Special Greeting to Animal Advocates!

Welcome to Responsible Policies for Animals' website! Naturally we celebrate every good thing people do for nonhuman animals. Compassion is a natural human trait, and other animals endure the most suffering because there are far more of them than humans. And nonhuman animals endure the most unjust treatment. They endure unjust treatment on a massive scale because they have no basic legal rights on which secondary rights and enforcement can be based.

Their lack of basic legal rights is the reason no amount of helping nonhuman animals today or in the near future can protect the vast majority. Their lack of basic legal rights is the reason no amount of helping them can significantly slow the growth of inhumane treatment of animals.

This enormously unjust situation - the inability to provide meaningful protection because nonhuman animals have no basic legal rights - is the reason the animal-rights movement began. The goal of the animal-rights movement is to establish basic legal rights for all sentient beings on which secondary rights and enforcement can be based. Animal-rights advocates, like countless other people, appreciate all good things people do for nonhuman animals, but we understand that without basic legal rights, no amount of help can begin to reduce the harm being done.

That's why, whatever else you might do for the animals, we urge you to support Responsible Policies for Animals (RPA). RPA dedicates its campaigns, literature, website, and enthusiastically received presentations to establishing basic legal rights for all sentient beings - the only possibility for a humane future. If you want fundamental change in the relationship between humans and other beings - not just less-inhumane treatment of oppressed animals but a truly humane future - be sure to support RPA. For more details on animal rights, see the Animal Rights page of this website. And read on …

Soon after the animal-rights movement began, leaders and followers faced an unpleasant fact: It is difficult to build popular support for animal rights. Establishing basic legal rights for all sentient beings will mean no use of nonhuman animals, big changes in land use, food production, and transportation - fundamental change in how people live. Even though human beings will be much better off, people typically resist significant change until they have no other choice. That doesn't mean animal rights cannot happen - it will take long, unwavering effort, creative methods, and clear understanding of the obstacles.

Seeing how difficult it is to promote animal rights, many animal advocates, without pushing animal rights very long or trying all likely means of persuasion, dedicated themselves to helping animals - animal welfare, animal rescue, animal placement, animal care. When you demand punishment for cruelty to animals or succeed in having your state prohibit some form of extremely inhumane treatment, you assume the political & legal system will do what the law says. But little happens. That's because people have property rights in the animals. That is a key reason nonhuman animals must obtain basic rights -- to end humans' right to own and use them. Under the current system, the law protects humans' rights in the animals, not animals themselves as individuals worthy of consideration.When you bring animals to sanctuaries, shelters, rehabilitators, or clinics or place them in good homes, you know you have helped reduce suffering in one or a small number of animals. Even if millions, billions, or trillions more might be subject to similar or worse suffering, it feels good to know you've helped.

Many others faced with the difficulty of promoting animal rights dedicated themselves to campaigning against the meat, fur, and other animal-using industries - abolitionism. When you get someone not to buy things made from animals or tested on animals, you know those businesses have one less customer and maybe that person will get people not to buy those things too. When you distribute a brochure or show a video, it is reasonable to believe people will heed the compelling facts and change their habits. Even if the animal-using industries continue to grow because more & more people are born, more & people are affluent, and the industries have enormous promotional resources and incentives, at least your effort produces some definite result. And it feels good to have a community of like-minded people working together, exchanging information, and commiserating.

When you promote animal rights - explaining all animals' plight under human supremacy, how almost all human activities harm other animals, how animal use and oppression harms human beings and societies, and how all will benefit when basic legal rights are established for all sentient beings - you aren't sure your efforts will produce definite results for any specific animals. Animal rights requires fundamental policy change, and many, many people have to change their thinking and practices for policy to change. Meanwhile, animals continue to suffer and die. Help now, not rights later, appears to be what they need.

However, through all the years of trying to help animals who have no basic legal rights and trying to reduce profits of animal-using industries, nothing has changed the key fact that led to the animal-rights movement in the first place: In a world of human rights, the only thing that can possibly protect nonhuman animals against human practices is basic legal rights for all sentient beings that can end harmful human practices through rights-based legal claims and statutes. Just as rights-based legal claims and statutes make it much less difficult for women to be protected against men, black people against white people, and more. Just as gay and lesbian people need full rights to be protected against tyranny of "straight" people.

That's why talk of "protecting" animals who have no basic legal rights, an "animal-protection movement" that is not a rights movement, or "abolitionism" leading to animal rights misleads and confuses. Advocating on behalf of nonhuman animals without promoting animal rights will always fail to provide meaningful protection to the vast majority - no matter how many people do it, no matter how dedicated and talented they are, and no matter how much money is put into it. It is simply the way the system works: Rights are rights, everything else is everything else.

Wanting advocating on behalf of animals without promoting basic legal rights to somehow be able to lead to those rights, many advocates use important words incorrectly. "Humane" means kind, not just less unkind than something else. It is never kind to use nonhuman animals - people didn't start using them thousands of years ago out of kindness. But now we hear of "humanely produced" meat, eggs, milk, wool, and other stuff from animals. There is no such thing. It is never kind to use animals -- no matter what kind of facility, no matter how they are treated when being used.

The only way humane treatment of animals can ever become policy rather than personal choice is through basic legal rights for all sentient beings on which secondary rights and enforcement can be based. That is why we say, whatever else you do to help animals, be sure to support RPA. We don't know of any other organization taking a rights approach to animal advocacy. Five years on the job tells us we're on the right track!

Learn more about RPA and its campaigns at this website - see the Campaigns page. It's easy to donate and become an RPA member from the website or by mail - click on Support RPA.

Don't hesitate to ask about RPA's work, schedule an RPA presentation in your area, or otherwise get involved! Thank you!

February 2008