It's a Matter of Respect

I'm home from one trip and about to embark on another, so obviously I'm too busy for blogging--there's cleaning and packing to do, right?  Right, but that would be so boring....

Some long drives in the past week gave me time to think about animal welfare regulation just a little more.  In my past posts, I attempted to think about the ethics of welfare regulation "ad hominem" -- in the technical sense (see sense #2, here).  That is, starting from my opponent's premises.  My opponent draws a very sharp line between rights and welfare. Being raised as food violates a pig's rights, and then there is the separate question of the pig's welfare--how miserable or happy is the pig, hour to hour? My opponent is bothered by over-attention to welfare issues, because the rights violation is the underlying problem. 

Now, I think even with this sharp dichotomy, there's a good case for welfare regulations, as I initially argued here (before I saw the Francione-Friedrich debate), but that post was, as I say, "ad hominem" (in the technical sense!) -- I was going along with an approach to animal ethics that isn't actually my own, and thinking about where it leads (and doesn't lead).  But what about how these issues look from my own standpoint?

The primary thing we owe to animals (I argue, in my book Animalkind: What We Owe to Animals), is respect. Animals in extreme captivity are disrespected because they can't be themselves--pigs can't be pigs, fish can't be fish.  A calf who can't so much as turn around is treated not as an animal but as a meat machine (to use Ruth Harrison's excellent phrase).   We may need to supplement respect-talk with compassion-talk, but I think respect is primary.  And it's appropriate even when we are uncertain what an animal is feeling.  Do animals habituate to horrible environments and stop feeling or caring?  Even if they did, that wouldn't make those environments OK -- they're still disrespectful. 

Suppose a zoo gives the animals more space, or an animal farm releases a pig to a group pen or pasture.  On my view, this isn't a superficial change-- a change to mere welfare, as opposed to rights -- it's a change to what really matters.  It's more respectful.  The animal is now at least more able to exercise his or her natural capacities.  Now, very small changes aren't worth huge amounts of effort or money, so on this respect account, we can still debate how to focus animal advocacy.  But an increase in liberty is a meaningful change, not a surface change.

Now, imagine we gradually make life better for a pig. We respectfully increase the size of the pen, then we respectfully allow the pig out doors, and we respectfully allow herd behavior, etc.  We don't clip ears or dock tails, and so on.  Nevertheless, the day comes when the animal is slaughtered and turned into barbecue (aside: Dear Michael Pollan, I am not enjoying the description of a pig barbecue in part I of your new book Cooked).  How can any of the previous improvements be respectful if the last stage is so disrespectful?

You could try to make a case that killing animals doesn't harm them, but I think that's false (see Animalkind, p. 128-31).  No, it's clearly harmful and disrespectful to kill an animal for the pleasure of a good barbecue (even assuming this pleasure runs pretty deep -- and we should allow that it does).  But respect comes in degrees--you have done far more of what you should, if you allow an animal to exercise his or her natural capacities prior to death.  I don't think the purpose of the whole system (using animals for our benefit) annuls all the apparent progress.  And in any case, the whole system doesn't have to be completely brought down, in the name of respect.   I'm prepared to countenance situations in which respectful people will pursue their own good at the expense of animals--i.e. situations in which harming or killing is a necessary evil. (Animalkind embraces this "necessity" standard and gives examples of justifiable use.)

Anyhow, the point is that on some views in animal ethics, we can help animals in two radically different, incommensurable ways--by securing their rights and by improving their welfare -- with one way running deeper than the other. But on other views, there's just one basic parameter--such as respect.  So we do better by animals on the very same parameter, whether we give them more liberty or go much further and save them from all exploitation. This sort of "one parameter not two" approach can take many forms.  The respect approach in my book is one; the capacities approach in Martha Nussbaum's book Frontiers of Justice also eschews any sharp rights/welfare distinction; and of course utilitarians take a one parameter approach, with that one parameter being well-being (rights, they say, are "nonsense upon stilts").

Because I think in terms of respect, I don't really feel at home with the whole welfare vs. rights debate -- it's not really my debate.  For that reason, this could very well be my last post on the subject.  Time to get back to ... well, all sorts of philosophy-stuff on my desk, but mostly packing.

Dueling Analogies

Alright, one more post on animal welfare regulations (like Prop. 2 in California, which requires animal housing large enough so the animal can turn around).  In my last post I talked about five cases in which progressives have supported both "revolution" for victims of an injustice and reform.  I argued that victims want both and are entitled to both.  Animals are entitled to both too, if they matter as individuals (and yes, they do).  The analogies were these--

1. Amnesty International works for better conditions for prisoners on death row (reform), while also working to abolish the death penalty (basic change).  
2. Feminists work for driving rights for women in Saudia Arabia (reform), while also aiming to change the underlying sexist social structures (basic change).
3. There used to be packed orphanages in the UK (and elsewhere) because adoption wasn't legal -- children were consigned to these places with no exit.  Children's advocates worked to make orphanages kinder places (reform) while also working to legalize adoption (basic change).
4. While waiting for child labor to be outright abolished (basic change), you could of course work for shorter working hours (reform).
5. It's perfectly reasonable that anti-slavery abolitionists worked to stop parents and children being separated in auctions (reform), while at the same time working to abolish the whole institution of slavery (basic change).

Elsewhere (see the comments on this post), I see a completely different set of analogies being used to argue against animal welfare regulations.  Some of the anti-regulation analogies are these (roughly--I've paraphrased)--

1. A law against sow crates is like an anti-bellum law limiting lashes to 40 instead of 42.
2. Persuading people to buy more humane products (e.g. pork produced without sow crates) is like persuading a rapist to rape less violently.
3. Advocating more humane treatment of farm animals is like advocating more humane treatment of people in death camps during the Holocaust.

My analogies are better for these reasons--

• In all of my cases, the reform is significant.  The prisoners clearly do want more time outside their cells, more phone calls, etc; women care about being able to drive; orphans want fewer beatings; child laborers want shorter hours; slave families don't want to be broken up.  This is important because I think animal can tell the difference between being able to turn around and not being able to turn around -- it matters to them. Anti-regulation analogy #1 is flawed because I very much doubt you can even tell the difference between being lashed 40 times rather than 42. 
• In my scenarios, the reformers want reform and more.   Everyone knows AI wants an end to the death penalty; everyone knows feminists want full equality for women, not just driving rights; etc. etc. We need this in a good analogy, because the pro-reform animal organizations and advocates are just as clear that they want reform and more.  In the anti-regulation analogies, we seem to be invited to imagine advocacy groups who want reform but nothing more.  I think that's why we recoil.  We think "How appalling to just want to make slavery, rape, and death camps more humane!"  Fill in the details so that the reform groups want reform and more, and now these reformers don't seem so bad -- in fact not bad at all.  Think about a covert German anti-Nazi group with influence on gas chamber designers. They shouldn't exert influence to make death easier for millions?  No--that just can't be right.
• In my analogies there's no implied approval.  That's important, because supporting reforms of the animal industry doesn't imply approval.  Some who support reform are adamantly opposed to animal consumption. In the anti-regulation analogies, implied approval is at least hinted at.  What's the idea in case #2? Will  rape counselors sit down with rapists and just ask them to tone it down a bit?  With more realistic details, the implied approval and absurdity disappears.  Suppose we try to deter violence by imposing harsher punishments for aggravated rape instead of punishing all rapists alike.  Now separately targeting the "how" and "that" of rape doesn't seem so absurd! In fact, this is exactly what the criminal justice system does.  And (surely) rightly so.

