Animal welfare

David Walters (Solidarity 586) highlights important environmental considerations concerning soil. The destruction, degradation, depletion of soil through intensive mono-cropping; the nitrogen run-off and energy use of artificial fertilisers; the numerous destructive impacts of chemical pesticides. Yet his key claim that “we need more ruminants (grass eaters) not less” does not follow and is untenable. In the first section I contend that Walters overstates the potential for soil to be used to offset historic industrial emissions, by implication underplaying their dangers, and by extension the...

Many on the green left advocate a huge reduction in animal product consumption, society- and world-wide. They point to the industry's environmentally destructive impacts, and call for land to be freed up for rewilding, afforestation, and other climate interventions. Others see it as a distraction from tackling fossil capital, an incorrect assessment of agriculture, a concession to lifestyle politics, moralism, or even authoritarian. What should socialist environmentalists say and do? Workers' Liberty's monthly socialist environmentalist reading group will read the articles below, and discuss...

For January 2019, 4.2 million people said they would join “Dry January”, a pledge to drop alcohol for the month. The Alcohol Change UK group, which organised “Dry January”, says that (even if some of those 4.2 million had lapses) this year’s response was the biggest ever, and hugely up on January 2013, when the project started with just 4,000 signing up. “Veganuary” had 250,000 people adopting a vegan diet for the month, more than its total for all its previous Januarys combined, 2014 to 2018. 84% of January-vegans and maybe 70% of all vegans are female (2018 stats), although vegetarians are...

Labour's Shadow Home Secretary, Jack Straw, recently proposed a curfew on children. He opened his heart and mind to Workers Liberty reporter Patrick Avakuum. --- AS Tony Blair's team waits impatiently to cross the floor of the House of Commons and show that they can outdo the Tories, Jack Straw, Labour's Shadow Home Secretary has emerged as an unexpected Front Bench star in this brilliant company. For a long time Straw — "straw in his name, straw in his mouth, straw between his ears" as someone once unkindly said —was regarded as the village idiot of the Front Bench. Not any more. Straw has...

Should we support the right for scientists to do experiments on animals? The socialist scientist Steven Rose, who experiments on chicks in basic research into human brain function and memory, writes about this in his book The Making of Memory... For anyone who holds an absolutist animal-rights position there can be no doubt that in killing the chicks I have done evil; demonstrated a hegemonic concern to dominate nature; caused pain; behaved, unequivocally, as a speciesist. Sure, everything I have done has been under authorization by quite stringent British Home Office laws, which regulate the...