A South Australian Aboriginal elder recently defended the killing of wombats by throwing rocks at them until they die (aka stoning) as a “cultural practice” used to obtain food…
This has been part of our culture and the way we’ve gone about it for thousands of years.
Hmm…
Stoning is an ancient tradition for adultery in Judaeo-Christian cultures, and still is in some Muslim majority countries…
…and how many of us in western democracies (whatever they are now) consider that to be a Good Thing?
On the flip side, killing animals without first stunning them is yet another tradition in some religious cultures…
…and in case you were wondering: no, I don’t think throwing rocks would count as a method of stunning.
Generally, when I hear “tradition”, I translate it in my head as “the way we’ve always done things around here” or simply, “just because we want to”.
Tradition can be harmless and even fun.
But, when your “tradition” is combined with careless treatment of sentient animals or the environment, other than making me angry, you should also imagine me sticking my fingers in my ears and uttering:
la la la la la la la la la la…
When you’re ready for a civilised conversation, let me know. Maybe then you can join the United Federation of Planets, er, People.
Until then, don’t bother me with your “it’s tradition” nonsense.
And please, please, please don’t expect me to respect your harmful tradition.
Postscript: Since I first wrote this, another aboriginal elder has spoken out to condemn the action and a 10 daily article claims that this “…has sparked a national debate on what’s culture and what’s cruelty.” While debate is always healthy, is there really anything much to debate here?
There are often moments when I desire inspiration from Christopher Hitchens, one of the most eloquent public intellectuals of our time.
I watched this interview tonight, recorded after his diagnosis with oesophageal cancer. It came from a slightly surprising (at least to me) source, but I found it to be rewarding and classically Hitch:
An extremely modest number really, compared with other observers over a similar timeframe.
But still, somehow a nice milestone.
I’ve also submitted more than 100 DSLR photometry observations to AID. Again, not many in comparative terms.
The light curve shows the last ten years of visual and B band data along with the 169 (in purple) visual and DSLR eta Carinae observations I’ve made during that time. The red trend line shows the steady rise in eta Carinae’s brightness that has been going on for decades now.
Between VStar, work, and life in general, I don’t get a lot of time to observe these days, but I try to make each observation count.
For anyone following Strange Quarks, you will have noticed my preoccupation with other things in recent months.
Our democracy recognises this right which is subject to the general law and must be balanced against the rights and interests of others and of the community as a whole.
Of paramount importance are the protection of public safety, the maintenance of peace and the facilitation of fair and equal access to public areas.
Recent protests by vegans in Victoria, NSW, and Queensland were the opposite of this, certainly compared to the well-organised and anticipated Climate Change school strikes held around Australia or the rally against live export.
You’re frustrated. You feel a sense of urgency. You’re impatient.
If you wanted to confuse the message with the medium, you’ve done it.
Pissing people off is not the answer.
Invading people’s privacy is not the answer. Would you tolerate that in reverse?
Those who said they had a burger instead of a salad for lunch that day in “retribution” for your action were just being inflammatory too.
But then, why do we expect others to be kind to us if we don’t lead with kindness and consideration?
I resisted using the term “vegan” for a long time because of negative stereotypes and an expectation of perfect compliance, preferring to say “I’m taking a plant-based approach”. I still like that better, even if it is more awkward.
Of course, the questionable actions of one group of humans is independent of what’s true or false in the world.
No-one really should want anyone to watch Dominion, even though I think its message is important.
Earthlings and later Dominion horrified and upset me. There are plenty more to choose from, including the Land of Hope and Glory, Cowspiracy, and What the Health?
Some people will respond to direct action or documentaries.
Others will be completely turned off by in-your-face approaches.
I’ve spoken with activists in Adelaide’s Rundle Mall.
You’ve all seemed like nice people.
But sometimes, I hear you use phrases like “convert to veganism”.
The temptation to adopt that attitude must be strongly resisted.
You shouldn’t be trying to convert anyonetoanything. That way lies dogma and an analog of religious zealotry.
Sure, engage people in conversation, encourage people to think about what they believe to be true about the world, cast doubt on the validity of traditions and long-held beliefs.
