are far behind in bioethical issues if we compare ourselves, for example, with Germany.

And that France used to be an avant-garde country ”, she explains before recalling how she became a vegetarian in 2003 and, a decade later, took the step to veganism.

“It was not difficult at all to leave the meat or the fish.

The cheese cost me a lot more.

It was like an addiction ”, he admits while his cat appears from the rear.

How was your first contact with animalism?

Around the year 2000 I started to open my eyes to the way we produce meat.

Shortly after I stopped eating it for ecological reasons, but it was not a shock like the one I suffered later.

In 2008 I began to be interested in autonomy and vulnerability [some studies that led in 2011 to his essay

Elements for an Ethics of Vulnerability]

and to work with patients with Alzheimer's, degenerative diseases of the nervous system and dementia.

Visiting these hospitals I became very sensitive to individuals who in many cases could not speak or defend themselves.

When I was researching these matters, I couldn't stop thinking about animals, beings that cannot speak or defend themselves.

It was there that I became deeply committed and began to see the damage we cause.

My idea is to make this cause the center of the redefinition of humanism.

The way we treat animals sheds light on the philosophical, ethical, and legal makeup of our society.

It is a question that must force us to evolve.

In

Manifesto Animalista

advocates "zoopolis", a term popularized by Sue Donaldson and W

ill Kymlicka

in their eponymous book.

It is a type of democratic society where the rights of humans and the needs of animals would be taken into account.

But today it is assumed that nature and humanity are opposite figures and that this must prevail.

Perhaps that is one of the key problems ...

Exactly.

The main problem is the need for domination that we have.

We have detached nature from human beings.

We have forgotten that we too are animals, that we share our vulnerabilities with them and that they also count on the planet, because they feel pain and have preferences.

The main thing is to help people change their mental frames.

Domination is a way of interacting with the different, whether human or not.

There are differences between racism, sexism, speciesism and other discriminations, of course, but they all have domination in common.

And the starting point of my critique of domination is taking into account those who are most vulnerable.

This pandemic has confronted us with this reality: at some point we are going to need others, we are not isolated particles.

Many classical philosophers argue that animals should not have rights, since they do not have duties.

What is your position?

They should not have the same rights as us, it is obvious.

No one is asking that they have the right to vote.

But that way of thinking is really old-fashioned.

We currently guarantee moral consideration to people who cannot speak or reason like us.

For example, individuals with severe cognitive deficits have rights, although they have practically no duties and we do have duties to them.

I think we should add positive obligations to animals that protect them from our abuse.

Whoever claims that they should not have rights, forgets that these are a matter of limits, of what we can and cannot do.

And some rights are not only available to fully empowered adults, but also to those who have not yet been born or those with degenerative diseases.

Although his essay has an idealistic background, the final chapters are quite pragmatic, with practical examples of how to move in that direction right now, abolishing bullfighting or hunting.

But even those measures would have many detractors right now.

In reality the book is a manifesto: it is addressed to politicians and legislators as well as to a wider public.

I wrote it because I wanted to show that this cause is very deep and has different levels.

The idea was to offer a method with which to introduce this topic in the context of a pluralistic society.

I am vegan, but I can't ask everyone to go vegan or to ban livestock.

We have to respect differences of thought, try to find common ground and prohibit certain practices that are no longer tolerated by the vast majority of the population.

It asserts that the abolition of slavery and how that achievement managed to radically transform the world economy without destroying it should be the path to antispeciesism.

My great inspiration has been Lincoln, a man who knew that the abolition of slavery was a cause of all humanity, not just blacks.

He was well aware of the prejudices against these new ideas on the part of those who did not see the world that way.

In our case, for example, if we reached an agreement so that elephants or lions have no place in circuses, we should support with different resources those who have earned their living with that up to that moment.

That can be recycled professionally.

You cannot say, "This is now forbidden, so get your life."

We have to help so that he can reorient himself.

Agreements must be reached, even if there are people with whom it may seem impossible to have anything in common.

After all, democracy involves ideological conflicts.

Corine Pelluchon, author of 'Animalist Manifesto', in Barcelona in 2020. Gianluca Battista

She is quite critical of capitalism and affirms that a radical change in our relationship with animals will never be possible within the current system, because it is based on exploitation.

If you look at the food industry, you can see it clearly.

Capitalism is not only an economic system, but an anthropological system based on the unlimited exploitation of the land and living beings for the benefit of a minority, in which cost reduction at any price prevails and where the end justifies the media.

