The Ethics of Eating Meat

Singer lays out many of the themes we have seen in White, Callicott, and Leopold. In presenting multiple arguments for the consumption of meat he is able to systematically refute each argument and strengthen the notion that animals are morally considerable beings. He draws conclusions similar to earlier authors we read in that animals have interests and should be treated ethically just as babies and adults with disabilities should be treated ethically. He also notes the fact that speciesism can be rooted in religious traditions.

Here we get our first look into the world of factory farming as well as alternative farming practices. The real issue is however, is that the reader must decide whether or not they believe killing animals for meat is ethical, and how do they justify this? I imagine it would be a much different world if everyone had to slaughter and process his/her own meat. I know plenty of people who eat meat on a regular basis, but if they had to kill the animal themselves I imagine they would not be able to do so. How many of you would be willing to kill a cow to have your next hamburger?

Singer mentions that hunting and then consuming animals is perhaps more ethical because the animals are able to enjoy their life as free beings. However he points out that it is not always this simple and often times hunting can also be cruel. It comes down to the fact that today, eating meat is really a thing of convenience. We are able to purchase meat at the grocery store, yet few of us know (or even care) how it actually got there. Fast food restaurants can sell meat products for only a few dollars and no one questions how they were made. Not only does the consumption of meat leave a bigger footprint, it can have serious health consequences. Yet, much of the developed world does not question how we get our meat. The animal agriculture sector today is run largely by powerful private companies that have found ways to get skirt around regulations. If there was greater transparency of the large companies so that consumers could witness the methods used in meat production, maybe fewer people would be inclined to eat meat. Attempts have been made with films such as Food Inc., yet there has been no significant drop in meat consumption. It would be one thing if the presence of factory farming ended hunger, malnutrition, or food deserts, yet this is not the case. How can we justify factory farming when these issues still exist and there are sustainable alternatives to eating meat?

Eating meat, at least in the South where I come from, is much more than the simple act of consuming food. It carries social connotations, for example a man who eats meat is perceived as much more of a man than he who chooses not to. People believe that having meat at every meal is a necessity. Contests are created to see who can eat the most meat. Consuming meat has become part of our identity. How then do we convince people today that there is a viable alternative to eating meat?

The Ethics of Eating Meat

This was a great article to read as we wrap up the second and third sections of the class because it does a good job of summarizing many of the arguments we've already seen regarding what ethical treatment (if any) we owe to animals.  The majority of these are brought up in the section titled "Unsound Defenses of Factory Farming," where Singer reminds us of why the three arguments are invalid:

1. Argument: Animals don't treat us well, so why should we treat them well?
   Rebuttal: Babies don't treat us well, either, but we still have ethical obligations to them.
2. Argument: The Benjamin Franklin defense.
   Rebuttal: The Franklin defense is a form of ethical naturalism ("ethics for dummies", as Professor Grady called it)
3. Argument: Sacrificing animals is necessary to providing for human well-being.
   Rebuttal: There are alternatives we could use that certainly wouldn't require factory farming, and likely wouldn't require the consumption of any meat at all.

If none of these arguments are valid, then we are left with the question of what (if anything) does entitle us to eat meat. Singer says that the most convincing arguments for eating meat come from those who most adamantly oppose factory farming.  Even with today’s most popular foodies, such as Michael Pollan, however, Singer raises some important objections. The last section of the article seems to suggest that the only unquestionably ethically sound way to eat meat is through dumpster diving.  Some of the dumpster divers argue that dumpstering, or “freeganism” is the only way to entirely remove oneself from the industrial food system and its ethical dilemmas.  It’s a form of “recycling” that they say is the lowest impact type of consumption.  Although I am drawn to the idea as a realistic way of coping with the modern food industry, I think it holds little value as a basis for our food ethics.  Contrary to what Tim and Shane say, “freeganism” isn’t removing them from the industrial food system at all, but rather is completely dependent upon that system and the waste it produces.  Rather than “recycling” our food, shouldn’t we just change to a system that produces less excess and higher quality to begin with?

-Taylor Sieben

Aldo Leopold - The Land Ethic

As the title suggest, Leopold's argument hinges on the understand and conception of the "land ethic". As apparent in Callicott's Essay, this was a relatively new conception of ethics that was entirely ecocentric (and apparently, vehemently argued among modern philosophers). Leopold's argument is created from a need to re-understand and recapitulate where woman and man must place their ethical considerations. Leopold argues that these new considerations must be based in a central "ethic dealing with human's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it". How does the come into realization? A deliberate move away from any mood of anthropocentrism and a move instead towards considering the woman and man as apart of the world around them and not necessarily being the world around them.

