80-136 lecture notes 7/13/01

Should we eat animals? The moral arguments.

The argument from animal suffering

(This is the general form of the argument we saw yesterday.)

1. If we eat meat^†, more animals will be farmed.
   
   
2. Farming (generally) causes animals to suffer significantly. (see yesterday's lecture notes for support)
   
   
3. Therefore, if we eat animals we (indirectly) cause animals to suffer. (1,2 MP)


4. But we should not cause animals to suffer.



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5. Therefore, we should not eat animals. [Or: we have a moral obligation to become vegetarians.] (3,4)

Objections

• Premise (2) is incorrect. Animals don't suffer, or at least not in the same way as humans.

Reply: Scientific evidence overwhelming supports the claim that animals feel pain. And does a heightened cognitive awareness of suffering make it more salient?

• Premise (2) is false since federal legistlation requires that animals be slaughtered humanely.

Reply: There are many loopholes in the law (e.g., it doesn't apply to poultry or kosher farming). Farmers don't comply with the law since it isn't adequately enforced. Moreover, the law has no provisions for the terrible living conditions that animals must endure.

• Premise (2) is wrong. Though a few scattered farms may cause animals to suffer, the number isn't sufficiently significant to warrent the conclusion that we shouldn't eat animals.

Reply:There is overwhelming evidence that the amount of suffering is significant. Most of the animals we eat were produced on factory farms, and by definition a factory farm is unable to worry about the welfare of animals. [Note: As the above is an empirical objection, the only way to assess its merits is empirically. Is Singer's evidence convincing? Morever, who has the burden or proof? See my notes below.]

• Even if current farming practices cause great suffering, it seems possible at least that we could farm animals without the animal suffering. Then in that situation the argument would ground no obligation to not eat animals.

Reply: It is our current practices that matter when we look to determine our current moral obligations. That sometime in the idyllic future, cows, pigs and chickens raised for meat consumption might be farmed without being made to suffer is irrelevant to what you must (morally) do now. The argument works given current practices.

• Premise (2) is too strong. When I eat meat it is already dead. Besides, what difference can one individual make?

Reply: The point isn't to change the past but to change the future. Not eating animals is a boycott. Mass conformity is no justification for giving in to injustice.

The argument from wasted resources

1. If we eat meat^†, more animals will be farmed.


2. Farming animals for food is (in general) highly wasteful.
1. Animal farming requires significantly more grain per animal than per human (AL, 165).
1. It takes 16-21 pounds of vegetable protein (fed to a cow) to produce one pound of meat protein.
2. 6-8:1 for pork.
3. 4:1 for turkey.
4. 3:1 for chicken.
2. Animal farming requires more energy resources than farming plant foods (AL, 167).
1. Feedlot beef requires 50 times more fossil fuel calories than plant foods.
2. 20:1 for chickens.
3. 5:1 for range-land beef.
3. Animal farming requires more water than farming crops. (167)
1. A pound of meat requires 50 times more water than an equivalent amount of wheat.
3. Therefore, eating animals is (in general) a wasteful practice (1, 2 MP).


4. In a world where starvation and malnutrition are rampant, and energy and water resources are in short supply, it is morally wrong to engage in feeding practices that are wasteful and mere luxuries.


5. We live in a world where starvation and malnutrition are rampant, and energy and water resources are in short supply. (AL, 164-166; unsupported claim)


6. Eating animals is a luxury. [Equivalently, eating animals isn't necessary to maintain a healthy diet.] (AL, 180-2)
1. Vegetarianism is a sufficiently healthy diet.
1. The death rate for heart attacks among vegetarianism is 29% less than that of the general population.
2. Vegeterians generally have lower cholesterol.
3. Many vegeterian foods contain the necessary amino acids.

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7. Therefore, we should not eat animals. (4,5,6)

Objections

• How does my not eating meat help end world starvation or conserve energy?

Reply: The argument does not depend on supposing that by eating less wastefully the food we 'save' from being wasted will magically appear on the plate of a starving or malnourished person. The argument depends instead in part on the idea that a change in a sufficient number of persons' actions might actually make a difference to the overall world supply of food, water, and energy. If that is so, then the moral choice is between aligning oneself with those who are doing something morally to help the situation or with those who are morally standing of the way.