So--I'm not impressed with the anti-regulation analogies. I think they're flawed.  But perhaps "enough with the analogies". I support Prop. 2 for the sake of pigs, and not because pigs are analogous to death row prisoners, orphans, slaves, or anyone else. I think I can grasp the critical considerations without the aid of comparisons, which inevitably both illuminate and obfuscate.  If we must have analogies, though, let's have the right ones.

The Rights Argument for Regulation

After recently having a lively debate with someone about the ethics of regulating the farm animal industry, I found myself trying to set up my argument formally (in my mind).  So why not share?

(1) Most farm animals live in abysmal conditions and die miserable deaths.

(2) Some regulations do/would offer significant improvement to the lives of farm animals (e.g. regulations that improve the slaughter process; regulations that would abolish sow crates).

(3) Individual animals benefitted by such improvements have a prima facie right to them from people who control their living conditions, irrespective of whether those improvements would save any lives (prima facie means: so long as that right is not outweighed).

Analogy involving people instead of animals:  suppose in a Korean orphanage, the living conditions are awful (tiny beds, horrible food, no affection, etc.) and half that enter wind up dying.   If children have rights, they have a right to better food, bigger beds, etc., even if those improvements won't increase the adoption rate and reduce the death rate.  Likewise, if animals have rights at all, they have a right to reasonable living conditions when humans control their living conditions, even if improvements won't change the basic fact that they're being used and killed for food.

(3) Farm animals' rights to reasonable living conditions (from people who control their living conditions) can be outweighed, if (a) respecting their rights would create a huge increase in demand for animal products, thus significantly increasing the number raised and killed for food or (b) respecting their rights would eliminate a huge decrease that could otherwise be predicted; the rights are not outweighed if these increases/decreases are small.

Analogy involving people instead of animals: suppose we respect the rights of the kids in the orphanage, and that assuages the concern of some would-be adopters, who thus don't adopt.  There's a small increase in children who die in the orphanage.  Or alternatively, imagine that without the improvements, there would have been a decrease in children who would die.  These consequences are surely not a reason to leave the kids in their tiny beds, eating horrible food, and receiving no affection. The kids in the orphanage, we are assuming, have rights!  We could only begin to think of preserving the squalor if improvements would have hugely negative consequences--for example, leading to half as many adoptions, twice as many deaths.  Such is the nature of rights.  Respecting them doesn't always dovetail with maximizing utility.

(4)  Improving the conditions of farm animals won't create a huge increase in demand for animal products, if any increase at all; and improving conditions won't preempt a huge decrease that could otherwise be anticipated.

Discussion: (a) Improving conditions won't generate a huge increase in demand; such an increase presupposes that there are now a large number of people not eating animal products because of the way animals are treated.  But the very small number of vegans and vegetarians says otherwise.  (b) Improving conditions won't preempt a huge decrease that could otherwise be predicted.  All the evidence is that affluence is the main driver of animal product consumption.  When people have more money, they consume more animal products--until some high level of affluence is reached, at which point they taper off a bit.  The tapering of the very affluent might be reduced, with better conditions for farm animals, but that can't be expected to have a major effect on the total level of consumption.

Thus,

(5)   Farm animals have a right to improvements in their living conditions, and that right is not outweighed by considerations having to do with impact on consumption.

Discussion:  This is how rights are understood in other social justice realms.  Because death row prisoners are rights holders, their living conditions must be improved now, even if that could delay the day when the death penalty is abolished, thereby increasing the total number of executions.  Inmates who have a voice in the matter want the better living conditions and release from prison and abolition of the death penalty. It would take heroic self-sacrifice to endue terrible living conditions, for the sake of saving others from it, possibly in the far future.  It ought to be assumed that animals, if they had a voice, wouldn't be more heroic than death row inmates. In fact, they'd be less so, given the greater ability of humans to dedicate themselves to abstract principles, total strangers, and goods in the far future.  Like we say prisoners have a right to better food, bigger cells, and more humane killing methods now,  anyone who believes in animal rights should say the same of pigs, cows, and chickens.

***

Of course, you can also argue for regulations from a utilitarian perspective, but there's nothing especially utilitarian about supporting regulations.   A rights perspective allows it ... no, in fact demands it.

Francione vs. Smith

Here (see 4/16 podcast) is a debate between Gary Francione and Wesley Smith on the Michael Medved show.  I reviewed Smith's book recently and I've blogged before about Francione.

They start by agreeing on the distinction between "animal welfare" and "animal rights."  Either you support business as usual, but want the usual things to be done nicely, or you think that animals are persons with the rights we usually attribute to persons.  Both are invested in the dichotomy, but for opposite reasons. 

There really is a middle path.  In fact, when Francione makes his argument against eating animals, he doesn't rely on rights talk. He simply says:

(1) It's wrong to inflict unnecessary suffering on animals.

That's an irresistible principle.  It makes for an irresistible argument against meat-eating considering that what we obtain from eating animal products is (usually...in most cases...) just pleasure and convenience.

Wesley Smith fails to respond, instead repeating some familiar bromides about how meat-eating is natural.

Francione quickly forgets he's talking to a defender of the status quo, and starts attacking a completely different foe--Humane Society style animal advocacy (or "welfarism," as he misleadingly calls it). 

Francione comes back to Smith's assertion that it's natural to eat meat.... but Medved wants to talk about medical research. Now it starts to be a problem for Francione that he opened with the irresistible principle.  By any measure, some medical research is necessary.  So how can it be wrong?

Francione back-pedals.  Moral justifiability doesn't turn on what's necessary or unnecessary after all!  He grudgingly concedes that some research is "empirically necessary" and "beneficial"...but no, that's not enough. It appears that he believes the irresistible principle, but also believes:

(2) It's wrong to inflict necessary suffering on animals.

Observation: when someone asserts (1), there's an "implicature" that they reject (2). That's part of what makes (1) so irresistible.  When you assert (1) and then (2), it's a whole new ballgame--the "animals are persons with rights" ballgame.

Next:  a change of subject and a reminder that Smith and Medved are capital "C" Conservatives.  Smith is bothered that Francione believes in a woman's right to abort a fetus but not the right to eat a chicken.  Francione points out that the rights-holding fetus is inside the rights holding woman, whereas the chicken isn't.  There's a difference. He throws in some stuff about racism and patriarchy that elicits derision.

Smith brings up PETA's Holocaust on your Plate campaign.  Colonel Sanders vs. Hitler.  Francione says he isn't interested in ranking evils.   It's all wrong.

Medved:  In Exodus, Moses kills the overseer who is beating an innocent slave.  We generally think that human beings are obligated to kill others and risk their own lives to stop the suffering and death of human beings.  Are human beings obligated to do the same to stop the suffering and death of animals?

Francione: Moses shouldn't have killed the overseer. (Smith points out that Francione is a pacifist.)

Medved shifts the focus from killing bad people to sacrificing yourself to prevent their misdeeds. What about sacrificing yourself to save 1000 people. If that's obligatory, must you do the same to save 1000 animals?

Francione: You could save 1000 right now by donating your organs at a hospital.  It's not obligatory, but it's admirable.  

OK, but would it be just as admirable to sacrifice yourself to save 1000 animals as it would be to sacrifice yourself to save 1000 humans?  Francione won't be cornered into answering such questions.

Francione comes back to the idea that it's wrong to impose unnecessary suffering on animals.  99.9% of our use of animals is unnecessary, he says.    It seems a tad disengenuous to keep pushing (1) when he also believes (2). It makes is seem as if he's just applying common sense, when in fact he has a revolutionary view of animals as persons with basic rights as strong as ours.