As biotic beings, we, along with the rest of nature, evolve. Beings within eco-environments evolve, the system responds, the organism lives or dies, and wonderfully, the evolutionary chain continues to grow. It is easy to think of human as having the unique position of having stepped outside of this cycle; yet, our DNA still manifests itself in novel and unique ways, our social consciousness changes, declines, grows, and generally moves (in any particular direction), and we continue as individuals that both reflect our past and stand as a new, and perhaps more wiser, form of our genetically former selves. We do, however, stand in a point where our actions do indeed cause long-term, destructive, and certainly poisonous results within the eco-system that once supported our livelihood and well-being as earthly organisms. Leopold's point, then, derives itself from our ongoing process of evolution both literally and metaphorically. Certainly, evolution has brought us,  at least, to highly considering the world around us. With a consciousness, humans have a unique power to reflect on the process of living, to understand that we have an ability to affect and to affect, we can change what of which we are conscious.

The expansion of new moral considerability must be considered if we are to call ourselves as evolving beings. Our considerability of not man-of-nature but man-within-nature must be subject to this evolution as well. "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." Leopold argues that it is this idea for which must be striven. The evolution lies in the consideration of nature as inherently worth moral considerability and as well, the idea that man lies within nature as a product of it.

Taylor's The Ethics of Respect For Nature

            In Paul W. Taylor’s The Ethics of Respect for Nature, Taylor outlines his biocentric outlook on nature and justifies his viewpoint. The biocentric outlook on nature consists of four points: 1. Humans are members of Earth’s community of life. 2. The Earth’s natural ecosystem is interconnected in many complex ways. 3. Each individual organism is thought of as a teleological center of life, pursing its own good. 4. All the points mentioned prior implies that humans are not superior to any other species. Taylor makes the claim that all things have inherent worth regardless of their consciousness. “The idea of a being having a good of its own, as I understand it, does not entail that the being must have interests or take an interest in what affects its life for better of for worse” (176). This claim that Taylor makes supports the idea that human superiority is non-existent. Taylor then goes on to explain, “the inherent worth of an entity does not depend on its merits” (179).  At the very end of his essay, Taylor states that even though all things have inherent worth, this does not imply equal that all things have moral rights.

Questions:

I know that Taylor makes it clear in his essay that he does not want to touch on moral rights at the moment, but I am curious. What does the biocentric outlook on nature imply in terms of our responsibility towards animals and plants? If everything has inherent worth, why do we have the right to kill other animals for our own wellbeing? Or do we have this right?

Also, Taylor states that we only have the ability to use reason because that is how we adapted for our survival. But doesn’t this ability give us some sort of right to use other animals? Other species use other animals to promote their wellbeing. Through evolution we gained the ability to use other organisms to our advantage, just as other animals have, therefore shouldn’t we take advantage of our abilities? On the other hand, being the only organism to possess reason, are we bestowed with a responsibility to take care of other organisms and take action to promote their wellbeing? 

All Animals Are Equal

     Singer is a utilitarian; whether or not an action is good depends upon its consequences, specifically whether it minimizes pain and produces pleasure. Here, he argues that all animals are equally considerable, and that their pains and pleasures are equally important to consider when we act. He first details how speciesism (privileging our own species interests over others) is akin to racism and sexism inasmuch as its logic depends on so privileging the interests of a certain group of socially "superior" individuals on the basis of some arbitrary characteristic (170-1). From this, he says, we cannot base our notion of equality on the idea of sameness or overall comparison of characteristics among sex or race; a characteristic itself (like intelligence, or money-making capacity) could still be used as a rubric for social hierarchy (170-1). He notes an additional reason for not thinking this way: if it is the case that some traits are genetically determined, racism would be seemingly "defensible" (171).* 

Equality, then, does not depend on characteristics:

Equality is a moral idea, not a simple assertion of fact. There is no logically compelling reason for assuming that a factual difference in ability between two people justifies any difference in the amount of consideration we give to satisfying their needs and interests.

 The "principle of equality" is not descriptive, but a "prescription of how we should treat humans" and, as it shall happen, other animals (171). To make this leap, Singer states that our equality consists in each one of our interests counting for no more or less than "one" (171). Interests themselves stem from the capacity to feel pleasure and pain, for "suffering and enjoying things" (172). If a being suffers, then, its (his or her) interests must be taken into consideration when we make our moral calculations. All animals are, thus, equally considerable because all are equally capable of suffering and having interests. If we can at all prevent suffering, we ought to do so. This does not imply that we should afford animals the same rights as we have, although Singer would say that we owe them at least the right of protection from any suffering we might inflict on them (170, 173).