Capitalism is not compatible with respect for the limitations of the planet, it is not compatible with the environment, it is not compatible with human health and it is not compatible with animal welfare.

Final point.

But in some interviews you define yourself as a liberal.

Yes, I am politically liberal: I believe that freedom is very important.

And I think we have to convince others of our ideas.

The key to moral and social progress is consent and enlightenment.

I don't like those who bet on governments of fear, on tyrannies.

I am also liberal in the sense that I am not an enemy of the market.

The question is to regulate that market.

In this system in which we now live, livestock has become an industry and it is not.

I don't mind that mobile phones are made on a production line, but for me, a cow or any other animal is not the same as a telephone and cannot be treated as if it were.

That revolution you are talking about should start with individual changes, but humans are often reluctant to change our way of life.

You cannot force anyone to change.

Yes, we can accompany those who want to do it.

That is why the attitude of some activists is not very helpful when they say that those who eat meat are monsters, because they forget that most of us have grown up doing that.

Realizing this takes time and courage.

When I realized all that it involved it was a

shock.

Part of my joy disappeared, because as I walked down the street, everything reminded me of that: counters with pieces of meat, different smells coming out of bars and restaurants, leather clothes or fur coats.

I may think they are blind, but they are not monsters.

You have to get rid of many prejudices to realize these things.

And the routine is very powerful.

The Amazon rainforest is being destroyed mainly to grow soybeans.

And, according to most studies, between 70% and 90% of that soy is used as fodder for livestock.

You say that would be another good reason to go vegan.

There are many reasons to go vegetarian or vegan, but if people changed their way of life thanks to arguments, humanity would be vegetarian long ago.

Unfortunately the arguments are not the driving forces of the story.

Money, affections and emotions are.

It is changed by some kind of

shock,

interest or an emotional change, not by force of arguments.

In his work he does point out more arguments in favor of veganism, such as that livestock is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, more than all means of transport combined, including airplanes and cars

.

Yes, many understand that and are outraged, but forget it immediately.

The consequences of our current lifestyle are so enormous and impact so many areas that, in the end, people tend not to feel responsible for their actions.

We end up acting like machines, because we do not see the faces of the beings that our actions harm.

The structure of responsibility in this era of the Anthropocene has totally changed.

Our ancestors, when they inflicted harm on someone, they saw their face.

Now you can buy a shirt made in Asia by underpaid minors and you will never have to put yourself in front of them.

What can be done when climate deniers like

Jair Bolsonaro

in Brazil or, earlier, Donald Trump in the United States are in power?

We can all contribute a little.

Every time we eat, it is as if we vote.

The food that each of us buy has an impact on the production chain and on reducing or increasing global warming.

Just like if everyone stopped eating

foie gras,

there would be no companies interested in producing it.

The consumer has some power.

Some

scientists link the destruction of rainforests to zoonosis and the spread of viruses like

Covid-19.

Do you think there will be progress in this area due to the pandemic?

I do not know.

It is clear that we are at a crossroads and that many people are opening their eyes, because this pandemic is having terrible effects both economically and socially.

Many have realized that this model does not work, that it has disastrous effects and that it is necessary to change.

But there are those who do not want to accept these changes and intend to return to the same point where we were a year ago.

It is the old world that refuses to die.

We also see it with feminism or anti-racism: when the old order is threatened, it responds with violence.

I believe that all these causes will win one day, as well as animalism, although I do not believe that I am still alive to see it.

It

seems that most governments and institutions are not going to the root of the problem and are only trying to solve its consequences.

It is true, but it is that those powers belong to the old order.

I believe that governments lag far behind citizens in tackling these issues.

In his manifesto he calls this time "the age of desolation, where the individual is only perceived as a force of production and consumption."

Is there room for optimism?

I am not very optimistic, although optimism or pessimism are just impressions.

Some may not be ready for change today, but in the long run I am sure they will find that this materialistic and individualistic way of life does not bring them happiness.

I hope that later they will not find refuge in religion, because I consider myself a woman of the illustration and I believe in emancipation and social progress.

The reactionary forces are very strong and our duty is to show that change is possible and that there are other options.

Also, you never know when an idea may become a reality.

For example, Spinoza in the seventeenth century already vindicated what today we call democracy and the separation between State and Church.

We had to wait a few centuries to put that into practice.

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