There are few things more annoying than being confronted with the moral implications of one’s actions. From the 15th century village hag facing immolation for practicing witchcraft, to the last desperate moments inside the Fuhrerbunker with allied forces rapidly closing in, to meet the judgmental gaze of an outraged moral majority is often a difficult and tedious task. Indeed, it has the distinct possibility of bringing the unpleasant reality of one’s own moral character, and perhaps the failings therein, into uncomfortable clarity. This is acutely applicable in the latter example, wherein one hopes that a final moment of critical self-reflection preceded Adolf’s exit from this life via route P-38. However, the presence of such an apparently aggrieved majority baying for the blood of the unjust is hardly satisfactory evidence that one possesses any such failings beyond, perhaps, a lack of the sort of refined social skills which have historically proven the best defence against allegations of ethical aberration. Something tells me your typical victim of witch burning could not be described as a ‘people’s person’. Nevertheless, in this case justice has suffered a despicable perversion, with the point here being that we simply we cannot rely on the prevailing moral consensus to be our sole barometer when navigating the sticky realm of right and wrong. That being said, if ever there is a time for critical introspection into our own behaviour, surely it must be when prompted to do so by our peers, indeed, who’s to say that we won’t find ourselves the Hitler of the situation.
This brings us in a roundabout way to the question in hand – is meat murder? Or, put less provocatively: what, if any, moral considerations do we owe animals? Are there any powerful enough to make us reconsider their farming and slaughter for human consumption? As I hope was conveyed in the preceding preamble, I believe this is a question which necessitates a particularly careful scrutiny. Unlike some of the common philosophical conundrums – which can make for harmless pub discussions with little danger of straying from the purely abstract, and everyone can therefore leave without the conclusion imposing itself in any tangible way on their lives – the implications in this case could be enough to put one off one’s pint altogether. If meat is indeed murder, then regardless of the civility with which your vegan friend argues, it is your status as a man of good moral character, not merely your lunch, which is really at stake. So, with not only steaks at stake but also compliance in what would turn out to be the most monumental and ongoing genocide in history, this question should not be treated as a trivial philosophical exercise.
Having framed the issue in this light, one might be tempted to hedge one’s bets by airing on the side of caution where mass enslavement and murder is concerned. Put in terms of a pascalian wager the vegan argument takes on a seductive allure; simply forgo certain foods, clothes etc. and secure your place on the right side of history when future generations realise this atrocity for what it is and close the farmyard gates for good. This approach, in addition to being that of an intellectual coward who clings to whatever socio-ideological moment happens to be on the breeze, misses that the consequences for accepting the vegan position do not end at one’s MacDonalds order.
For example, adopting a strict ‘right to life’ position should immediately tear open a can of ethical worms throwing up far more questions than answers. A right to life, but where does life begin and end? – does veganism commit one to being anti-abortion? What qualifies as a life? – should insects be protected? Bacteria? Viruses? I fully accept many vegans may greet these objections with an eye roll and believe that their belief system is capable of answering them all with perfect consistency without advocating for the end of human civilisation as we know it. However, I do not state them as objections, indeed, should we discover a robust right to life in our exploration of this topic we should not let the inconvenience of this truth discourage us from its adoption, I am merely demonstrating that the vegan position is far from ethically straightforward, and people should not think that simply opting for the McPlant renders them accomplished moral philosophers.
The arguments:
People may abstain from eating meat for a wide variety of reasons which extend beyond moral consideration for the animals involved. Particularly in the last five to ten years it seems that veganism and vegetarianism have seen most of their new recruits from the environmental movement, warriors in the ever escalating and newly dubbed ‘climate crises’. As the reasons therein have more to do with a broad commitment to environmental and climate activism which neither begins nor ends with the topic at hand, and is primarily concerned with the consequences of industrialised farming as it relates to human civilisation (and some vague notion of ‘the planet’ as a cohesive moral entity), they are the subject of another article entirely. I am addressing the more traditional arguments, the kind which my parents and I myself subscribed for the first eighteen years of my life, that being a moral objection to the farming and slaughter of conscious living beings. This view generally (but not always) revolves around a conception of animal rights – the idea that some of the rights we observe and almost universally agree upon for fellow humans should be extended to animals. I will explore this idea first before looking at some other, less formalised, motivations one might have to refrain from meat eating.
