Melanie Joy Interview

Melanie Joy is a social psychologist, professor, and personal coach. She has been involved in the animal liberation movement since 1989 and has worked as an activist, educator, and organizer. Her academic areas of specialization include the psychosociology of violence toward animals and humans and organizational behavior. She has written a number of articles and has been interviewed for magazines, books, and radio on her work. For more information about Melanie Joy please visit http://www.melaniejoy.org/.

EG: Tell us about your new book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism.

Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows is the first book about not simply why people shouldn’t eat meat, but why they do eat meat. It explores the psychology of meat eating, which stems from the belief system, or ideology, that I call carnism.

In Why We Love Dogs...I provide answers to the following questions: Why do we love some animals and eat others? Why do meat eaters around the world tend to find the flesh of only a small handful out of thousands of animal species appetizing – and the flesh of all other species disgusting and offensive? How can humane people participate in inhumane practices without realizing what they’re doing? What are the social and psychological mechanisms that meat-eating societies use to prevent people from reflecting on their food choices when it comes to eating animals? How can we shift, as individuals and as a society, from a mentality that enables mass exploitation to a mindset of empowerment and compassion? How does eating animals negatively impact not only the animals, our health, and the environment, but also our psychological wellbeing?

By answering these questions, I hope to help meat eaters (carnists) become more aware of the invisible system that shapes their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors when it comes to eating meat, so that they can make more empowered and informed choices as citizens and consumers. I wrote the book hoping to invite meat eaters into the conversation, so that they could feel empathized with and respected. I also wrote the book to help vegetarians and vegans understand the system they’re working to transform and the meat eaters they encounter, so they can advocate and communicate with meat eaters more effectively. I hope my book will help vegetarians and vegans feel more grounded and empowered in their food choices and better able to articulate the reasons beneath their choice to stop eating animals.

EG: Why do we call some animals pets and other animals dinner?

The reason we love some animals and eat others is because there is an invisible, dominant belief system, or ideology, that shapes our attitudes and behaviors toward animals, conditioning us to love some animals and eat others. This belief system is what I call carnism. Carnism is essentially the opposite of veganism; we tend to assume it’s only vegetarians and vegans who bring their beliefs to the table, but when eating animals isn’t a necessity, it’s a choice—and choices always stem from beliefs.

Because for most people in the world today eating meat is a choice, I use the term “carnist” rather than “meat eater;” “carnist” accurately reflects that an ideology is at work when a person eats meat (consider how we don’t say “plant eater” when we describe a vegetarian). “Carnivore” and “omnivore” are also not accurate terms to describe those who eat meat. Carnivores are animals that need meat in order to survive, and omnivores are animals that are able to survive consuming both plant and animal matter. “Carnivore” and “omnivore” reflect one’s biology, rather than one’s ideology. “Carnist” is not meant to be a negative term, but merely a descriptive one. It only makes sense to have a name for someone who acts in accordance with the tenets of carnism, just as we have a name for someone who acts in accordance with the tenets of vegetarianism.

Carnism is a violent ideology, in that it is literally organized around physical violence. Meat cannot be procured without slaughter. And its tenets—beliefs and practices—run counter to the values of most people; most of us care about animals and don’t want them to suffer needlessly and intensively. So ideologies such as carnism keep themselves alive by utilizing specific strategies, or defense mechanisms, to hide the contradictions between our values and practices, allowing us to make exceptions to what we would normally consider ethical. The primary defense of the system is invisibility and the primary way the ideology stays invisible is by remaining unnamed. If we don’t name it, we won’t see it, and if we don’t see it, we can’t question or challenge it. And the victims of the system also remain invisible: the billions and billions of animals who exist as living commodities, the meat consumers whose health is seriously compromised, the environment, the workers in meat production plants—the system victimizes all of us.

Carnism is so entrenched that it essentially acts as the filter through which we see the world. In other words, we learn to look at the world through the eyes of the system, so we start seeing certain animals not as living beings, but as “food” from a very early age and we are discouraged from examining this perspective through our lives. In other words, carnism teaches us how not to think and feel when it comes to meat and the animals we eat.

EG: What is selective empathy?