That’s just plain old skepticism and the aim of movements like street epistemology.
It’s not up to you — or anyone — to tell people what to think or how to live.
Above all, show compassion for the people you engage with (people are animals too), as well as the non-human animals you are trying to save, a path I have not always trod well.
I’ve chosen to try to eliminate the use of animal products. I feel compelled to.
Others choose to reduce the use of animal products in various ways.
It all helps.
Doing nothing is less tenable the further down the track we go.
I thought it was interesting that Grill’d had their first Meat Free Monday not long after the vegan protests. Voting with our wallets may ultimately be more effective than direct protest.
Honestly though, I’d rather not write about this stuff at all, but I still feel the need to get it off my chest. I’ve written more here.
The criteria we apply to food choices are: our desires, our health, what’s good for the food producer (e.g. Fair Trade), environmental impact (climate change, resource usage/degradation), and what’s good for non-human animals (animal welfare).
Other than our health, without which nothing much matters to us, I consider this list to be essentially in order of increasing importance.
Large scale animal farming is environmentally unsustainable in terms of land and water use and the resulting waste and emissions (carbon dioxide and methane). This will only get worse as the human population continues its exponential growth. A plant-based diet could significantly reduce emissions and waste.
“Appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthy and nutritionally adequate.”
“Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the lifecycle. Those following a vegan diet should choose foods to ensure adequate intake of iron and zinc and to optimise the absorption and bioavailability of iron, zinc and calcium.”
“Supplementation of vitamin B12 may be required for people with strict vegan dietary patterns.”
It took a long time for me to accept the idea that we’re not at the centre of the universe, that there is no compelling evidence for gods of any sort, of a higher plan, of an afterlife.
The idea that we have a higher moral status, a greater right to be happy — to be free — than other animals is widespread, even though most of us would not be inclined to say so.
This idea is called speciesism. It is as if racism had been applied beyond the borders of homo sapiens.
Raising livestock for food involves billions of sentient animals worldwide per year being born into servitude and living lives that are nasty, brutish, and short, to borrow from Leviathan (Hobbes).
We need to widen our ethical circle to include other species. We do so when thinking about species loss through habitat degradation and climate change, but not necessarily when thinking about the animals we exploit.
Do the desires (e.g. cultural, religious) of one or more humans outweigh the welfare — the life — of even a single non-human animal?
For example, it’s hard to see how the live export of cattle or sheep can be defended on cultural, religious or other grounds when we know the harm caused to individual animals.
And what of the shorter yet no less harrowing trip from farm to abattoir, to say nothing of what happens upon arrival?
Caged hens as a source of eggs can’t be ethically justified unless you think that having an area no larger than a sheet of printer paper to live in, standing on wire, beak cutting to stop pecking of other hens, not being able to engage in natural behaviours are okay.
“In the egg industry, the sex of day-old chicks is determined at the hatchery. Sexing chicks…is done at this very early stage to determine their fate.”
“If strong and healthy, the female chicks remain in the hatchery, they are grown to a suitable size and then transferred to a laying facility — which could be a caged, free-range or barn set up.”
“Male chicks are considered an unwanted byproduct of egg production and are killed and disposed of shortly after birth.”
“A hen is declared ‘spent’ when her egg production drops at around 72 weeks of age. At this point she is considered less profitable and removed from the production system… Spent hens are either killed on farm and composted, or transported to an abattoir for slaughter.”
The treatment and fate of so-called broiler chickens and other birds such as turkeys is not something I have written about so far.
“For cows to produce milk, they have to give birth to a calf. Most calves are separated from their mother within 24 hours of birth to reduce the risk of disease transmission to the calf, and most do not stay on the farm for long.”
“Separation within 24 hours of birth interferes with the development of the cow-calf bond and thus reduces separation distress. Cows will show a strong response (calling) if their calf is separated at an older age.”
“The term ‘bobby calves’ refers to newborn calves that are less than 30 days old and not with their mothers. Essentially, they are surplus to dairy industry requirements as they are not required for the milking herd.”
“Products from processed bobby calves include young veal for human consumption, valuable hides for leather, calf rennet for cheese making, and byproducts for the pharmaceutical industry.”
