"Because animals are property, we consider as "humane treatment" that we would regard as torture if it were inflicted on humans"
About this Quote
Francione’s line is a pressure test disguised as plain speech: swap the victim, keep the act, and watch our ethics wobble. The quote works because it doesn’t beg for empathy in the abstract; it indicts a legal and cultural category - property - as the quiet engine that makes cruelty feel normal. If an animal is owned, “humane treatment” stops being a moral standard and becomes a management style: pain reduced only to the point that production, convenience, or social comfort can proceed without guilt.
The scare quotes around “humane treatment” are doing most of the damage. They signal that the phrase functions less as a description than as a moral permission slip. Francione’s subtext is that our baseline is already compromised: we start from the assumption that animals are usable, then negotiate how gently we can use them while still calling ourselves decent. That’s why his human comparison lands. It exposes the double accounting we practice when the harmed body can’t sue, vote, or be recognized as a rights-bearing subject.
Context matters: Francione is a leading figure in animal rights law and a prominent critic of “animal welfare” reforms. He argues that welfare standards often stabilize exploitation by making it look enlightened - bigger cages, better slaughter methods, improved handling - without challenging the ownership premise. The intent isn’t merely to shame individual consumers; it’s to reframe the debate from kindness to justice. If the moral ceiling is set by property law, “humane” becomes the rhetoric of a system congratulating itself for turning torture into policy.
The scare quotes around “humane treatment” are doing most of the damage. They signal that the phrase functions less as a description than as a moral permission slip. Francione’s subtext is that our baseline is already compromised: we start from the assumption that animals are usable, then negotiate how gently we can use them while still calling ourselves decent. That’s why his human comparison lands. It exposes the double accounting we practice when the harmed body can’t sue, vote, or be recognized as a rights-bearing subject.
Context matters: Francione is a leading figure in animal rights law and a prominent critic of “animal welfare” reforms. He argues that welfare standards often stabilize exploitation by making it look enlightened - bigger cages, better slaughter methods, improved handling - without challenging the ownership premise. The intent isn’t merely to shame individual consumers; it’s to reframe the debate from kindness to justice. If the moral ceiling is set by property law, “humane” becomes the rhetoric of a system congratulating itself for turning torture into policy.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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