November 15, 2022

133: "I relate directly to other creatures - I don't need any belief system" - Karen Davis - United Poultry Concerns President - Sentientism

1 hour 14 minutes

Karen was an animal rights advocate and president of United Poultry Concerns. UPC is a non-profit organization founded in 1990 to address the treatment of domestic fowl in farming – including chickens, turkeys, and ducks. Karen also ran an animal sanctuary. She was the author of several books on veganism and animal rights, including Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry (1997) and The Holocaust and the Henmaid's Tale: A Case for Comparing Atrocities (2005).

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?”

Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.

We discuss:

00:00 Welcome

01:23 Karen's Intro

- @United Poultry Concerns

- Meeting Viva the chicken

- "A lifelong affinity for birds"

- Seeing a friend's father killing a hen

05:05 What's Real?

- Growing up in Pennsylvania

- Catching & killing wildlife "my parents never objected"

- Everybody went to some kind of church "that's what we did then... respectable people go to church"

- Sunday school "for parents to have some time to themselves"

- Parents not very religious

- "God didn't make rats, the devil made rats" to rationalise killing

- "I was never a believer"... "If I joined the church... I could wear stockings instead of socks"

13:08 What Matters?

- "I was always directly affected by others whether they were human or other than human"

- Childhood distress: a duck being run over, baby birds falling from nests

- #empathy & #compassion as a moral core

21:02 Who Matters?

- Father & brothers hunting pheasants, squirrels & rabbits

- Realising what father was doing in the cellar

- Arguing at the dinner table "I wasn't thinking about who was on my plate"

- Father: "Everything hunts the rabbit"

- "I relate directly to other creatures - I don't need any belief system at all"

- Reading "The First Step" by #leotolstoy . Giving up animal products as the first step of #nonviolence ... "that was really it - I didn't want to eat animal flesh any more... that was in 1974"

- #Animaltesting . #EdwardTaub 's primate research #SilverSpringmonkeys

- Nurses having to do animal experiments to qualify

- Do you need to have a psychopathic detachment to be a vet/doctor?

- Being a juvenile probation officer

- Being traumatised by SPCA literature on #harpseal slaughter "This was my eye opening experience of institutionalised animal abuse"

- Witnessing seal culling in Canada in 1974

- National Geographic asking photographers to damage Beaver habitats to get a good story

- Brian Davies' book "Savage Luxury"

- Lisa Kemmerer

- Cultural/traditional/religious justifications for causing harm...

...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form.

Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!

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By Jamie Woodhouse

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