He then applies this framework of equal consideration to two phenomena: meat-eating (and consequently factory farming) and laboratory testing using animals. We eat meat, he claims, purely because it gratifies our tastes; it produces in us a certain kind of pleasure (172-3). We could survive (even thrive) on plant-based proteins, which means that we have no pressing need to eat animals. Thus, in order to produce the least amount of suffering, we should stop eating meat (173). Animal testing, similarly, seems to be a privileging of human interests. We are willing to overlook the suffering of laboratory animals in order to broaden our own knowledge; Singer asks the question why an experimenter would rather use an adult rat than a human infant (173). The answer, he thinks, is mere speciesism.

I am somewhat apprehensive of the above. In principle, I do think we should endeavor to minimize the amount of suffering in the world; factory farms are terribly cruel and our continued support of them is ethically unjustifiable. But I do think that there are multiple ways that one can measure a balance of pleasure or pains. Certain pleasures or pains might well weigh more than others, even as individuals count for one. Under a different metric, we could justify animal testing by highly valuing continued freedom from disease. This does leave us with the problem of justifying why we use adult animals instead of fellow-humans, and why the latter seems more abominable to us than the former.

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* It's important to note that this essay is written in 1974, when the scientific jury was still (more or less, although probably less) out on whether genetics determined character traits like intelligence. His claim regarding genetics and characteristics, however, seems to me to provide a further basis for his argument for animal equality, in addition to bolstering his argument against equality-from-capability. Even if differing genetic codes impart differing capacities among diverse animal groups, superior ability or capacity in no way relates to the equality of those individuals. 

Animal Rights or Animal Welfare?

 

A few weeks ago I was able to attend the annual conference of the Association of Zoos & Aquariums (AZA) in Kansas City.  The AZA is the organization responsible for accrediting zoos in the Americas with a rigorous set of requirements.  One of my main objectives during the conference was to network with animal welfare scientists, following up with my research this summer in San Diego and shopping for potential graduate advisors.  This was a particularly good year for me to go because animal welfare was a significant part of the conference proceedings.  There were five separate sessions on animal welfare issues, and one session offered the first preliminary results of a massive 2012 study of elephant welfare in zoos, the largest study of its kind to date.

One session I attended addressed the work of the Animal Welfare Committee, a body which deliberates the standards of animal welfare to which the AZA holds its member zoos.  The committee is made up largely of scientists in whose work I have an interest, including my mentor from this summer.  One of the talks during the session, given by Dr. Nadja Wielebnowski of the Oregon Zoo, was called "Defining Animal Welfare".  I want to share some of the points from that talk as a counter-perspective to Tom Regan's perspective on animal rights.

 

Brambell's five freedoms (1965)

The Animal Welfare Committee (AWC) thinks of itself as promoting ethics with science.  Their proposed ethical obligation does not seem too different from Regan's view:  "Animals should be treated kindly and without inflicting any unnecessary pain or suffering."  In order to appropriately address this ethical concern, the AWC promotes the use of scientific metrics to assess animals' states of well-being.  This combination of ethics and science is evident in their definition of animal welfare:

Animal welfare is the degree to which an animal can cope with its environment and associated challenges as determined by a combination of measures of physical and psychological health and well-being.

Animal welfare refers to an animal's collective physical, mental, and emotional states over a period of time and is measured on a continuum.

 This definition proposes that animals experience good welfare when they are under conditions like those projected in Brambell's five freedoms (poster above).  This definition also makes animal welfare measurable on a continuum, taking it out of the realm of subjective speculation and placing it the realm of science.  It is for this reason that the AWC is made up largely of scientists, as they would have the most objective view on what constitutes good animal welfare.  The AZA also prompts its member zoos to use science to monitor the welfare of their collections.

Overall animal welfare science is relatively new thing on the zoo scene.  Prior to the last decade the quality of animal care was thought to be the only factor affecting animal welfare, but now more factors like psychological states, environmental enrichment, and hormone levels are being taken into account.  This requires a barrage of scientific monitoring that can assess levels of all of these factors.

This leads back into philosophy in the AWC's stance on animal rights:  The concepts of animal welfare and animal rights are considered closely related and sometimes synonymous, but the AWC considers itself a proponent of animal welfare and not animal rights.  The difference is in the use of science;  the AWC considers animal welfare a scientific and ethical decision based on a scientific approach to life condition, while animal rights is an ethical and philosophical belief, one which cannot be validated with science.

What do you think of this distinction?  Is the AWC correct in limiting its scope to what it can assess scientifically, or does failing to endorse animal rights represent a bias in favor of zoos?  Given Regan's proposed goals of the animal rights movement, his viewpoint would not favor the existence of zoos at all, while the AZA continually argues for the role that zoos play in educating the public about conservation and providing support for animal conservation around the globe.