Selective empathy is empathizing with only certain individuals or groups. We tend to feel more empathy for those we perceive to be more like ourselves; in other words, the more we identify with someone—see something of ourselves in him or her and see something of him or her in ourselves—the more we empathize with this individual. And the more we empathize with another, the more likely we are to treat him or her with compassion. Carnism blocks our sense of empathy for the animals whom we’re socialized to consume; we learn to think of pigs, chickens, and cows, for example, as fundamentally different from ourselves and from other more “humanlike” animals. Moving beyond carnism requires us to restore this blocked connection.

EG: Please present us with the facts about meat production.

Modern meat production is arguably the most brutal practice in the history of humankind. In the United States alone, ten billion land animals are slaughtered every year for their flesh and other body parts. These animals live in horrific conditions, crammed into pens and cages in CAFOs or “factory farms,” and treated as living machines, as units of production. They are often cruelly mishandled, die from disease or exposure before even making it to the slaughterhouse, live in filthy conditions, and many of them never see the light of day. It is not uncommon for farmed animals to be shackled and slaughtered while still conscious. The suffering of these creatures is unimaginable.
Moreover, carnism is a system of victimization, in that everyone in the system suffers. Meat production is a leading cause of every major form of environmental destruction, from deforestation to water depletion. Meat consumption is a leading cause of disease among humans; it’s been connected with the development of many types of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and pandemic flus. Meatpacking is considered the single most dangerous and exploitative factory job in the United States. Carnism victimizes all of us: the animals, the environment, meat consumers, and meat packers.

EG: What will change the way people think about meat in general?

I strongly believe that by viewing meat eating not simply as a matter of personal ethics but as the inevitable end result of a belief system we can dramatically change the way we think and talk about the issue. While there are many things that will help change the way people think about meat (e.g., new information on the health hazards of a meat-based diet, a growing awareness of the environmental impact of meat production), I believe that by understanding not merely the truth about meat production, but the truth about carnism—the system that shapes our attitudes, feelings, and behaviors toward the animals who are raised and killed for human consumption—we can free ourselves from the constraints of the system to think freely and reconnect with our natural empathy for other living beings.

EG: Once you said, “Had I known that eating meat was a choice, I may well have chosen otherwise.” What did you mean by that?

What I meant was that I grew up as both an animal lover and a carnist. I loved animals and also ate them regularly. My carnistic mentality was such that I “just stopped thinking” when it came to eating animals. I didn’t realize that I was psychologically and emotionally disconnecting from the truth of my experience when I ate meat. I didn’t realize that I was acting in a way that was dramatically opposed to my core values, and I didn’t realize that I was making a choice when it came to eating meat. Eating meat was just a given, the way things were, the “normal, natural, and necessary” thing to do. The paradox of the system is that it conditions us to choose to eat meat, but at the same time it prevents us from realizing that we’re actually making a choice when we do eat meat.

EG: The book encourages readers to question their own authority. What we consider "normal, natural, and necessary" to consume?

In Why We Love Dogs..., I explain how we learn to trust authorities, even though those authorities are operating within a carnistic framework. These authority figures are our social institutions and the professionals that represent them, and such entities play a key role in promoting what I call the Three Ns of Justification: eating meat is normal, natural, and necessary. The Three Ns are actually myths, and they’ve been used to maintain and support virtually all violent ideologies. I explain that we need to question all authorities, including our own authority—the voice in our heads that guides our choices. Because we internalize carnism, taking in the system’s logic as our own, we inevitably develop a carnistic mentality. We need to be willing to question what we’ve been taught, what we’ve accepted as our own truth.

EG: Are you seeing progress in people's attitudes towards the animals?

Yes; this is the case at least in the United States (I’m not familiar with statistics from other countries). The number of vegetarians is on the rise, vegetarian organizations are growing in size and strength, meat substitutes can be found in virtually all major grocery food store chains, “vegan” is becoming a household word in some parts of the country, and more and more books and articles on the consequences of meat production and consumption are being published.

EG: Do you think the environmental movement is becoming more compassionate towards animals?

To my knowledge, the dialogue between vegan activists and environmentalists is starting to open up more. I have no doubt that most people in the environmental movement do in fact care about animals and the impact of meat production on the planet. The dialogue between vegans and environmentalists (and this distinction is often a false dichotomy—many people are both vegans and environmentalists) has been historically problematic for a number of reasons. My hope is that understanding carnism will help unite animal activists and environmentalists, as we can see that we’re all fighting for a common cause.

EG: Is eating soya causing damage to the planet?

I can’t comment on this because I don’t have enough evidence to discuss it fully.