Smith pipes up about the main claim of his book--animal advocates are undermining human exceptionalism.

Francione:  what is special about humans is our ability to love, feel compassion, reach out, help the vulnerable other.

It really is the height of irony when people like Smith blow the trumpets about human specialness, which to a great degree consists of our extraordinary moral goodness (he says), and then use that to defend hideous acts of cruelty.   Please.  

Medved to Smith: How would we be worse off if the status of animals changed?

Smith: if we see ourselves as just another animal in the forest, we will act like that.

This is one of the very implausible themes of his book.  It's strange how people throw around predictions without any evidence to support them.  Are animal advocates really a more "animalistic" bunch than the rest of us?  I had not noticed that. 

He goes on to say: we'd be worse off without meat, medical research, wool coats, horse riding, etc.

Surprise revelation during this debate:  conservative commentator Michael Medved is close to being a vegetarian (he only eats fish).  Based on that and his line of questions in the interview, I'm going to recommend my book to him (what chutzpah).  Animal ethics without equality--I think that's his stance, and that's what I argue for.

PETA and Euthanasia

I've got to stop reading Gary Francione.  I'm going to wind up with a permanent frown.  Francione reports that PETA euthanizes 90% of the animals in its shelter.  He draws a couple of conclusions.  First, PETA must be euthanising healthy animals.  He writes, after presenting the statistic--

That is a disgrace. “Euthanasia” is death that is in the interest of the human or nonhuman euthanized. Euthanasia is never in the interests of a healthy being.

Why assume the animals were healthy?  This is what Ingrid Newkirk wrote, after an anti-animal-rights group started a campaign about how PETA kills animals (I discussed the campaign here). 

Second, he surmises that PETA accepts a theory he attributes to Peter Singer. 

PETA apparently shares Peter Singer’s view that a relatively painless death does not constitute a harm for nonhuman animals because, unlike humans, most nonhumans are not self-aware and cannot grasp what it means to “have a life.” In order to have an interest in your continued existence, you must be human. So those 2352 animals that PETA killed weren’t really harmed. They did not care about their lives anyway. Nothing was taken from them when they were killed.

But this isn't even Singer's theory,  His theory is that death harms human beings in more ways than it harms animals, not that  death doesn't harm animals at all.  For a human and an animal, death harms by taking away future satisfactions.  Death merely harms humans in an extra way, by taking away satisfactions they explicitly want.

This difference does have some practical implcations. If you could run a farm where animals are painlessly killed and bred, so that every bit of happiness lost was replaced, Singer thinks that would be different from running a people farm.  The absence of desires about the future makes animals (of most species) replaceable.  But euthanizing animals at a shelter doesn't involve the combination of killing and replacing.  So Singer's "replacement argument" has no relevance.

Frown.

Vegan-Bashing

More vegan-bashing from Gary Francione here.

I really hope people who read Francione don't take his word for it when he attributes positions to Peter Singer.  For example, in paragraph 5 he says Singer maintains that being a "conscientious omnivore" is a "defensible ethical position." But when you follow the link, you read this passage from an article in the Guardian, written by Patrick Barkham--

Is Singer arguing that, ultimately, veganism is the only ethically defensible position? [Singer said:] "I wouldn't phrase it in such absolute terms. It's pretty difficult to be a conscientious omnivore and avoid all the ethical problems, but if you really were thorough-going in eating only animals that had had good lives, that could be a defensible ethical position. It's not my position, but I wouldn't be critical of someone who was that conscientious about it."

Francione forgot to include the phrase "It's not my position."  If you read Singer's writing about humane meat, it's very clear what he thinks.  It's better than regular meat, but no meat is best.  See his excellent book The Ethics of What We Eat.

Francione says Singer is a "'flexible' vegan who will be non-vegan when it is convenient."  That makes you think Singer eats hamburgers in airports, or something.  But no. Follow the link (to a very interesting interview in Satya) and you'll find out what it means.  His example is that he will eat dishes containing ghee at Indian restaurants. 

Francione says Singer maintains "that we may have a moral obligation not to be vegan in situations in which others will be annoyed or disconcerted by insistence on veganism."  What, he thinks vegans should eat hamburgers at family barbecues? No, no, no.  Follow the link (that Satya interview, again), and it turns out Singer was talking about something very specific.

I think animal people should think more about the impression they’re making on others because my ethics are based on the consequence of what you do. I think it’s more important to try and produce a change in the right direction than to be personally pure yourself. So when you’re eating with someone at a restaurant, and you ordered something vegan but when it comes there’s a bit of grated cheese or something on it, sometimes vegans will make a big fuss and send it back and that might mean the food is wasted. And if you’re in company with people who are not vegan or not even vegetarian, I think that’s probably the wrong thing to do. It’d be better off just to eat it because people are going to think, ‘Oh my god, these vegans…’

Francione is right that Singer thinks killing animals doesn't have the same moral import as killing (normal) humans. In my new book I make the same objection Francione does. But that doesn't mean I find Singer's view scurrilous.  The whole issue of killing is very, very difficult if you delve into it with any philosophical sophistication (for evidence of the complexity, see Jeff McMahan's extremely intricate book The Ethics of Killing).  Smart, well-informed people who care about animals simply will not reach all the same conclusions.

Then we get Francione's summary of the abolitionist approach, and his commitment to the idea that animals are persons.  He wants us to see that an abolitionist vegan has to be a 100% pure, full-time vegan.  But really, I don't see why.  Being a very pure vegan has consequences and opportunity costs.  On any moral theory, that has to matter. Surely what does no good at all for animals, or even alienates people from animal causes, cannot be morally required, no matter how you look at animal ethics.

Related:  Meet the Vegetarians

Meet the Vegetarians

One of the attitudes of abolitionists I find most absurd is their country club view of other vegans and vegetarians.  "Not good enough" is the constant rallying cry.  Gary Francione recently pronounced that "vegetarianism is not morally preferable to being an omnivore." He also routinely excoriates "not good enough" vegans like Peter Singer, the folks at Vegan Outreach, and vegan.com writer Erik Marcus.  He keeps his club very exclusive indeed.

Thinking about this makes me feel like an evolutionary biologist devoting time to attacking creationism, but the fact is, Francione has a band of  followers who uncritically repeat absolutely anything he says (for example, all of his arguments are repeated here).  So, because of the influence, not the merits, let's give this a look.

First of all, what is a vegetarian?  I've been surprised to find that some animal advocates don't know (or pretend not to know). For example, here's a definition at the Friends of Animals website (they're not in league with Francione, as this interview makes clear)--

Millions of North Americans identify themselves as vegetarian or vegan. A vegetarian is someone who enjoys a plant-based diet. A vegan is a vegetarian — one who avoids eating the flesh of any living animals and other products taken from other animals (milk, eggs, cheese, honey and so forth) — and also embraces a lifestyle of respect for all sentient beings. That respect factors into clothing decisions and selections of “cruelty-free” cleaners and toiletries, and so forth. Thus, while “vegetarian” may describe a diet, “vegan” embodies a lifestyle — an ethical commitment to live, as far as possible, in harmony with the planet and all its inhabitants. (italics mine)

So--vegetarianism is only a diet, and not driven by respect for animals. Maybe that's what Francione also believes (or pretends to), but he goes further by making some peculiar assumptions about a vegetarian diet. He thinks vegetarians take meat out of their diets and replace it with eggs and milk.  So--where an omnivore has a hamburger, a vegetarian will have an egg-burger. Or something. (See here for more on that sort of diet and whether it benefits animals--it actually does, somewhat.)

