Carry2
2013-06-17, 08:09 PM
Since this kind of got brought up (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=286516) recently, and I've been trying to get to grips with the question myself lately, I thought I might start a fresh thread on the subject. I have a lot of respect for the basic ethical premise of vegetarianism and the animal rights movement in general- these people are, after all, taking on a non-trivial inconvenience for the sake of reducing net suffering in the world. In itself, that's a laudable, even unarguably worthwhile goal. But actually digging into the questions raises a host of complications, and while I'm not proposing definite solutions in most cases, I do want to cover the bases before the most salient points get inextricably buried somewhere in the middle of a 20-page thread.
I should also mention I'm totally living in glass houses, here- while I'm fortunate enough to live in a country where most animals are raised on pasture, rather than factory-farmed, I can't really claim with any statistical confidence that everything put on my plate lived well and died cleanly... and I tend to just eat what's on my plate. But maybe I'll start revisiting that policy.
Self-Awareness
* There's a continuous spectrum of physical and neurological development in between bacteria (whom we literally cannot avoid slaughtering by the billion every day) and the Bonobo Chimpanzee (which are basically people with a few different hangups.) It's functionally impossible to put a blanket ban on killing any form of animal life, but it's equally myopic to declare anything non-human morally incidental.
* It's difficult to argue that things like oysters and mealworms have an intrinsically greater moral worth than cucumbers and redwoods, given that the difference in behavioural complexity is pretty marginal. It's also pretty unlikely that unfertilised chicken eggs, which don't even have a nervous system, can be described as capable of suffering (http://www.grandin.com/welfare/animals.are.not.things.html). (Fish and reptiles are more of a grey area.)
* It's possible that the amount of intelligence here isn't as important here as the animal's quality of awareness- i.e, do they have consciousness, individual personalities, a sense of pleasure/pain, the ability to learn or form memories- but this can be difficult to objectively measure, particularly when animals as different as wild boar, parrots and octopi have similarly sophisticated cognition despite radically different brain structures.
Practical Concerns
* As I'll return to later, an animal's natural death is unlikely to be much more pleasant than even a fairly grisly end in the abbatoir. However, the kind of system that's indifferent to their suffering in death is unlikely to be much more concerned with their living standards the rest of the time, and just because a particular policy is more humane than the default, isn't an excuse for not doing better (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMqYYXswono&t=1m56s).
* Factory farming raises other, human-centric concerns. Overcrowding in these places tends to be so severe that animals have to be fed a steady diet of antibiotics to compensate for their stressed-to-extinction immune systems, which increases the likelihood of antibiotic-resistant pathogens developing and being transferred to nearby human populations. (To say nothing of the fact that their faeces become, for all practical purposes, unusable toxic waste (http://www.nrdc.org/water/pollution/nspills.asp).)
* The dietary case for going pure-vegan is pretty mixed. It is possible, but tricky, to get your full complement of vitamins and minerals this way, though generally speaking, getting at least a small amount of animal protein will simplify your life. That said, there are good reasons to favour at least a predominantly vegetarian diet, and not just from the perspective of personal health. Farmed meat (especially meat from mammals and birds) is much less efficient to produce on a per-acre basis than equivalent vegetable calories, and this concern will become more pressing as global populations rise.
* Animals don't have to be kept for meat, of course. But since I can't see the logic to abandoning animal products entirely (see below,) and since animals are not immortal, for the life of me I can't see a good reason for not eating them once they're dead, or even for not 'easing their passing'. (There are, of course, questions about the appropriate age, methods, and circumstances for slaughter, but the idea doesn't seem intrinsically wrong.)
* The obvious exception: pest control. Thing is, while few are likely to weep for the anophales mosquito or tsetse fly, a number of far more highly-developed animals routinely interfere with human interests in non-trivial ways- rats in your granary or a tiger in your goatpen are no joke for 3rd-world farmers. Also, while neutering as a method of population control might seem morally superior, it's hard to argue that it's not a violation of an animal's most fundamental interests.
Greater And Lesser Evils
* Strictly speaking, a total abandonment of the use of all animal products would drive a significant number of domesticated animal breeds to the verge of extinction. Even in cases where their ancestral habitat still exists, domesticated breeds often cannot survive in the wild, and/or detrimentally contaminate the gene pool of their wild counterparts. Without an economic basis for maintaining an animal's population, it's difficult to see how relegation to captivity in a handful of zoos works out as a long-term net win for the cause.
* Medical testing. Legal regulations on this point (though not always enforcement) are actually pretty stringent, and the arguments against it are incoherent: If animals are similar enough to us in physical and neurological terms that they should have rights, then they are similar enough to yield valid insights into treatment of human disease through experimentation. Animal rights advocates will often argue the former extensively, while denying any vestige of the latter. And there has not been a single significant medical breakthrough in the last hundred years that did not depend crucially, in some form, on animal testing.
