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.