From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “They’re Going to Wish They All Could Be California Hens” (front page, March 4):

While the conditions in California’s colony cages are certainly better than those of the barren battery cages used for 90 percent of egg-laying hens in this country, they still involve cramming 60 animals into a wire cage, each bird with just 116 square inches in which to live her entire life

At Farm Sanctuary, we spend our lives with hens, and we can attest that chickens are individuals with needs and personalities, just like the dogs and cats most readers will know a bit better. It is no more acceptable to confine 60 hens for their entire lives in a cage that you report is “about the size of a Ford F-150 pickup truck’s flatbed” than it would be to treat 60 cats similarly.

Compassionate consumers can take a stand against this cruelty by choosing vegan options.

BRUCE FRIEDRICH
Senior Policy Director
Farm Sanctuary
Washington, March 4, 2014

To the Editor:

The humane laws for hens in California that provide them more space in which to live should be countrywide. Chickens deserve to live humanely. That’s the least farmers can do.

People seem to lose sight of the fact that these are sentient animals, not food machines! The same goes for pigs and cattle that are exploited and forced to live in substandard conditions.

Congratulations to California for being so compassionate and leading the way.

ELAINE SLOAN
New York, March 4, 2014

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from March 2004.

Statistics

This blog had 1,204 visits during February, which is an average of 43.0 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 78.4.

Statistics

This blog had 1,134 visits during January, which is an average of 36.5 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 82.3.

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from February 2004.

According Animals Dignity

In this New York Times op-ed column, Frank Bruni predicts that our understanding of and concern for animals is only going to grow as scientific advances help us to understand the rich psychological and emotional lives of animals. Tom Regan was right: Many of the animals we routinely exploit are experiencing subjects of a life just like us.

Lions

Statistics

This blog had 1,754 visits during December, which is an average of 56.5 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 81.7.

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from January 2004.

Henry S. Salt (1851-1939) on the Golden Rule

How, then, shall we sum up in a sentence the principle of our duties to the lower animals? I do not know that it can be better done than in the words of George Nicholson, one of those early pioneers to the influence of whose writings, though now almost forgotten, the cause of humaneness owes so much. "In our conduct to animals," he wrote, "one plain rule may determine what form it ought to take, and prove an effectual guard against an improper treatment of them—a rule universally admitted as a foundation of moral rectitude: Treat the animal in such a manner as you would willingly be treated, were you such an animal." In our dealings with the non-human as with the human race, it is not "charity," or "self-sacrifice," or "mercy" that is required, but simple justice—an insistence on our own duties as on those of our neighbors, a recognition of our neighbors' rights as of our own.

(Henry S. Salt, "The Rights of Animals," International Journal of Ethics 10 [January 1900]: 206-22, at 222 [italics in original; footnote omitted])

Ten Years Gone

Here are the posts from December 2003.

Statistics

This blog had 2,210 visits during November, which is an average of 73.6 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 93.2.

Ten Years Gone

I began this blog 10 years ago today. The time has gone fast. Although I rarely post anything substantive, I did so for many years, so the blog still serves a useful purpose. Here are the posts from November 2003. On the first day of each month, from now on, I will link to the posts for that month 10 years earlier. I hope you enjoy the flashback.

Henry S. Salt (1851-1939) on Animal Rights

Nor is it true that the worth of an animal's life, any more than of a man's, can be measured simply by the amount of "agreeable sensation," a fallacy often put forward by those who cage animals in menageries, on the plea that they are there well tended and saved from the struggle for existence. To live one's own natural life, to realize one's self, is the true moral purpose of man and animal equally, and the wrong done by the unnecessary cramping and thwarting of animal individuality, as in the turning of an active intelligent being into a prisoner or pet, cannot really be compensated by the gift of any material "comforts." Compare the life of the wild bison with that of the stall-fed ox, or that of the sheepdog with the pampered pug, and the moral can hardly be overlooked. An animal has his proper work to do in the world, his own life to live, as surely as a man; and those who scoff at this idea, and deny individuality to animals, should remember that there was a time, under the Greek and Roman civilization, when it was held to be doubtful whether a slave, in like manner, had any claim to be regarded as a person.

(Henry S. Salt, "The Rights of Animals," International Journal of Ethics 10 [January 1900]: 206-22, at 209 [italics in original])

Statistics

This blog had 1,785 visits during October, which is an average of 57.5 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 89.8.

Statistics

This blog had 1,349 visits during September, which is an average of 44.9 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 79.2.

Kristof

My friend Mylan linked to an op-ed column by Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times. Let me make a few comments.

1. Kristof says that "SeaWorld [marine park] denies the claims [of mistreatment], which isn't surprising since it earns millions [of dollars] from orcas." This is cynicism. Kristof should address SeaWorld's argument, not question its motives. How would he like it if his readers questioned (or speculated about) his motives? (For example: Does Kristof own stock in a rival company?) Charity requires that good (or at least benign) motives be imputed to arguers. Cynicism is the imputation of bad motives. Cynicism is not argumentation; it is the evasion of argumentation.
2. Kristof writes: "The juxtaposition of the two reviews made me wonder: Some day, will our descendants be mystified by how good and decent people in the early 21st century—that's us—could have been so oblivious to the unethical treatment of animals?" Good question! I would replace "animals" with "fetuses."
3. Kristof writes, by way of apology for his "hypocrisy," that he eats meat ("albeit with misgivings") and has "no compunctions about using mousetraps." Eating meat and using mousetraps are as different (morally speaking) as night and day. Using a mousetrap can be justified by defense of self or property (though there are more humane ways of getting rid of pests). Eating meat cannot be so justified. Nobody needs to eat meat in order to survive or flourish. This shows that Kristof has not given much serious thought to the topic of the moral status of animals. He knows just enough about the topic to be dangerous (since he has a large audience).