This is an extremely tendentious definition of vegetarianism. It's designed to make vegetarians look like the ugly stepsisters of Cinderella, the animal-respecting vegan.  To which I just have to say: meet the vegetarians.

"Kate" was a student in my animal rights class recently.  She is passionately committed to animal causes and plans to focus on animal law when she goes to law school.  She eliminates most animal products from her diet, but not yet all of them, so calls herself a vegetarian, not a vegan. She wears non-leather shoes and apparel and has been involved in animal causes in her community.

"Ned" is a philosophy professor who teaches an animal rights class and writes influential articles on animal ethics.  His diet is nearly vegan, but not completely, so he calls himself "vegetarian." He eats fish, because he believes they feel no pain. He eats honey, because he believes bees are non-sentient.  He's an accommodating husband and father, so compromises a little to have a harmonious family life. He wears no leather and avoids other animal products.

Kate and Ned are typical of the many vegetarians I have known.  They are ethically driven.  They put their ethical convictions into practice in many areas of their lives, not just with regard to diet.  They are well informed--not at all ignorant of the ethical problems with milk and eggs.  They are close to vegan, but not total vegans, partly out of conviction (Ned doesn't think there's a moral problem with eating fish or honey), but also for many other personal and practical reasons.

Now, Francione is entitled to be bothered that people don't change more quickly.  He's entitled to be frustrated that many animal advocates aren't persuaded by a rights perspective that sees animals as persons (Kate and Ned both find Peter Singer much more convincing than rights authors).   True, Kate and Ned aren't thinking and doing everything that he would want.  So by all means, they shouldn't be allowed into the abolitionist country club.

What you can't say is that being a vegetarian is morally equivalent to being an omnivore.   If you think animals matter, then you'll assess that statement in terms of how much killing and suffering vegetarians like Kate and Ned prevent, compared to omnivores.  You might even add up the rights-violations, if that's how you think about these things. Clearly, they're doing much much better than the typical omnivore. 

And don't tell me Kate and Ned are rare.  I have met lots of vegetarians in the course of teaching an animal rights class for nearly 10 years, and I haven't encountered these ugly stepsister vegetarians--the ones who gorge on eggs and cheese, don't know a thing about the dairy and egg industry, and aren't generally concerned about the treatment of animals.  Among people who care about animals, there are lots and lots of Kates and Neds.

Maybe these folks just think by misrepresenting and denigrating people like Kate and Ned, they'll turn them into 100% vegans.  If that's it, they might want to give a little more thought to the recipe they're following.  I don't think you can make vegans by chopping up vegetarians.

Vengeance Watch

I have two contributions to "vengeance watch" for today.

First, have a look at the comment thread that follows this essay by "mere vegetarian, but nearly vegan" Victor Schonfeld, director of the groundbreaking movie The Animals Film.  What a drubbing!

Then we have this badly reasoned brief against vegetarians. Law professor Sherry Colb writes--

Ovo-lacto vegetarianism is no better than nothing, because it causes as much death and possibly even more suffering than omnivorism, if one is consuming the same quantity of animal products but merely switching from including flesh to increasing dairy and eggs, as many lacto-ovo vegetarians do.

On every level, this is out in left field.  First, there's no reason to assume that vegetarians simply replace meat with greater quantities of dairy and eggs.  The meat that used to be in my spaghetti sauce got replaced by vegetables, thank you very much.  The beef that used to be in my red bean chile got replaced with...more beans.  What makes me a vegetarian, not a vegan, is that there's still parmesan on top of the spaghetti, and possibly some shredded cheddar on top of the chile.  But omnivores would have those toppings as well.

But let's suppose, contrary to fact, that vegetarians are replaceatarians.  So where omnivores eat chicken for dinner, vegetarians eat omelets.  Her claim that vegetarianism is no better than nothing would still be groundless.  As I say in the comments over there, if you eat one chicken per week, you kill 52 in a year. On the other hand, laying hens live about a year and lay about one egg per day. So eating a daily egg for a year involves the suffering and death of two chickens: the layer plus the male chick killed at the outset.  If you have 3 eggs a day, the cost is 6 chickens (Those approximations are backed up at this Humane Society fact page.) Replacing chicken with eggs  would prevent the death and suffering of a large number of animals.

The vegetarian-bashers are followers  and associates of Gary Francione who fancy themselves modern day abolitionists working to emancipate animals just as their forebears tried to abolish slavery.  I wonder, though, what the anti-slavery abolitionists would think of their tactics.

19th century abolitionists were certainly not slave owners, just as vegans and vegetarians aren't likely to be hands-on killers of animals.  The analog of diet-activism in the world of anti-slavery abolitionism is the strategy of a boycott.  You could try to end the institution of slavery by not using slave produced goods and trying to encourage others to do the same.  If slave produced products had no buyers, abolitionists may have argued, slavery would have to come to an end.

I am reading a great book about slavery (Inhuman Bondage, by David Brion Davis) so perhaps I will soon know to what extent abolitionists were boycotters.  But morally, maybe they should have.  It's surely morally wrong to put slave produced sugar in your tea.  Doing so makes you complicit in the horrendous things that took place on the Carribbean sugar plantations where most sugar was grown and refined.  And don't say sugar was a necessity--of course not. Nor could abolitionists plead ignorance about which sugar was slave produced.  All sugar was slave produced.

It's fair to say that sugar use would have been wrong, but did 19th century abolitionists give it up?  And if so, did the most fastidious boycotters demand abstinence from others? Did the abstainers hold themselves up as the true leaders of the cause? Did they try to convince themselves that just drinking unsweetened tea, and not wearing cotton, etc., would put an end to the awfulness that was slavery?

Francione likes to say that vegetarians are like rapists on a diet ("I'll rape one woman today, instead of ten"). Did abolitionists accuse each other of being like rapists on a diet for still putting a little sugar in their tea?

Despite the wrongness of using slave produced sugar, abolitionists obviously would have been fools to spend their time monitoring the teaspoons full of sugar in each others' tea.  Likewise, even if all use of animals for food is wrong, vegans should give up their crusade against vegetarians.

Take home question.  What's the difference between putting slave-produced sugar in your tea and being a rapist?  If we knew that, then we could explain the difference between putting milk in your tea and being a rapist. Your suggestions welcome.

More "defense of vegetarians" is here.

Vegans, Donans, Greenans

Following up on another thread (see "In Defense of Vegetarians")--

The abolitionist crowd has a very strange attitude toward vegetarians.  We are  actually worse than omnivores, they think. Unpublished comments from these people (last month) dismissed both my new book and my Animal Rights course as worthless, since I'm a mere vegetarian.  Yesterday Alex even compared vegetarians to embezzlers. Not only do we contribute nothing to animal advocacy, but we actually take away.

Ahem.

I worry these people are single-issue moralists. They never think about any moral issue besides the treatment of animals.  That's my suspicion because nobody would dream of having the "vegans only" type of attitude on comparable issues.

Let's make up some new words.  Donans are people who do all that they should with regard to preventing death from poverty and disease. They give to the point of marginal utility, just as Peter Singer says we should in "Famine, Affluence, and Morality." They may not do so for exactly Singer's reasons (perhaps they're more persuaded by the arguments in Peter Unger's very interesting book Living High and Letting Die), but they never ever do anything like buying an ipod rather than sending $200 to Oxfam, an amount that will save at least one life.

Donatarians don't do as much. They are just as convinced by Singer or Unger (or by other arguments) but find themselves sometimes buying ipods. They are simply not up to doing everything they should.