Rights:
Although the precise nature and extent of human rights has always been controversial, I think the term invokes a connotation which bears a near universal resemblance. Images of righteous champions standing up to tyrannical villains, the words “life, liberty, property”, and so on may have already crossed your mind. Thankfully, we need not wade too far into the murky periphery of what the pantheon of rights should include and exclude, as far as animal rights are concerned there is no pressing need to, for example, discuss the right to freedom of speech or religious expression. We may therefore remain in the clear and hopefully uncontroversial waters of rights to life and bodily integrity, some form of which are observed by all but the most barbaric of human civilisations – we, as humans, basically agree that there is some binding moral force by which we object to the crimes of murder and assault.
To understand to who and what a right should be extended, we first need an understanding of where it comes from in the first place – what is the source of the right which makes it normatively binding? Again, to avoiding waylaying this article into a full-blown discussing of the origin of rights, I will attempt to elucidate my point with the use of examples which I hope will leave you with the intuitive sense that animals simply do not fit into our everyday use of rights as both legal and moral devices.
The way I see it typically argued is that any definition of rights extending to animals takes the normative content to be the fact of consciousness. I think that people making such an argument have the experience of animals at the centre of their candidacy for rights protections. Examples of their supposedly unjust treatment invoke an almost involuntary empathic appreciation for this phenomenological unpleasantness which we hardly help but understand as at least somewhat parallel to that of our own suffering. For many, this is probably enough to want to extend the salvation of rights to our few sentient companions in an otherwise inanimate universe. Indeed, is the abolition of certain extremes of pain and distress not the objective of many of our most cherished and safeguarded rights? Although intuitive to the instinctively utilitarian mind of modernity, this conception of rights quickly falls apart when we consider how rights are actually implemented and, most illuminatingly, when and why they are taken away.
As much as we like to think of rights as inalienably fastened to one’s status as a divine being created in the lord’s image, something only the worst kind of tyrant would seek to dispossess one of, we have to acknowledge that we are all only a certain kind of action away from being stripped almost completely bare of our cherished freedoms. Not only this, but we all agree that this should and must be the case, for the practicalities of living both our personal lives and within any kind of civilised society. I am primarily referring here, as you’ve guessed, to the institution of law; imbued with the authority to snatch away the right any man has to the integrity and free use of his own body and generally be roundly cheered on for doing so.
Upon violation of societies rules you may quickly find yourself languishing against your will within the four walls of a prison cell, perfectly conscious and presumably experiencing some no small degree of mental anguish. For a serious crime, you can expect almost no one, not even the most morally enlightened vegan crusader, to be campaigning for the reinstatement of your liberty. This crusader may, however, argue that being imprisoned for an act of aggression against your fellow man cannot be compared to the slaughter of innocent animals. For one, the state, ours at least, will not kill you for even the most egregious of moral transgressions. Is this restraint bourn from, perhaps, a right to life stemming from a protection of consciousness? I’m afraid this view does not hold up when we consider other examples, such as the self-defence situation. Again, no one, even the militant Peta activist, would condemn you from inflicting lethal force upon an assailant determined on your own or someone else destruction or severe harm. So, there is always a scenario we can imagine in which the simple fact of having consciousness is no guarantee of rights protections. Indeed, it seems pretty clear from our common usage of rights in both the legal and moral sense that someone posses them only so far as they respect the rights of others.
But, you may be insisting, these are only examples in which our hand has been uncomfortably forced to withhold rights out of an immediate and pressing concern for the rights of ourselves and others – if we had not stepped in these rights would certainly have been violated, or violated further, and so the criminal is guilty and therefore deserves his fate. Cow #13209, having spent her whole life milling around, chewing the cud, and generally being a chilled-out kind of character, cannot be said to be in any particular moral violation which would warrant her demise at the hands of famer Giles.
