Farm Sanctuary

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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.