Greenans are just as exemplary as Donans, but their focus is on the environment.  These are people who recycle every single thing that's recyclable, ride bicyles rather than drive cars, never ever fly, and otherwise reduce their carbon footprint to the absolute minimum. 

Greenatarians don't do as much.  They are just as convinced of the obligation to be totally green, but they recycle as much as practically possible, drive hybrids, limit family size, etc.

Imagine saying that donatarians and greenatarians do nothing for the poor and the environment. Nobody would take this view seriously. It's just as silly to dismiss what vegetarians can do for animals.

In Defense of Vegetarians

Why do they need defense?  From whom?  Well, this Newsweek writer thinks vegetarians are sanctimonious and they sneak corn-dogs when nobody's looking.  From the other side, vegetarians are attacked by vegans for not giving up dairy and eggs as well as meat.  To add to a vegetarian's woes, some of the famous ones are reverting to meat-eating.  I was not at all happy to read that Mollie Katzen, author of my very favorite vegetarian cookbook, has a recipe for beef stew in her newest cookbook.  (I recently looked at the three books of hers I own and realized she was probably never an animal-concerned vegetarian to begin with.  Oh. Well.)

Since I take the vegan perspective most seriously, of all these perspectives, I'm just going to defend vegetarians from attacks that could come from that direction. Note:  just could. I think lots of vegans are sane people who aren't looking to attack anybody.

So--let's start with vegetarianism in a traditional, idyllic world.  You live in a village in the Swiss alps, where the views of the mountain tops are as pretty as can be.  Your cow Bessie lives happily in your field while her domestic partner pulls a plow. There are hens and roosters in your yard.  By milking Bessie and taking eggs from the hens, you are able to enjoy the delicious vegetarian food in Mollie's cookbooks.  Is there a moral problem there?

Tom Regan is the philosopher who put "yes" on the map in his 1983 book The Case for Animal Rights.  Regan says that even in the idyllic scenario, you'd be violating the basic rights of an animal to be treated with respect.  By using these animals as resources (getting work from the bull and and resources from the cow and chickens), you are treating them as means, obviously without their consent.

I'm on board with the notion that animals should be treated with respect, whether or not we add "rights" talk to the mix.  However, I don't share Regan's sense that the animals on Idyllic Swiss Farm are treated disrespectfully.  So I don't in fact think there's a problem there.  Vegetarianism is all that's required of anyone in that setting, and not veganism.  Which goes to show: there's no absolute or universal prohibition against using animals for food or other purposes.

But now jump to your own real situation.  Sad to say, you probably don't have a view of the alps out your window. You don't have a cow in your yard or any chickens.  The animals that produce your eggs and milk are in fact treated with disrespect.  This is glaringly true if they come from factory farms, but still true if they come from "improved" factory farms or even humane farms (which are never as idyllic as Idyllic Swiss Farm).  Barring any special circumstances, you will stop eating eggs and milk if you are in the finest moral fettle.

The thing is, most of us are not in the finest moral fettle.  We recycle, but not everything.  We see that driving and flying produces carbon emissions, but at most we cut back. We don't stop.  We can see that buying luxuries for ourselves is vastly worse than contributing to Oxfam and thereby saving lives, but we still buy some luxuries.  Most of us are not, in short, moral saints.  So when we decide how to behave, we think in terms of priorities.  You recycle the big stuff, but not every scrap of plastic.  You get a smaller car, but not no car.

So the question (for us sinners) is whether a vegetarian diet is based on a rational set of priorities.  And...guess what?...it is.  Just think about eating chicken vs. eggs. If you eat chicken all year, the cost in chicken lives is 25-50.  All those chickens will have endured what chickens go through to wind up on our plates--which is a lot if they were ordinary factory farmed chickens, though less, if they weren't. If you eat eggs all year, roughly one laying hen went through those same things, plus one male chick was killed (since the males have no economic value).  That makes it a very rational choice to give up chicken first before eggs.

If you think through the costs to animals and the environment of beef vs. milk, you will come to the same conclusion. Ideally, we should give up both.  If you're not up to that, then your first priority should be giving up beef.

Even when people desperately want to change their diets for the sake of their own health and appearance, they very often don't succeed.  It's even harder when the issue is not your own well being, but the treatment of other creatures.  I think vegetarianism is a rational half-way house for people not ready to go completely vegan. It's a choice that stems from knowledge about animal products, not from ignorance.

Then again, is it really important to choose a rational half-way house as opposed to just some half-way house?   Be a vegan before 6 pm, says Mark Bittman.  Even Gary Francione approves of Vegan Mondays!  I think vegetarianism makes much more sense than these possibilities, but I'm all for any way of cutting back on using animals for food.   All of these options reduce the number of animals being mistreated, and that simply has to be good.

What Karen Dawn Said

Using Amazon's "look inside" feature last night, I discovered that Karen Dawn does a fantastic job of responding to the "anti-welfare warriors" in Thanking the Monkey (pages 6-7).

If I'd read that back in December when I was making similar points (e.g. here and here), I could have saved a lot of time and energy.  What Karen Dawn said!  Her book has graphics and endorsements to die for.  I want to read more of this book.

The Thirsty Cow

Can we go back one more time to my pre-Thanksgiving criticism of Gary Francione (in this comment, to be precise)—the objection that launched a thousand ad hominems? At the time, a few commenters felt I had him wrong and would see this if I just read his book about the animal rights movement—Rain without Thunder. I figured I’d read enough (his first book, some articles, his website), but I was curious.

Now that I’ve read it, I’m all the more baffled by all the hostilities. In fact, the book just substantiates the charge. I said Francione wants to keep animals in the worst possible conditions to achieve abolitionist goals. Well, yes. At least he wants to keep them in much worse conditions, and part of the reason is to achieve abolitionist goals.

Francione is against reforms like Proposition 2 in California, and the recent referenda in Florida and Arizona, but what you learn from the book is that he’s also against the Humane Slaughter Act, the Animal Welfare Act, and any reform that ameliorates the treatment of animals without actually liberating them. The AWA is inadequate, as many have argued (and I argue in my book) but it does provide very basic benefits to animals, like pain relief during experimental procedures, bigger cages and appropriate diets, rest stops and water every 5 hours for animals being transported etc. The Humane Slaughter Act covers too few species and is inadequately enforced, but it does require stunning before slaughter for cattle. I don't see him saying in the book that this legislation doesn't alleviate suffering; clearly it does.  But he fears such reforms will increase the use of animals for food, experimentation, etc. So they will retard progress toward abolition.

There are a couple of other points in the book that shed light on Francione’s thinking. I argued (with a slavery example) that denying basic welfare improvements to animals is incompatible with taking them seriously (particularly on Francione’s view—since he sees animals as “persons”.) But – surprisingly – Francione has just the opposite view. He thinks we violate the rights of animals when we pass humane legislation—

… [E]ven if I am obligated to give a thirsty cow water on the way to slaughter it does not follow that I should pursue that obligation as a legal or social policy, for the practical reason that it will never and can never succeed on an institutional level, and for the theoretical reason that it conflicts directly with the notion that animals have rights. (p. 223)

The same odd idea is stated earlier in the book, when he’s defining the (clearly pejorative) expression “new welfarist”—

The new welfarists believe that it is both coherent and morally acceptable to disregard the rights of animals today (by pursuing welfarist reform that reinforces the property status of animals) in the hope that some other animals will have rights tomorrow.” (pg. 39)

So (he thinks), possibly I ought to give a thirsty cow water on the way to slaughter, but if I try to make sure all cows have water on the way to slaughter, I’m disregarding their rights. I’d be respecting their rights more if I just let them be thirsty on the way to slaughter, and concentrated on vegan education.

