Animals

Sunny

I'm a dog person, not a bird person, but I understand the loss suffered by my friend Peg today.

Slaughter

This is a few years old, but everyone should read it.

Statistics

This blog had 4,003 visits during March, which is an average of 129.1 visits per day. It's the fourth-best month in the blog's history.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Animal Abuse as Clue to Additional Cruelties” (news article, March 18):

As someone who deals with dozens of cruelty-to-animals cases every week, I applaud states that are imposing stricter penalties on people who hurt animals and that are working to establish online registries of animal abusers.

Animal abusers are cowards who take their issues out on “easy victims”—and their targets often include their fellow humans. I cannot begin to say how many incidents I’ve seen involving animal abusers who commit violent acts against humans, and animal neglecters who have also neglected their children or other human dependents.

Treating cruelty to animals with the seriousness it deserves doesn’t only protect animals, it also makes the entire community safer.

Martin Mersereau
Norfolk, Va., March 18, 2010
The writer is director of the Emergency Response Team, cruelty investigations department, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Animal Rights

Here is a New York Times blog post about legal rights for animals.

Statistics

This blog had 3,399 visits during February, which is an average of 121.3 visits per day.

A Look at Humane Farming

The film Partitions (running time: 14 minutes) by Audrey Kali gives an intimate glimpse of the ethical struggles that five small-scale meat farmers face when their animals are slaughtered. In this film, we see farmers interacting with the animals they will eventually transform into food (chickens, pigs, and cattle). The farmers in the film confront very difficult questions posed by the filmmaker about why they think their approach to processing of meat is different from that of factory farming. Although the farmers can easily answer that their animals are treated more humanely whilst alive, their discomfort about being asked questions regarding the slaughter process is visually and audibly obvious.

This film provides an accurate portrayal of small-scale, non-intensive animal farming. This is as humane as "humane farming" gets. One of the farmers interviewed says: "We give our pigs and our chickens many weeks of relatively happy life." The farmer fails to note that the natural lifespan of pigs is 11-15 years and the natural lifespan of chickens is 5-11 years, depending on breed. After watching the film, the viewer can decide whether giving these animals a few weeks of "a relatively happy life" is humane enough to justify taking these animals' lives for products that no one needs.

Sanctuary Tails

Here is the Farm Sanctuary blog.

Philip E. Devine on the Vegetarian's Dilemma

The sum of the matter is as follows. Either the vegetarian argues on utilitarian premises, or he tries to supplement or replace his utilitarianism with some plausible non-utilitarian principles implying the wrongfulness of rearing and killing animals for food. In the first case, there is no way around the suggestion, which many people appear to believe, that animal experience is so lacking in intensity that the pains of animals are overridden by the pleasures experienced by human beings. That the argument may appear cynical is no concern of the utilitarian, who is forced by his moral theory to admit the relevance of even the most cynical-seeming arguments. On the other hand, all the non-utilitarian principles which have been put forward turn out on inspection to have reference only to human beings. If they were to be abandoned, the practical result would be more likely to be that human beings would be treated as we now treat animals rather than animals as we now treat (or believe that we should treat) human beings.

(Philip E. Devine, "The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism," Philosophy 53 [October 1978]: 481-505, at 491)

Note from KBJ: Devine's argument takes the following form:

1. Either the vegetarian argues on utilitarian grounds or the vegetarian argues on nonutilitarian grounds.

2. If the vegetarian argues on utilitarian grounds, then vegetarianism is unsupported.

3. If the vegetarian argues on nonutilitarian grounds, then vegetarianism is unsupported.

Therefore,

4. Either vegetarianism is unsupported or vegetarianism is unsupported (from 1, 2, and 3, constructive dilemma).

Therefore,

5. Vegetarianism is unsupported (from 4, tautology).

The argument is valid (i.e., truth-preserving), and the first premise is true, but the second premise is false. Devine seems to think that if humans cease eating meat, they will derive no pleasure from eating. But not eating meat doesn't mean you get no pleasure from eating; it means, at most, that you get less pleasure from eating. Think of the difference between eating a hamburger and eating a veggie burger, for example. It is not as though the latter produces no pleasure! So the choice is between inflicting terrible pain and deprivation on animals and getting slightly less pleasure from eating. It's pretty clear that utilitarianism supports vegetarianism. Certainly Devine has not established that it does not.

W. V. Quine (1908-2000) on Altruism

There remains the awkward matter of a conflict of ultimate values within the individual. It could have to do with the choice of a career, or mate, or vacation spot. The predicament in such a non-moral case will concern only the individual and a few associates. When the ultimate values concerned are moral ones, on the other hand, and more particularly altruistic ones, the case is different; for the individual in such a dilemma has all society on his conscience.

The basic difficulty is that the altruistic values that we acquire by social conditioning and perhaps by heredity are vague and open-ended. Primitively the premium is on kin, and primitively therefore the tribe in its isolation affords a bold boundary between the beneficiaries of one's altruism and the alien world. Nowadays the boundary has given way to gradations. Moreover, we are prone to extrapolate; extrapolation was always intrinsic to induction, that primitive propensity that is at the root of all science. Extrapolation in science, however, is under the welcome restraint of stubborn fact: failures of prediction. Extrapolation in morals has only our unsettled moral values themselves to answer to, and it is these that the extrapolation was meant to settle.

Today we unhesitatingly extrapolate our altruism beyond our close community. Most of us extend it to all mankind. But to what degree? One cannot reasonably be called upon to love even one's neighbor quite as oneself. Is love to diminish inversely as the square of the distance? Is it to extend, in some degree, to the interests of individuals belonging to other species than [our] own? As regards capricious killing, one hopes so; but what of vivisection, and of the eating of red meat?

One thinks also of unborn generations. Insofar as our moral standards were shaped by evolution for fostering the survival of the race, a concern for the unborn was assured. One then proceeds, however, as one will, to systematize and minimize one's ethical axioms by reducing some causally to others. This effort at system-building leads to the formulation and scrutiny of principles, and one is then taken aback by the seeming absurdity of respecting the interests of nonexistent people: of unactualized possibilities. This counter-revolutionary bit of moral rationalization is welcome as it touches population control, since the blind drive to mass procreation is now so counter-productive. But the gratification is short-lived, for the same rationalization would seem to condone a despoiling of the environment for the exclusive convenience of people now living.

It need not. A formulation is ready to hand which sustains the moral values that favor limiting the population while still safeguarding the environment. Namely, it is a matter of respecting the future interests of people now unborn, but only of future actual people. We recognize no present unactualized possibilities.

Thus we do what we can with our ultimate values, but we have to deplore the irreparable lack of the empirical check points that are the solace of the scientist. Loose ends are untidy at best, and disturbingly so when the ultimate good is at stake.

(W. V. Quine, "On the Nature of Moral Values," in Values and Morals: Essays in Honor of William Frankena, Charles Stevenson, and Richard Brandt, ed. Alvin I. Goldman and Jaegwon Kim [Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1978], 37-45, at 44-5 [italics in original])

Statistics

This blog had 2,864 visits during January, which is an average of 92.3 visits per day.

Farm Sanctuary

Click here if you'd like to sponsor a farm animal for Valentine's Day.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “More Perils of Ground Meat” (editorial, Jan. 10):

Instead of encouraging efforts to improve food safety, you demonize a company that had the courage to invest in innovative technology proved to be effective in reducing dangerous pathogens.

The American food safety system is the highest standard in the world, and our ground beef is the safest.

According to the most recent information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s FoodNet Data, there have been no significant increases in food-borne illness since 2005, and there were significant declines before then.

Furthermore, recent analysis by the Food Safety and Inspection Service for E. coli O157:H7 shows that in the last year the percent of positive raw ground beef samples has dropped from to 0.30 percent from 0.47 percent at federally inspected establishments.

Furthermore, where there was a modest increase detected in raw ground beef components, Beef Products Inc.’s rate of positives is well below industry averages (0.05 percent for 2009 versus 0.99 percent).

Food safety is the No. 1 goal of industry, government and consumers. Beef Products’ technology, which has been approved by both the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration—as is thoroughly set forth on its Web site—provides consumers safe products.

