Students Discuss Human Supremacy, Animal Rights

The seminar, sponsored by the Carolina Animal Rights Effort, addressed "Human Supremacy: Animal Rights and Social Justice."

"What I would hope is that you would like to help these animals get out from under the tyranny they are subject to," said Paul Shapiro, co-founder and campaign coordinator of the animal rights group Compassion Over Killing. "A lot of people don't think about animal rights as a social justice struggle."

The main problem, Shapiro said, is that people have been conditioned for centuries with the notion of "human supremacy" over other animals. People use this idea to justify the abuse of animals for entertainment, food, clothing and experimentation.

"We are faced with the task tonight of voluntarily leaving the oppressor class," Shapiro said, citing the 9.4 billion animals killed annually in slaughterhouses as an example of the abuse.

"We have a situation where 260 million individuals are living off the deaths of 9.4 billion," he said.

Shapiro discussed medical and cosmetic experimentation as another example of human supremacy in society. Human beings have no right to use other species to improve their lives, whether for vanity purposes or medical, he said.

"These animals are what the medical profession would call sacrifice, but what from the animals' perspective is murder," he said.

To allow the audience to visually perceive how animals are abused, Shapiro showed a video containing graphic clips of atrocities such as electrocution, bleeding to death and branding.

Shapiro said a similar video that he viewed eight years ago persuaded him to join the struggle for animal rights, and he said he hoped it would do the same for these students.

"I honestly feel that in order to smash human supremacy we need to expose where it has led us," Shapiro said. "I feel it's necessary for us to bear witness to the suffering we cause."

Many of the justifications for human supremacy are the human species' superior culture, technology, rationality and uniqueness, or that humans need to kill other animals to survive. Shapiro said these reasons are merely justifications humans use to assuage their guilt.

"We have all these reasons why we do this, and all of them are groundless," he said. "Other animals kill other animals for survival. We do it for choice."

The hardest part of the animal rights movement is that the actual victims cannot fight back, Shapiro said. He added that each person who contributes to the slaughter by eating meat, wearing clothing made from animal products, or hunting should be held responsible.

"The injustices are being committed in our name," he said. "We pay them to do it."

Money is the driving force behind the atrocities, and they can be stopped if the market for animal products decreases substantially, Shapiro said. "These cruelties don't exist because people are sadists," he said. "They exist because they are profitable."

Andrew Cotter, a sophomore from Chapel Hill, was the sole person to admit to being a human supremacist early in the speech. He said he was moved by Shapiro's presentation, with the images on the video affecting him the most.

"It was an effective workshop and it will change my outlook," he said. "I may not become vegan, but I have to do something."

The University Editor can be reached at udesk@unc.edu.