This exciting event will bring together postgraduate students focussing on human-animal relations, critical animal studies and anthrozoology, as well as activists, campaigning organisations and interested members of the public. Everyone is welcome to attend. The conference will take place on Saturday 10th March 2012, 9am – late, at the St. Sidwell’s Centre in Exeter, UK.

This conference is kindly sponsored by the University of Exeter and registration is FREE and open to everyone. To register, please click here. Please register by 3rd March 2012. More information on the conference, and to see the programme when it is made available, please see the website here.

Every year there is an International Animal Rights Gathering, bringing together activists from around the world for workshops, talks, film showings and networking. This year it took place in the Netherlands, at the anarchist campsite Tot Vrijheidsbezinning.

One theme of this year’s workshops was how to carry out undercover investigations, drawing on experience from highly successful investigations into the pig and fur industries in Sweden and Finland. There were also thought-provoking and in-depth discussions on sexism and gender-awareness in the animal rights movement and the future of campaigning against the fur industry. Another highlight was the disco and karaoke!

On Friday 5th to Sunday 8th August, the UK Animal Rights Gathering will take place in Northamptonshire, so do get in touch with SAF if you want to go down together. Next year the International Animal Rights Gathering will be for the first time in Poland.

Activists from SAF today went down to Loughborough to protest against Harlan, a company breeding animals for use in painful experiments. We marched and gave out information in the city, before visiting Harlan in Belton. For more information about the campaign, please see the website of the National Anti-Vivisection Alliance.

What do you do with yourselves?

We’re an acoustic band from Pity Me, which is a small village in Durham. We both play guitar and sing. Other than that we both study social sciences full time and work part time. Daniel does data entry work for the NHS and I (Nathan) work for an organization which helps prisoners and their families in the North East.

What’s your vegan story?

We became vegan a couple of years ago, but here’s some context. I grew up in a vegetarian household, and so aside from being fed fish as a young kid at school by misinformed canteen workers before I was old enough to really understand that eating fish was wrong, I’ve never eaten meat. So in a sense my parents deserve most of the credit for any compassion I have for animals. Daniel was raised eating meat and made the decision to go vegetarian as a teenager, so his personal agency has been a lot more influential on his decision. We were both vegetarian when we started the band, and we talked a lot about veganism as the logical, reasonable extension of vegetarianism. A couple of our close friends turned vegan and that in itself was a really powerful illustration of the possibility of a healthy, happy vegan lifestyle, especially as prior to that we only really knew one vegan. In 2008 the band had the opportunity to tour Germany and the person who drove us around (Vincent) was both straight edge and vegan. We decided that out of respect for him we’d be vegan for that week, but I think we both knew in our heads that it was going to be longer than that. Vincent is a really inspirational guy and spending that time with him and gaining an insight into his worldview had a profound effect on us, as did seeing the German DIY punk scene and how politicized it was compared to our experiences of the UK. When we got back my sister and her boyfriend also decided to go vegan, and eventually many of our friends followed suit. We weren’t the first of our friends to go vegan by any means, but I do think our experience of Germany with Vincent helped a lot of us to make the transition.

Is Durham a good place for vegans?

Durham is a very small place, and there are I’d say around 10 vegans who know each other well and support one another. In that sense it is a very good place, because there are always people to look out for good deals on food, new ethical stuff, places to eat etc. There are also a couple of good places who are vegan friendly. There is a pizza shop called ‘Pizza al Taglio’ in the indoor market which does a vegan option everyday, as well as vegan garlic bread. They are really nice people who have supported and advised us in our own endeavours. We run a monthly DIY non-profit vegan café called ‘One Flew Over The Coffee Cup’ in a community centre which offers cheap ethical, food, drink as well as a record/zine distro). The problem is that because we know each other well, no matter how hard we try to be inclusive and open, it seems cliquish. If there are other vegans in town, which I’m sure there are, we hope the café will be a way for us to get to know them and include them in our support network.

Here is a link to our collective, with posters for our café:

http://equestriancollective.wordpress.com

A number of your songs are quite explicitly feminist. Is your feminism linked to your belief in animal rights?