Jeremy Russell
Director of Communications and Government Relations
National Meat Association
Oakland, Calif., Jan. 11, 2010

To the Editor:

I’ve been involved in beef safety research since college, and I don’t recognize the industry you’ve depicted in recent articles.

Your readers probably don’t realize how many different individuals—university researchers, lab technicians, quality assurance managers and so many others—work daily to bring safe beef to dinner tables across the country.

E. coli O157:H7 and other food-borne threats are tough, adaptable foes. But the people who raise and package beef share a commitment to aggressively finding and applying safety solutions that keep them out of our food.

Beef farmers and ranchers alone have invested more than $28 million since 1993 in beef safety research, and the industry as a whole invests an estimated $350 million a year on safety.

I know the people of the beef industry, and I’m proud of the work we do every day to provide safe food.

Mandy Carr Johnson
Executive Director of Research
National Cattlemen’s Beef Association
Centennial, Colo., Jan. 11, 2010

From the Mailbag

Keith:

As a historian or even an anthropologist, one could make the argument that being a vegetarian limits one's ability to understand other cultures. I, like you, am not a complete vegetarian. In fact, my diet is worse, but I do justify my eating habits. I refuse to eat pork, but eat grass-fed beef when I am making Persian food, and certain forms of chicken and lamb with other ethnic foods I consume. I also have a rule to eat any cultural food when I am traveling to another country or am a guest or have guests of people from another culture who eat food with meat. Food is such an important part of history. In many ways, it has a lot to do with defining one's culture. If a person is in a discipline in which he or she is attempting to understand a culture or wants to experience a culture, vegetarianism is nearly impossible. So, how you would respond a person like me who cares for animal welfare, consciously stays away from the worse meat he can, and eats it mostly for cultural reasons. When I do cook it (which is maybe once every two weeks), I try to be a responsible as possible.

bjb

Note from KBJ: Thanks for writing, Brad. Suppose you travel to a place in which cannibalism is practiced. Do you eat the human flesh served to you by your hosts? Suppose they eat feces, grubs, dirt, or vomit; do you partake? By your logic, you cannot understand them unless you do. And why limit it to food? There are other customs besides diet. Suppose your hosts offer you young women for sex, as occurred with Lewis and Clark. Can you possibly understand them if you refuse? What if it's customary to allow guests to torture or kill one of the tribe? Can you possibly understand them if you refuse? Some things, I think you will agree, are more important than understanding. In other words, there are moral limits to science, as to law.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

“Company’s Record on Treatment of Beef Is Called Into Question” (front page, Dec. 31):

Would the average American have believed that hamburgers were treated with ammonia to remove salmonella and E. coli (or, in many cases, not remove them)?

An earlier article recounted an E. coli outbreak traced to Cargill (“The Burger That Shattered Her Life,” front page, Oct. 4). It, too, traced, with a great deal of investigative reporting, the journey fat trimmings take through the meatpacking industry. This is not unlike what we hear from financial institutions trying to track (or not) derivatives. It’s like trying to grip mercury.

The United States Department of Agriculture has been broken for a long time, and it is clear that it cannot protect the American public from illness and death from contaminated meat products. How many more Americans must die before something is done?

Perhaps simplifying the whole process would eliminate the need for multiple inspections, saving the U.S.D.A. labor costs and saving the lives of hamburger lovers.

Why not add only ground fat belonging to the meat being ground? Period. No outside fat trimmings! Sounds too easy, doesn’t it?

Evelyn Wolfson
Wayland, Mass., Dec. 31, 2009

To the Editor:

Let me see if I have this straight: We are now feeding our children stuff that used to be reserved for dog food, by treating it with ammonia, in order to save three cents a pound? Hey, why not just feed the little tykes dog food? I’m sure it would save even more money.

By the way, since we are using the former scraps (described as “pink slime” by one microbiologist) for people now, what are we feeding the dogs?

Mary Ellen Croteau
Chicago, Dec. 31, 2009

To the Editor:

In the United States Department of Agriculture’s dual, and often conflicting, roles as protector of consumers and promoter of agricultural products, it has once again made a clear choice.

By approving the revolting and often ineffective use of ammonia to sanitize the results of substandard meat processing, it has chosen the profits of big business over food safety for all Americans.

Instead of allowing companies to find ways to turn food a dog might reject into cheap human food, shouldn’t the U.S.D.A. concern itself with why there are E. coli and salmonella in our food supply in the first place?

Jan Weber
Brooklyn, Jan. 2, 2010

To the Editor:

If you can smell a chemical in your food, it’s an ingredient.

Andrew L. Chang
Stanford, Calif., Jan. 1, 2010

To the Editor:

Your article gave a whole new meaning to “Where’s the Beef?”

Not in my mouth.

Lesley Lee
Phoenix, Jan. 1, 2010

Note from KBJ: Enjoy your hamburger.

Henry S. Salt (1851-1939) on Zoophily

And here we see the inevitable logic of Vegetarianism, if our belief in the Rights of Animals is ever to quit the stage of theory and enter the stage of fact; for just as there can be no human rights where there is slavery, so there can be no animal rights where there is eating of flesh. "To keep a man, slave or servant," says Edward Carpenter, "for your own advantage merely, to keep an animal that you may eat it, is a lie; you cannot look that man or animal in the face." I am not saying that it is not a good thing that quite apart from food-reform, anti-vivisectionists should be denouncing the doings of the Scientific Inquisition, while humanitarians of another school are exposing the horrors of sport, for Cruelty is a many-headed monster, and there must at times be a concentration of energy on a particular spot; but I do say that any reasoned principle of kindness to animals which leaves Vegetarianism outside its scope is, in the very nature of things, foredoomed to failure and decay. Vegetarianism is an essential part of any true Zoophily, and the reason why it is not more generally recognised as such is the same as that which excludes it from the plan of the Progressive—that it is so upsetting to the everyday habits of the average man. Few of us, comparatively, care to murder birds in "sport," and still fewer to cut up living animals in the supposed interests of "science," but we have all been taught to regard flesh-food as a necessity, and it is a matter, at first, of some effort and self-denial to rid ourselves of complicity in butchering. Herein is at once the strength and the weakness of the case for Vegetarianism—the strength as regards its logic, and the weakness as regards its unpopularity—that it makes more direct personal demand on the earnestness of its believers than other forms of Zoophily do; for which reason there is a widespread, though perhaps unconscious, tendency among zoophilists to evade it.

(Henry S. Salt, The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues [London: The Ideal Publishing Union, 1899], 110 [italics in original])

Do Animals Have Rights?

Here is a talk by Mylan Engel.

Statistics

This blog had 3,084 visits during December, which is an average of 99.4 per day.

Enjoy the Ethical Synergy of Healthy Eating in 2010!

January is the time of New Year's resolutions. Like most Americans, you have probably resolved to get in better shape and to lose weight. Why not make this the year that you get serious and take a meaningful step toward improving your health and reducing your waistline by experimenting with a vegan diet for 21 days? If you are like most people, you will be amazed at (i) how much weight you will lose, (ii) how much better you will feel, and (iii) how much more energy you will have. If you have been a regular reader of my posts, you already know that switching to a vegan diet devoid of meat and animal products almost always results in significantly lower plasma cholesterol levels. A vegan diet also significantly reduces the risk of heart disease and some cancers, while lowering blood pressure and risk of type II diabetes, and is, thus, an extremely effective means of helping you to achieve your goal of improved health.

It has never been easier to try out a vegan diet. Today marks Day 1 of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine's 21-Day Vegan Kickstart. This 21-day program is designed for anyone who wants to explore and experience the health benefits of a vegan diet, and it's free! That's right, free! You can access the PCRM's 21-day meal plan, complete with delicious easy-to-prepare recipes, here. If you would like to receive, via email, daily e-tips to put you on the path to weight loss, better health, and greater well-being, you can register for the 21-Day Kickstart here. If you do register, a delicious, easy, and satisfying recipe will be emailed to you every day that will help you break your cravings for unhealthy foods. You will also receive weekly motivational nutrition webcasts featuring Dr. Neal Barnard, President of the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine.

