Famous Vegans - Gary Francione

Gary Francione with Mollie and Katie, who were rescued from a kill shelter.

Gary Francione

Born Gary Lawrence Francione on May 29, 1954. He is an American legal scholar and Distinguished Professor of Law and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University School of Law-Newark. He has been teaching animal rights and the law for more than 20 years and was the first academic to teach animal rights theory in an American law school.

Gary Francione is well known for his abolitionist theory of animal rights, arguing that animal welfare is theoretically and practically unsound, serving only to prolong the status of animals as property by making the public feel comfortable about using them. His theory was developed in his 2000 book Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog?. He has written several other books about abolition and animal rights that you can find at this link. His website is Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach.

Gary Francione - documentary project I'm Vegan:

Quotes by Gary Francione:

"We cannot justify treating any sentient nonhuman as our property, as our resource, as a thing that we can use and kill for our purposes."

"We all say that we take animal interests seriously, but in reality, our society treats animals in much the same way that it treats any other form of property. If, however, we did accord animals this one right not to be treated as property, we would be committed to abolishing and not merely regulating animal exploitation because our uses of animals for food, experiments, product testing, entertainment, and clothing all assume that animals are nothing but property. If we accepted that animals have the right not to be treated as our property, we would stop—completely—bringing domestic animals into existence."

"We believe that no human should be treated exclusively as the resource of other humans. We have no rational or morally justifiable reason to deny this protection to sentient nonhumans. We cannot justify treating any sentient nonhuman as our property, as our resource, as a thing that we can use and kill for our purposes."

"if animal use cannot be morally justified, then we ought to be clear about that, and advocate for no use. Although rape and child molestation are ubiquitous, we do not have campaigns for "humane" rape or "humane" child molestation. We condemn it all. We should do the same with respect to animal exploitation."

"We all condemn Michael Vick for sitting around a pit and watching dogs fight because he derives pleasure from doing so. The rest of us sit around the barbecue pit and roast the bodies of animals who have been tortured as badly as—if not worse than—Vick’s fighting dogs, because we enjoy the taste. That’s moral schizophrenia. We treat some animals as members of our family, and we stick forks into other animals who are no different from our nonhuman family members."

"There is absolutely no morally defensible distinction between flesh and other animal products, such as milk or cheese. Animals used in the dairy industry usually live longer and are treated as badly if not worse than their meat counterparts, and they all end up in the same slaughterhouse anyway. The meat and dairy industries are inextricably intertwined. As far as I am concerned, there is more suffering in a glass of milk than in a pound of steak, though I would not consume either. Vegetarianism as a moral position is no more coherent than saying that you think it morally wrong to eat meat from a spotted cow but not morally wrong to eat meat from a non-spotted cow. We do not need any animal products for health purposes, and animal agriculture is an ecological disaster. The best justification that we have for killing billions of animals every year is that they taste good. That simply cannot suffice as a moral justification."

"I have been in a number of slaughterhouses in my life. I have been on dairy farms, egg farms (conventional, cage-free, and organic), and just about everyplace else that involves institutionalized exploitation. There is nothing—nothing—that I want to eat or wear or otherwise consume so badly that I would ever be a part of the torture—and I use that word literally—that goes on in the very best, the supposedly most “humane,” of those horrible places."

"I find it very annoying that so many animal advocates talk about the difficulty of being vegan. Many animal advocates are inclined to make the issue their suffering and not the animals’ suffering, and I suppose that accounts for part of the reason that veganism is portrayed as such a "sacrifice." And many animal advocates are not vegans, or are “flexible vegans,” which means that they do not observe veganism at all or not consistently, and emphasizing the supposed difficulty of veganism is part of justifying their own behavior. Just as I take an absolutist position on rape and pedophilia and racism, and do not think that being "flexible"0 about these issues is appropriate, I am not "flexible" about my veganism. It represents for me a matter of fundamental justice, and reflects my moral and spiritual commitment to nonviolence."

"the Internet has changed the landscape of animal advocacy. People all around the world can communicate with each other and can now form communities with others. We are no longer dependent on the formal structure of the large groups to communicate. And that is precisely what is happening. There is a vibrant grassroots community developing completely outside of the formal structure of the large groups. And advocates are engaged in all sorts of creative, nonviolent vegan advocacy. I am very excited about the future."

Quotes are from his 2002 interview with Friends of Animals and his 2011 interview with The Believer.