The Point of View (1916)

AUTHOR: Lovell, Mary Frances

KEYWORDS: animal welfare, ethical veganism, slaughterhouses

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

In this short editorial article Lovell responds to the accusation that the Women's Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty against Animals does not sufficiently consider the cruelty of slaughterhouses. Lovell explicitly links animal welfare activism to ethical veganism. She explains:

The present writer, who has eaten no meat for over twenty-two years, has strongly denounced in this JOURNAL repeatedly, also elsewhere, the barbarities of animal killing in slaughter-houses. She has also described in print the hideous scene which she compelled herself to witness in the Chicago slaughter pen which acquired notoriety in The Jungle; doing it in order to be able to speak authoritatively and to show that the only way to stop this kind of cruelty is to destroy the cause of it, which is the demand for flesh as an article of food, cruelty being absolutely inseparable from the business of cattle trafficking and slaughtering (35).

Lovell further notes that several other Society members, including the president Caroline Earle White, abstain from flesh foods. She argues that the reason why some continue to consume animal products is

probably because they have never compelled themselves to really know the facts, or because they think slaughter-house reform is the real remedy, and are willing to wait until the reform comes; or because they give no thought to the matter at all, contenting themselves with opposition to the cruelties they see in the streets; or because they imagine meat to be necessary to their health; or simply because they like it (35).

Lovell clearly places ethical veganism at the center of animal welfare activism while conceding a need to “cultivate the virtue of patience”  in these matters (36).