Elsewhere in this blog (see here, here, and here), I have written about ethical synergy, the regularly observed phenomenon that simultaneously showing respect for persons (including oneself), animals, and the environment typically benefits all three groups (including oneself). Switching to a cruelty-free vegan diet is yet another powerful example of ethical synergy at work. By not ingesting animals you will not only be refusing to support the unnecessary animal cruelty inherent in modern animal agriculture, you will be taking positive steps toward improving your health, eating right, and losing weight, steps much more likely to result in permanent weight loss and improved cardiovascular health than unhealthful fad diets that cannot be sustained for the long haul. You will also be dramatically reducing your carbon footprint, a boon for the environment! Eating vegan is good for you, good for animals, and good for the Earth. Now that's a New Year's Resolution we can all live with!

The Bottom Line: And this time I do mean BOTTOM line! Try the 21-Day Vegan Kickstart. You have nothing to lose but your gut and your butt!

Bon Appetit!

A Self-Interested Reason to Not Eat Meat

Here’s another self-interested reason to not eat meat: Drug-resistant bacteria are routinely found in beef, chicken, and pork sold in supermarkets. Drug-resistant infections are by no means rare. Twenty percent of people who get salmonella have a drug-resistant strain. To find out more of what the meat industry and pharmaceutical companies don't want you to know, read this Associated Press column by Margie Mason and Martha Mendoza.

Here are just a few facts drawn from the column:

• Drug-resistant infections killed more than 65,000 people in the U.S. last year—more than prostate and breast cancer combined.
• 70% of the antibiotics used in the U.S. last year—28 million pounds—went to pigs, chickens, and cows, which in turn creates a perfect breeding ground for antibiotic-resistant super germs.
• Many of these antibiotics are routinely added to the feed of healthy animals to promote rapid weight gain.
• The FDA, the CDC, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have all declared drug-resistant diseases stemming from antibiotic use in animals a "serious emerging concern."
• The problem is not new. In the 1970s, the FDA proposed a ban on penicillin and tetracycline in animal feed, but the proposal was defeated after criticism from interest groups.
• In 2008, the FDA issued its second limit on the use of cephalosporins in cows, pigs, and chickens, citing the importance of cephalosporin drugs for treating disease in humans. But the Bush Administration reversed that decision five days before it was going to take effect after receiving several hundred letters from drug companies and farm animal trade groups.

The Bottom Line: If history is any guide, you can't count on the federal government to do the right thing and ban the routine nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in farm-animal feed, but here are two things that you can do: First, nudge Congress in that direction. Contact your U.S. Representative and urge her/him to support Representative Louise M. Slaughter’s bill banning the routine use of antibiotics in animal feed. Second, and most importantly, refuse to support the meat industry’s unsafe practice of adding antibiotics to animal feed by refusing to purchase their products. Make a conscious choice to not eat meat. Protect your own health and the future effectiveness of antibiotics: Go vegetarian in 2010!

Animals

Farm Sanctuary

Sponsor a sanctuary animal.

Meat

I foresee a day, perhaps not far in the future, in which it is illegal to raise cows, pigs, and other animals for food. The ground for this will not be animal welfare, as you might expect, but environmentalism. Lawmakers, perhaps as a result of an international treaty, will prohibit the intensive rearing of at least large hoofed animals for food, on the ground that it is damaging to the natural environment. It will be said that animal husbandry is one of the most inefficient and destructive industries on the planet, and that the planet cannot survive unless humans change their diets. Since diets change only slowly, if at all, it will be thought justifiable to coerce people into changing.

I object to this for two reasons, one conditional and one unconditional. First, the ground is improper. The natural environment, unlike individual animals, is inanimate, unconscious, and insentient. This is not to say that we may do whatever we please to the environment. Obviously, if the environment is polluted, then everything that depends on the environment is adversely affected. But the environment has no intrinsic value; it is valuable only for the sake of sentient beings who depend on it. It has, in other words, extrinsic or instrumental value only. Individual animals, qua sentient beings, have intrinsic value. They are valuable for their own sakes, not merely because they are valued by (or useful to) others. So if animal husbandry is to be prohibited, it should be on animal-welfare grounds, not environmental grounds.

My second objection, unlike the first, is unconditional, and therefore more sweeping. It is that coercion (via legal prohibition) is not a proper method of protecting animals, at least if the aim is to protect animals. The reason is that it has a backlash effect. The best thing that one can do for animals, in the long run, is to persuade people to stop eating them. Of all the ways of influencing behavior, rational persuasion is the most effective, the most secure (in the sense of long-lasting), and the most defensible from a moral point of view. Force, coercion, and manipulation, by comparison, are inferior on each score.

I believe that as time passes, humans will, for various reasons, change their diets. Some will reduce their consumption of meat for the sake of the animals. Others will do so for the sake of the environment. Others will do so for health reasons. Still others will do so because they believe, rightly or wrongly, that vegetarianism (or demi-vegetarianism) is good for human beings. Nobody will be forced, coerced, or manipulated, so nobody can complain about being disrespected.

Robert Young on Killing Animals

Does my proposal as to what makes killing another human being generally a major moral wrong in any way help us with deciding what, if anything, is wrong with killing non-human animals and foetuses?

I believe it does help. It seems reasonable to believe that many animals share in common with us that they have things they want to do in and with their lives or which they may come to want (either again or for the first time). Certain of our killings of them clearly maximally unjustly prevent their realization of such life-purposes (or if this appears too grandiose a term, with the desires to do things which they experience). For instance, to kill animals which have these similarities to human beings in the course of pointless or duplicative experimentation, in the course of providing cosmetics, furs and other items readily producible without such killings, or merely for sport, is morally wrong according to the account I have proposed. Indeed to kill for food animals which it is reasonable to believe have such desires (and not merely interests) will be justifiable only where no adequate alternative food supply is available and the food is needful either immediately or for some reasonable future period if stocking up is required by the exigencies of one's situation. Where there is no reason to believe of some living being (say a mosquito or a tree) that it possesses the characteristic I have been concentrating on there will on my account be nothing intrinsically wrong in killing it. This is not to say that other instrumentalist considerations (e.g. to do with ecological effects) will not be relevant. Similarly, should anyone doubt that the animals human beings typically eat for food have life-purposes (even in a rudimentary form), this will not show that questions of morality have no relevance to our treatment of them, since other principles such as those advocated by Peter Singer in Animal Liberation (New York: New York Review, 1975) here assume relevance (e.g. ones to do with the painfulness of the methods of rearing and killing.) It is worth noticing that my proposal does not rule out killings which have the effect overall of fostering the wants of the largest subset of some group like a wild herd where otherwise the wants of an even larger subset will be thwarted. Systematic cullings in the absence of feasible alternatives, therefore, may be morally permissible.

(Robert Young, "What Is So Wrong with Killing People?" Philosophy 54 [October 1979]: 515-28, at 526-7)

Adopt a Chimp

See here.

Moral Vegetarianism, Part 13 of 13

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post.

CONCLUSION
There is no doubt that moral vegetarianism will continue to be a position that attracts people concerned with the plight of animals and with humanitarian goals. If the conclusions of this paper are correct, however, moral vegetarianism cannot be separated from a number of ethical issues and questions, issues that need to be settled and questions that need to be answered if a comprehensive and considered moral vegetarianism is to be maintained: the problem of carnivorous animals; the moral status of eating microorganisms, consenting animals, and genetically engineered animals; the difficulty of distinguishing animal parts and animal products.

Although I have found no compelling moral arguments for vegetarianism, there still may be reasons why morally sensitive people would wish to become vegetarians. As I have suggested above, vegetarianism may have a protest or symbolic function. Nevertheless there is, as far as I can determine, no moral duty not to eat meat, and one who eats meat is not thereby committing any moral error.

One final point. It might be suggested that although becoming a vegetarian as a protest against animal suffering or a way of committing oneself to helping the hungry people of the world is not a moral duty, it is still a moral act; it is a supererogatory act. This view is not implausible, but it needs to be qualified in certain ways. A supererogatory act, whatever else it is, is an act that is good but not obligatory. The question is whether becoming a vegetarian in order to protest animal suffering or as a way of committing oneself to feeding the hungry people of the world is good but not obligatory.

Suppose first that there is a moral obligation to protest cruelty to animals or to commit onself [sic] to feeding the hungry people of the world. Becoming a vegetarian in this case would not be a supererogatory act; nor would it be an obligatory act. It would be one way of fulfilling one’s moral obligation, although not necessarily the best way.

Second, suppose that there is no moral obligation to so protest or commit onself [sic]. It is not implausible to suppose that doing so would nevertheless be a good thing. Then becoming a vegetarian would be a supererogatory act. If becoming a vegetarian is not the best way to do so, however, moral vegetarians would deserve some praise but not as much praise as some other people who protest cruelty to animals and commit themselves to feeding the hungry people of the world. Indeed, it is not implausible to claim that moral vegetarians deserve some criticism. Their moral idealism is in a sense wasted or at least used badly. One is inclined to say: “If you really want to protest animal suffering or commit yourself to helping hungry people, instead of not eating meat you should . . .” (see above for various suggestions).

There is, I believe, nothing paradoxical about the idea that a supererogatory act can be blameworthy. Jumping in a swift river and saving a drowning man when you are only a fair swimmer is a paradigm case of a supererogatory act and deserves praise. But such an act may deserve some criticism as well if the drowning man could have been easily saved by tossing him a life buoy.

KBJ: This completes the task of quoting and discussing Martin's essay. I hope you enjoyed it.

Jeffrey Burton Russell on Might and Right

It may also now be time for humanity to consider that its responsibilities go beyond humankind and extend to other beings as well—to animals and even to plants. What is the basis of the assumption that I have the right to cut down trees that were growing before I was born? What gives me the right to deprive animals who live in the forest of their sustenance? The Judeo-Christian tradition says that God gave the creatures of the world into Adam's hands for his use; but other traditions have viewed God's purposes differently. At any rate, the continued exploitation of nature by those who have ceased to believe in God or in the Book of Genesis reveals the real basis for this human "right." It is might, sheer might and might alone. Because we have the power to exploit other beings to slake our greed, we do it, and until very recently we have done it without thought or consideration.

(Jeffrey Burton Russell, The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity [Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1977], 24-5)

Philip E. Devine on the Deontological Stop

A second vegetarian strategy is simply to reject as immoral the balancing of animal pains against human pleasures. Thus John Harris's reply to the Benthamite defence of meat-eating is quite simply: 'Those who use it are saying that they think more about their stomach than their morals, and so a moral argument will probably not affect them'. We can call this move the deontological stop.

Deontological stops are not uncommon in philosophical discussions of moral questions. Perhaps the best known is in G. E. M. Anscombe's outburst: 'If anyone really thinks, in advance, that it is open to question whether such an action as procuring the judicial execution of the innocent should be excluded from consideration—I do not want to argue with him; he shows a corrupt mind'. And it may not be possible to avoid them without giving up the discussion of practical issues altogether or claiming, implausibly, that our arguments could have convinced Hitler or Stalin. But Anscombe could at least count on a certain aversion to judicial murder on the part of her audience. For a vegetarian to employ a deontological stop against those who defend the eating of meat would be to guarantee that vegetarian views will remain, and deserve to remain, the exclusive property of a sect.

(Philip E. Devine, "The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism," Philosophy 53 [October 1978]: 481-505, at 487 [italics in original; footnotes omitted])

Note from KBJ: Devine is a good philosopher, but here he conflates two issues. The first issue concerns the grounds of one's abstention from meat. There are absolutist deontologists who believe that certain acts are not only intrinsically wrong (i.e., wrong in and of themselves, independently of their consequences), but absolutely forbidden. In other words, no amount of good procured or evil prevented can justify those acts. Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum. Someone might hold that it's absolutely wrong to eat meat, just as someone might hold that it's absolutely wrong to torture, lie, or kill the innocent. This is an eminently respectable position, though it is far from universally held. The second issue concerns the persuadability of those who are not absolutist deontologists. If I, an absolutist deontologist, am trying to persuade you, a consequentialist or a moderate deontologist, to stop eating meat, I will have to show you that the consequences of eating meat are worse than the consequences of not eating meat (and significantly so, if you are a moderate deontologist). In short, Devine conflates (1) having grounds for one's own belief and (2) being able to persuade others to share that belief. I can have grounds for my belief even though those grounds won't persuade someone who endorses a different normative ethical theory. To persuade X, one must use only premises that are accepted by X. One need not oneself accept those premises.

Statistics

There were 3,783 visits to this blog during November. That's an average of 126.1 visits per day. November was the fifth-best month in the blog's six-year (72-month) history.

Sixth Anniversary

I started this blog six years ago today, on 28 November 2003. Where has the time gone? Three years ago on this date, there had been 42,820 visits, which is an average of 39.0 visits per day. During the past three years, there have been 101,807 visits, which is an average of 92.8 visits per day. Overall, in six years, there have been 144,627 visits, which is an average of 65.9 visits per day. As you may have noticed, I recently changed the blog's appearance. I hope you like it. If you have something to which I should link, please send it. I do not like being used as a mere means to other people's ends, so please don't try to use this blog to get publicity for some product or service you are selling. I do, however, enjoy publicizing things that are designed to benefit animals.

Agriculture

Here is an essay about industrial farming.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

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.”

To the Editor:

Soon after I read Gary Steiner’s article, my wife asked me to kill a spider, which I did. This made me feel guilty. Spiders are living creatures, too; perhaps I should have gently caught it and carried it outdoors?

It is hard to imagine where a line can be drawn. We kill so many living creatures when we build a house, construct a road, drive down that road or just walk on a path. How far do we go in protecting them?

When we plant and harvest crops that vegans would find acceptable to eat, many animals are killed and their habitats are destroyed.

If we all decide to consider animals as precious as humans, the only logical place for us is back in the jungle. But even then if we were to survive we would have to kill some animals in self-defense.

Alexander Mauskop
New York, Nov. 22, 2009

To the Editor:

I am an ethical vegan. Gary Steiner perfectly articulates my feelings, and particularly my frustration, as so many around me obsess about the preparation of their turkeys.

When one “goes vegan,” what seems obvious to that person is ridiculed by a large part of society. Mr. Steiner illustrates the disconnect within our culture about eating animals and the righteousness with which people will defend that disconnect.

Alice Walker once said: “The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.”

I hope that Mr. Steiner’s essay will result in people at least stopping for a moment, before carving the birds on their tables, and giving these ideas some serious critical thought.

Chris Taylor
Lawrence, Kan., Nov. 22, 2009

To the Editor:

Gary Steiner’s case for veganism founders on the facts. First, the human digestive system has evolved to accommodate an omnivorous diet, not a purely vegetable one.

Indeed, many paleoanthropologists maintain that the evolution of the large, energy-hungry human brains depended on a transition of our ancestors’ diets to include meat.

And vegans must tread a very narrow line to avoid all sorts of deficiency diseases, while omnivores have very broad latitude in diet, as a survey of world cuisines makes evident.

Second, our food animals have co-evolved with us. Cows, domestic sheep, chickens and many others would not survive if they were not raised for human consumption, protected from malnutrition, disease and predators.

Professor Steiner is entitled to his beliefs and his tofurkey; most of the rest of us will enjoy our turkey without guilt (but with vegetable stuffing).

Lawrence S. Lerner
Woodside, Calif., Nov. 22, 2009
The writer is professor emeritus at the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at California State University, Long Beach.

To the Editor:

Gary Steiner recognizes that many of us justify eating animals because we believe we are superior to them. Mr. Steiner rightly rejects this view as morally flawed.

Humans can acceptably consume animals precisely because we are not superior to them at all. Wolves eat sheep. Tuna eat mackerel. We are animals ourselves—and are no more (or less) than the animals we consume, or than the predators that would otherwise consume them.

If we are not justified in eating mackerel ourselves, are we not also morally obligated to stop the slaughter brought on by the tuna?

Such an obligation would make us the protectors of all species, and the destroyers of every ecosystem on earth.

L. David Peters
New York, Nov. 22, 2009

To the Editor:

As a vegetarian for 18 years, I have been confronted with the same questions that Gary Steiner faces from those challenging his dietary habits. I learned an effective response long ago that has benefited both my blood pressure and friendships.

I say with a big smile: “My vegetarianism is a personal choice that I usually don’t discuss in detail. I’m happy to eat with nonvegetarians.” And then I’m quiet.

That has pleasantly ended many potentially uncomfortable exchanges. Being vegetarian, as with being a member of a political party or a religious denomination, does not bestow license to convert others to one’s own way of thinking.

On my deathbed, I’ll be happy to have lived life as a vegetarian and also (I hope) comforted by many who were not alienated through heated discussions about my dietary choices.

Lisa Dinhofer
Frederick, Md., Nov. 22, 2009

To the Editor:

I will rise to the challenge Gary Steiner presents. He’s right: I don’t care deeply about the suffering of animals I eat, wear or otherwise benefit from. Suffering and injustice are inherent in life, and time is short.

Moreover, I find no way to shine a moral spotlight on one corner without letting shadows fall on another. I radically limit my conscious sphere of concern (just as Mr. Steiner must).

My moral boundaries may be rational or reflexive, expansive or selfish—who can judge?

I also recognize that alleviating suffering in one area may cause pain elsewhere. My mind and spirit are continually tested by outrages, from the countless dead innocents in current wars to the limited life prospects of my son’s first-grade classmates with drug dealers for parents.

Were I also to internalize the pain experienced by animals, I’d simply shut down. Whose lot could that possibly help?

Sandy Asirvatham
Baltimore, Md., Nov. 22, 2009

To the Editor:

I was shocked to read that Gary Steiner thinks his cat can’t appreciate Schubert’s late symphonies. It’s not the feline lack of musical discernment that I found disturbing (I don’t “get” Schubert’s symphonies either), but rather that Mr. Steiner owns a pet.

If he wishes to make no distinction between animal and human life and rights, how does he justify keeping an animal in what amounts to captivity?

And where does he draw the line between keeping a cow for milk and keeping a cat or dog for comfort or gratification?

Alice Desaulniers
Irvington, N.Y., Nov. 23, 2009

Note from KBJ: Every letter except the first (by an analytic philosopher with whom I attended graduate school) is confused. Several of them commit flagrant fallacies. Sometimes I despair over the quality of thought in this country. When even educated, intelligent people make elementary mistakes, there is no hope.

"A Meat-Crazed Society"

Here is a New York Times op-ed column by philosopher Gary Steiner.

The True Costs of Eating Meat

In this Washington Post column, James E. McWilliams highlights the true environmental costs of eating meat:

• The livestock industry as a result of its reliance on corn and soy-based feed accounts for over half the synthetic fertilizer used in the United States, contributing more than any other sector to marine dead zones.
• Livestock production consumes 70 percent of the water in the American West—water so heavily subsidized that if irrigation supports were removed, ground beef would cost $35 a pound.
• Livestock accounts for at least 21 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions globally—more than all forms of transportation combined.
• Nearly 70 percent of all the antibiotics produced are fed to farmed animals to prevent (not treat) disease. Undigested antibiotics leach from manure into freshwater systems and impair the sex organs of fish.

McWilliams’s column reminds us of the scientific findings documented in Livestock’s Long Shadow, the Food and Agricultural Organization’s 390-page report on the environmental impact of meat production. According to the Executive Summary of that FAO report:

The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. The findings of this report suggest that it should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution and loss of biodiversity.

Livestock’s contribution to environmental problems is on a massive scale.

To put the point in perspective, McWilliams ask us to consider how we would react if someone told us "that a particular corporation was trashing the air, water and soil; causing more global warming than the transportation industry; consuming massive amounts of fossil fuel; unleashing the cruelest sort of suffering on innocent and sentient beings; failing to recycle its waste; and clogging our arteries in the process." He thinks we would rightly "frame the matter as a dire political issue."

Such a dire political issue requires a political response. McWilliams insists that vegetarianism is "the most powerful political response we can make to industrialized food. It's a necessary prerequisite to reforming it. To quit eating meat is to dismantle the global food apparatus at its foundation."

The Bottom Line: One cannot be a meat-eating environmentalist. If you care about the planet, follow McWilliams's advice, and switch to a plant-based diet. Do it for the Earth, do it for the animals, and do it for your health. Menu suggestions and recipes for a cruelty-free, planet-friendly Thanksgiving feast are available here.

About the Washington Post columnist: James E. McWilliams is Associate Professor of History at Texas State University at San Marcos and a recent fellow in the agrarian studies program at Yale University. He is the author of Just Food.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

“Last Act for the Bluefin” (editorial, Nov. 9) has it right. The bluefin tuna needs an immediate respite from all fishing. No wildlife species, especially a migratory one shared in common by many nations, can withstand commercial hunting without end.

In the United States, we learned this lesson just in time to rescue our migratory waterfowl and other prized game species from oblivion at the beginning of the 20th century. All commercial hunting was banned, and those species were carefully managed for sport hunting only.

Commercial hunting of wildlife was always a losing proposition on land. Though some commercial fisheries have been well managed, others have been a disaster (Atlantic halibut, Atlantic cod, Hawaiian lobster, sharks). It is now or never for the bluefin. Governments need to step up and do the right thing. Will they?

William J. Chandler
Washington, Nov. 9, 2009
The writer is vice president for government affairs, Marine Conservation Biology Institute.

Manfred Kuehn on Kant's Cosmopolitanism

Kant's ideas about cosmopolitanism are still hotly debated today. They are dismissed by some as a "Eurocentric illusion," and praised by others as the answer to the problem of humanity's survival. Whether they are the one or the other will be for (still) future generations to discover. Nevertheless, they make clear that Kant considered himself first and foremost not a Prussian but a citizen of the world. He was glad to be alive while momentous changes were taking place in the history of mankind, and he saw himself as rising to the challenge, addressing the important issues resulting from the changes, and trying to nurture what was good in them. However insignificant some of the occasions for these essays were, Kant succeeded in transcending them and in saying something of lasting importance.

Kant's cosmopolitan ideas were meant to form part of a civil religion similar to the kind that James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and the other framers of the American Constitution envisaged. His transcendental idealism, at least in morality, ultimately is a political idealism, in which attaining the greatest good is not something that will be accomplished in another world but is a task to be accomplished on this earth. Kant's political writings were an attempt to show how rational (or reasonable) ideas can be substituted for religious ones, and why indeed it is necessary for the good of mankind to reinterpret religious ideas to make them fit the needs of humanity.

(Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001], 384-5)

Note from KBJ: I no more think of myself as a citizen of the world than I think of myself as a citizen of North America or of the Northern Hemisphere. I'm a citizen of the United States (as well as some of its subdivisions, such as Texas and Fort Worth). By the way, one answers questions and solves problems. One does not answer problems.

Note 2 from KBJ: Kant denied moral status to nonhuman animals. Our duties to them, he argued, are actually duties to particular human beings. Animals, being nonrational, have no intrinsic moral significance. Kant's dog, in other words, counts for nothing, while some Chinese peasant counts for as much as Kant himself. So much for cosmopolitanism! It sounds more like parochialism or anthropocentrism to me.

Moral Vegetarianism, Part 12 of 13

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post.

The Argument from Brutalization

The previous argument was based on an alleged indirect effect on human beings of not eating meat. The argument from brutalization is basically of the same kind. It is argued that the killing and eating of meat indirectly tends to brutalize people. Conversely, vegetarianism, it is argued, tends to humanize people.

This argument can have a strong or weak form depending on what is meant by “brutalize” and “humanize.” In the strong form, it maintains that eating meat (indirectly) influences people to be less kind and more violent to other people; conversely, not eating meat tends to make people more kind and less violent. In the weaker form of the argument it is maintained only that eating meat tends to make people less sensitive to people’s inhumane treatment of other people and more willing to accept people’s brutality and inhumanity to other people.

Whatever form the argument takes, it is important to understand its status. I have argued that there is no incompatibility between being a nonvegetarian and advocating the painless and humane treatment of animals. Consequently, there is no logical connection between being a nonvegetarian and the cruel treatment of animals, let alone the cruel treatment of persons (human or otherwise). Similarly, there is no logical connection between eating meat and being insensitive to the inhumane treatment of animals or humans.

The argument from brutalization, however, does not appear to postulate a logical connection between vegetarianism and inhumanity but rather a psychological one. Thus the strong form of the argument seems to assume the truth of the following psychological generalization.

1. People who do not eat meat tend to be less cruel and inhumane to persons than people who do eat meat.

As far as I know, no good evidence has ever been collected to support or refute (1). Pacifists like Gandhi are often cited as examples of people who are vegetarians and who are opposed to violence. But Hitler was also a vegetarian. Indeed, Hitler’s vegetarianism is a constant source of embarrassment to vegetarians, and they sometimes attempt to explain it away. For example, the Vegetarian News Digest argued that “there is no information that indicates [Hitler] eliminated flesh food for humanitarian reasons.” But the reason Hitler did not eat meat is irrelevant to the present argument. Here we are only concerned with whether or not eating meat tends to make people less brutal.

But perhaps the psychological generalization presupposed is a little different from (1). Perhaps the argument from brutalization presupposes

2. People who do not eat meat for moral reasons tend to be less brutal than people who do eat meat.

In terms of (2) the comments of the Vegetarian News Digest are not irrelevant. The case of Hitler need not count against (2).

The truth of (2) is by no means self-evident, however, and empirical evidence is needed to support it. Although I am not aware that such evidence is available at the present time, let us suppose that (2) is well confirmed. This by itself would hardly be a strong argument for vegetarianism, since the following generalization could also be true.

3. People who eat meat after reflection on the morality of eating meat are less brutal than people who eat meat without such reflection.

The bulk of the population has given no reflection at all to the morality of eating meat. Consequently, a comparison between moral vegetarians and meat eaters at large is hardly fair. Putting it in another way, supposing (2) to be true, moral vegetarianism per se might not be responsible for humanizing people. Rather, what might be responsible for such humanizing is simply moral reflection, reflection that might lead either to the acceptance or to the rejection of moral vegetarianism.

What would be significant is if the following generalization were true.

4. People who do not eat meat after serious reflection on the morality of meat eating are less brutal than people who eat meat after such reflection.

The truth of (4) would enable us to say with some confidence that something besides moral reflection is involved in becoming less brutal. At the present time, however, there is no reason to suppose that (4) is true.

Similar considerations indicate that the weaker form of the argument from brutalization also fails. The weaker form of the argument seems to assume

5. People who don’t eat meat for moral reasons are less likely than people who do eat meat to be insensitive to people’s inhumane treatment of other people.

Whether (5) is true or not is uncertain. But in any case (5) is not terribly relevant to moral vegetarianism. A relevant comparison would not be between moral vegetarians and nonvegetarians in general but between moral vegetarians and nonvegetarians who eat meat after moral reflection, that is between moral vegetarians and what might be called moral nonvegetarians. Thus, what needs to be established is not (5) but

6. People who don’t eat meat after reflection on the morality of eating meat are less likely than people who do eat meat after such reflection to be insensitive to people’s inhumane treatment of other people.

At the present time we have no more reason to accept (6) than we have to accept (4). And we have no reason to accept (4). Thus the argument from brutalization fails.

KBJ: I agree that this argument fails. Perhaps that is why I have never heard anyone make it.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Nicolette Hahn Niman (“The Carnivore’s Dilemma,” Op-Ed, Oct. 31) is simply wrong in suggesting that grass-fed beef produces less methane than feed-lot meat. It is the other way around, with grass-fed animals producing up to three times more methane.

It may be true that in some trials scientists have found ways to reduce methane emissions from cattle, but until these methods are in widespread use, they are simply not relevant to the consumer choices we face.

In any case, globally, only 8 percent of all meat is produced in natural grazing systems, and there is little available unforested land suitable for such systems. To replace factory-farmed meat without further tropical forest destruction is impossible.

Hence the call to cut down or eliminate meat-eating, especially beef, should be supported by everyone concerned about the future of our planet.

Peter Singer
Geoff Russell
Barry Brook
New York, Nov. 3, 2009
Peter Singer is a professor of bioethics at Princeton University and the author of “The Ethics of What We Eat.” Geoff Russell is the author of “CSIRO Perfidy.” Barry Brook is a professor of climate change at the University of Adelaide, Australia.

From Today's Wall Street Journal

Jonathan Safran Foer's pup-in-cheek essay "Let Them Eat Dog" (Weekend Journal, Oct. 31), while humorous enough, masks more serious issues.

Beyond the environmental impacts of meat production there is a basic ethical issue involved. So here is an even more modest proposal than roasting Fido: Try eating only what animals you are willing to kill with your own hands. I suspect that meat consumption would decline dramatically under such a code; it would certainly make many of us less hypocritical.

Steve Heilig
San Francisco

Mr. Foer misses the point of the debate completely. A decision not to eat dogs has nothing to do with our inherent hypocrisy, but with our relationship to different animals. Dogs were bred to be companion animals; pigs and cows are raised as food. To suggest that eating one and not the other represents a conflict of ethics is preposterous.

However, I agree with Mr. Foer that factory farming has to go. We carnivores have to become more benevolent. Rather than eating dogs, we all ought to eat exclusively small-farmed, free-range meat. Arguments like "Let Them Eat Dog" caricatures the antifactory farm position, which is a shame because it's an important argument to hear. I suggest that Mr. Foer stop writing about food and stick to the stories.

Sarah V. Howland
Northport, N.Y.

At one point during my year living in China, I ate dog. The fury this meal caused my friends and family back in America motivated me to examine whether eating any animal was justified. Why was a dog more worthy of not being dinner than a pig? My interactions with farm animals have been as affectionate and fun as any I've had with dogs or cats. In the name of moral consistency I became a vegetarian four years ago. The peace of mind—and the weight I've lost—have been well worth the effort.

Chantelle Wallace
Austin, Texas

The irony of this article, which is reminiscent of Irish author Jonathan Swift's suggestion of eating "excess children" to shock and awe his readers, isn't lost on an intelligent reader. Mr. Foer's book "Eating Animals" is definitely worth the reading for any individual who has the guts to face the facts of a meat-based diet and the damage it is doing to man and animal alike.

Elaine Livesey-Fassel
Los Angeles

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “The Carnivore’s Dilemma,” by Nicolette Hahn Niman (Op-Ed, Oct. 31):

Living “green” is not easy. Yes, every decision we make results in more or less of an impact on our environment. As a parent of young children, I have much to worry about regarding what my children eat—a balanced, wholesome diet, free from antibiotics, hormones or bacteria. Need we feel guilty about being carnivorous?

The best advice Ms. Niman gives us is to pay attention to the source of meat products and what our mothers always told us: clean your plate. Regardless of what we choose to eat, doing so will reduce our dietary carbon footprint by half because “about half of the food produced in the United States is thrown away.”

Jeffrey H. Toney
Union, N.J., Nov. 2, 2009
The writer is dean of the College of Natural, Applied and Health Sciences at Kean University.

To the Editor:

The claims Nicolette Hahn Niman makes for how greenhouse gases might be reduced while still eating meat may very well be true, and I do not have the expertise to challenge them. But the method she advocates for reaching those goals—raising grass-eating, pasture-foraging farm animals—would appear to be notoriously difficult to reproduce on a scale large enough to harvest enough meat, at a reasonable cost, for all the people wanting to eat meat in this country, let alone the world.

What would the cost of a hamburger at Burger King or McDonald’s be if the meat were to come from Ms. Niman’s ranch and others using comparable methods? How many people would be able to afford the price?

When I see “grass-fed” beef from the Niman Ranch and others on menus at the high-end restaurants I occasionally visit, the items offered are invariably among the most expensive on the list.

And how much land would be required to contain ranches like the one owned by Ms. Niman for pasturing the animals to provide all the beef, turkey, chicken and pork eaten in this country? Would no forests need to be cut down to create the pastures?

Lois Bloom
Easton, Conn., Nov. 1, 2009

To the Editor:

As an ethics instructor who aims to inspire my students to think about the connections between their values and daily practices, I found Nicolette Hahn Niman’s article disappointing.

Borrowing a move from the tobacco industry, Ms. Niman obscures the well-evidenced connection between veganism and environmentalism.

Contrary to Ms. Niman’s suggestion that the findings do not apply to smaller farms, the United Nations and the University of Chicago reports demonstrate the inefficiency of beef “production” because a cow must be fed to convert grass or grain calories into protein before a human can consume even “humane” or grass-fed beef.

Ms. Niman’s argument amounts to lowering an ethical standard to fit the demands of our meat-centric culture and Western privilege. Instead, we should heed the chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, who advised giving up meat for one day a week at first, and then decreasing it from there.

Stephanie Jenkins
Highland Park, N.J., Nov. 2, 2009

To the Editor:

While Nicolette Hahn Niman’s article demonstrates our folly in oversimplifying solutions to many of our challenges and offers many viable solutions to sustaining our lifestyles in generations to come, she leaves out one very green practice: hunting and fishing.

There is little that is less polluting and less harmful to the planet than hunting wild game responsibly. What is greener than forage-fed meat? I take umbrage at the omnivores who buy grass-fed beef and call me a barbaric savage for harvesting Maine’s overpopulated deer, moose, rabbit and fowl.

James Siegel
Portland, Me., Nov. 1, 2009

To the Editor:

Nicolette Hahn Niman’s otherwise fine article would have been stronger if she had not blurred an important distinction. After noting the special criticism beef receives, she treats all meat the same.

Yet the turkey she raises is a much smaller factor in advancing global warming than the cattle on her ranch because they produce meat much more efficiently. Birds need only a fraction of the food that cattle do to gain a pound of meat.

Indeed, in Ms. Niman’s natural environment they’re even more environmentally beneficial than cattle because of their diet. A “free range” bird eats insects, as well as plants, so it gets more nutrition out of the same amount of land than do her cattle, which eat only the grass. They also help with pest control.

Thus, it’s not enough to say that Americans should “cut back on consumption of animal-based foods.” Regardless of how much meat they eat, they need to switch from eating beef to poultry.

Barry Rehfeld
New York, Nov. 1, 2009
The writer is the editor of Zero Energy Intelligence.com.

To the Editor:

When Nicolette Hahn Niman refers to “a conscientious meat eater,” she is using an oxymoron. Can anyone in good conscience be complicit with the unnecessary suffering and slaughter of another sentient being?

Steven G. Kellman
San Antonio, Oct. 31, 2009

Statistics

There were 2,758 visits to this blog during October, which is an average of 88.9 visits per day.

Henry S. Salt (1851-1939) on Moral Blindness

I do not share the extreme vegetarian view that food reform is the foundation of other reforms, for I think it can be shown that all cruelties to animals, whether inflicted in the interests of the dinner-table, the laboratory, the hunting-field, or any other institution, are the outcome of one and the same error—the blindness which can see no unity and kinship, but only difference and division, between the human and the non-human race. This blindness it is—this crass denial of a common origin, a common nature, a common structure, and common pleasures and pains—that has alone hardened men in all ages of the world, civilized or barbarous, to inflict such fiendish outrages on their harmless fellow-beings; and to remove this blindness we need, it seems to me, a deeper and more radical remedy than the reform of sport, or of physiological methods, or even of diet alone. The only real cure for the evil is the growing sense that the lower animals are closely akin to us, and have Rights.

(Henry S. Salt, The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues [London: The Ideal Publishing Union, 1899], 109-10 [italics in original])

Pet Care Education

Here is a website for your consideration. I have added it to the blogroll.

"The Carbon Footprint of Meat"

One of my students directed my attention to this news story.

H. B. Acton (1908-1974) on Animal Rights

I will conclude with some remarks about the rights of animals. When it is asked whether animals have rights, and whether human beings have duties to them, the question, I think, is partly moral and partly verbal. Let us consider the moral question first. This is the question whether the wrongness of cruelty to animals depends in part upon the animals' suffering, or whether it does not depend upon that at all, but only upon the bad effects upon human beings of cruelty to animals, and upon the badness of the human states of mind that such cruelty involves. (Hominum causa omne ius constitutum.) It is this latter view, I believe, that is in the minds of some of those who deny that animals have rights. Now most people would grant that it is wrong to bring about what is bad except in order to prevent worse. If this be so, then to say that the wrongness of cruelty to animals depends solely upon the human aspects of it, is to assume that the pain of animals is not bad. This could be either because no pain is bad, or because no animal pain is bad. This is not the place to discuss these propositions, but it is important to notice that the more inclusive or the less inclusive of them must be true if the wrongness of cruelty to animals depends entirely upon human beings or human society.

The question of words is whether to talk about the rights of animals is likely to mislead. If a legal right is an interest or expectation protected by law, then it follows that, under the Protection of Animals Act (1911), domestic and captive animals in England have rights, in that they are protected against being cruelly beaten, kicked, ill-treated, over-ridden, over-driven, over-loaded, tortured, infuriated, or terrified. Yet writers on jurisprudence say that animals do not have legal rights. Their main reason, I think, for not following their own logic, is that by saying that animals have legal rights they are putting them into a class all the other members of which are persons of one sort or another. Persons are beings with rights and duties, whereas no one supposes that animals have duties. Perhaps it is feared that the association of animals with this class in one respect will lead to suggestions that they share the other characteristics of its other members. Perhaps it is feared that the admission that animals have rights will be followed by claims that animals should be treated like persons in other ways also. Similar considerations, I suggest, apply when we ask whether it is proper to say that animals have moral rights. If we say they have, we class them with beings the rest of whom are capable of duties. Even congenital idiots look like men. Furthermore, although we say that animals have rights, we also think we are justified in hunting and eating them. This puts them into such a different category from other right-owning creatures, that we hesitate to apply the same word to the immunities we consider they are morally entitled to. Here, as elsewhere, the influence of what is nuclear and typical is unduly constraining.

(H. B. Acton, "Rights," The Aristotelian Society, supplementary volume 24 [1950]: 95-110, at 108-10 [italics in original; footnotes omitted])

Angelo

See here.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Animal Cruelty and Free Speech” (editorial, Oct. 6):

I do not agree that “anyone with an appreciation for the First Amendment” must conclude that “crush videos” or videos of vicious dogfights are protected speech and that the federal law in question should therefore be struck down.

The law speaks specifically and narrowly to the distribution for profit of videos that show illegal acts of cruelty actually being performed on live animals (my italics). Only a very narrow range of activities come under the sweep of this law, and all of them are illegal.

Yes, racists are allowed to “spew racism,” but they are not allowed to encourage criminal activities, and if they were to carry their “advocacy” to the point of distributing videos that depicted the actual maiming or killing of the people they would like to get rid of, they would not be able to claim First Amendment protection.

I am not a fan of pornography, but I find it hard to understand how we can deny First Amendment protection to some depictions of sexual acts performed by consenting adults who at the end of the day collect their paychecks and go home, but must give that protection to those who produce and sell videos that show helpless animals being illegally tortured and killed.

I was privileged to be present in the court when this case was argued. It was beyond refreshing to see a complex question debated with thoughtful intelligence and civility on all sides.

Christopher Anne Affleck
Cambridge, Mass., Oct. 7, 2009

To the Editor:

You make the argument that the First Amendment has historically protected free discourse and should, in the same spirit, protect depictions of animal cruelty. The comparison to Nazi marches and racist hate speech fails to acknowledge a critical distinction—speaking out in favor of criminal activity versus the carrying out of criminal acts.

In the case of dogfighting and “crush videos,” cruelty is not just promoted, but staged. If the Nazi marchers and racist hate mongers “augmented” their activities with videos of graphic violence against Jews and blacks, would The New York Times rush to their defense on constitutional grounds?

Fred Engelhardt
Alna, Me., Oct. 6, 2009

To the Editor:

If the First Amendment protects videos that cannot be made without torturing animals, you didn’t make much of a case for it.

Yes, as you say, the First Amendment allows Nazis to march and racists to spew. But that expression does not require the torture of Jews or African-Americans to produce. While deeply offensive, it is still only words.

The closer analogy here is child pornography. If it cannot be made without sexually abusing children, it has no First Amendment protection. Why are “crush videos” involving animals any different?

They might be different if our Constitution gives live animals no greater consideration than clay pigeons. But the capacity of animals to feel pain makes this case harder than your editorial suggested.

J. Stephen Clark
Albany, Oct. 6, 2009
The writer is a professor of constitutional law at Albany Law School.

To the Editor:

Your editorial states: “The government seems to think it is enough that the harm caused by the animal-cruelty depictions outweighs their social value, but the First Amendment does not say that Congress can restrict speech if it fails a balancing test.”

Why isn’t that your position concerning the ability of Congress to restrict campaign speech paid for with corporate treasury funds?

Lawrence A. Mandelker
New York, Oct. 6, 2009
The writer is a lawyer.

From the Mailbag

Keith,

On Sunday, October 4, Farm Sanctuary held the largest Walk for Farm Animals in New York City history. Nearly 700 registrants converged on Central Park, making the event quite possibly the largest gathering of people standing in solidarity with farm animals ever. Special guest Jane Velez-Mitchell, host of HLN’s “Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell,” delivered one of the most powerful pro-vegan, pro-animal speeches I’ve ever heard. I wanted to share it with you in case you would like to share it with your readers. Please note there are two parts: here and here.

All the best,

Meredith

On Trial: Animal Torture Videos vs. Free Speech

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear U.S. v. Stevens. At issue in the case is the constitutionality of a decade-old law passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1999. That law, U.S. Code, Title 18.48, made it a federal crime to knowingly create, sell, or possess a depiction of animal cruelty with the intention of placing that depiction in interstate or foreign commerce for commercial gain. The statute defines a depiction of animal cruelty as “any visual or auditory depiction, including any photograph, motion-picture film, video recording, electronic image, or sound recording of conduct in which a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded, or killed, if such conduct is illegal.”

The law was enacted to prevent the sale of videos depicting wanton cruelty to animals, such as “crush videos” in which a scantily clad woman, whose face is unseen, kills helpless animals such as rabbits and kittens by stomping on them with spike heels or her bare feet. The law also made it a crime to sell videos in which animals were tortured to death by being burned alive, as well as videos of illegal dog fights.

In 2004, Robert Stevens was convicted of violating this law and sentenced to 32 months in prison for selling videos featuring pit bulls chasing wild boars on organized hunts and depicting a pit bull attacking the lower jaw of a domestic farm pig, according to the Philadelphia-based appeals court.

In July, a divided U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the decision by a vote of 10 to 3, overturning Stevens’s conviction and striking down the law on the grounds that it violated the right to free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.

For more about the case, see this Chicago Tribune column.

For a New York Times editorial supporting the Appeals Court's decision to declare the law unconstitutional on free speech grounds, see here.

Is the New York Times right to support striking down the law banning depictions of animal cruelty on First Amendment/free speech grounds? I don’t think so. There are legitimate limits to free speech, and almost all of these limits are justified on the basis of the harm principle. According to the harm principle, one’s liberty can be legitimately limited when doing so is necessary to prevent harm to others. We don’t have the free speech right to falsely yell “Fire” in a crowded theater because many people would likely be injured in a mad dash to the exits. Similarly, child pornography is not protected by the First Amendment. Child pornography is illegal because we know that if it were legal to make and distribute such pornography, countless innocent children would be filmed being sexually abused against their will and the abusers making these films would profit from this abuse. The 1999 law banning crush videos was enacted for similar reasons. It was enacted to prevent helpless innocent animals from being tortured to death.

This much is certain: If the Supreme Court upholds the verdict of the Appeals Court and deems U.S. Code, Title 18.48 unconstitutional, more innocent animals will be crushed and burned to death in crush videos, and more animals will be ripped to shreds by pit bulls. And the people making these videos will profit handsomely from the torture they inflict on these animals. I hope the Supreme Court will see clear to protect animals from such gratuitous harm and exploitation. Free speech has legitimate limits, and this is one of them.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “The Burger That Shattered Her Life: Trail of E. Coli Shows Flaws in Ground Beef Inspection System” (front page, Oct. 4):

Your article about E. coli and the young woman whose future has been irreversibly altered through the simple, all-American act of eating a hamburger is a stunning indictment of the food-processing industry in general and the specifically named corporations whose moral bankruptcy is made all the more glaring by their efforts to justify their actions behind a curtain of claims of trade confidentiality.

It also offers an equally harsh negative judgment of the federal authorities whose mandate is to protect the integrity of the public’s food supply chain but who have chosen to interpret this responsibility so lightly as to let such claims stand while ignoring repeated offenses by the industry.

Is it any wonder that cynicism with regard to the efficacy of government is at an all-time high?

A. Victoria
Bridgehampton, N.Y., Oct. 5, 2009

To the Editor:

I ate my last hamburger last night. It tasted wonderful—juicy, fragrant and meaty. Then I saw the photo of Stephanie Smith and read the accompanying article. It’s a terrible but ultimately not surprising tale, given the continued lack of self-regulation and the emphasis on profit over safety in the meat industry.

The only way the meat industry will change its ways is for people to stop buying ground beef and cause sales to plummet. Only then will these companies “do the right thing,” if only to ensure their continued survival.

Starting today, I’m no longer eating ground beef.

Ann Calandro
Flemington, N.J., Oct. 4, 2009

To the Editor:

Your otherwise impressive article did not mention irradiation, the only reliable method of eliminating E. coli O157:H7 and other disease-causing microbes from raw meat and poultry. The Food and Drug Administration approved irradiation as safe and effective for use on poultry in 1992 and on meat in 1997. But for more than 20 years, consumer groups led by Public Citizen have worked to scare the public about food irradiation and threatened to boycott companies that market irradiated products.

In 2001, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that irradiating half the meat and poultry consumed in the United States would mean 900,000 fewer cases of food-borne illness and 350 fewer deaths each year. Unfortunately, irradiated meat and poultry can’t be found on store shelves. For that you can blame a cowardly food industry and a cynical consumer movement, willing to sacrifice lives to further its antinuclear agenda.

Larry Katzenstein
Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., Oct. 5, 2009
The writer worked from 1978 to 1990 at Consumers Union as a health and science writer for Consumer Reports Magazine.

To the Editor:

As someone who has followed this issue for years, I would no sooner eat burger meat from an industrial processor than I would send a 4-year-old across Broadway alone.

While this tragedy will increase calls for sorely needed government regulation, the real answer lies in the hands of each one of us: buy your burger from a local butcher who processes his ground beef daily on the premises.

There are many of these, survivors of the industrialization of our food supply, in most cities and towns across America. You will enjoy a much better meal and can safely cook it to your preferred doneness, although it will cost more.

The consumer, in his willy-nilly race to the bottom of the price chain, is the real enabler here. I wonder if the inflated health insurance premiums we all pay, in part to account for worst-case scenarios like that of Stephanie Smith, are in effect a hidden subsidy for these food-processing giants, who, like the banks that don’t even know who actually owns the mortgage, are unable to tell where our food even comes from.

Serge Scherbatskoy
Arcata, Calif., Oct. 4, 2009

To the Editor:

I have been a strict vegetarian most of my life, and, as such, I have never lacked reasons—ethical, economic and health-related—to continue this lifestyle. But Stephanie Smith’s very tragic hamburger-induced affliction provides me with still another excuse (as if I needed one) to shun the carnivorous ways of so many of my fellow beings.

I wish Ms. Smith the very best.

Gordon Wilson
Laguna Niguel, Calif., Oct. 4, 2009

To the Editor:

Nobody on the path followed by the contaminated beef that wrecked Stephanie Smith’s life has accepted responsibility for his failures in the obligation to assure food safety. The Department of Agriculture, Cargill and all their suppliers mouth meaningless, and nonbinding, pledges to make incremental improvements while assuring us only that they will not take all the measures that are within their power to produce safe food.

The Department of Agriculture, our government, continues to compromise our health in favor of industry convenience. How many lives must be lost or horribly altered before the agencies we entrust with our well-being do their jobs and begin to look out for our interests?

Gary Paudler
Summerland, Calif., Oct. 4, 2009

To the Editor:

With regard to the tragic E. coli food poisoning of Stephanie Smith, which has probably left her paralyzed for life, as well as many others around the country ill from tainted ground beef, I find the comments of Dr. Kenneth Petersen, an assistant administrator with the Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, dreadful, appalling and alarming.

He stated that the department could demand mandatory testing, but that it had to consider what effect that would have on companies as well as consumers. He said, “I have to look at the entire industry, not just what is best for public health.”

It was my understanding that the agency’s first priority was and should be the safety of the public! Imagine if I and the rest of the medical profession said we had to look at the entire pharmaceutical and surgical supply industry’s needs, not just our patients’ health. What a potential disaster that could be for our patients’ health and well-being!

Howard Rudominer
Livingston, N.J., Oct. 4, 2009
The writer is a doctor.

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