Priscilla Feral: Three Decades of Animal-Rights Theory, Written Through Activism

by Lee Hall

30 July 2008 -- Today is Priscilla Feral’s birthday, and I’d like to celebrate it by writing some thoughts about Priscilla’s gifts to our movement.

One of the first things that drew me to Friends of Animals was a commentary Priscilla had published in the members’ calendar (this text now appears in FoA’s brochure “Who We Are”): “

Humans have imposed harnesses and saddles on wild horses and African wild asses for domestic work. Breeders have crossbred horses and donkeys, creating mules -- capable of even more labor. But attempts to domesticate zebras, equids closely related to wild horses and wild asses, have met with utter failure. Africa’s zebras have an unknown quality that defies domestication. Friends of Animals admires this “wildness” and seeks to protect it. With knowledge that we cannot control everything, we might learn to control ourselves.

I’d considered myself a student and an advocate of animal rights for nearly 20 years when I encountered those words, yet they refreshed me and caused my understanding of animal rights to grow. Our movement needs advocates for untamed spaces, appreciation for freedom, and respect for the autonomous animals of our Earth.

Wherever humans think of other animal communities as threats, nuisances, or just not particularly useful, those communities are pushed off their lands and out of their waters. The big carnivores and omnivores have been eradicated across Europe. Britain’s few remaining wolves live behind fences. When these animals disappear the web of life unravels. Autonomous communities are wiped out. Rights don’t help animals who are gone.

North America still has space where large animals roam. But those wild places are constantly threatened by oil and mineral corporations and other forms of human encroachment.

Some activists have objected to Priscilla’s interventions on behalf of wolves. They have said the wolves, unlike cows, are so far away -- so why should FoA care? They have said the free-living animals are all going extinct anyway -- so why bother? Priscilla bothers, and that’s why there’s an animal-rights movement in North America.

Priscilla cares about the chickens and cows as well, and knows the only way to respect them is to stop purpose-breeding them, and therefore has, over the years, steered FoA away from animal-handling agreements entirely. Priscilla has encouraged activists to present vegan values as the only serious answer to the daily injustices domesticated animals face.

In a word, it’s domination that Priscilla’s work addresses. Change the view that it’s OK to be the domineering species, and we really have a chance of ending the many indignities within systems of animal use. Avoid the issue of domination, and animal use continues, regulated by a caring populace as billions are served.

To make every last spot of land profitable, ranchers and supportive officials herd and displace untamed beings. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management uses helicopters to harass mustangs, drive them into corrals, and ultimately transfer them into private hands. And now, the officials are proposing to kill horses. Encouraged by Priscilla’s work, activists are demanding an end to the round-ups, sales and slaughter (by any means) of free-living horses and burros.

The question is who gets the land: free-living animals, or profiteers. So the key step each of us can take in support of horses is to adopt a plant-based diet. Priscilla and Friends of Animals are sending this message to the public, through television, radio, and the Internet. And we have the recipes to back it, for Priscilla is a chef and cookbook author too.

Dining With Friends is full of outstanding vegan dishes and its animal-rights message is strong. At one spot in the text, explaining the ethical problems with consuming dairy products, I had included a remark that milk comes from cows whose babies are taken away, so behind every mocha latte there’s a veal calf. Our publishers were concerned about marketing the book and they asked us to remove that line because its “tone” might not be good for sales. Rather than delete the calf, Priscilla preferred to start up our own publishing house! And that’s how Nectar Bat Press was formed.

And while Priscilla was working to spread vegan recipes everywhere from The New York Times to South Africa, some activists have decided to talk up “cage-free eggs” and “certified humane” animal products, and in early 2005 Whole Foods Market introduced its Animal Compassion Foundation, a concept for marketing flesh and other animal products in a way that purportedly involves positive attention to the animals. The announcement lifted Whole Foods stocks to a record high -- although it’s never been clear whether the Animal Compassion standards were put into place in North America.

The promotion was, in any case, endorsed by philosophy professor Peter Singer together with 17 animal-advocacy groups. In marked contrast, Priscilla’s group took a public stand objecting to the arrival of “compassionate” animal parts in stores.

Aware that human rights are animal rights, Priscilla marched against the invasion of Iraq, and has promoted fair trade together with animal-rights principles.

In the past two years, Priscilla has stepped in where needed for two community rescue groups. Peter Wallerstein’s Marine Animal Rescue (formerly Whale Rescue Team) is going strong while Priscilla carries out the fundraising; and Primarily Primates, a rescue and rehabilitation site in Texas, was itself rescued by FoA, which has spent half its operating budget on saving the sanctuary and safeguarding its animals. Priscilla is, at the same time, advocating for primates’ rights rather than accepting such concepts as the CHIMP Act -- which assumes other primates are ours to use, then condescendingly arranges a “retirement” package for them.

Priscilla’s day-to-day work has ensured the neutering of 2.5 million cats and dogs, and funded sterilizations of, and support for, feral cats. But imposing contraception on groups of independent animals, such as free-roaming horses, is human dominion over animals who are living naturally, and it’s frequently accompanied by confinement by government agencies, humane groups, or private owners. Priscilla has never tolerated this.

Priscilla points out why addling or oiling the eggs of geese to keep them from hatching is disrespectful (not to mention violent) to geese, and why foisting contraception on free-living animals is an affront to a movement for animal rights. This is especially significant in an advocacy field in which even references identified as abolitionist have suggested birth control for whole communities of free-living animals, such as deer.

Activists and government agencies collaborate on research and administration of contraceptives in free populations of deer, horses, elephants and bears. Priscilla bluntly states, “Animals in nature don't need to be controlled by a species that has such difficulty in controlling itself.”

Priscilla has embraced the life of an activist -- while writing animal-rights theory on activism’s slate. FoA’s anti-fur interventions don’t constitute mere single-issue campaigning; Priscilla consistently places them in a larger context, which is to insist that animals such as chinchillas, lynx, rabbits, mink and foxes could, but for this exploitive trade, live free on Earth; so to end the fur trade is, essentially, to extend animals their birthright of freedom.

Animal rights presents a genuine and profound challenge to our culture, and Priscilla’s activism conceives of the greatness of this challenge. It’s not just about having sympathy for maltreated animals and outrage over what people do to them. It’s even more than having our role as their masters abolished. It’s about viewing them with respect and ensuring they can live in their own ways. Ultimately, it’s not a work of anger and opposition, but a work of love.

Thank you, Priscilla. And happy birthday.