Caroline Lemieux is a second year Honours Mathematics major and the future president of the UBC’s Activists for Animals club. Read our inteview with this passionate and dedicated student leader to learn about the club’s presence on campus and to experience another perspective on the place of animals in modern society.
What is the UBC Activists for Animals organization and what is your role in it?
I am the current treasurer and incoming president of UBC Activists for Animals.
UBC Activists for Animals was initially founded by a group of political science students. They realized how deeply exploitative our current relationships with nonhuman animals are after taking a fourth year seminar entitled “Political Theory and Nonhuman Life”, taught by professor Laura Janara. They were shocked to realize there was no dedicated student club that examined these issues. Within the context of the university, the use of animals as objects in scientific research is one of the more obvious of these exploitative relationships, so this was the club’s founding concern.
We’ve now extended our aim beyond that concern. It’s quite obvious that the objectification of animals is pervasive in society as a whole, and that to effectively challenge it we need to examine all of our relationships with animals. That’s scary, because for most of us, the exploitation and domination of animals is tied to our everyday habits. Most students eat or wear the body of an animal every day without giving much thought to the being that used that body to experience the world. That body belonged to someone, but culture, capitalism, and consumerism has taught us it is completely fine to take it as an object for our pleasure.
We think it’s vital to bring back real conversation about animals, and that’s why we say UBC Activists for Animals “challenges the way we think about animals.”
What events does the club put on? How can students get involved?
There are three main categories of events we put on: outreach, community building, and non-violent direct action.
Firstly, we do traditional “outreach” type events, in which we leaflet or hold a booth in the SUB to discuss animal issues with students, mostly related to diet.
For community building, we hold information events like informal teach-ins held on campus, where we explore the philosophical, political, and social theories describing our relationships with animals. We mostly use these as a platform to begin discussion; attending is a great way to hear different perspectives.
Other community events include ones where we team up with VegUBC to organize potlucks or other food-centered events, which are always tons of fun, filled with delicious food, and where we often get to have interesting discussions (I really like discussions).
On the other end of the spectrum, we participate in direct action events, when we go out and disrupt the normalcy of exploitation. Non-Violent direct action has been an important tool in most social justice movements, and we think it’s vital to animal liberation. This year, we’ve mostly participated in Direct Action Everywhere’s It’s Not Food, It’s Violence, campaign. Many of our members participate in direct action in the greater community.
We welcome involvement in all those events; community events you can easily come out to, outreach we’re happy to have other people help out with, and protests you can come talk to us about first if you’re uncomfortable (you can even just hold a sign with us).
We advertise most of our events on our Facebook group and on our event page, and you can contact us at activistsforanimals.ubc@gmail.com or through facebook.
What do you think UBC could do to improve its sustainability? What could UBC do to improve its approach to animal welfare?
I think it’s important to note that although UBC is a place of gathering and learning, it remains a huge institution which is deeply connected to various industries and the societal norm. So we can’t really expect it to be a real leader in either of those issues.
The environmental impacts of animal agriculture are fairly well known, and some environmental organizations are finally starting to take note. Despite talking a lot about individual actions to save the environment (see the ripple effect campaign), UBC does not mention the issue at all. We reached out to the people behind the Loop Café in UBC’s most sustainable building, CIRS, to ask why the café did not address this. The response was sort of disheartening and revealed that the commitment to sustainability was only as deep as it needed to be to give good energy and water consumption numbers for a single building. Addressing animal agriculture’s environmental impact would make UBC’s commitment to sustainability a bit more believable.
Before answering on the subject of welfare, I want to mention that dialogue on welfare makes me uncomfortable because it often comes from a place of accepting that we can use non-humans as objects, and reaffirms their property status.
The least we can hope for is that UBC improve transparency and actually dedicates itself to the 3 R’s of “conducting research on animals humanely”: reduction, refinement, and replacement. Since the number of animals in research at UBC has increased through the years in which statistics have been reported, the reduction and replacement seem to be lacking. Certainly improving its approach would involve more encouragement of replacement.
I think these improvements will not come unprompted, and I especially think it’s necessary for the next generation of academics to think critically about and question the norm of their field if it involves using animals.
What do you plan to do next year in terms of animal rights actions?
A lot of that will depend on who is in the club next year and where there interests lie! I know for sure we will be doing some outreach and I’m hoping to do more events to cement the animal rights community on campus. As far as specific actions, I know we’ll be continuing with Direct Action Everywhere’s campaigns.
The movement is young and constantly in flux, so it’s hard to say exactly what we’ll be doing.
What drew you to work for animal rights?
In my last year of high school, I stumbled upon a bunch of vegan food blogs and thought the food looked really good, so eventually decided to go vegan (“not for the animals, though,” I said then).
After that, I came across the writings of various animal rights/liberationist thinkers, and I think since I no longer had my defenses up, justifying my behaviour above all else, their arguments actually made sense.
What drew me in the most was this concept that the mentality that allows us to look at animals, see that they look different from us, and just from that, decide we can exploit them for our own gain, is the same mentality that has allowed groups of humans to oppress other groups of humans throughout history (and in the present). Instead of looking at others and recognizing they are subjects of life, that their body allows them to experience the Earth, and that they should be respected, we decide that since they look different, we can use them as we please.
The dire situation animals are in right now is also a huge part of what makes me overcome my natural introversion and speak out about this. Animals in humanity’s oppressive institutions, and those in the wild, (which we are destroying,) have families, personalities, desires, fears — and a will to live. We take everything from every one of those individuals. So many have died in the time I’ve taken to write this. And most of us go through our daily lives without a thought for them.
What has been the biggest challenge fighting for animal rights?
On a level of reaching out to individuals, it’s getting individuals to acknowledge that animals are sentient beings with a desire to live which needs to be respected. In some ways that isn’t too difficult. Most people already think this way about some animals like dolphins, great apes, elephants, lions, dogs, cats, etc. Additionally, in 2012, Scientists concluded in The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness that animals were sentient beings. (Ironically, I’m sure that conclusion came as a result of invasive experimentation on those beings). But that acknowledgement is usually the sticking point.
The broader challenge, I would say, is that animal exploitation is tightly linked to many huge industries. The beef, pork, and chicken industries, the egg and dairy industries, grain producers (since a huge amount of grain is used to feed cattle), aquaculture, fisheries, fast food giants, clothing brands for whom animal use is central, animal entertainment industries (e.g. SeaWorld), advertisement corporations that profit off those industries… There are many more. You don’t see that many industries being affected by, say, marriage equality. So we’ve got a lot more advertisement and powerful institutions ready to tear us down and paint us as zealots by any means possible.
What is one thing everyone could do every day to help improve the lives of animals?
Stop normalizing their exploitation.
The easiest way to do that is to not eat their bodies, their milk and their eggs. There, I’ve said it, going vegan is important. It’s important because of the social impact: the more we see each other question the normality of exploitation, the bigger that question becomes.
Doing that every day may seem overwhelming, and some people are not successful at doing it every day at first, and that’s okay, as long as the goal is there. In the meantime, we can stop normalizing the view that animals are objects to be abused by the words we use; by calling them animals, not meat, for example.
We have been taught to care so much about the judgment of our peers, and to worry about seeming mean or weird, disrupting normalcy or “being a killjoy” is something we’re really scared about. But I’ve come to realize that justice for the oppressed is way more important than what other people think about me. And I know we all have that same power to speak out.