Yes, very much so. I see the two forms of oppression as inherently linked. Meat eating is a by-product of patriarchy, which is predicated on essentialist notions of what we should and shouldn’t do based on arbitrary biological ‘facts’. The fact the women can bear children becomes a societal compulsion that all women should have children (and stay at home, away from the work place, and not engage politically etc), and that if they don’t have children they are unnatural, or somehow failures. The fact that humans have canine teeth and have in the past eaten meat becomes some warped justification that we should eat meat, in spite of our moral and intellectual capacity to understand that in doing so we cause pain and environmental catastrophe.

Most hierarchical binary distinctions are to an extent predicated on an underlying oppressive male:female power structure; Culture: Nature, Reason: Emotion, White: Non-White, Straight: Queer, Human: Non-human. It is so deeply ingrained in every pour of our social fabric that it is very difficult to escape. The best we can do is to subvert it in every way we can and at every possible opportunity. Ultimately, the market is the driving force behind this abominable practice, the profit incentive keeps it alive and in that sense, the meat industry is as powerful an illustration as you are likely to get of the evils of capitalism. In a system founded on the accumulation of wealth, profit will always trump ethics. To clarify, I am not anti-science. Our biology does influence the way we behave, but it does not determine it. We are moral beings, and as such we should act according to morality and reason, not mindlessly follow the path that our biology appears to be leading us along (which again is invariably an ethnocentric, heternormative, context-specific definition of what that biology ‘means’ in a society).

Carol Adams has written a lot of very good stuff on the links between the subordination of women and animals within capitalist society. I recommend ‘The Sexual Politics of Meat’ as well as ‘The Pornography of Meat’. The latter is really interesting as it uses a lot of examples of how sexualized imagery is used in advertising, drawing startling parallels between the way women and animals are presented in the male gaze, (i.e. both as passive objects to be dominated by the active male subject either through fucking or through eating). But as well as that, it shows the alarming sexualisation of meat adverts, as well as the fixation of pornography with things like torture and pain. For a crude recent example of sexualization of ‘food’ try the ‘sultry’ Marks and Spencer’s campaign, which deals with (non-vegan) food, but it is pervasive in a lot of advertising (and pornography) in subtle but damaging ways.

Do you think your music changes people’s minds and can translate into political action?

I’d be surprised if a song heard in isolation caused somebody to change their opinion completely about an issue, but I’m confident that songs can articulate ideas in ways that listeners may never have thought about before. I compare it to my engagement with punk when I was younger. I knew I didn’t like injustice from a very young age, but it was only through hearing songs about homophobia, imperialism, animal cruelty etc, that I was able to translate that abstract idea into real issues. It’s why I think it’s important that at least some of ours songs are rooted in reality.

I tend to think that cause is always extremely complex, and I wouldn’t be naïve or big-headed enough to say ‘we have turned people onto veganism or feminism’. I think that our lyrics, as well as the way in which we operate as a band, when engaged with in the right context, does have the potential to have a meaningful affect on people. The important thing is to think holistically. One song is unlikely to turn a blue rosette green, but I think that the fact that there is a network of like-minded people out there, who are expressing themselves artistically and creatively in any way they can is immeasurably important. Young people are generally open minded and the more young people who get to know about DIY punk shows, and meet the vegans involved in the DIY scene (like SAF in Sheffield) the better. They are the ones who are most likely to have the courage to think about their place in the world and the impact that they have on it, without automatically becoming defensive about their current lifestyle. I tend to have a very open definition of what constitutes political action, and something as simple as attending a DIY punk show is, to me, a very important form of political action.

Currently listening to:
RVIVR (album of the summer 2010), Punch, Offshore Radio, Good Luck, Imperial Can, Fashanu, The Middle Ones, Billy Joel plus loads more.

Currently eating:

Vegan Chimichangas from ‘Tias’ on Claypath in Durham (ask for the vegan menu), Garlic Mushroom, Spinach and Vegan Cheese Pizza from Pizza al Taglio in the indoor market in Durham (tell them ONSIND sent you).