I would say now that I’m asymptotically approaching veganism: moving towards a plant-based diet on ethical and sustainability grounds.
There’s “low-hanging fruit” like meat. Then dairy and eggs. Once I got over a few psychological hurdles, leaving these behind turned out to be easier than I expected.
Yet there are shades of grey…
I have shoes with leather uppers that I purchased before my thinking changed. Should I discard them? Will that help the animal now? No. Will I buy shoes with leather uppers in future. No.
Last Christmas we had a turkey in the freezer with a long expiry date that had not yet been eaten. Would the “right action” have been to not consume it? If so, wouldn’t that have been a waste and wouldn’t that mean the turkey’s demise was pointless?
Do you care about herd immunity? You should. Will you get the yearly flu vaccine to protect the vulnerable in our society as well as yourself? Eggs are used in the process of making the flu vaccine. Having the flu vaccine involves a compromise, perhaps one we will not have to make forever if research bears fruit.
Do you use sweetener in your coffee? Does it contain lactose? Some do, some don’t.
Do you drink almond milk or otherwise consume almonds? I have not dealt with the question of bees and honey in the first seven posts, but irrespective of your thoughts on that, how are the flowers of almond (and other) trees pollinated? By bees. Do the bees just fly in and out of the orchard, or under some circumstances are they brought there, in man-made hives?
Do you drink wine? The fining process often uses animal products (such as milk or eggs), but there are alternatives.
We need to cease deliberately enslaving and killing animals, treating them as means to our ends, instead of acknowledging them as sentient creatures who like us, do not wish to suffer and moreover, who wish to be free.
The point is to think. To ask questions. To cast doubt on long held beliefs. To intend change, to do better. To find alternatives, to say no more often.
It should never be about dogma. I sometimes hear vegan activists using the phrase “convert to veganism”. That way lies religion and unjustified ideology.
Peter Singer and Jim Mason, in The Ethics of What We Eat (pages 255, 256), say that objecting to the idea of killing young healthy farm animals for food:
…leads many people to become vegetarian, while continuing to eat eggs and dairy products. But it is not possible to produce laying hens without also producing male chickens, and since these male chicks have no commercial value, they are invariably killed as soon as they have been sexed. The laying hens themselves will be killed once their rate of laying declines. In the dairy industry much of the same thing happens—the male calves are killed immediately or raised for veal, and the cows are turned into hamburger long before normal old age. So rejecting the killing of animals points to a vegan, rather than a vegetarian diet.
I’m not fond of labels but I would say now that I’m asymptotically approaching veganism, that I am moving towards a plant-based diet. I’m largely there but 100%, all the time?
There’s the “low-hanging fruit” like meat. Then dairy and eggs.
Yet there are shades of grey.
I have shoes with leather uppers that I purchased before my thinking changed. Should I discard them? Will that help the animal now? No. Will I buy shoes with leather uppers in future. No.
Do you care about herd immunity? You should. Will you get the yearly flu vaccine to protect the vulnerable in our society as well as yourself? Eggs are used in the process of making the flu vaccine. Having the flu vaccine involves a compromise. In part 5, I referred to Australian research that aims to reduce the ethical dilemma by determining sex before hatching.
On the subject of vaccines, fetal bovine serum may be used instead of non-animal derived alternatives in vaccine production. The RSPCA says that where a synthetic serum or a non-animal derived alternative exists, they must be used instead of the animal-derived product.
The extent to which alternatives are used is something I want to discover more about, but: vaccination matters people! Imagine smallpox making a comeback.
Of course, as the recent outbreak of African Swine Fever in Chinese factory farmed pig populations shows, when a large outbreak of disease in animals occurs, they are “destroyed”. I don’t think that would fly with human disease outbreaks.
Do you use a sweetener in your coffee? Does it contain lactose? Some do and some don’t.
Do you drink almond milk or otherwise consume almonds? How are the flowers of almond (and other) trees pollinated? By bees. Is this a natural process? Do the bees just fly in and out of the orchard, or are they brought there, in man-made hives? If the latter, although less harmful than taking their honey, it’s arguably still a form of exploitation. Is that enough to make you stop drinking almond milk? If not, you made a compromise.
