As prohibitions on methods of animal exploitation—rather than just regulations which allow those forms of exploitation to persist if they’re more “humane”—I think these are different than typical welfare reforms. As I say in the post, this is the position taken by abolitionist-in-chief Gary Francione in Rain Without Thunder.
Of course the line between welfare reform and prohibition is murky. You could argue that these are not, in fact, prohibitions on the relevant form of exploitation—namely, raising animals to be killed for food. But in trying to figure out whether welfare reforms delay progress, we have to go on what evidence we have...and the fact that we do have these prohibitions on certain practices, in many cases based on the explicit recognition of animal interests that shouldn’t be violated (e.g. the Five Freedoms), seems to be about as good as it gets in terms of historical evidence bearing on the debate over welfarism.
As prohibitions on methods of animal exploitation—rather than just regulations which allow those forms of exploitation to persist if they’re more “humane”—I think these are different than typical welfare reforms. As I say in the post, this is the position taken by abolitionist-in-chief Gary Francione in Rain Without Thunder.
Of course the line between welfare reform and prohibition is murky. You could argue that these are not, in fact, prohibitions on the relevant form of exploitation—namely, raising animals to be killed for food. But in trying to figure out whether welfare reforms delay progress, we have to go on what evidence we have...and the fact that we do have these prohibitions on certain practices, in many cases based on the explicit recognition of animal interests that shouldn’t be violated (e.g. the Five Freedoms), seems to be about as good as it gets in terms of historical evidence bearing on the debate over welfarism.