United Poultry Concerns <https://www.UPC-online.org>
15 June 2023
 

 
Thinking Like a Chicken Podcast – News & Views!
 
In today’s podcast I discuss the advantages versus the disadvantages of
Single-Issue Campaigns for animals, including the difference between
Focused Campaigns and Closed-Circle Campaigns and why this difference
matters. Please join me.
 
 
*Listen to the Podcast
<https://www.upc-online.org/podcasts/230616_focused_campaigns_versus_closed_circle_campaigns-what_would_a_chicken_say.html#podcast>*
 
 
Transcript
 
*Focused Campaigns versus Closed Circle Campaigns: What Would a Chicken
Say?*
Hello, and thank you for joining me today. I’m Karen Davis, the founder and
president of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization that
promotes compassion and respect for chickens, turkeys, ducks, and other
domesticated birds. Today’s podcast reflects an article I wrote a few years
ago in response to the claim by some members of the animal advocacy
community that what they call “single-issue” campaigns blocks the
advancement of animal liberation and veganism.
 
So I am in Brooklyn, New York on a fall day looking at a stack of crates on
the sidewalk filled with live chickens. Sickened by this sight, do I, as an
animal rights activist, just skip over the chickens and proceed to tell
anyone who will listen to Go Vegan?
 
What if a passerby is upset about the chickens crammed in the crates
without food, water or shelter, and asks what can be done to help them? Do
I simply say that these particular chickens are suffering for a sacrificial
ritual, then move on to note that the ritual, while totally cruel, is no
worse than what chickens go through in slaughterhouses every day, urge the
person to Go Vegan and proceed to expound the philosophy of Abolition or
Nothing?
 
Will ignoring the chickens in front of our eyes advance the abolition of
all animal abuse better than if we paid attention to these particular
victims who are helplessly suffering right in front of us?
 
For some Abolitionists, all campaigns focusing on particular animals- in
this case chickens used for a brutal sacrifice – frustrate the ultimate,
worldwide goal of Abolition, Animal Rights, and Veganism. (Veganism most
broadly is a philosophic and practical commitment to justice, compassion,
and nonviolence.) My organization, United Poultry Concerns, promotes the
compassionate and respectful treatment of domesticated birds with a focus
on birds in the agribusiness sector. Does our focus hamper efforts to
liberate all animals from all forms of oppression everywhere on the planet?
 
A point to consider is that every category of animal, animal abuse, and
advocacy can be called “single issue,” whether the category is Chickens,
Farmed Animals, Furbearing Animals, Aquatic Animals, Rodeos, SeaWorld, Save
the Elephants, Vivisection, or other categories.
 
Campaigns on behalf of specific human groups have been waged throughout
history. Was the campaign to end Apartheid in South Africa a “single-issue”
campaign that thwarted the overall effort to liberate people everywhere
from legalized discrimination? What about the women’s movement or the civil
rights movement or the LGBTQ movement in America? Aren’t they “single
issues” within the universal drive for social justice? And do they not
break down further into specific campaigns for voting rights, equal
opportunity in education, housing, sports, and employment?
 
If so, then we must ask whether addressing a particular category of animals
or animal abuse necessarily precludes advocacy on behalf of all animals.
Does focusing on chickens prevent me from putting their suffering within a
broader range of issues? My experience as a Chicken Rights activist for 33
years, since 1990, says that one can develop the skills to do this while
pursuing specific objectives.
 
One can, because a focused objective and the Big Picture are not separate.
Cockfighting, for example, is one “detail” within the larger dimension of
staged animal fights within the broad category of using animals for
entertainment. Using animals for entertainment is part of an entire system
of animal abuse in which the individuals of other species are defined by
humans as property, objects, commodities and resources, without dignity or
rights.
 
Paradoxically, instead of a “detail” versus “dimension” divide (“single
issue” versus Big Picture), the dimensions are in the details and vice
versa, similar to the paradox of individuality and ecology. “I am in the
world, the world is in me,” is how the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead
summarized the cosmic interaction between the Unit and the Ubiquity.
 
 
 
*Closed Circle Campaigns*
That said, not all single issues are the same. Some are closed circles. An
example of a closed circle approach to helping animals is where one group
of exploited animals is used as bait to win funding and favor for another
group. A fundraiser for dogs and cats featuring a chicken dinner,
reassuring your member of Congress that while you oppose experimenting on
animals you have no objection to hunting, fishing or eating them – this
type of advocacy is a closed circle. By contrast, even though United
Poultry Concerns focuses on the plight of birds in the food industry, we
would not hold a fundraiser featuring a lobster dinner or raffle a fur coat
to raise money for our chicken sanctuary. We would not lobby Congress for
chickens at the expense of other animals.
 
 
 
*Thinking Like a Chicken*
Every campaign for animals provides an opportunity to promote the goal of
animal liberation. I like the term animal liberation better than abolition
because animal liberation is a positive sounding goal that highlights the
animals themselves. It’s easy for the animals to disappear in closed-circle
discourse about Ideology and Food. Exclusive use of the word VEGAN can get
in the way of the animals’ faces, their experience, their particular
situation. As animal advocates, we cannot let this happen.
 
In a debate about single issue campaigns, prompted by an Abolitionist
critique of the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos
<http://www.endchickensaskaporos.com/> (a project of United Poultry
Concerns), Alliance cofounder, Rina Deych, of Brooklyn, New York, wrote:
“While I completely agree that veganism should be promoted, I do not agree
that so-called single issue campaigns and the promotion of veganism are
mutually exclusive. In fact, many people (including myself) became vegan
after becoming sensitized to the individual issues. Not all of us can
relate to the concept of tens of billions of animals being slaughtered for
food. For many of us, it becomes a reality when we see one animal suffering
(and, hopefully, ultimately being saved). It’s harder to block out that one
image than one of a sea of animals we can conveniently blur into one blob
and tuck away into our unconscious mind and ignore.”
 
The poet William Blake said that we must learn to see the universe in a
grain of sand. Similarly, animal activists must strive to insinuate vegan
advocacy and animal liberation into all of our efforts to help nonhuman
animals. We must advocate passionately for the ultimate goal of Animal
Liberation – and we must advocate with equal justice, passion and
conviction, and do the very best we can, for *these birds, this bird* who
is alive in the flesh, just like ourselves, in the here and now. *These
birds, this bird* needs and deserves our focused attention, our immediate
help, even as we work to liberate all animals from the tragedy of misery
and oppression that we have brought to them.
 
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s podcast and that you will share it with your
social media network. Please join me for the next podcast episode of *Thinking
Like a Chicken – News & Views!* And have a wonderful day.
 
 
KAREN DAVIS, PhD is the President and Founder of United Poultry Concerns, a
nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful
treatment of domestic fowl including a sanctuary for chickens in Virginia.
Inducted into the National Animal Rights Hall of Fame for Outstanding
Contributions to Animal Liberation, Karen is the author of numerous books,
essays, articles and campaigns. Her latest book is *For the Birds: From
Exploitation to Liberation: Essays on Chickens, Turkeys, and Other
Domesticated Fowl* published by Lantern Publications & Media.
 
—
United Poultry Concerns is a nonprofit organization that promotes
the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl.
Don’t just switch from beef to chicken. Go Vegan.
https://www.UPC-online.org/ http://www.twitter.com/upcnews
https://www.facebook.com/UnitedPoultryConcerns
 
View this article online
<https://www.upc-online.org/podcasts/230616_focused_campaigns_versus_closed_circle_campaigns-what_would_a_chicken_say.html>