But surely not. If we are virtually powerless to liberate animals from farms and labs, then we certainly don’t violate their rights by passing laws that insure that lab and slaughterhouse workers do at least more of what they should to alleviate suffering.

Francione repeats over and over again throughout the book that “new welfarists” support humane reforms as a means of working toward more fundamental change. Thus, he thinks the success of these reforms can be measured based on whether they are actually producing fundamental change. By that measure, they’ve failed. The Humane Slaughter act has not reduced the number of animals killed, and I believe the AWA hasn’t either.

But surely that's not the intent of animal advocates, and not the right standard for judging anmal welfare legislation.  Animal advocates want to alleviate suffering simply because it's bad.  They have further goals having to do with justice and fundamental change.  But they don't want to alleviate suffering in order to achieve those more distant goals. The right way to judge animal welfare legislation is to consider a counterfactual world--one just like this one, but without the legislation.  There's more misery in that world, and no less killing and injustice. That's a worse world and we're right to avoid it.

Time to move to greener pastures.

"Jonathan Safran Foer is not a Vegan"

I bet this is the complaint that Jonathan Safran Foer is most tired of hearing as the media covers his new book Eating Animals (I'm going to read it over the holiday break--so stay tuned for a "review" in January).

Everyone who's made dietary changes for ethical reasons has encountered the same reaction from omnivores.  But do you wear leather?  But do you eat fish?  But do you eat eggs?  Even Elizabeth Kolbert, clearly an unrepentant omnivore, can't resist a dig about what Jonathan eats in her largely sympathetic New Yorker review:  "Foer never says anything about forgoing eggs or dairy, which seems to imply that he consumes them."

If you're a vegetarian, you get this kind of reaction from omnivores all the time.  There's no question what the motive is--to dismiss the whole argument for giving up anything.  They want an excuse to think about nothing and do nothing.  Obviously, they're being illogical.  Making less than the optimal effort is no excuse for making no effort at all.  But that's how people think. 

Vegetarians should ignore Elizabeth and Co and the high priority they assign to consistency.  If you do prioritize consistency, you're going to start thinking you've got to choose between being a consistently indifferent omnivore and a consistently scrupulous vegan.  A huge number of people will choose the first.  It's just the way it is--if you've spent 10 or 25 or 50 years learning to love ice cream, and you're surrounded by ice cream eaters, the only path to consistency you may be able to take is the path back to consistent indifference.

And that really would be a pity.  If you didn't eat chicken all year, that's about 25 fewer chickens dying after a miserable life.  You'd be making a big mistake if you discounted that savings, just because you could have saved 26 (that's about what it works out to), if you'd also given up eggs.

The obsession with consistency hampers all sorts of efforts people make to do good.  For example, you might (wisely) decide that saving the lives of strangers is more important than buying luxuries.  How inconsistent of you to write a check to Oxfam and then, the very next week, but yourself a new ipod!  For that amount of money, you could literally have saved another life!  But again, if faced with a choice between consistent indifference and consistent life-saving, most of us will choose consistent indifference.  It's really important not to think that's the choice we face.

The same point can be made about efforts we make to be "green."  If I had to be consistently indifferent or consistently green (which means recycling everything, flying nowhere, riding a bicycle all the time, etc.), I would certainly choose to be consistently indifferent.

Most absurd of all, Jonathan Safran Foer has been getting flack from a handful of militant vegans for being "just" a vegetarian.  They ought to think through what it means, practically speaking, to demand perfect consistency.  It's an obvious fact about the psychology of consumption (whether it's food or other stuff): the person who puts a premium on consistency is much more likely to choose consistent self-indulgence rather than consistent compassion.

Maybe what the militant vegans are really complaining about is the fact that Foer is not a vegan, yet he wrote a book of animal advocacy.  I'm sure glad the author didn't worry about that--or we wouldn't now have a powerful work of animal advocacy nearing the Amazon top 100.  I very much doubt his readers will find him less inspiring because he's still drinking lattes (if he is).  In fact, many people are going to find inspiration in the message that normal, struggling, imperfect people can start thinking and doing differently.  Go Jonathan!

The Perfectly Humane Farm

At the end of the last thread we got to talking about "perfectly humane farming"--animal farming that yields a happy life for animals, ending in a painless death.  That doesn't seem like an oxymoron, like it's an oxymoron to talk about perfectly humane slavery.  Human beings resent being enslaved, and so almost always suffer under it; I don't think farm animals resent their lot in life.

There probably aren't any perfectly humane farms in the real world (Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma provides proof of that), but I think there are some that come close.  

The chickens in the first picture lived on an organic farm in Hawaii that I stayed at last summer.  The chickens in the second picture lived in the English Lake District.  It's reasonable to think these animals had lives that were 99.9% pleasant.  The problems remaining in their lives were two:  (1) At some point they were going to be eaten for dinner and the killing was likely to be painful (though quick). And (2) throughout their lives they were being used as resources.  The eggs they labored to produce were taken from them, though in return they were housed and fed.

Is there a problem with (1) and (2)?  I just want to make a "meta" point and not answer the question. The "meta" point is that this is a difficult question.   There are really difficult and perplexing problems here.  As the saying goes:  reasonable people will disagree.  I think that's what Peter Singer must have been thinking when he wrote, "I can respect conscientious people who take care to eat only meat that comes from such animals," in the last chapter of Animal Liberation, even though in chapter 4 he had already made many arguments that people ought to give up eating chicken--including "humane chicken."

The questions about (1) and (2) are difficult. Even those who say "wrong" and "wrong" can just have a flickering sense of wrongness, not a sense durable enough to survive the competition with their fondness for chicken and eggs. At the same time, I find that almost everyone sees a problem with what is being done to the third chicken--her life is being made a living hell.  And that's the fate of almost all of the 6 million chickens we kill for food in the US, every six hours.

To save that chicken from a miserable life, many people are prepared to act differently.  Maybe they'll pay a little more for cage-free or free-range eggs (which are better if not perfect), or go to the polls to vote for a referendum, Some will stop eating chicken altogether, or stop eating both chicken and eggs. 

Because of the difficulty of (1) and (2), I don't think the main thrust of animal advocacy should be eliminating the whole practice of using animals for food.  I'm (honestly) pessimistic about that campaign, but optimistic about the campaign to alleviate suffering.  Since it matters enormously whether animals suffer, whether or not there's also a problem with (1) and (2), I think that's a rational way to set priorities.

Just for fun: more happy animals, for your viewing pleasure.  The pig lives in Central Pennsylvania.  The sheep were grazing on a hill very near Hadrian's wall in northern England.  

UPDATE:  Maybe I didn't make this clear.  We cannot possibly make every farm animal as happy as a Hawaiian chicken or the pig and the sheep in these pictures.  To achieve much less suffering, there has to be at least a reduction of the number of animals eaten.  But suffering should be the main focus of arguments for veganism and vegetarianism, because (1) and (2) just aren't compelling enough to most people or even to most conscientious and clear-thinking philosophers.  I say this after many years of watching lots of people react to animal ethics messages.