Argument from environmental pollution

1. If we eat meat^†, more animals will be farmed.


2. Producing meat for food (in general) causes environmental pollution. (AL, 168-9)
1. Cattle feedlots are the source of fully one-half of the toxic organic pollutants found in water. (In the US, animals create 130 times as much manure as humans do.)
2. Livestock are incredibly hard on topsoil: each pound of beef erodes about 35 lbs. of topsoil.
3. Livestock contribute to deforestation and the loss of biodiversity as we clear thousands of acres of forest for pastureland a day; the practice also leads to desertification (where overgrazing is also a factor).
4. Producing beef is highly consumptive of water and nonrenewable resources -- it takes the equivalent of about 190 liters of gas to produce the meat you eat every year.
5. Cattle are significant sources of 'greenhouse' gases -- they account for 15-20 percent of methane emissions worldwide.
3. Therefore, eating meat (in general) indirectly causes environmental pollution. (1,2 MP)


4. In a world with environmental pollution as serious as ours, it is morally wrong to engage in feeding practices that are wasteful and mere luxuries.


5. Eating animals is a luxury. [Equivalently, eating animals isn't necessary to maintain a healthy diet.] (AL, 180-2)
1. Vegetarianism is a sufficiently healthy diet.
1. The death rate for heart attacks among vegetarisn is 29% less than that of the general population.
2. Vegeterians generally have lower cholesterol.
3. Many vegeterian foods contain the necessary amino acids.

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6. Therefore, we should not eat animals. (4,5)

Other Comments

• The objections that "meat tastes good" and "it's natural." Humans are omnivores: we need meat to be healthy. Why else would it taste so good?

These arguments are quite weak. Meat eating is cultural, not natural -- think of India and how little meat they eat. Even if it were 'natural' for humans to eat meat (i.e., if we evolved as omnivores), it is hard to see how this provides us a moral justification for eating meat now -- that we evolved that way surely doesn't make something right. If men have an evolved predisposition to rape, that would not morally justify rape, for example. So it is hard to see how the supposed "naturalness" of meat-eating is relevant or can justify the practice. The claim that most people need meat in their diets is by now on extremely shaky scientific grounds -- most people, no matter how active, can live a fully healthy life without eating meat products through minimal initial effort in learning to eat a balanced vegetarian diet.

• The question of the 'burden of proof'. Is it the vegetarian who must argue vigorously for the morality of her choice of eating habits? Or is there a presumption against meat eating?

There seems to be a reasonable presumption that unnecessarily causing suffering to animals wasting resources and creating environmental pollution is morally objectionable, unless there is some sufficiently strong justifying reason for doing so. But then, it appears that the obligation for providing arguments in support of their eating habits weighs more heavily on the person who would continue to eat meat than on the person who abstains. Consider the following remarks:

"What is important to the general animal liberation position is that the burden of proof is to be on those who would sacrifice animal interests for the general welfare, just as it is on those who would sacrifice the interests of some humans to help other humans (e.g., in times of war), and that justification requires demonstrating not merely some marginal increase in utility through the sacrifice but, rather, requires demonstrating both that prohibiting the sacrifice would severely compromise the general welfare (which is not restricted to human welfare) and that the sacrifice is distributed fairly." (Sapontzis, 66 in Pojman: Environmental Ethics)

Once we start consciously considering that animal suffering, wasted resources, or environmental pollution are morally relevant factors, we begin to evaluate the consequences of our actions. Sapontzis seems to sugest we adopt a "conservative principle" to guide us to err where we can on the side of caution rather than on the side of possible morally inappropriate behavior. Thus, someone who is prone to violence when drunk has, we think, a moral obligation to be careful about how much he drinks -- he should err in his behavior on the side of drinking less (or not at all) rather than erring on the side of drinking too much. We ought, morally, to be careful , we think, because morality matters.

But then, we may just suppose that there is a presumption that we shouldn't kill and eat animals for our food if we can avoid it. And we can avoid it through eating a nutritious vegetarian diet. Thus, it could be argued, it is not the vegetarians who need to offer a moral argument in favor of their position but those who would endorse eating meat who are responsible to produce arguments for their position sufficient to overcome the reasonable presumption that it is wrong to treat animals in ways that cause them great suffering and use them as mere resources existing for our use. It is, in fact, difficult to find good arguments that meat eating is justified.

• On killing. The above arguments raise no objection to the killing of animals for our food per se. Is there anything wrong with killing animals for our meat that aren't factory-farmed?

We'll consider the moral "sanctity of life" principle later on, but here are two quick arguments.

• Tom Regan argues that an animal is a subject of a life, hence we have a moral duty not to kill it without sufficient justification (and the desire for the taste of meat, says Regan, isn't sufficient justification).


• James Rachaels argues against killing animals for food on utilitarian grounds that in killing an animal, we take away its entire future capacity for happiness.