Now you see why I don't read Kristof. Had Mylan not linked to his column, I would not have read it.

Statistics

This blog had 866 visits during August, which is an average of 27.9 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 58.1

From The New York Times

In Response to Nicholas D. Kristof's column "Can We See Our Hypocrisy to Animals?"NYTimes readers urge consistency in our treatment of and concern for animals here.

From Sunday's New York Times

Can We See Our Hypocrisy to Animals? by Nicholas D. Kristof

Statistics

This blog had 1,070 visits during July, which is an average of 34.5 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 55.5.

Veganism

Want to kill your cat? Feed him or her a vegan diet.

Statistics

This blog had 1,406 visits during June, which is an average of 46.8 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 62.6.

Vegetarianism

According to the Wall Street Journal, vegetarians live longer than meat-eaters.

Statistics

This blog had 2,060 visits during May, which is an average of 66.4 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 89.2.

Green Energy Kills

Cockroaches

Idiocy never sleeps.

Vegan Food Groups

Roscoe and Surya

Statistics

This blog had 2,364 visits during April, which is an average of 78.8 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 111.3.

Humor

Statistics

This blog had 2,049 visits during March, which is an average of 66.0 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 102.4.

Animals

According to the Guardian, the new pope (Jorge Mario Bergoglio) took his name from Saint Francis of Assisi (depicted above), who is the patron saint of animals. This would be a wonderful opportunity for the Roman Catholic Church, which has 1.2 billion adherents, to drive home the point that animals are not resources for human use but fellow denizens of the planet, with lives, a good, and a dignity of their own.

Statistics

This blog had 2,196 visits during February, which is an average of 78.4 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 104.3.

Farmers

Many viewers were moved by Dodge's Super Bowl commercial "So God Made a Farmer." This rich parody, God Made a Factory Farmer, dispels the myth of the family farm in a humorous, but accurate way. Very funny and so true!

Statistics

This blog had 2,552 visits during January, which is an average of 82.3 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 85.2.

Killing Animals

Here is an essay by law professor Gary Francione.

How to Go Vegan

Here.

The Philosophy of Animal Rights

Mylan Engel Jr and Kathie Jenni are the authors of this book. Mylan is a longtime contributor to this blog. We met in graduate school at the University of Arizona in 1983.

Statistics

This blog had 2,533 visits during December, which is an average of 81.7 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 87.5.

Meat

Here is an interesting story about the evolutionary value of a meat-based diet.

Statistics

This blog had 2,797 visits during November, which is an average of 93.2 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 98.7.

Anniversary

I began this blog nine years ago today. (Here is the first post.) In that time, there have been 245,434 visits, which is an average of 27,270.4 visits per year and 74.6 visits per day. My posting has slowed considerably, but I hope the archive is of use to students (no plagiarism, please!) and anyone else who is interested in the moral status of nonhuman animals.

Statistics

This blog had 2,784 visits during October, which is an average of 89.8 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 89.2.

From the Mailbag

Dear Professor Burgess-Jackson,

I'm a great admirer of your animal ethics blog, which I've found to be an invaluable resource. I just wanted to share a link to Gary Francione's recent philosophy bites podcast. An interesting debate has taken place in the comments section regarding Francione's (mis)interpretation of Peter Singer—hope it will be of interest!

best regards,
Spencer Lo

Statistics

This blog had 2,378 visits during September, which is an average of 79.2 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 73.3.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

In “Where Cows Are Happy and Food Is Healthy” (column, Sept. 9), Nicholas D. Kristof describes “happy” cows that are loved “like children” by an organic dairy farmer. I applaud his recognition that cows are individual feeling beings that share with us the ability to experience happiness and contentment, fear and pain.

The article does, however, gloss over the undeniable fact that even cows with names produce milk only because they have recently given birth to calves who, if male, have been taken away from them. Consumers should consider that cows like Edie or Sophia are often fiercely protective, grieving mothers whose anguished cries the farmer undoubtedly heard as he removed their young.

The article also doesn’t mention the common practices of castrating male calves and amputating the horns of cows and calves, typically without any pain relief. Most cows are also forcibly impregnated, and the closely spaced pregnancies impose significant metabolic stress on cows.

Even at Bob Bansen’s dairy, food comes at the cost of animal welfare. It’s a safe bet that any glass of milk is from a grieving mother, named or unnamed, that will end up dying at the slaughterhouse.

INGRID E. NEWKIRK
President, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
Norfolk, Va., Sept. 10, 2012

Tom Regan on the Animal-Rights Movement

In issuing its condemnation of established cultural practices, the rights view is not antibusiness, not antifreedom of the individual, not antiscience, not antihuman. It is simply projustice, insisting only that the scope of justice be seen to include respect for the rights of animals. To protest against the rights view that justice applies only to moral agents, or only to human beings, and that we are within our rights when we treat animals as renewable resources, or replaceable receptacles, or tools, or models, or things—to protest in these terms is not to meet the challenge the rights view places before those who would reject it. On the contrary, it is unwittingly to voice the very prejudices it has been the object of the present work to identify and refute.