While it is true that we cannot say a farm animal has deserved the inevitable final trip to the abattoir, this is again, missing the point of rights – its not about deserved at all. Although it is tempting, as many do, to imagine the concepts of morality, rights, crime and punishment etc., as all stemming from some metaphysical ten commandments floating around somewhere for us to discover in the abstract realm of academic moral philosophy, I don’t believe this biblical level of ethical clarity is something we can, or should, realistically be looking for. The kind of objective ethical principles we apply to each other as a civilised society, the kind we are seeking to extend to animals, can only be derived relatively. For human beings, this comes as an agreement that among rational beings, capable of reciprocation, that it is generally in all of our self-interests to respect the ownership the individual has over his own body what he creates with it. When someone breaks this tacit agreement, violating another’s right to life, liberty, or property, they prove themselves incapable of participating in the aforementioned reciprocal arrangement, thereby removing themselves from the moral pool of mutual self-interest – it ceases to become advantageous to respect this person as a fellow autonomous rational entity. Amongst humans, of course, there is the distinct possibility of reform and rehabilitation; a criminal today may, after an appropriate time conversing with four walls, adopt a more civilised position and once more become an asset rather than a threat to those around him. Crucially, this is impossible for an animal.
Although our bovine friend from earlier may give the impression that she has embraced a code of peace and love, we can be sure such behaviour does not result from any relatable kind of belief. The reality is, we must expect this pacifism to give way to whatever degree of savagery strikes her as necessary as a means to an emotional, short-term, and crucially irrational brand of self-interest – an animal can never be made to understand the concepts necessary to participate in the world of rights.
If this does not seem intuitive, imagine leaving your dearest loved one in a locked room with a tiger. Further, imagine said tiger has never so much as hurt a fly – existed thus far on a strict diet of vegan meat substitute – and therefore there exists no evidence that this cat in particular possesses any proclivities to violence. Now, lets add to this picture you, positioned on some overlooking balcony perhaps, holding a shotgun. I somehow doubt there will be any confusion as to where your intuitions lie now. The tiger remains technically, legally innocent, yet we would not wait until mid-lunge to pass a guilty verdict and deliver the death penalty. We would not wait, even, for the first sign of aggression, for the claws to be drawn or the teeth to be borne, this is because we understand that such a creature is irrational and is therefore capable of violence at any time. The decision to kill the creature is not based off of any violations it has incurred, nor do we need particular evidence that a violation could be imminent, instead the intrinsic nature of the animal, the fact that its behaviour is not rationally directed, is enough to pre-emptively strip it of any and all rights – in other words, it never had any rights to begin with.
Of course, we may be motivated to avoid killing the cat, if at all possible. We might prefer (although unlikely given the danger of this exact scenario) to administer a sedative rather than a shotgun round, preserving the life of the animal. However, and this is the crucial point, we would all agree that there exists no moral condemnation whatsoever for pulling the trigger on that shotgun and blowing the things head clean off. That said, should a non-lethal alternative be available, you might, and I might agree, have the feeling that, all other things being equal, there is something better about avoiding a needless killing. Although we have now left the realm of rights, dispensing with the normative weight therein (the kind which upholds law and justifies forceful intervention on behalf of justice), this does not mean we cannot still explore our intuitively held, if somewhat vague, felt ideas of right and wrong. Indeed, it is on this level that I think we will find that a discussion of animal welfare makes the most sense.
Non-binding moral considerations:
Although a discussion of ethics typically centres on those legitimately derived oughts with which we seek to constrain or compel the behaviour of others, it seems to me that legitimate rights and wrongs can exist which do not fit into a legal or civil system of ‘rights’ and should therefore not be enforced through coercive means. Indeed, we employ such moral devices in everyday life; we might say it is ‘wrong’ for a person to lie or cheat a friend, however, such a violation can be committed perfectly within the bounds of the law. Subsequently, moral considerations herein have no place within the kind of discussion we were having previously, one involving the appropriate allocation of force in a civil society.
Moving forward from here I think it worth noting that the carnivores amongst us have beaten the charges of accessory to mass murder. Without rights to violate, it is unlikely that any moral considerations will be discovered from this point on which warrant the kind of legal, societal and universal condemnation which amounts to such a denunciation.