We recently had a turkey in the freezer with a long expiry date that had not yet been eaten. Would the “right action” have been to not consume it? If so, wouldn’t that have been a waste and wouldn’t that mean the turkey’s demise was pointless? I think so, therefore we had it last Christmas and were grateful.
Do you drink wine? The fining process often uses animal products (such as milk or eggs), but there are alternatives. Sites like Barnivore will help and obviously you can Google. Wine labels may sometimes say whether they are vegan friendly. More reds than whites seem to be vegan friendly from what I’ve seen so far, but by no means all. Beer is often okay. The main thing is: check if you don’t know.
Jelly contains, well, gelatine which is created from animal skin, bones and connective tissue. There are alternatives.
There are even lighter shades of grey.
If food has been cooked and will be discarded if I don’t eat it, should I eat it?
Perhaps.
More subtle, if food is cooked and leftovers would be kept refrigerated, should I eat it since it will be eaten later by someone else anyway. That’s less compelling since any animal based food I choose not to eat will reduce the need/demand for that food.
There are bacteria everywhere, including in what we eat. Fragments of insects may inadvertently end up in our food. I may step on a bunch of ants…
But we have to make a distinction between the foregoing and deliberately enslaving and killing animals, treating them as means to our ends, instead of sentient creatures who, as Moby said in a TED talk, just want to be free of pain and suffering, essentially just want to be happy.
The point is to think. To ask questions. To intend change, to do better. To find alternatives, to say no more often.
It should never be about dogma. That way lies religion and unjustified ideology.
For cows to produce milk, they have to give birth to a calf. Most calves are separated from their mother within 24 hours of birth to reduce the risk of disease transmission to the calf, and most do not stay on the farm for long.
The term ‘bobby calves’ refers to newborn calves that are less than 30 days old and not with their mothers. Essentially, they are surplus to dairy industry requirements as they are not required for the milking herd. This applies to all bull calves (males) and about one quarter of heifer calves (females) born each year. And, each year, around 450,000 of these bobby calves are destined for slaughter.
It continues:
Some calves will be reared for veal and about three quarters of the heifers will become replacements for adult milk-producing cows. Heifer calves may also be reared and then exported to dairy farms overseas. Bobby calves may also be killed on farm.
Bobby calves destined for slaughter are housed together on farm and fed colostrum, milk or milk replacer, usually only once a day. Bobby calves, because of their low value, often do not get the same standard of housing, cleanliness, care or attention as the valuable replacement heifers or the calves being reared for veal.
Products from processed bobby calves include young veal for human consumption, valuable hides for leather, calf rennet for cheese making, and byproducts for the pharmaceutical industry.
It goes on to talk about the transport and handling considerations for such young animals and concludes with:
The RSPCA believes that bobby calves should be at least 10 days old and be fed at least four hours before being transported. Transport to the abattoir should be no more than 10 hours and in trucks that have protection from the elements, bedding and enough room for all calves to lie down.
To avoid or reduce the welfare concerns relating to bobby calves, the RSPCA position is that if bobby calves cannot be euthanased on farm (to avoid the welfare issues associated with handling and transport), they should be at least 10 days old before being transported off farm and then slaughtered within 12 hours of last feed.
Another consideration is the stress caused to both cow and calf, described on this RSPCA page:
Separation within 24 hours of birth interferes with the development of the cow-calf bond and thus reduces separation distress. Cows will show a strong response (calling) if their calf is separated at an older age, e.g. 4 days after birth, compared to separation at 1 day or 6 hours after birth. A similarly strong response in cows was found when separating the calf at 2 weeks of age compared to 1 day.
To reduce separation distress, consideration could be given to a more gradual separation process whereby the calf is prevented from suckling but still has (some) physical contact.
There are also health concerns relating to the cow such as mastitis and lameness although less so than in the US and UK.
In contrast to the fairly intensive nature of dairy production overseas – where cows may be housed in sheds for their entire lives – most Australian dairy cows spend at least part of the day on green pasture.
The natural lifespan of a cow is up to 20 years, yet few commercial dairy cows live beyond the age of seven years, and many younger animals go to slaughter.