But prejudices die hard, all the more so when, as in the present case, they are insulated by widespread secular customs and religious beliefs, sustained by large and powerful economic interests, and protected by the common law. To overcome the collective entropy of these forces-against-change will not be easy. The animal rights movement is not for the faint of heart. Success requires nothing less than a revolution in our culture's thought and action. . . . How we change the dominant misconception of animals—indeed, whether we change it—is to a large extent a political question. Might does not make right; might does make law. Moral philosophy is no substitute for political action. Still, it can make a contribution. Its currency is ideas, and though it is those who act—those who write letters, circulate petitions, demonstrate, lobby, disrupt a fox hunt, refuse to dissect an animal or to use one in "practice surgery," or are active in other ways—though these are the persons who make a mark on a day-to-day basis, history shows that ideas do make a difference. Certainly it is the ideas of those who have gone before—the Salts, the Shaws, and more recent thinkers—who have helped move the call for the recognition of animal rights, in the words of Mill that serve as this book's motto, past the stage of ridicule to that of discussion. It is to be hoped that the publication of this book will play some role in advancing this great movement, the animal rights movement, toward the third and final stage—the stage of adoption. To borrow words used in a different context by the distinguished American photographer Ansel Adams, "We are on the threshold of a new revelation, a new awakening. But what we have accomplished up to this time must be multiplied a thousandfold if the great battles are to be joined and won."

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 399-400 [ellipsis added] [first edition published in 1983])

Bernard E. Rollin on Animals as Ends

As we mentioned, Kant restricts having intrinsic value or being an end in itself to rational beings, but it is difficult to see why this should be so. Surely any sentient or conscious being has states that matter to it in a positive or negative way—pleasure matters to an animal in a positive way, pain or fear in a negative way. Since it can value what happens to it, it has intrinsic value. Given the logic of morality, we should extend our moral attention to those states that matter to it when our actions affect that being. So what if it can’t reason?—not all or even most of our moral attention focuses on reason vis a vis people. Most of it in fact focuses on feeling, on not hurting people physically or mentally, or helping them be happy or escape from suffering. So if human beings are ends in themselves, why not animals, since they too have feelings and goals that they value?

(Bernard E. Rollin, "Reasonable Partiality and Animal Ethics," Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 8 [April 2005]: 105-21, at 117)

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Your reporting on the illegal ivory trade (“Elephants Dying in Epic Frenzy as Ivory Fuels Wars and Profits,” “The Price of Ivory” series, front page, Sept. 4) is a chilling reminder of just how high the stakes have become today for elephants in the wild.

Our experience on the ground confirms your reporting that this trade is increasingly tied to organized crime. Money for greater local enforcement is now the most pressing need to combat poachers and the armed wildlife trade syndicates to which they are increasingly linked.

This holds true whether it is in the Democratic Republic of Congo or right here in New York City, where Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, recently prosecuted two jewelers selling illegally obtained ivory with a combined retail value of more than $2 million.

Unless we start taking wildlife crime seriously and allocate the resources necessary to tackle a sophisticated and well-financed global criminal network, elephants and other charismatic species will continue their tragic slide into oblivion.

ELIZABETH L. BENNETT
Jeju, South Korea, Sept. 4, 2012

The writer is vice president for species conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Note from KBJ: I take it that rats are not a "charismatic species."

Tom Regan on the Use of Animals in Science

All that the rights view prohibits is science that violates individual rights. If that means that there are some things we cannot learn, then so be it. There are also some things we cannot learn by using humans, if we respect their rights. The rights view merely requires moral consistency in this regard.

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 388 [first edition published in 1983])

Statistics

This blog had 1,803 visits during August, which is an average of 58.1 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 53.4.

Tom Regan on Wild Animals

With regard to wild animals, the general policy recommended by the rights view is: let them be! Since this will require increased human intervention in human practices that threaten rare or endangered species (e.g., halting the destruction of natural habitat and closer surveillance of poaching, with much stiffer fines and longer prison sentences), the rights view sanctions this intervention, assuming that those humans involved are treated with the respect they are due. Too little is not enough.

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 361 [italics in original] [first edition published in 1983])

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

“Some in California Skirt a Ban on Foie Gras” (news article, Aug. 13) might give readers the impression that California chefs are free to serve foie gras as a complimentary side dish and so evade the state ban on sales.

Not so. When a diner pays money to a restaurant with the expectation that he or she will receive foie gras and then is served the dish, that constitutes a sale. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals applauds the efforts of those district attorneys and animal control officers who are enforcing the law against those few chefs who continue to flout it.

Foie gras is the diseased liver of ducks or geese that have been force-fed through pipes shoved down their throats. PETA urges everyone to avoid this product of cruelty to animals.

GABE WALTERS
Counsel, PETA Foundation
Norfolk, Va., Aug. 13, 2012

Tom Regan on Endangered Species

The rights view is not opposed to efforts to save endangered species. It only insists that we be clear about the reasons for doing so. On the rights view, the reason we ought to save the members of endangered species of animals is not because the species is endangered but because the individual animals have valid claims and thus rights against those who would destroy their natural habitat, for example, or who would make a living off their dead carcasses through poaching and traffic in exotic animals, practices that unjustifiably override the rights of these animals. But though the rights view must look with favor on any attempt to protect the rights of any animal, and so supports efforts to protect the members of endangered species, these very efforts, aimed specifically at protecting the members of species that are endangered, can foster a mentality that is antagonistic to the implications of the rights view. If people are encouraged to believe that the harm done to animals matters morally only when these animals belong to endangered species, then these same people will be encouraged to regard the harm done to other animals as morally acceptable. In this way people may be encouraged to believe that, for example, the trapping of plentiful animals raises no serious moral question, whereas the trapping of rare animals does. This is not what the rights view implies. The mere size of the relative population of the species to which a given animal belongs makes no moral difference to the grounds for attributing rights to that individual animal or to the basis for determining when that animal's rights may be justifiably overridden or protected.

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 360 [italics in original] [first edition published in 1983])

Statistics

This blog had 1,721 visits during July, which is an average of 55.5 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 48.4.

Tom Regan on Utilitarianism

The initial attractiveness of utilitarianism as a moral theory on which to rest the call for the better treatment of animals was noted in an earlier context. . . . Because animals are sentient (i.e., can experience pleasure and pain) and because they not only have but can act on their preferences, any view that holds that pleasures or pains, or preference-satisfactions or frustrations matter morally is bound to seem attractive to those in search of the moral basis for the animal rights movement. Especially because animals are made to suffer in the pursuit of human purposes—in the name of "efficient" factory farming, for example, or in pursuit of scientific knowledge—the utilitarian injunction to count their suffering and to count it equitably must strike a responsive moral chord. But utilitarianism is not the theory its initial reception by the animal rights movement may have suggested. It provides no basis for the rights of animals and instead contains within itself the grounds for perpetuating the very speciesist practices it was supposed to overthrow. To secure the philosophical foundation for animal rights requires abandoning utilitarianism.

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 315 [italics in original; ellipsis added] [first edition published in 1983])

Tom Regan on Rights

Whether individuals have legal rights depends on the laws and other legal background (e.g., the constitution) of the society in which they live. In some countries (e.g., the United States) citizens meeting certain requirements have the legal right to vote or run for elected office; in other countries (e.g., Libya) citizens do not have these rights. Moreover, even in those countries that give this right to its citizens, the requirements are not always the same and are subject to change. In the United States, for example, citizens once had to be twenty-one years of age to vote in federal elections; now they must be eighteen. At one time one could not vote if one were black or female or illiterate; now one has this right regardless of race or sex or educational achievement. Legal rights thus are subject to great variation, not only among different countries at the same time but also in the same country at different times. When it comes to legal rights, not all individuals are equal. This should not be surprising. The legal rights individuals have arise as the result of the creative activity of human beings. Those rights set forth in the Bill of Rights, for example, were not rights that citizens of the United States could claim as legal rights before these rights were drawn up and the legal machinery necessary for their enforcement was in place.

The concept of moral rights differs in important ways from that of legal rights. First, moral rights, if there are any, are universal. This means that if any individual (A) has such a right, then any other individual like A in the relevant respects also has this right. What counts as the relevant respects is controversial. . . . What is not controversial is the exclusion of some characteristics as relevant. An individual's race, sex, religion, place of birth, or country of domicile are not relevant characteristics for the possession of moral rights. We cannot deny that individuals possess moral rights, as we can in the case of the possession of legal rights, because of, for example, where they live.

A second feature of moral rights is that they are equal. This means that if any two individuals have the same moral right (e.g., the right to liberty), then they have this right equally. Possession of moral rights does not come in degrees. All who possess them possess them equally, whether they are, say, white or black, male or female, Americans or Iranians.

Third, moral rights, unlike legal rights, do not arise as a result of the creative acts of any one individual (e.g., a despot) or any group (e.g., a legislative assembly). Theoretically, one could, it is true, create legal rights that accord with or protect moral rights, but that is not the same as creating these moral rights in the first place. If there are moral rights, they do not "come to be" in the way legal rights do.

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 267-8 [ellipsis added] [first edition published in 1983])

Veganism

A professional football player has gone vegan. It's not clear whether he's doing it for moral reasons, for health reasons, or both.

Tom Regan on Cruelty

Cruelty is manifested in different ways. People can rightly be judged cruel either for what they do or for what they fail to do, and either for what they feel or for what they fail to feel. The central case of cruelty appears to be the case where, in Locke's apt phrase, one takes "a seeming kind of Pleasure" in causing another to suffer. Sadistic torturers provide perhaps the clearest example of cruelty in this sense: they are cruel not just because they cause suffering (so do dentists and doctors, for example) but because they enjoy doing so. Let us term this sadistic cruelty.

Not all cruel people are cruel in this sense. Some cruel people do not feel pleasure in making others suffer. Indeed, they seem not to feel anything. Their cruelty is manifested by a lack of what is judged appropriate feeling, as pity or mercy, for the plight of the individual whose suffering they cause, rather than pleasure in causing it; they are, as we say, insensitive to the suffering they inflict, unmoved by it, as if they were unaware of it or failed to appreciate it as suffering, in the way that, for example, lions appear to be unaware of, and thus are not sensitive to, the pain they cause their prey. Indeed, precisely because one expects indifference from animals but pity or mercy from human beings, people who are cruel by being insensitive to the suffering they cause often are called "animals" or "brutes," and their character or behavior, "brutal" or "inhuman." Thus, for example, particularly ghastly murders are said to be "the work of animals," the implication being that these are acts that no one moved by the human feelings of pity or mercy could bring themselves [sic] to perform. The sense of cruelty that involves indifference to, rather than enjoyment of, suffering caused to others we shall call brutal cruelty.

Cruelty of either kind, sadistic or brutal, can be manifested in active or passive behavior. Passive behavior includes acts of omission and negligence; active, acts of commission. A man who, without provocation, beats a dog into unconsciousness is actively cruel, whereas one who, through negligence, fails to feed his dog to the point where the dog's health is impoverished is passively cruel, not because of what he does but because of what he fails to do. Both active and passive cruelty have fuzzy borders. For example, a woman is not cruel if she occasionally fails to feed her cat. She is cruel if she fails to do so most of the time. But while there is no exact number of times, no fixed percentage, such that, once it is realized, cruelty is present, otherwise not, there are paradigms nonetheless.

We have, then, at least two kinds of cruelty (or two senses of the word cruelty) and two different ways in which cruelty can be manifested. Theoretically, therefore, cruelty admits of at least four possible classifications: (1) active sadistic cruelty; (2) passive sadistic cruelty; (3) active brutal cruelty; and (4) passive brutal cruelty.

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 197-8 [italics in original; endnote omitted] [first edition published in 1983])

Statistics

This blog had 1,880 visits during June, which is an average of 62.6 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 62.4.

Tom Regan on Kant's View of Animals

Unlike [John] Rawls, whose considered views on our duties regarding animals are unclear at best, [Immanuel] Kant provides us with an explicit statement of an indirect duty view. That Kant should hold such a view should not be surprising; it is a direct consequence of his moral theory, the main outlines of which may be briefly, albeit crudely, summarized. . . . On Kant's view, rational beings, by which he means moral agents, are ends in themselves (have, that is, independent value, or worth, in their own right, quite apart from how useful they happen to be to others). As such, no moral agent is ever to be treated merely as a means. This is not to say that we may never make use of the skills or services of moral agents in their capacities as, say, mechanics, plumbers, or surgeons. It is to say that we must never impose our will, by force, coercion, or deceit, on any moral agent to do what we want them [sic] to do just because we stand to benefit as a result. To treat moral agents in this way is to treat them as if they had no value in their own right or, alternatively, as if they were things. As Kant remarks, "beings whose existence depends, not on our will, but on nature, have nonetheless, if they are non-rational only a relative value and are consequently called things."  Moral agents are not nonrational, do not have "only a relative value," and are not things. Moral agents (rational beings) are ends in themselves.

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 174-5 [italics in original; ellipsis added; endnote omitted] [first edition published in 1983])

Tom Regan on Harm to Animals

That individuals can be harmed without knowing it has important implications for the proper assessment of the treatment of animals. Modern farms (so-called factory farms), for example, raise animals in unnatural conditions. The animals frequently are crowded together, as in the case of hogs, or kept in isolation, as in the case of veal calves. Since the only environments these animals ever see are the artificial ones in which they live, it sometimes is claimed that they don't know what they are missing and so cannot be worse off for having to forego [sic] an alternative environment they know nothing about. The unspoken assumption is not that what you don't know can't hurt you; it is that what you don't know can't harm you. This assumption is false. If I were to raise my son in a comfortable cage, in isolation from other human contact, though seeing to it that his basic biological needs were satisfied, and if, in all of my dealings with him, I went to considerable trouble to insure [sic] that he experienced no unnecessary pain, then I could not be faulted on the grounds that I was hurting him. However, I would have quite obviously harmed him and this in a most grievous way. How lame would be my retort that my son "didn't know what he was missing" and so wasn't harmed by me. That he doesn't know what he's missing is part of the harm I have done to him. Those animals who are raised intensively, then, let us assume, do not know what they're missing. But that does not show that they are not being harmed by the conditions under which they live. Quite the contrary, just as would be true in the case of my son, what we should say is that part of the harm done to these animals by factory farming is that they do not know this.

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 97-8 [italics in original; endnote omitted] [first edition published in 1983])

Statistics

This blog had 2,768 visits during May, which is an average of 89.2 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 106.0.

Tom Regan on Human Chauvinism

There is a neglected other side to the anthropomorphic coin. This is human chauvinism. The anthropomorphic side reads: "It is anthropomorphic to attribute characteristics to nonhumans that belong only to humans." The human chauvinism side reads: "It is chauvinistic not to attribute characteristics to those nonhumans who have them and to persist in the conceit that only humans do." Human chauvinism, that is, like all other forms of chauvinism, involves a failure or refusal to recognize that those characteristics one finds most important or admirable in one's self, or in members of one's group, are also possessed by individuals other than one's self or the members of one's group, as when male chauvinists fail, or refuse, to see that they are not alone in possessing admirable qualities. With the argument of the present chapter serving as the backdrop, the conclusion we reach is that to deny consciousness or a mental life to mammalian animals is an expression of human chauvinism.

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 31 [italics in original; endnote omitted] [first edition published in 1983])

African Philosophy and Nonhuman Animals

This interview may be of interest.

Statistics

This blog had 3,341 visits during April, which is an average of 111.3 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 152.1.

Dairy

Veganism

Here is a New York Times story about veganism.

Sustainable Meat

Here is a New York Times op-ed column about "sustainable meat."

In the Company of Animals

Here is a New York Times blog post about companion animals.

Humor

Global Animal

My friend Mylan Engel spoke at a conference on human use of animals. Here is a report.

Statistics

This blog had 3,175 visits during March, which is an average of 102.4 visits per day. A year ago in March, the average was 134.9.

A Friend of Animals

PETA

The word is spreading. PETA cares more about celebrities than it does about animals.

PETA

PETA is the worst thing ever to happen to animals.

Statistics

This blog had 3,026 visits during February, which is an average of 104.3 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 124.8.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:
 

Re “Don’t Presume to Know a Pig’s Mind” (Op-Ed, Feb. 20): 

Blake Hurst, a former hog farmer and president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, cautions that “we can’t ask the pigs what they think.” But we can ask, and they can answer. Not in words, of course, but they can answer in ways that we can understand if we are paying attention. 

People who study pigs say they are as intelligent as a 3-year-old child, smarter even than the dogs we share our homes with. Would anyone in this day and age dare to say that we cannot presume to know a dog’s mind, that a dog cannot tell us if it is happy or sad, frustrated, lonely or bored? 

I think it is safe to say that yes, an intelligent animal is unhappy, even downright miserable, being confined to a crate two by seven feet for months on end. 

BOBBIE MULLINS
Norfolk, Va., Feb. 21, 2012 

To the Editor:

 

Blake Hurst’s observations about happy pigs and unhappy farmers aren’t about the well-being of either. They’re about protecting a system that produces cheap food. That system may treat sentient animals like car parts, ruin antibiotics we need for human medicine, and destroy rural communities by polluting our air and water, but at least it’s “efficient” (a word Mr. Hurst hammers three times). 

The meat industry loves to squeal that “the cost of bacon will rise” whenever it’s faced with pressure to change. I served on the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, which released a report in 2008 that detailed exactly how much these “efficiencies” are costing America. 

This week, Bon Appétit Management Company vowed that by 2015, none of the three million pounds of pork we serve a year (including 800,000 pounds of bacon) will come from hogs confined in gestation crates. It’s time to send the message that cost is not the only important consideration. 

FEDELE BAUCCIO
Chief Executive, Bon Appétit
Management Company
Palo Alto, Calif., Feb. 20, 2012 

To the Editor:

 

Blake Hurst asserts that “production methods should not cause needless suffering,” but the position he takes does just that. 

Mr. Hurst flippantly questions the ability to measure a pig’s happiness, but sound science—not to mention common sense—clearly establishes that mother pigs locked in gestation crates with so little space that they cannot turn around for most of their lives do indeed suffer. There are more humane alternatives available that would reduce that condition, and according to experts at Iowa State University, some forms of alternative sow housing could actually cost less in dollars and labor—savings that could potentially reach the customer. 

Moreover, pigs are not the only ones that would be happier with welfare improvements: according to a nationwide poll commissioned by the ASPCA, a majority of Americans want farm animals to be treated in a way that inflicts the least amount of pain and suffering possible. That sounds like a win-win to us. 

SUZANNE McMILLAN
Dir., Farm Animal Welfare, ASPCA
New York, Feb. 22, 2012 

To the Editor:

 

Blake Hurst dismisses companies and consumers who are embracing food production methods that provide more respect for animals and the environment as being motivated by “nostalgia.” He doesn’t recognize the public health and ecological harms caused by industrial food animal production methods, including increased antibiotic resistance, polluted drinking water, huge fish kills and impaired air quality leading to respiratory illness. 

How does the health of a farmer’s family and community figure in when they are making the decision to continue industrialized production methods? 

In addition, producing more meat worsens worldwide hunger and food insecurity by dedicating precious farmland and water resources to the production of animal feed. Reducing meat consumption and shifting to more ecologically sensitive methods would improve public health by cleaning up the environment and reducing intake of saturated fats, a worthy goal not rooted in nostalgia but in ecologic and biomedical science. 

JILLIAN PARRY FRY
Baltimore, Feb. 20, 2012

The writer is a doctoral fellow, Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. 

 

To the Editor:

 

Thanks to Blake Hurst for reminding us how bizarre it is for humans to think that they know what makes other animals happy. We have a hard enough time figuring out what makes people happy, but chickens? Are they happier scratching around the barnyard or sitting confined in cages? Who knows? 

The idea that eggs from free-range chickens are somehow morally superior to other eggs is, frankly, weird. No one, Mr. Hurst and me included, wants animals to be subjected to unnecessary pain. But let’s not play psychiatrist with other animals’ minds. 

PHILIP D. HARVEY
Cabin John, Md., Feb. 20, 2012

PETA

PETA is the worst thing ever to happen to animals. Morally serious people ignore this organization.

Back to the Start

Animal Rights

PETA's latest publicity stunt was to file a lawsuit in federal court alleging that five orcas at SeaWorld in San Diego are slaves for purposes of the 13th Amendment. I'm a longtime proponent of animal rights, but this suit is ridiculous. First, the 13th Amendment was designed to abolish human chattel slavery. Applying it to nonhuman animals is a stretch. Second, it is not a necessary condition for the possession of rights (legal or otherwise) that one be a person. Nonhuman animals can suffer. That fact alone suffices to grant them a legal right not to be made to suffer. The right is defeasible, of course, as it is in the case of humans. (Dentists make people suffer.) Third, the Constitution is a pact between autonomous beings. It sets forth the terms on which these autonomous beings will associate with one another. If nonhuman animals are to be granted legal rights, it will be through legislation or common-law adjudication, not constitutional adjudication. As always, PETA is more concerned about drawing attention to itself than it is to improving the legal status of nonhuman animals. I have said it before and I will say it again: PETA is the worst thing ever to happen to animals. Nobody who cares about animals should have anything to do with it.

PETA's Latest Publicity Stunt

Should Animals Be Considered People?

See here.

Steven M. Wise on Farm Animals

The problem of the unjust use of farm animals is large, growing, historical, institutionalized, governmentally encouraged, and fundamentally unregulated at either the state or federal level. Farm animals are treated essentially as raw materials. Their ethological needs and direct interests are neglected to the extent that their needs are not as congruent with higher productivity and profit. Their interests are primarily protected, if at all, through archaic state anti-cruelty statutes that were not passed in contemplation of the factory-farm or genetic engineering. They are of little use and little used. Farm animals remain helpless, because they are legally incompetent, and assertion of their interests are barred by the traditional legal doctrine of "standing," a concept that is sound only when applied to competent human beings. Though factory-farming and biotechnological techniques massively violate the moral rights of farm animals, they have no remedy.

American consumers know little of the needs of farm animals, little of the health risks of eating them, and almost nothing of modern factory-farming and biotechnological techniques. The federal government neither adequately protects nor informs consumers about the animal products they eat or of the health hazards of eating them. Instead it aids industry boards that exist solely to sell animal products. It also provides tax incentives to factory-farmers. Because Congress has pre-empted the field, states have been unable to enact additional laws that require meat producers to provide consumers with accurate and relevant product information. Consumers should have the right to know in order to make informed decisions.

Anglo-American justice has reformed or abolished the unregulated wholesale exploitation of the helpless by the strong; women, children, blacks, and the disabled have all tasted its sweet fruits. "[F]iat justicia, ruat coelumtet," spoke Lord Mansfield, upon deciding that a Virginia slave was a free man on English soil. The factory-farming and genetic engineering of farm animals, based as it is upon their unregulated institutionalized exploitation in a manner that inherently and unnecessarily infringes their basic needs and concerns, is unjust. Because it is unjust it should be abolished.

(Steven M. Wise, "Of Farm Animals and Justice," Pace Environmental Law Review 3 [1986]: 191-227, at 226-7 [brackets in original; footnotes omitted])

Statistics

This blog had 2,643 visits during January, which is an average of 85.2 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 102.9.

Steven M. Wise on Legal Rights for Animals

The legal rights of nonhuman animals might first be achieved in any of three ways. Most agree that the least likely will be through the re-interpretation or amendment of state or federal constitutions, or through international treaties. For example, the Treaty of Amsterdam that came into force on May 1, 1999, formally acknowledged that nonhuman animals are “sentient beings” and not merely goods or agricultural products. The European Community and the member states signatory to the treaty are required “to pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals.” In 2002 the German Parliament amended Article 26 of the Basic Law to give nonhuman animals the right to be “respected as fellow creatures” and to be protected from “avoidable pain.” Half of the sixteen German states already have some sort of animal rights provisions in their constitutions.

In the United States, most believe that gaining personhood is much more probable through legislative enactment than through a constitutional change. But a change in the common law (which Germany does not have) may be the most likely of all. What is the common law? Lemuel Shaw, the nineteenth century chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, provided this good definition: it “consists of a few broad and comprehensive principles, founded on reason, natural justice, and enlightened public policy, modified and adapted to all the circumstances of all the particular cases that fall within it.”

Why the common law over legislation? The common law is created by English-speaking judges while in the process of deciding cases. Unlike legislators, judges are at least formally bound to do justice. Properly interpreted, the common law is meant to be flexible, adaptable to changes in public morality, and sensitive to new scientific discoveries. Among its chief values are liberty and equality. These favor common law personhood, as a matter of liberty, at least for those nonhuman animals, such as chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, dolphins, and whales, who possess such highly advanced cognitive abilities as consciousness, perhaps even self-consciousness; a sense of self; and the abilities to desire and act intentionally. In other words, they have what I call a “practical autonomy,” which is, I argue, sufficient, though not necessary, for basic legal rights. An animal’s species is irrelevant to his or her entitlement to liberty rights; any who possesses practical autonomy has what is sufficient for basic rights as a matter of liberty. And as long as society awards personhood to non-autonomous humans, such as the very young, the severely retarded, and the persistently vegetative, then it must also award basic rights, as a matter of equality as well, to nonhuman animals with practical autonomy.

(Steven M. Wise, “The Evolution of Animal Law Since 1950,” chap. 7 in The State of the Animals II, ed. Deborah J. Salem and Andrew N. Rowan, Public Policy Series [Washington, DC: Humane Society Press, 2003], 99-105, at 103 [endnotes omitted])

The Great Climate Hoax

Don't fall for it, folks. "Global warming" is the pretext for taking over your life. That "scientists" are behind this will do immeasurable harm to science. Mark my words.

Veganism

Not all bodybuilders are meat-eaters. See here.

Animal Studies

Animals have made it to campus.

Statistics

This blog had 2,713 visits during December. That's an average of 87.5 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 111.6.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:
 
In “Hunting Deer With My Flintlock” (Op-Ed, Dec. 26), Seamus McGraw says he has a responsibility to kill deer because there are too many. He has volunteered to kill a deer cruelly, ineptly and with an outdated weapon that causes additional suffering to the deer. I assume that the use of the flintlock is to enhance his self-image as a master of the woodland.

He says he hunts out of a need to take responsibility for his family, who evidently live where the supermarkets offer no meat. He says meat tastes more precious when you’ve watched it die. May I recommend a trip to a slaughterhouse?

I’m tired of hearing people who enjoy killing justify it with specious moral platitudes. Animals suffer when killed. No pearly phrases can make that any better.

MARIE BROWN
Baldwin, N.Y., Dec. 26, 2011

To the Editor:
 
Seamus McGraw mounts all the standard defenses: I am feeding my family; there are too many deer; I kill as mercifully as possible.

But whether with a flintlock or a modern rifle, hunting cruelly takes the life of a living, sentient being that has as much right to live as any hunter or writer. It is only the prejudice of our species that justifies culling the deer population while protecting our own.

STEPHEN F. EISENMAN
Highland Park, Ill., Dec. 26, 2011

To the Editor:
 
I don’t have all the answers concerning Pennsylvania’s burgeoning deer population (most of it caused by the burgeoning human population), but I want to comment on the self-serving tone of Seamus McGraw’s article.

For a man who claims not to enjoy killing, he takes considerable pride in his bloodletting. That his flintlock rifle failed him, and more important, the doe, because he flinched is reason enough to put down his antiquated weapon. It ought to be reason enough for such a firearm to be banned entirely.

Beyond that, though, is the tragedy of the doe’s sole contact with a human: a moment that could have initiated a communion between the two was instead reduced to carnage. Nothing noble there. No art in it either.

CYNTHIA A. BRANIGAN
President, Make Peace With Animals
New Hope, Pa., Dec. 26, 2011

To the Editor:
Please give me a break. Seamus McGraw tells us he has to kill deer in his section of Pennsylvania because “with no predators to speak of—the wolves were wiped out centuries ago and the last mountain lion in the state was killed more than 70 years ago—the responsibility for trying to restore a part of that balance fell to me.”

Who wiped out the wolves and mountain lions? Hunters like him.

JIM F. BRINNING
Boston, Dec. 26, 2011

The Great Climate Hoax

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the globe is warming. What follows, as a normative matter? Nothing. As David Hume (1711-1776) pointed out long ago, you can't validly deduce an evaluative proposition from a set of factual propositions. (Put differently, there has to be at least one evaluative premise in order for there to be an evaluative conclusion.) What we should do about global warming (again, assuming it exists) depends on the consequences of global warming. Few if any changes have only good consequences or only bad consequences. Almost always, there are both good and bad consequences. Whether we should do something to stop the change, therefore, depends on which type of consequence—good or bad—predominates.

How often have you heard a dispassionate discussion of the good consequences of climate change? All you hear, day after day, is a depressing litany of bad consequences. This alone shows that global warmists are biased. They want intervention to stop climate change, so they mention only the bad consequences of climate change. A rational person with no ideological axe to grind would attend to good consequences as well as to bad consequences. For example, how many people around the world die of extreme cold as opposed to extreme heat, and how would that change if the globe warmed? What is the optimal temperature for the alleviation of suffering, for both humans and sentient nonhuman animals? How many different species of animal or plant would there be if the globe warmed, as opposed to how many there are today? What is the optimal temperature for food production? Would there be more food rather than less if the globe warmed?

Change per se is neither good nor bad. Whether a given change is good or bad, all things considered, depends on its consequences (and how these are evaluated). I wish scientists would inform the public of all the consequences of global warming, so that the public can decide for itself whether to expend its scarce resources in preventing it. That scientists have not done this is the best evidence yet that they are advocates rather than, as they purport to be, disinterested observers. Is it any wonder that they are not trusted? Do you trust people who are hell-bent on selling you something to the point where they omit relevant information? In law, this is called fraud.

Statistics

This blog had 2,963 visits during November, which is an average of 98.7 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 130.0.

Anniversary

This blog began life eight years ago today, with this post. There have been 214,285 visits in the past eight years. That's an average of 26,785.6 visits per year and 73.3 visits per day.

Statistics

This blog had 2,767 visits during October, which is an average of 89.2 visits per day. A year ago, this blog had 95.0 visits per day.

Animal Rights

I support the goal of legal rights for nonhuman animals, but this approach is wrongheaded. Instead of using the 13th Amendment, the original understanding of which did not include animals, proponents should work for a constitutional amendment, or simply for national legislation. Take it to the people.

Statistics

This blog had 2,200 visits during September. That's an average of 73.3 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 78.0.

W. D. Ross (1877-1971) on the Right and the Good

Now when we ask what is the general nature of morally good actions, it seems quite clear that it is in virtue of the motives that they proceed from that actions are morally good. Moral goodness is quite distinct from and independent of rightness, which (as we have seen) belongs to acts not in virtue of the motives they proceed from, but in virtue of the nature of what is done. Thus a morally good action need not be the doing of a right act, and the doing of a right act need not be a morally good action. The ethical theories that stress the thing done and those that stress the motive from which it is done both have some justification, for both 'the right act' and 'the morally good action' are notions of the first importance in ethics; but the two types of theory have been at cross-purposes, because they have failed to notice that they are talking about different things. Thus Kant has tried to deduce from his conception of the nature of a morally good action rules as to what types of act are right; and others have held a view which amounts to saying that so long as our motive is good it does not matter what we do. And, on the other side, the tendency of acts to produce good or bad results has sometimes been treated as if it made them morally good or bad. The drawing of a rigid distinction between the right and the morally good frees us from such confusion.

(W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1988], 156 [italics in original; footnote omitted] [first published in 1930])

Note from KBJ: There are four categories: (1) right and morally good (i.e., doing the right thing for the right reason); (2) right and morally bad (i.e., doing the right thing for the wrong reason); (3) wrong and morally good (i.e., doing the wrong thing for the right reason); (4) wrong and morally bad (i.e., doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason). As examples, I would give the following: (1) abstaining from meat for the sake of the animals; (2) abstaining from meat for health reasons; (3) eating meat because one believes (with, say, Roger Scruton) that doing so redounds to the benefit of the animals themselves; (4) eating meat because one likes the taste.

Statistics

This blog had 1,656 visits during August, which is an average of 53.4 visits per day. The average for August 2010 was 62.7.