The action of mistreating a friend, I would argue, should be considered a moral failing in relation to a tacit system of social norms, in which we assume people value inclusion and respect. Crucially, our judgment again here, as always, is rooted in the individual values and self-interest of the relevant parties. Obviously, for the person being mistreated, the condemnation of such behaviour suits his fairly straightforward interest in engaging in honest and beneficial social relationships. But even for the perpetrator, a case can be simply made, without appealing to contrived and possibly Kantian manipulations of abstract logic, for a condemnation of their own actions from their own ethical perspective.
Presumably, despite their recent actions, this person holds some value in the social relationship they have jeopardised. Indeed, to cultivate such a relationship in first place requires a degree of time, effort and sacrifice all of which are being rendered meaningless in its demolition. Beyond this even, it follows that we place some value in the very personhood of a friend; we do not, I think, consider such a relationship in terms of a cold egocentric calculation pertaining to our own cost verses advantage. Instead, we invest in them as individuals whose success and happiness we value as end in and of itself. We must note, however, that all this is perfectly consistent with the ultimate and only source of value being individual self-interest. There is no ulterior normative force compelling us to respect and value the people in our lives, and therefore the sociopath who sees no sense in conforming to standards of interpersonal good behaviour cannot really be deemed immoral in a strict sense. What we can say of the Scrooge in our lives is that they are missing out on a rich source of positive value to be found in human connection. Additionally, we can say their anti-social behaviour is bad for us or from our perspective, we can also warn others off engaging with such a person, all of which amounts to a basically typical response to an unpleasant, unkind individual.
We have therefore secured a source here for the legitimate expression of individual values which pertain to the people in our own lives. The crucial point here is that these values do not legitimise the use of force in pursuing, we cannot banish people from society for failing to respect them. Some may brand these values subjective, however it is worth noting that, although the values underpinning rights are distinct in the kind of action their enforcement justifies, they too are technically subjective in the sense that they exist in relation to the individual subject rather than in some detached, ethically third-person perspective. The difference is that the enforcement of rights is a prerequisite for the existence of civilised society in the first place, and so can be assumed to be universally shared amongst all rational actors who value their life and property.
We have now, albeit in an admittedly longwinded way, arrived at a non-binding sense of right and wrong we can use to consider our feelings towards animals. Given that the values we find in our human relationships can be used to create a moral landscape for the norms and considerations encountered therein to exist within, we can surely do the same when it comes to our friends of the fur and of the feather.
It is perfectly legitimate to value the life and prosperity of a beloved family pet, and to therefore arbore any cruelty which may threaten them. Mittens the cat means something personally to you, and so it is natural and rational to include him within your ethical framework as a valued end in and of himself. From this perspective, the notion of animals as property appears wholly straightforward; we, as rational actors and therefore legal rights holders, are able to designate objects of value for protection under the law. So long as the ownership of mittens does not violate the legitimate claim of another legal actor, we are able to fully realise the potential for human-feline companionship up to and including letting them walk all over the counter tops and decide their own mealtimes.
The question of pets is, admittedly, less controversial than the main theme of this essay, the idea that animals can not merely be owned, but killed for our benefit. Our line of reasoning thus far seems to have led us to the position that, if farmer Giles is willing to send Ermintrude to the slaughterhouse, and I’m willing to pay for her with a side of black pepper sauce, this is a matter solely between the two of us and no government or private individual has the moral justification to intervene. Again, however, this conclusion carries normative weight in the realm of law, a devout vegan who violently shudders at the thought of tucking into a nice bloody steak should feel no obligation to convert to carnivorism. Additionally, they remain free to argue the case against their meat-eating friends, even if this case has been largely reduced to an appeal to an emotional, felt sense of right and wrong which boils down to the kind of realities you find intuitively palatable.