Due to the concerns listed above, the environmental issues discussed in part 1, and the more general argument about animals-as-means-to-our-ends from part 3 I choose not to consume dairy products anymore, where possible.
Caged hens as a source of eggs can’t be ethically justified unless you think that having an area no larger than an A4 sheet of paper to live in, standing on wire, beak cutting to stop pecking of other hens, not being able to engage in natural behaviours, physical pain, injury and death are all okay.
If you already buy cage free eggs in the supermarket, either barn or free range, you will be surprised to know that more than 11 million hens, or 70% of Australia’s hens, are still confined to a battery cage.
Hens in battery cages are constantly frustrated that they can’t do the things that come naturally to hens – spread their wings, walk freely, dust bathe, forage, lay their egg in a nest.
Battery cages cause physical pain, injury and death.
Australia is falling behind. Battery cages were phased out in the EU by 2012, and will be phased out in New Zealand from 2012. Canadian egg farmers have committed to an industry-led phase-out, while in the US, several states have either ended battery cage farming, stopped construction of further cages, or begun a phase-out.
They conclude that:
Battery cages are indefensible from a welfare point of view. The science is in, consumers and many major businesses are making the switch. It’s time for the Australian egg industry to stop clinging to the past, and catch up.
As mentioned in part 1, Karen and I have been choosing free range eggs for quite awhile now with the help of apps like CluckAR. Determining what constitutes free range and what doesn’t can be tricky though. As we’ve discovered, the number of birds and the conditions under which they are kept vary wildly under the “free range” or “cage free” banners, e.g. in a barn, out in the open.
But whether caged, barn, free range, there are two remaining problems: male chicks and “spent” hens.
In the egg industry, the sex of day-old chicks is determined at the hatchery. Sexing chicks (determining whether they are a hen or a rooster) requires considerable skill and is done at this very early stage to determine their fate.
If strong and healthy, the female chicks remain in the hatchery, they are grown to a suitable size and then transferred to a laying facility — which could be a caged, free-range or barn set up. Male chicks are considered an unwanted byproduct of egg production and are killed and disposed of shortly after birth.
Male chicks are killed for two reasons: they cannot lay eggs and they are not suitable for chicken-meat production. This is because layer hens — and therefore their chicks — are a different breed of poultry to chickens that are bred and raised for meat production. Layer hens are bred to produce eggs whereas meat chickens are bred to grow large breast muscle and legs.
It concludes with this:
The RSPCA continues to urge the egg industry to invest in alternatives…For example, research into alternatives to allow chick sex to be determined in the early egg incubation phase should be urgently progressed.
Recent advances in gene technology mean that it is now possible to differentiate between male and female chicks pre-hatch. This discovery provides an opportunity to improve animal production, reduce costs and eliminate ethical dilemmas in the egg laying and related industries.
An additional benefit of this technology is the potential to use the male eggs to protect people from influenza viruses. For example, human influenza vaccines are generally grown by vaccine manufacturers in fertilised chicken eggs. The pre-hatched male eggs that are no longer required by the layer industry could then be used to help produce seasonal flu vaccines.
“Spent” hens
From this RSPCA frequently asked questions page about layer hens:
A hen is declared ‘spent’ when her egg production drops at around 72 weeks of age. At this point she is considered less profitable and removed from the production system.
The process of removing ‘spent’ hens is known as ‘depopulation’ where hens are manually caught by human ‘catchers’ (up to 5 hens per hand) and placed into crates ready for transport.
There can be welfare issues during depopulation. For example, time pressures and rough handling often lead to injuries such as bone fractures.
Spent hens are either killed on farm and composted, or transported to an abattoir for slaughter. Some of the meat from spent hens may be exported, while other options may include pet food, and lower-quality processing meat for human consumption (for example in soups and stocks.)
For these reasons, and the more general argument about animals-as-means-to-our-ends from part 3 I choose not to consume eggs anymore, where possible.
There is always the option of keeping your own hens or sourcing them from a local community that raises them ethically. For poor communities there’s a lot of sense in this.
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. (Mahatma Ghandi)
Source: The Australian, April 7, 2018
Even though the Australian Government is currently reducing the number of months per year that sheep will be exported, it’s hard to see how the live export of cattle or sheep can be defended on cultural, religious or other grounds.
The RSPCA has long maintained that livestock should be slaughtered as close as possible to the point of production to avoid or minimise the inherent risks associated with their transport.
The trade in live farm animals from Australia, which requires transporting millions of animals over thousands of kilometres on arduous journeys which can last several weeks, could not be further from this principle.
As that article also points out there are other reasons for live export such as refrigeration issues, affordability, a desire to build breeding stock in the destination country.
Of course, those reasons would be less compelling, even irrelevant, if a plant-based diet was predominant.
Obviously export is driven by demand and the supply relates to the second aspect, but I want to focus on the first and fourth which have particular relevance here.
Do the desires (culture, religion) of one or more humans outweigh the welfare of one non-human animal?
After writing that last sentence I recalled Spock’s words at the end of The Wrath of Khan:
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.
As an aside, in that context, he was taking a consequentialist ethical stance to sacrifice his own life to save the lives of his shipmates, while oddly, at the same time making it sound like a Kantian maxim that could be applied independent of context.
The sentence structures are similar:
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.
The desires of humans outweigh the welfare of an animal.
But that’s where mere syntax is insufficient and semantics matters.
In Spock’s utterance, the word needs is applied both to the many and to the few or the one, while in the second sentence desires is applied to humans but welfare is applied to an animal.
Welfare implies needs.
So, the second sentence becomes:
The desires of humans outweigh the needs of an animal.
Hmm. Desires vs needs…
The needs of an animal — human or non-human — include being able to:
eat and drink
sleep
avoid pain
live
The desires of humans in the context of live export are to:
do something because an ancient text says they should, e.g. eat one animal but not another or slaughter an animal in a particular way after transport (e.g. kosher, halal)
It seems reasonable to suggest that needs trump desires here.
But the thing is, I like the taste of beef, bacon, ham, fish, turkey, chicken, cheese, milk, and other foods I’ve spent half a century eating.
Beef was my favourite meat. Lamb chops were frequently seen on the dinner plate when we were growing up but less frequently in my adult life. I preferred beef but lamb was fine too.
I have liked these things, but I don’t need them. It seems I never really did.
I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men. (Charles Darwin)
What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. (Morpheus, The Matrix)
The lesson of Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot is that the Copernican Revolution is still underway.
It took a long time for me to accept the idea that we’re not at the centre of the universe, that there is no compelling evidence for gods of any sort, of a higher plan, of an afterlife.
Many believe that one or more gods have an unhealthy interest in what we do and with whom.
Some believe that we are special among all the species of the Earth, that we are inexorably destined for greatness, that we alone are worthy of salvation, that we have dominion over all creatures.
But as a species we exhibit both the heights of greatness and the depths of depravity.
The idea that we have a higher moral status, a greater right to be happy, to be free, than other animals is widespread, even though most of us would never articulate it in that way.
This belief is called speciesism.
We mightbe more intelligent than some of our mammalian cousins, but any claim to be emotionally “superior” to them is on very shaky ground, as is the notion that they have less capacity for pain.
Do we consider the life of an intellectually disabled human less important than a person of “normal” intelligence? If not, then why would it be reasonable for non-human animals?
Even on the most optimistic view of those animals not deliberately exploited (pets), a different standard is applied to them vs us when it comes to choice, e.g. euthanasia (“putting it to sleep”) or reproduction (“neutering”).
The Matrix quote is not accidental. We have constructed our human world. We didn’t discover it fully formed. Societies, industries, economies, religions, ideologies: they are all man-made.
A casual conversation with work colleagues in 2015 planted a seed. In the course of conversation, a documentary called Earthlings was mentioned.
I remembered this now and then but it wasn’t near the top of my priority list. Among other things, hearing about the Yulin meat festival in China raised its priority.
I thought I was aware of factory farming practices, but watching Earthlings suggested otherwise. Dominion, the “Australian Earthlings“, was released in 2018. That brought it even closer to home.
Other documentaries — of varying emphasis and quality — include Speciesism, Cowspiracy, The Ghosts in our Machine, Sustainability, Lucent, What the Health?, Live and Let Live, Rotten, and Forks over Knives. Each add to the story in their own way, as do more matter-of-fact sources, such as RSPCA.
Sometimes, you need to see something in a new or different way to discover what you already knew or glimpsed for a moment before forgetting, reminiscent of The Silence of Doctor Who.
The real adventure lies not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. (Proust)
We have convinced ourselves that it’s okay to call some animals friends and others food or fur.
Once I began to accept that our relationship with animals was broken, it took only a short time to take seriously the idea that this needed to change, that they are not a means to our ends.
In contrast to my transition to atheism, this shift has happened over months instead of years.
That has the tendency to be disruptive to those around you.
In retrospect, I should have been openly talking with people close to me about this sooner, but there was a lot to process and I needed to sort things out first.
That’s largely what these posts are about.
In the end I’ve just been confusing and annoying to be around lately.
More than usual anyway.
I remember thinking that I didn’t know whether I would be able to adapt to life without animal products. I had already switched to soy milk. One day I decided to try a few weeks of lunches at work with no meat. I didn’t miss it. Eventually I started omitting other animal products and replacing them with plant-based ingredients (see part 2).
It’s still a work in progress.
My basic position now is simple:
Perpetuating a demand for food from large scale animal farming is ethically questionable.
This is for two main reasons, one of which was considered in part 1.
First, large scale animal farming is environmentally unsustainable in terms of land and water use and the resulting waste and emissions (carbon dioxide and methane). This will only get worse as the human population continues its exponential growth.
Second, raising livestock for food involves billions of sentient animals worldwide per year being born into servitude and living lives that are nasty, brutish, and short, to borrow from Leviathan (Hobbes).
Part 2 pointed to a third reason: it may actually be healthier for us (so, more ethical) not to depend so much on animal-based food.
I was on a school camp on a farm in the mid-1970s and a sheep was slaughtered in front of us. Imagine that happening now! There was a request for a volunteer to help pull out the small intestine to show the class how long it was, presumably because “kids like gross stuff” I guess and it was educational in some sense. Naturally, I put up my hand for this and was the “lucky winner”. I don’t remember whether anyone fainted.
As a 15 year old (my daughter’s age) I was a volunteer St John Ambulance cadet and had the opportunity to train for and become a so-called “third man” on ambulances in the late 1970s. I saw my share of motor vehicle accidents and death then and that continued into young adulthood when I trained as a nurse.
So I have a fairly strong stomach.
Yet, as an adult, I couldn’t watch Earthlings or Dominion without a break.
One reasonable objection to all of this is that in nature, animals kill other animals, so why shouldn’t we? Just think of a David Attenborough documentary. In nature lions kill antelope, buffaloes, zebras, young elephants, rhinos, hippos, wild pigs, giraffes, even sometimes apparently mice, birds, hares, lizards, crocodiles and tortoises.
The argument from nature is understandable, but it ignores the fact that as a species, homo sapiens is defined by how it defiesnature.
Very little that we do is natural, except for the mandate of bodily functions.
As noted earlier, we have constructed our world. We are tool builders, we wear clothes, live in houses, build machines that “defy” gravity, farm crops and animals on a large scale, pollute the environment, fight wars etc.
Do lions factory farm animals by the thousands at a time?
Do they, or the scavengers that come after, waste much of their prey?
It’s less about the killing of animals per se than the treatment and killing of animals en masse and at a distance.
There is a difference between hunting when trying to survive and purchasing animal products from a supermarket. In the latter case, the unpleasant part is someone else’s job, and the scale is massive.
In The Ethics of What we Eat, Peter Singer and Jim Mason quote Andrew Tyler of Animal Aid:
Ultimately, my objection is to the commercial forces that are seeking to persuade people of the poor world that their best nutritional interests are served by buying into modern, high-throughput farmed animal production processes. With that comes an addiction to high capital input systems, loss of control over the means of production, bad health, and a nightmare animal welfare scenario.
We may not be poor, but this is exactly the situation we find ourselves in.
This was a hard post to write — with a lot of revisions — and probably a bit ponderous to read. It could also be considered overly philosophical and abstract in parts, but it seemed to me to be necessary before returning to more specific topics in future.
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