By Jessica Scott-Reid
Jessica is a Canadian writer, animal advocate and plant-based food expert. Her work appears regularly in media across Canada and the US.
“In ‘Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves’, Jeff Sebo argues forcefully that we have a responsibility to help everyone affected by human activity, including other animals. By reducing support for factory farming, deforestation, and the wildlife trade; increasing support for humane, healthful, and sustainable alternatives; and including the health and welfare of nonhuman animals in our advocacy and political agendas, we can create a better future for humans and nonhumans alike.”
It is hard to pinpoint Jeff Sebo’s top talent. The PhD, professor, author, activist and more, wields critical influence in each of his roles. This propensity for taking an intersectional and cross-disciplinary approach to both his academic work and advocacy is what seems to fuel Sebo’s massive passion for animals, the planet and people, and has helped guide his very successful and impactful career. Sebo’s interest in animals he says, was born from a philosophical perspective on animal rights that just couldn’t be refuted. And today, that philosophy has broadened to include a new and crucial perspective: that only by saving the animals can we save ourselves.
Therein lies the premise of Sebo's latest book entitled: Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves. Published earlier this year, the book brings together concerns regarding human and animal rights, global health, and climate change, with new ideas for advocacy and policy change.
Sebo recalls that his interests in animals and in philosophy were piqued simultaneously. “I went to college at Texas Christian University and had some wonderful professors there who were progressive, human and animal rights scholars and advocates,” he says. “They taught me Peter Singer and Tom Regan, and other animal rights scholars in my freshman year. And I was persuaded by those arguments right away," he says.
According to those arguments — often considered some of the fundamental building blocks of animal rights — "we have no good reason to discriminate on the basis of species membership," Sebo explains. "We should instead extend equal consideration to the interests and needs of everyone when deciding how to treat them, and when we do that, we realize that our current treatment of animals in farming, research, and other industries is clearly morally wrong."
Upon exposure to these philosophical perspectives, Sebo began his own journey towards no longer consuming animal products, first giving up meat then eventually going vegan.
Getting involved with animal activism in college, Sebo says, came about because “that was basically, of all the issues I cared about, the one that was most neglected by student groups.” Deciding it would be the best use of his time to focus on animals, Sebo organized an animal rights group on campus.
In graduate school, Sebo says he remained concerned about animal issues personally, but drifted away from it in his scholarship. “I wrongly thought that all the philosophical questions were answered: ‘animals matter, we need to stop exploiting them, and the rest is education and advocacy.’ I was wrong about that,” he says.
As fate would have it, while Sebo was completing his PhD in Philosophy at New York University in 2011, the school was in the process of developing an animal studies program. As a post-doc, Sebo then jumped on board to help build the program, “giving me this huge luxury, this opportunity to pivot and focus my professional work back on this issue that I cared a lot about and develop my research and teaching in that direction.” By 2018, the program had grown from an undergraduate minor to a full graduate program with a research centre: The Center for Environmental and Animal Protection.
Sebo argues that animals are part of our global health and environmental crisis “both as causes through no fault of their own, and as victims.”
Today, Sebo is the director of that graduate program, inspiring new students and researchers while continuing to explore those additional and budding philosophical questions around animals. As mentioned, Sebo is particularly interested in studying how human exploitation of animals effects the broader world around us. In Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves, Sebo argues that animals are part of our global health and environmental crisis “both as causes through no fault of their own, and as victims,” he explains. “Industries like factory farming and deforestation and the wildlife trade harm and kill hundreds of millions of animals per year, and then contribute to global health and environmental threats like pandemics and climate change, which in turn harm human and non-human animals.”
To aid in his advocacy, Sebo is also on the board of directors of Minding Animals, which works to advance the legal rights of animals, “but more importantly to advance the field of animal studies,” Sebo explains. This is done by holding events as well as “co-organizing a major animal studies conference in a different country, so that every three years we can bring this growing animal studies and advocacy community to a new part of the world,” to meet and learn from local scholars and advocates, “and gradually build an international infrastructure for animal studies and animal advocacy,” he says.
A big lesson Sebo has learned as a result of his years of study, teaching and advocacy, is that there is never an end to the philosophical questions around animals. Because, as he says, not only must we be concerned about the current ways in which humans harm animals, but also new ways too, “like chimera research, like xenotransplantation [transplanting organs between species], like insect farming, like octopus farming,” he says, “before they scale and become entrenched in our global economy and people get used to them, and then they become much harder to dislodge.”
Ultimately, Sebo’s timely, well-informed and critical message is: “We really need to not only care about animal welfare and animal rights for its own sake, but also include animals in our broader discussions about human rights and global health and environmental justice.” Save the animals, and we save it all.
Jeff Sebo is Clinical Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Affiliated Professor of Bioethics, Medical Ethics, and Philosophy, and Director of the Animal Studies M.A. Program at New York University. He is co-author of Chimpanzee Rights and Food, Animals, and the Environment. His latest book is: Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves.