Forget the Camel by Elizabeth MeLampy

Author Interview

Elizabeth MeLampy is a lawyer and writer who graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. She was named an Emerging Scholar Fellow by the Brooks Institute for Animal Rights Law and Policy in 2020 and received an award for her work with Harvard Law’s Animal Law & Policy Program in 2021. Her first book, Forget the Camel: The Madcap World of Animal Festivals and What They Say About Being Human, is published in April by Apollo Publishers. Welcome to the 28th in my series of interviews with authors about vegan living and animal rights.

How did you become involved with animal rights?

Before I went to law school, I was an omnivore with only a generalized care about animals. I had pets and appreciated wildlife, but that was the extent of my understanding of the world of animals. But in law school, I took a class on animal law that changed my life. I learned details about our food system—namely, how we raise and slaughter animals—not in abstractions and euphemisms but in concrete, specific terms. Rather than mentally glossing over the death of an animal that ended up on my plate as an uncomfortable but necessary step in the food chain, I started familiarizing myself with the process. Phrases like “nonambulatory,” “downed animals,” “zoonotic disease,” “ventilator shut down,” and “ineffective stunning” swarmed in my head as I read slaughter reports and thought critically, for the first time in my life, about what that process was actually like.

As I studied these materials, my dog and cat were curled up next to me; it was impossible not to make the connection that all animals desire to be free from suffering. I began to understand that what many people think of as the “worst” parts of factory farming are, in fact, routine, acceptable, and arguably legal. And even more, I learned about lax labelling laws and realized that you can’t trust what a label claims about animal welfare. Beyond farmed animals, I also learned about animals used in research or for entertainment, and how few legal protections they have. Essentially, I learned about the horrors that befall animals every day all throughout our society, and I decided I couldn’t ignore it.

I wanted desperately to do something to help animals. My first action was to opt out of the industries causing the worst harm. I stopped eating meat and slowly made my way to veganism. I swapped products out for cruelty-free versions, and I stopped buying leather and wool. I also wanted to participate affirmatively in helping animals, so I interned at a few different organizations to learn as much as I could about animal law.

As I continued to think about how the law oppresses animals and facilitates their exploitation, I began to wonder what it would take to change how people think about animals. I think making the world a better place for animals will require a complete shift in how we view them. Writing about animals is part of how I want to help the movement, and I hope to reach people who have never investigated their relationships with animals.

What is it about the law that inspired you to become a lawyer?

I am a longtime student of the humanities. I studied Latin and Greek in high school, and I wrote my college thesis on ancient Christianity. I’ve always been fascinated by people, language, and stories because I think there is immense power in the stories we tell and retell. As individuals, communities, countries, and ultimately as a species, we rely on the power of narrative to shape our identities.

In many ways, heading to law school was an obvious step, because the law is arguably just a bunch of stories-made-enforceable. The law reflects what conduct we condone, what we encourage, and what we prohibit, all of which are socially constructed and subject to change as our stories do. Fifty years ago, women couldn’t get credit cards without a husband and gay activity was criminal; both of those laws were rooted in stories about the role of women and the primacy of nuclear family life. Now we live in a different world where I was able to graduate from law school and marry my wife. Our stories about the role of women and expressions of love changed, and the law followed.

But in the United States, the law is purposefully conservative and slow. Restraint is a feature, not a bug. So, what is lawful does not necessarily equate with what is just, a fact that becomes even more salient when you consider whom the law forgets, ignores, or actively oppresses. I would argue animals fall into that category. And with animals, we can see how powerful stories can determine creatures’ fates: pigs, cows, and chickens are tortured and slaughtered with few legal barriers, but someone who kicks a dog might go to prison for years. The difference in legal treatment reflects the ideas we have normalized in our minds about the animal: chickens are meant to become food; dogs are meant for companionship.

There is so much fascinating work going on in the world of animal law. Some people are trying to expand animal rights; others are trying to push the boundaries of the legal category of “animal” altogether. Ultimately, the law structures our world, and if we want to improve the lives of animals, the law is an important place to work

What is the “Madcap World of Animal Festivals” you describe in Forget the Camel?

Animal festivals—events that use an animal as their central theme—reflect broad truths about how we interact with animals. My book, Forget the Camel, covers well-known animal festivals like the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Sled Race in Alaska and Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. But it also covers less famous events like the Jumping Frog Jubilee in Angels Camp, California, the world’s largest Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater, Texas, and the Maine Lobster Festival.

As I watched people kill, harass, terrify, and parade animals for entertainment, I realized that the stories we tell about animals are made literal at these events: some animals are meant for food, some are harmless, some are dangerous, some are good in some contexts but not others. These stories define animals’ treatment in our society and in the law, and questioning those foundational stories is part of the project of this book. And festivals offer concrete, accessible opportunities to investigate those assumptions about animals. What these festivals normalize is what makes them worth thinking about. Animal festivals both reflect the current reality of our human-animal relationships and risk reinforcing our past mistakes.

In Forget the Camel, I take the reader on a journey through three typical aspects of human-animal relationships: dominance, humor, and reverence. I structure the book in these three parts, progressing from the most obvious examples of animal exploitation to a possible model for future festivals based on respect and consideration for animals. Beginning with the Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater, Texas, where hundreds of snakes are beheaded and skinned in public, and ending with the Butterfly Days Parade and Festival in Pacific Grove, California, where the town welcomes the return of the migrating bugs with a quaint party every year, the book looks at animal festivals as microcosms of our relationships with animals more generally. Each chapter builds on the last as the book explores the wild, wide world of animal festivals, and I hope the book as a whole leaves readers with the conviction that a better future for animals is possible.

As you researched your book, did you discover other animal festivals that you were not able to include? If so, what were they?

Oh, yes! My book covers eight animal festivals, but during my research, I found dozens more in the United States, ranging from bird festivals to fishing contests to derbies. Animal festivals happen all over the country every month of the year. Whenever I told someone I was working on this book, they’d often respond with a variation of: have you heard of this one? Most of the time, I hadn’t. It goes to show how diverse, widespread, and prevalent animal festivals are in our country. I include an appendix in my book listing nearly 50 additional festivals I came across to help make this point.

And that list doesn’t include some more common events that I think count as animal festivals, like horse races, animal fights, rodeos, agricultural fairs, and live nativities. Nor does it include a comprehensive look at animal festivals around the world, of which there are many. Events like the Running of the Bulls or bullfights in Spain, a cat slaughter in New Zealand, or the whale hunt in the Faroe Islands come to mind as potent examples that exist beyond our borders.

Many of these animal festivals are not necessarily notable for their size or influence as individual events. But when taken in the aggregate—when analysed in a long list of festivals that spans the continent and the globe—we can begin to understand the importance of these events as a category. Animal festivals are interesting for what they normalize about animals. Ultimately, most of these events treat animals as expendable props to help tell our own human stories.

But I don’t think tradition is a good enough reason to continue harming animals year after year, especially when these events essentially reinscribe the commodification and disposability of animals. Forget the Camel argues for a more compassionate future that considers the experience of the animals who suffer for the sake of our entertainment.

What action can anyone take if there is an animal festival occurring near where they live?

Many animal festivals have a lot more going on than the animal part. Every event I visited for my book offered a full weekend of activities, like carnival rides, exhibition booths, local award ceremonies, festive food and drinks, and more. It’s possible you could attend the event and enjoy the good without patronizing the part of the event that causes harm to animals. If that feels important or meaningful to you, then that is worthwhile.

But if you believe the festival is harmful, there are a few things you can do to speak up. First, you can refuse to attend and ask your friends and network to refrain from attending, too. Festivals are only as successful as their attendance, and refusing to participate is an act of protest in and of itself. Beyond boycotting an event, you can also reach out to the organizers to raise and discuss your concerns. It’s possible that through thoughtful dialogue you might be able to have an outsized impact on the event and its future.

But you can also protest more actively. You could attend the event and capture it on film, witnessing what happens to the animals in order to spread the word about it. You can launch a campaign (or even just a few posts!) on social media to try to get the word out about how animals might experience the event. PETA or other local organizations may have protest activities planned, and you could try to join those to further advocate for animals. Penning an Op-Ed for a local paper might create a good buzz for the animals. If you’re particularly ambitious, you could even organize a competing event to help draw attendees away from the harmful one.

Part of my philosophy is that if we want to make the world a better place for animals, we have to change how we think about animals. At animal festivals, we have an opportunity to consider the animals, their experiences, and the balance of human benefit with animal harm. Every conversation you have is an opportunity to push the people around you to broaden their consideration of our animal kin.