Later this week, at least two philosophers will risk arrest by taking part in the largest-ever open rescue in the history of animal activism.

Ridglan Farms, located in Wisconsin, is, according to David Killoren, visiting professor of philosophy at Grand Valley State University, “one of the largest and most notorious suppliers of research dogs in the United States”.

This coming Sunday, Dr. Killoren and approximately 2000 others will converge on Ridglan Farms with the aim of freeing the beagles confined there. Participants in the activity commit to an agreement that states, among other things: “During any action, I agree to embody nonviolence in my tone, words, and actions. I will act compassionately towards everyone, including animals, workers, police, and fellow activists.”

In the following guest post, Dr. Killoren discusses the plan and the reasoning for it, and raises some questions he thinks other philosophers might have about it.

The Philosophy of Invading a Beagle Breeding Facility
by David Killoren

On April 19, if all goes to plan, the largest open rescue in the history of animal activism will occur. 2000 activists will attempt to rescue 2000 beagles from Ridglan Farms in Wisconsin, one of the largest and most notorious suppliers of research dogs in the United States. (For the dogs who are removed on the 19th, a network of foster homes awaits; those interested in adopting a dog rescued from Ridglan can apply here.) Participants in this action will take a significant risk of arrest, and may be charged with felonies such as theft. There are at least two philosophers—me and Aaron Yarmel—who will be participating.

If you’re a philosopher who will be there, feel free to out yourself in the comments below. And to anyone who’s feeling inspired to join: signup at the official page may be closed by the time you are seeing this post, but if you email me at [email protected], I can put you in touch with the organizers who can offer you a role.

The point of this post is to provide an occasion for discussion among philosophers about open rescue, and about confrontational animal activism more generally. I’ll say a bit about what open rescue is. Then I’ll raise the question of whether open rescue should be counted as a form of civil disobedience. Finally, I’ll discuss what the purpose of open rescue might be.

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Wikipedia’s entry on open rescue is actually pretty good, but here’s the idea in a nutshell.

Farmers, scientists, and others routinely use animals in ways that are profitable and that serve human interests but are extremely harmful to the animals. Many philosophers and non-philosophers believe that this state of affairs is deeply immoral and unjust. And many of us believe that, when someone is being unjustly and immorally harmed, we should take action to save them.

And historically, that’s what many animal activists have done. You’ve probably heard about Animal Liberation Front (ALF), an activist group that gained notoriety for invading farms and laboratories, often in secret and at night, typically masked so as to hide their identities. ALF activists saved the lives of many animals. And many were convicted of crimes including trespassing, theft, and property destruction. The founder of ALF, Ronnie Lee, served more than a decade in prison, and many other ALF activists received heavy penalties as well.

Open rescue is like some of the familiar tactics of the ALF, except that it’s open. Open rescuers do not hide their identities. Often, they announce their intentions in advance. They usually operate in broad daylight. And they are happy to be photographed or filmed. In a typical open rescue, dozens or hundreds of activists may show up to a farm, laboratory, or breeding facility, enter without permission of the owners, break down doors or smash windows as necessary for entry, and remove animals.

Open rescuers do not believe that they are doing anything that should have to be kept a secret. Their argument is that there is a quite general right to rescue animals who are in distress and need help. Thus, for example, if you see a dog trapped in a hot car, and the only way to save the dog is to break the window of the car without permission of the car owner, then you have the right to do that. And open rescuers argue that they have the right to do the same for animals whose lives are in danger in farms, slaughterhouses, laboratories, breeding facilities, and so on.

Open rescue is a form of confrontational animal activism that originated in Melbourne, Australia. (In this podcast episode, Rach Cosker-Rowland and I discuss philosophical issues concerning confrontational activism in the Australian context.) But the tactic has ascended to new levels in the United States, largely as a result of the operations of an activist group called Direct Action Everywhere (DxE). DxE has been conducting increasingly daring open rescues for more than a decade. And now Wayne Hsiung, the founder of DxE, is organizing the largest open rescue in history. Here’s a 30-minute video in which Hsiung explains a theory of social change that underlies his approach to open rescue broadly, and the April 19 action specifically.

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Should we think of open rescue as a form of civil disobedience? In her influential book, A Duty to Resist (Oxford, 2018), Candice Delmas sets out a standard conception of civil disobedience onto the table when she writes:

To call a disobedient act civil is to highlight the agent’s principled motivations and communicative intentions, to make a disruptive breach of law intelligible as a speech-act—an address to the community—and, thus, to begin the work of its justification. (p. 22)

On this characterization, civil disobedience involves breach of law. But open rescuers, in at least some cases, believe that what they are doing is legal—just as it’s legal in many jurisdictions to break a window to save a dog trapped in a hot car. (The law on the matter of dogs trapped in hot cars, by the way, varies from state to state.) In such cases, open rescuers act in defiance of authorities, and invite arrest and trial, in hope of an opportunity to prove in court that their acts are legal. This seems to differ from some of the paradigm cases of civil disobedience, such as the case of Rosa Parks, who broke laws in order to reveal their injustice.

Whether or not we decide to call open rescue in all cases a form of civil disobedience, open rescue is similar to many of the historically significant acts of civil disobedience in that it’s an attempt to push for social change through non-violent direct action. Maybe that’s all that matters. Still, the taxonomical question here might be of some interest. Traditionally, and for good reason, civil disobedience is a particularly respected form of activism, but I’m not sure whether our use of this category carves activism at its joints.

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Is open rescue a good idea? Evidently, I think so, or else I wouldn’t willingly take on the costs and risks involved in participating in open rescue.

But let’s consider a hypothetical. Suppose that, over time, after many victories in court, the legality of open rescue becomes settled and universally accepted. Sometime in the not-too-distant future, it is agreed by everyone that it is legally permissible for any human to enter any place where animals’ lives or well-being are threatened, and to remove any animals found on the premises.

That hypothetical scenario seems pretty unlikely to me, but it’s certainly possible and imaginable. So, let’s ask: If this scenario actually came to pass, what good would that do for animals?

Here, numbers matter. In the United States alone, billions of animals are used each year for human purposes (including but not limited to agriculture and research). It is simply impossible, practically speaking, for activists to rescue that many animals—even if there were no legal barriers to our doing so, and even if the legal owners of these animals made no attempt to prevent us from doing so. In a world where the right to rescue was legally established, the vast majority of animals threatened by humans would still not be rescued.

What prevents us from rescuing the animals, it turns out, is not just the law. Nor is it security guards, walls, or moats. It’s the sheer number of animals who are being used for human purposes.

So, if it’s not just the law that’s stopping us from rescuing animals, what’s the point of trying to establish the legality of rescuing animals? I think the point, or at least a main point, has to be to make a moral argument to the public. Open rescue is a way of arguing that all animals–not just dogs trapped in hot cars, but also dogs trapped in breeding facilities like Ridglan Farms, and pigs trapped in gas chambers, and chickens trapped in crates on trucks bound for slaughter, and so on—are the sorts of beings who deserve to be saved. If the public were somehow to be persuaded to accept that, quite a lot might follow.