Angels and Demons

One of the things Gary Steiner and Gary Francione talk about in this podcast (toward the end) is my New York Times letter to the editor. In fact, Steiner reads it aloud.  Here's what I wrote--

Re “Animal, Vegetable, Miserable,” by Gary Steiner (Op-Ed, Nov. 22):

Mr. Steiner might feel less lonely as an ethical vegan — he says he has just five vegan friends — if he recognized that he has allies in mere vegetarians (like me), ethical omnivores and even carnivores. Some of us agree with his outlook, but just don’t have the fortitude to make every sacrifice he makes.

In fact, a whole lot of semi-vegans can do much more for animals than the tiny number of people who are willing to give up all animal products and scrupulously read labels. Farm animals also benefit from the humane farming movement, even if the animal welfare changes it effects are not all that we should hope and work for.

If the goal is not moral perfection for ourselves, but the maximum benefit for animals, half-measures ought to be encouraged and appreciated.

Go vegan, go vegetarian, go humane or just eat less meat. It’s all good advice from the point of view of doing better by animals.

Jean Kazez
Dallas, Nov. 22, 2009
The writer teaches philosophy at Southern Methodist University and is the author of the forthcoming “Animalkind: What We Owe to Animals.”

After Steiner reads the letter, he says I must not appreciate the size of the problem, and he cites the 56 billion animals killed for food every year around the world (there are about 10 billion in the US). That puzzles me, because the huge number of animals killed actually seems to cut in favor of my tolerant stance.  Considering the vast number of animals, and considering the tiny number of total vegans, how could you not want to build coalitions with everyone you can? 

I think the coalition building approach doesn't appeal to "abolitionists" because they overdo the analogy between animal exploitation and American slavery (among other reasons).  If you rewrite my letter so that it's about slavery, and change the date to Nov. 22, 1859, it reads like an appalling bit of pandering to spineless slave owners.  If I'd been writing about slavery before the civil war, I would have been saying the wrong things.

But imagine another world instead of the US in 1859--a world in which almost everyone has slaves.  In fact, imagine that there are 56 billion of them (maybe some of them are on another planet, like in the movie Bladerunner).  Imagine also that the vast majority of humanity sees no problem whatever with slavery. In fact, they get great enjoyment out of being served by slaves, and prefer not to think about their gruesome living conditions and the way they are killed (maybe for organ donations, if not for food).  Then would it be so misguided to hold out a welcoming hand to anyone who was willing to reduce their dependence on slavery or at least improve slave welfare?  I should think not! 

Now, I actually think the slavery/animal-exploitation analogy isn't apt, as I argue in my forthcoming book.   The killing and mistreatment of animals is sui generis, and not easily assimilated to what we did to African slaves or what rapists do to women, or what people do the mentally disabled, or anything else.  The point is just hypothetical.  Supposing there really were a valid analogy, it would still be right to develop coalitions between all who are concerned about animals, to any degree.   There is just way too much animal death and suffering in the world, and it's too acceptable to too many people, for it to be reasonable to adulate vegans and villify everyone else.  (Villify? Yes, villify.  Listen to the podcast.)

What does "engaging" mean?

I'm famous!  The proof is that Gary Francione rants a bit about "this Kazez person" at the end of today's podcast.  He complains that I said something that upset him, and then I refused to engage with his work.  The upsetting bit was in the comment section of an earlier post--

Alex, My outlook is just pragmatic and results oriented. An ethical omnivore is someone who's making food choices on ethical grounds, and does think animals matter. They may not be going far enough, but they're doing much better than the total animal dismissers.

I am worried about Francione's approach--especially his opposition to proposition 2 and the like. It's certainly true that such reforms are not enough, but to actually oppose them strikes me as bizarre. Imagine someone in the 19th century started a campaign to supply shoes for slave children. Would any reasonable abolitionist object to that, on grounds that images of shoeless children strengthen the abolitionist cause? It seems to me that Francione's rejection of the humane movement is analogous. Essentially, he wants to keep animals in the worst possible condition in order to use their suffering to rally people to the cause of totally changing the status of animals.

I've got to run right now, but I hope to write a post in the not too distant future about Francione and what I like and don't like about his ideas.

Let the record show that I did follow up.  I have written several posts about his work (here and here), full of very specific arguments.  He has responded to none of these arguments.  It's bewildering, but "engage with his work" evidentlly means exactly one thing to Gary. It means "talk to me on my podcast." Apparently when I write about his work, that doesn't count. (And of course, reponding is not on his list of things to do).

Shaking head. Moving on. 

But first, one more remark--I think it's peculiar the way Gary  uses the fact that I am not a vegan as an argument against me.  Some day this will make it into critical thinking textbooks--the "ad non-vegan" fallacy will be listed as a subspecies of the "ad hominem".

There's Something About Gary

Francione, that is.  From Google alerts that keep landing in my mailbox, I've learned he's an absolute master of the ad hominem, and at grandstanding, and demanding apologies instead of answering criticism, and putting excerpts from private email on the internet, and misinterpreting them to begin with. One of his ad hominems has to do with Temple Grandin endorsing my book.  May as well consort with the devil, he seems to think. But I'm thrilled with the endorsement.

Temple Grandin is a hero in my eyes (and by the way, also in the eyes of PETA, who gave her an award a couple of years ago).  That's so even if she's more accepting of the whole practice of animal consumption than I am.  Here's the kind of change she's brought about in slaughter houses: under her auditing system, stunning has to work on the first attempt 95% of the time.  That's a significant improvement over past success rates (data here).  Without stunning, a cow will be conscious when hoisted up by her back leg and getting her throat slit.  When stunning is unsuccessful on first attempt, the animal endures much more pain. 

Now Gary (and he has to be just "Gary" because back when we were using honorifics, he thought it was right to address me as Adjunct Professor Kazez) thinks this is just a trivial improvement.  That's his general assessment of all "humane" reforms.  They're no more of an improvement than "being tortured with electrical shocks while strapped into a padded chair rather than a chair without padding."  (See here--and note the ad hominems.  Just what "welfarist corporations" does Peter Singer "lead"?!)

The trouble with Gary is that he's "abstractifying," to use a lovely term coined by Temple.  He's focusing entirely on killing itself, as the fundamental wrong we do to animals--or treating animals as property, which he considers our primary mistake.  He's not getting inside the minds of animals, which is what Temple Grandin is so good at (her book Animals in Translation is fantastic).  There's a huge difference between being effectively stunned and going to your slaughter, and being unstunned, or struggling after an initial improper stunning and being stunned again.  The difference is by no means trivial, and given how many animals will in fact be slaughtered in the foreseeable future, we've got to take it seriously.

Of course, if Grandin's auditing system did do something trivial for animals, that wouldn't be a reason to object.  An animal activist has no reason to care if animal scientists and meatpackers are just wasting their time and money.  What bothers him, really, is that he thinks with reforms like this, people are going to eat more meat.  So there's going to be more killing, and more of all the abuses that go along with animal agriculture.

Even if that were the case, I'd still have a hard time believing we don't have an obligation to make animal slaughter as gentle as possible.  We should not use animals' suffering strategically, leaving some of it in place in the hopes of discouraging animal consumption.  In effect, this is what Gary would have us do.  (My saying this is what's got him hurling so much abuse at me.  Too bad he hasn't just responded with a clarification of his true aims or a defense of this sort of strategy. It might have been interesting!  I might even have retracted the criticism if he'd directly responded to it with some convincing argument.)  We wouldn't use the suffering of death row inmates, or slaves, or starving children that way.  If we're serious about animals being entitled to respect and compassion, we shouldn't use them that way either.