Although this characterisation, notably the use of the (often pejoratively used) word ‘emotional’, may give the impression that I am dismissing moral considerations of this sort, but this is not my intention. As previously outlined, the landscape of legally non-binding ethics can still be a rich and important one, essential for the navigation of certain environments such as social relationships. That said, the values guiding our choices in that realm enjoy a considerably more concretely universal basis – we all value mutually rewarding inter-personal connections and therefore right and wrong in the social arena become broadly straightforward and arise organically. The same cannot be said for your vague felt sense that certain conscious beings should have this consciousness preserved and be spared unpleasant phenomenological experience. But, then again, I cannot in good faith say I am able to brush aside such feelings, indeed, in my experience the prevailing approach to ethics in and amongst our hallowed institutions of academia is treat to precisely this emotional awareness of the good and the bad as not just the end but the guiding principle of moral philosophy (although any professor of meta-ethics worth his salt will justify his tenure by substituting the word ‘intuitive’ for ‘emotional’). Considering this, who am I to dismiss the inescapable voice of one’s own conscience, even if I would stop short of considering it the root of all moral truth as some seem to.
Arguments from the intuition:
Having said all this, I find it pressing to allay the cricket on my shoulder, who does pipe up from time to time, reminding me that there is something uncomfortable, something off and perhaps something wrong about another living thing dying for what, in this modern age, amounts essentially to my sensory pleasure. For me this is not a new feeling, I was a practicing pescatarian for my first eighteen years. Admittedly, a commitment inherited from my parents which I have since broken with after considering the arguments and coming to the conclusions presented here. For that time however, I took the feeling to heart and, perhaps as a result, it still arises to challenge my dietary decisions today.
So then, how do I respond when confronted in such a way by my own subconscious? One line of thought – which generally allows me to enjoy a post-workout whey protein, chicken sandwich combo guilt free – follows from the reality that most of the animals we eat owe the fact of their existence precisely to the industry which delivers them into my plate and into my shaker. Given the titanic scale of animal farming today, seeing 140,000 chickens slaughtered on average every minute, we can confidently speculate that the vast majority of this number would never have been bred and raised in the first place if not for human demand. Further, I can say with certainty that the particular life cut short for the benefit of my McCrispy sandwich exists solely because of this transaction between Maccies and I. Should veganism sweep the globe tomorrow causing the collapse of the meat industry, we can be sure billions of prospective bovine and poultry lives never see the light of day.
I might pre-empt your reaction here by saying that I hope that this style of moral reasoning strikes you as jarring; I too typically have little time for a calculation so brazenly utilitarian. Indeed, I used to respond to these kinds of arguments vociferously in my pescatarian days. I found it particularly persuasive to consider the thought experiment wherein an alien race of an incomprehensibly advanced consciousness enslaves earth and begins farming humans as an exotic, intergalactic delicacy. Readily imaginable as a sci-fi movie premise: humans are reduced to living sheltered yet domesticated lives, being raised to accept that at any time their extraterrestrial overlords may herd them to an inevitable demise. What we would expect, given such a scenario, is some resistance to be in order. A hero to rise and awake humanity from its submissive malaise and recapture the indomitable spirit of freedom that is its birthright, for it is better to live a day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep, and so on. The fact that the aliens may have doubled or to what whatever degree multiplied the human population, with billions owing the fact of their existence to intentional cultivation, strikes us as wholly irrelevant to the ethics of the situation.
However, having matured past my deontological phase, I now realise the problems with this analogy. For starters, we must go beyond simply asking whether the scenario is right or wrong, and ground what are otherwise floating adjectives lacking subjects in the realm of reality by asking instead: right and wrong for whom. We cannot strictly and meaningfully condemn the aliens; we cannot say they are objectively wrong for acting in their own interests where they truly have nothing to gain from engaging with human beings on their own moral level, if we are incapable of reciprocating. This does not mean for a second that humanity is obligated by the rules of logic and reason to simply roll over and accept our fate for all eternity as cosmic hors d’oeuvres. From our perspective the day certainly needs a great deal of saving.