* Game hunting. An animal's natural death in the wild is highly unlikely to be as humane as a bullet through the ribcage. Being torn apart or asphyxiated alive by predators, starving through overpopulation, or expiring from some lingering disease are much more likely. And while it's less crucial than in the case of domesticated species, wildlife preserves can benefit from the revenue and public consciousness associated with supervised hunting. (Though this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_hunting) still seems a hugely inefficient way to do it.)
So... discuss.
I should also mention I'm totally living in glass houses, here- while I'm fortunate enough to live in a country where most animals are raised on pasture, rather than factory-farmed, I can't really claim with any statistical confidence that everything put on my plate lived well and died cleanly... and I tend to just eat what's on my plate. But maybe I'll start revisiting that policy.
Self-Awareness
* There's a continuous spectrum of physical and neurological development in between bacteria (whom we literally cannot avoid slaughtering by the billion every day) and the Bonobo Chimpanzee (which are basically people with a few different hangups.) It's functionally impossible to put a blanket ban on killing any form of animal life, but it's equally myopic to declare anything non-human morally incidental.
* It's difficult to argue that things like oysters and mealworms have an intrinsically greater moral worth than cucumbers and redwoods, given that the difference in behavioural complexity is pretty marginal. It's also pretty unlikely that unfertilised chicken eggs, which don't even have a nervous system, can be described as capable of suffering (http://www.grandin.com/welfare/animals.are.not.things.html). (Fish and reptiles are more of a grey area.)
* It's possible that the amount of intelligence here isn't as important here as the animal's quality of awareness- i.e, do they have consciousness, individual personalities, a sense of pleasure/pain, the ability to learn or form memories- but this can be difficult to objectively measure, particularly when animals as different as wild boar, parrots and octopi have similarly sophisticated cognition despite radically different brain structures.
Practical Concerns
* As I'll return to later, an animal's natural death is unlikely to be much more pleasant than even a fairly grisly end in the abbatoir. However, the kind of system that's indifferent to their suffering in death is unlikely to be much more concerned with their living standards the rest of the time, and just because a particular policy is more humane than the default, isn't an excuse for not doing better (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMqYYXswono&t=1m56s).
* Factory farming raises other, human-centric concerns. Overcrowding in these places tends to be so severe that animals have to be fed a steady diet of antibiotics to compensate for their stressed-to-extinction immune systems, which increases the likelihood of antibiotic-resistant pathogens developing and being transferred to nearby human populations. (To say nothing of the fact that their faeces become, for all practical purposes, unusable toxic waste (http://www.nrdc.org/water/pollution/nspills.asp).)
* The dietary case for going pure-vegan is pretty mixed. It is possible, but tricky, to get your full complement of vitamins and minerals this way, though generally speaking, getting at least a small amount of animal protein will simplify your life. That said, there are good reasons to favour at least a predominantly vegetarian diet, and not just from the perspective of personal health. Farmed meat (especially meat from mammals and birds) is much less efficient to produce on a per-acre basis than equivalent vegetable calories, and this concern will become more pressing as global populations rise.
* Animals don't have to be kept for meat, of course. But since I can't see the logic to abandoning animal products entirely (see below,) and since animals are not immortal, for the life of me I can't see a good reason for not eating them once they're dead, or even for not 'easing their passing'. (There are, of course, questions about the appropriate age, methods, and circumstances for slaughter, but the idea doesn't seem intrinsically wrong.)
* The obvious exception: pest control. Thing is, while few are likely to weep for the anophales mosquito or tsetse fly, a number of far more highly-developed animals routinely interfere with human interests in non-trivial ways- rats in your granary or a tiger in your goatpen are no joke for 3rd-world farmers. Also, while neutering as a method of population control might seem morally superior, it's hard to argue that it's not a violation of an animal's most fundamental interests.
Greater And Lesser Evils
* Strictly speaking, a total abandonment of the use of all animal products would drive a significant number of domesticated animal breeds to the verge of extinction. Even in cases where their ancestral habitat still exists, domesticated breeds often cannot survive in the wild, and/or detrimentally contaminate the gene pool of their wild counterparts. Without an economic basis for maintaining an animal's population, it's difficult to see how relegation to captivity in a handful of zoos works out as a long-term net win for the cause.
* Medical testing. Legal regulations on this point (though not always enforcement) are actually pretty stringent, and the arguments against it are incoherent: If animals are similar enough to us in physical and neurological terms that they should have rights, then they are similar enough to yield valid insights into treatment of human disease through experimentation. Animal rights advocates will often argue the former extensively, while denying any vestige of the latter. And there has not been a single significant medical breakthrough in the last hundred years that did not depend crucially, in some form, on animal testing.
* Game hunting. An animal's natural death in the wild is highly unlikely to be as humane as a bullet through the ribcage. Being torn apart or asphyxiated alive by predators, starving through overpopulation, or expiring from some lingering disease are much more likely. And while it's less crucial than in the case of domesticated species, wildlife preserves can benefit from the revenue and public consciousness associated with supervised hunting. (Though this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_hunting) still seems a hugely inefficient way to do it.)
So... discuss.