What’s your fave recipe?

Chocolate Organge Cake (courtesy of Gary from FASHANU)

Cake:

400g self raising flour
250g caster sugar
250 ml orange juice
100 ml water
50g cocoa powder
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 organge (zested)

Sieve all dry ingredients. Slowly mix in wet ingredients until a smooth consistent batter that dribbles off the spoon is created. Put in a 8 inch cake tin. Cook in 190 degree preheated oven for 35-45 minutes (or until knife comes out clean from centre of cake)

Icing:
50g sunflower spread
100g icing sugar
3tbsp boiling water
1tbsp cocoa powder

Put in bowl and mix. Spread on cake. Eat whole cake in one go. Pat belly and burp to show your satisfaction (optional).

What do you do?

I’m a father to three beautiful girls, and a Geography lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University

How did you become interested in animal rights?

My commitment to animal rights has seen me witness the best and worst of human nature, both in myself and in others. Like most children I had an instinctive empathy and love for other animals: as a 7 year old my first published newspaper letter was against fox-hunting for example. Yet it was only while at university that I stopped eating the bodies of other animals. My ‘Damascus moment’ happened in 2001 having witnessed the news coverage of the human response to the foot-and-mouth disease, one which saw cows, pigs, sheep and newborn lambs being thrown into burning pyres, and bulldozed into muddy graves. Shortly after this I read “Animal Liberation” by Peter Singer, and Mark Rowlands’s book “Animals Like Us” which makes one of the well argued cases I’ve ever heard for extending rights to other animals.

I am always seeking new ways to raise consciousness about our relationships with non-human animals, and where possible to change the hearts and minds of others. I believe that the animal rights movement, driven by the passion, truth, commitment and beauty that makes people to stand up for those who suffer injustice, brutality and cruelty, embodies everything that is good and strong in humanity.

How do you find animal rights activists in the street view academia?

I think many animal rights activists, quite properly, view academia with either suspicion or disinterest. Yet many universities have produced academics that have shown great commitment and courage in helping to shape the direction of many justice and liberatory movements, both in the UK and abroad. Regretfully, there still exist significant gaps that divide many activists and academics when it comes to approaching animal rights and animal liberation. However, I believe that the most effective and meaningful responses to overcoming the speciesist attitudes in society will be those that are created by academics and activists coming together openly, and creatively building bridges between theory and practice.

To what extent can Critical Animal Studies (CAS) influence the wider movement?

A “critical” approach to animal studies recognises that the relationship between humans and other animals are at the point of crisis, and that this has enormous implications for the planet as a whole. Crucially, those working within Critical Animal Studies have an explicit commitment to understanding the commonality of oppressions and violence that impact on humans and other animals, and the importance of learning from and with activists. Recently, I published in the Journal for CAS a protest summary from Bogotá Colombia against bullfighting. Here the animal rights activists marched in solidarity with other social demonstrations taking place around them. They did this because, in their own words: “We wanted to connect everything around the speciesist and capitalist culture with the struggle of the people, and their capacity to build a new society. We wanted to politicize the animal liberation movement, as well as “veganize” the political agenda of those struggling against capitalism and imperialism.” There is still a long way for critical animal studies to go, but the start is encouraging and the momentum is increasing. See: http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/?page_id=387

Currently listening to:

The Smiths: The Queen Is Dead

Currently eating:

Dairy free dark chocolate bar

Making the festival even more distasteful is its decision to let Front Magazine sponsor one of the stages. Front is a soft-porn mag, marketing itself as alternative, but still promoting extremely narrow definitions of beauty (the models are only distinguishable from those in other lads mags by their tendency to sport a tattoo or two). The current issue seems to heavily feature booze, meat and sexism – almost a satire of tedious lads mags’ ideas of masculinity, and subjects that comprise the antithesis of what hardcore should be about.

Update: Death Is Not Glamorous have said they will no longer play the festival. We love you guys! They’re playing in Leeds on August 9th so you can catch them then. See below for a taster!