But what if our celestial rulers found themselves eaten away by their own, unfathomably advanced, version of the moral conscience? What if they felt a duty to extend some benevolence to the herds of homo sapiens dying for their pleasure? Beyond leading sheltered lives protected from undue physical discomfort, we might ask that some degree of freedom and purpose be afforded us, as these are the things humans value and proving them would no doubt improve our existence. How exactly these would be provided to us without simply demolishing the whole farming operation is beside the point, perhaps some sophisticated simulation: a matrix-like sci-fi scenario wherein we all lead wonderful fulfilling lives completely unaware of an impending demise orchestrated by God-like puppet masters. The point is that the ‘moral’ considerations which have their root in what we find psychologically palatable can, I think, be assuaged through a kind of utilitarian calculation in which the wellbeing of animal lives is considered and valued within the farming process. Worthy of inclusion within this calculation is the fact that the lives and subsequent degree of wellbeing we are considering would not have obtained at all if not for the system that they are a part of. Ask yourself, given this scenario, wherein your needs, safety and pleasure are as good as guaranteed, would the technical fact of your imprisonment within a cosmic paddock beyond your comprehension tip the scales so drastically to the negative that you would turn down the offer of life at all? To contest that ultimately ending the being’s life bears some moral weight on this scale has little to no meaning when we take the existence that was had as a net positive and understand that rights talk (as in right to life) is not applicable here.
For those finding their moral compass unmoved by this argument, or perhaps pulling it apart for its lack of a normative foundation and arbitrary dividing lines, I would only remind you that the project of this section is not to craft a bulletproof, watertight logical syllogism which renders its conclusions binding. This is a response to a feeling, thrown up alongside carnivorous thoughts and grounded in the arational sense that something is wrong or uncomfortable about the farming and slaughter of animals. If the preceding argument does anything to alleviate this experiential discomfort, as it does for me, then I think we have made some real ground in solving an ethical problem. If you are left cold, or possibly incensed, by the last few paragraphs, then I cannot say with any meaningful normative weight that you are wrong. So long as you do not claim that your sense for the morality of the situation bears some obliging normative conviction, the only thing left for now is to agree to disagree.
Before concluding what has turned out to be a somewhat sprawling essay, I would like to get one last but not insignificant niggle that stands out when I read my own words back, off my chest. In denying God’s intellectually limited creatures rights, and thereby banishing them from the domain of legal protection beyond that of property, I seem to leave myself absolutely zero coercive recourse when considering their treatment by others. As I have argued, I am largely at peace with the killing of innocent and possibly adorable animals for my own gustatory satisfaction but, as hope I have gotten across, I find myself nevertheless inclined to reach for the ‘free-range’ option in the diary aisle and shudder slightly at the thought of battery farming. The thought of unnecessary and acute conscious suffering obtaining for a mild degree of pleasure or convenience on my part, or indeed at all, jars with me in a way no thought experiment or analogy has yet been able to shake. According to my own rules however, I am powerless to enforce any particular standard of animal welfare and would be obliged to oppose the government should it do so.
Now, I can work through channels of social pressure and campaigning when it comes to the issue of farming practices – should this bother me beyond my own personal purchasing preferences – working to create market incentives for the meat industry to promote welfare standards. The more pressing and disturbing problem arises however, when considering the sadistic animal torturer. Currently occupying an uncontroversial position in the canon of western legislation, a general prohibition of animal cruelty ensures we can all sleep soundly knowing no puppies are being kicked on our governments watch. In my utopia however, the worst psychopath would be free to carry out his, by all accounts, dastardly deeds, entirely unmolested by the long arm of the law. What compounds this as a concern is that fact that the kind of manic likely to establish a Mengele-esque house of fluffy animal torture is decidedly unlikely to be receptive to the type of social pressures the local ‘mums against mass-mutilation group’ are able to inflict. This conclusion leaves me with an uneasy taste in the back of my moral conscience and I bring it up specifically to own up to the fact that I have no ethically potent palate cleanser to offer in response.
Do not, however, let an unsettling after-taste taint your whole evening. We should resist the urge to throw out the sensical, rational arguments presented thus far in the face of one unpalatable outcome. Indeed, as I have repeated several times now, we have sailed past the realm of ‘hard’ morality involving strict cases of right and wrong some time ago, and are currently navigating the arational waters of non-binding moral preference. Assuming that the arguments which led us here are sound (they very well may not be), we should focus on exploring and constructing non-coercive means of instituting some form of animal rights which can keep both puppies away from psychos, and chicken in our tikka masalas.