But all that's really just theoretical, because I don't buy it that Temple Grandin's reforms are going to make people consume more animal products. There have been a number of humane reforms in the US in the last several years, and even more in the European Union, but the overall amount of animal food being consumed in developed countries isn't increasing, according to the UN report Livestock's Long Shadow (pg. 16).  I've seen no evidence that the trend toward humane standards is attracting people toward animal consumption who wouldn't otherwise be engaging in it. (And here's where Gary's responding to argument might have been helpful.  What's his evidence?  Why does he think there's a trend like this?)

An aspect of Gary's approach is its categorizing of animal advocates as either "abolitionist" or "new welfarist."  Abolitionists see a problem with the basic practice of killing animals and using them as our resources. Then there are welfarists (and he may as well say "demons," since that's how he sees them) who care only about animal welfare and favor incremental change. This is really a hopeless taxonomy because there's no reason whatever that bits of the two positions can't be combined (and supplemented with other ideas). It's a combo view that many advocates actually embrace.

Like me, for example.  I think there is a problem with killing (I don't buy Peter Singer's "replacement argument"), but it does not eclipse the problem of suffering.  We ought to address the problem of suffering and we ought to address the problem of killing. It's not that one is just a matter of "how" and the other is the essence of the matter.  It's really important for cattle to be effectively stunned in slaughter houses.  Bravo for Temple Grandin that she's tackling the problem of suffering.

Should Humane Farm Reform be Opposed?

A fairly offhand remark I made about Gary Francione in the comments to my last post apparently caused offense, so I need to expand, explain, etc, especially because Gary tells me he plans on using me as a poster child for the "welfarist" (i.e. utilitarian) stance in a planned podcast. My forthcoming book is actually steadfastly non-utilitarian, so this doesn't make much sense. Let's understand the child, before we put her in a poster. I'll explain what I think about Francione and humane farm reform later today. Stay tuned.

**

Let's start with some classifying of positions on humane farm reform, by which I mean everything from just widening stalls a few inches to raising animals outside with plenty of space and sunshine.

1. Full supporters think humane reforms are not only good, but sufficient.  They think once we've implemented all the realistically possible reforms we can, we'll be done and we'll all be able to eat meat with a pretty clear conscience, even if there may be some residual concern about whether killing is wholly respectful.  In this category I'd put Michael Pollan and Temple Grandin.
2. Partial supporters think humane reforms are good, but insufficient.  They think we should not be raising and killing animals just to satisfy our own desires for food pleasure.  On this view, any realistic scenario in which animal farming continues will raise serious ethical concerns.  In this category I'd put utilitarians like Peter Singer, non-utilitarians like myself, activist organizations like PETA and the Humane Society, and many others.
   
3. Opponents think that humane reforms are bad and should be actively opposed.  Gary Francione is in this category.  When California voters had a chance to vote for or against Proposition 2, which abolished cages for laying hens, sow crates, and veal crates, he encouraged his followers to vote against it, or at least abstain.

Francione thinks that being a partial supporter of humane reform necessarily goes together with having a utilitarian (or "welfarist") outlook on ethics--or so he seems to say here.  Thus, he supposes that all animal advocates who are partial supporters of humane reform must reject animal rights, animal personhood, the duty to respect animals, and the like.  This is not the case.  Partial supporters of humane reform can come to that position from a variety of ethical and empirical premises. Singer comes to that position from utilitarianism.  I come to that position without accepting utilitarianism. The guiding concepts in my forthcoming book are respect and compassion; I don't see maximizing happiness or interest satisfaction as "the prime directive."

In fact, I think that someone with Francione's position on animals--that they are persons, not property, and that it violates their rights to use them as resources--could easily be a partial supporter of humane reform.  To see this, it helps a lot to develop analogies.  The reason it's helpful is because it's actually rather difficult to see what is entailed by the assumption that animals are persons.  Solution?  Think about various cases where an injustice is being done to human beings--clearly persons.  Then think about whether it would make sense to oppose humane reforms that fell far short of abolishing the injustice.

So--slaves in the antebellum south were obviously persons.  Would it make sense for an abolitionist to tell people to vote against humane reforms like supplying shoes for children or letting slaves learn to read or stopping families from being broken up at auctions?   I can see how an abolitionist might worry that humanizing "the peculiar institution" might slow down the pace of change, but when you see slaves as persons, you must see them as entitled to whatever small mercies are possible.

Or take abolitionism about the death penalty.  Would it make sense for a death penalty abolitionist to be against reforms like making the method of execution more humane, or making DNA testing more available, or reducing the number of strip searches or hours spent in solitary confinement?  All of these types of reforms do make people more comfortable with the death penalty, and may delay the day when the death penalty will finally be abolished in the US.  But since death row inmates are persons, they're entitled to these improvements.

Now, you might complain that my analogies involve a variety of reforms, some involving not "just" welfare improvements but matters of justice; some small, others big.  So focus just on the smaller welfare-oriented reforms.  Shoes for slaves, a nicer method of execution for people on death row.  Could any abolitionist about slavery or the death penalty really oppose these things?

In short, even assuming (1) that animals are persons, and (2) that there's a legitimate concern about whether humane farm reform slows down progress toward a vegan world, and (3) that humane reforms are small, I can't see how it can make sense to vote against Proposition 2.  Especially if you see animals as persons, you must secure what you can for them,  even if that slows progress toward the ultimate goal.

But now let's have a closer look at Francione's empirical assumptions.  He thinks humane reforms are minor and that there's a serious worry about humane meat increasing meat consumption or slowing progress toward veganism.   I don't actually find either point compelling.  Some humane reforms are minor and some are major.  Take for example "humane beef."  Most cattle spend the final 5 months of their lives in the gruesome environment of a feedlot, being stuffed with corn, hormones, antibiotics, and even cement dust.  "Humanely" raised cattle never go to a feedlot. I don't think someone can really be imagining life from a steer's standpoint if they think that difference is negligible.

And as to meat consumption slowing progress toward veganism--this assumes that people who buy "humane" animal products at a Whole Foods (for example) are former vegans or would-have-been vegans.  This conflicts with my experience. In almost ten years of teaching an animal rights class, I've had lots of experience of seeing what happens when I present videos about factory farming as well as information about "humane meat."  Meat eaters progress "only" to the humane meat option usually just because they think it would be too hard to go further.  I do not observe vegans or vegetarians regressing to the humane meat option.  They do not think "humane standards" do enough to remove the ethical problems with meat-eating.

It also flies in the face of some key facts to suppose that humane animal products increase meat-eating.  For one, they're very expensive.  That's a deterrent.  Second, Whole Foods is presumably the biggest seller of humane animal products in the US. I have read that 90% of Whole Foods shoppers are not there because of any concern at all about the treatment of animals.  If they weren't shopping at Whole Foods, they'd be shopping at another pricey grocery store like Central Market or at an ordinary grocery store.  They'd be buying ordinary factory farmed meat.

A third important point is that the humane movement is succeeding at a key task.  People do tend to completely dismiss animals raised for food. For many people, an animal that's going to be eaten just doesn't matter at all. It's astonishing and really impressive that 63% of California's voters voted for Proposition 2, effectively saying that all animals matter.  They're not going as far as Francione would want them to, or Peter Singer would want them to, or I would want them to, but they took an absolutely critical first step.

There's much more that could be said, but this is already monstrously long.   I just have to add--read my comment policy.  I will delete any comment that is not to the point and impeccably respectful.  No comments about me or my way of moderating this blog are going to be published. 

In Which I Casually Mention...

...that the New York Times published my letter about Gary Steiner's editorial today. I'm going to be super-busy in the next couple of days (NOT busy cooking a turkey), but your thoughts welcome.