Confusions and Fallacies About Animals, Part 9

It’s a sad fact of life that some people don’t care about animals. It’s tempting to think that no argument for vegetarianism could appeal to these people. But let’s think about it. Suppose you care only about humans. That is to say, suppose that when you deliberate, about diet or anything else, you take only the interests of human beings into consideration. As far as you’re concerned, animals count for no more than rocks. On the moral scale, they have no weight.

You should still be a vegetarian. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But keep two facts in mind.

1. Meat-based agriculture is wasteful. “If we are to analyze the real efficiency of animals as food machines, . . . we must add in all grain and other food energy spent in rearing and maintaining breeding animals and all losses resulting from infertility and deaths. When these are figured in, only about 17 percent of the usable grain or food energy fed to a dairy herd is recovered in milk, and only about 6 percent of that fed to a beef herd is recovered in edible meat” (Jim Mason and Peter Singer, Animal Factories, rev. and updated ed. [New York: Harmony Books, 1990], 110 [endnote omitted]).

2. There are human beings throughout the world, including in the United States, who are starving to death or otherwise malnourished. I hope I don’t need to support this factual claim. If you doubt it, do some research.

By doing what you can to end animal agriculture, such as refraining from eating animal flesh, you improve the world for human beings. What’s good for animals turns out to be good for human beings. This gives the lie to the idea that we must choose between humans and animals. There is no conflict. There is no competition. There is no dilemma.

Animal agriculture has many other harmful effects on humans, from pollution of the air they breathe and the water they drink to erosion of the soil they depend on (see here) to the spread of diseases (think of Mad Cow). And meat-based diets are themselves unhealthy, even deadly. They’re linked to heart disease, colon cancer, and stroke, among other maladies. Don’t take my word for it. Check into it! Take responsibility for your choices.

I hope you care about animals, because that in itself will, if you’re rational, dictate your diet; but even if you don’t—even if you care only about humans—you have ample reason to become a vegetarian. All roads lead to vegetarianism.

The Vegetarian Site

This website has several good links. Try the one entitled "Philosophy of Animal Rights."

ALF

Here is the website of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). Please note that providing a link does not constitute an endorsement on my part of any organization, doctrine, or set of tactics.

"Almost Totally Useable"

Here is a site devoted to emu farming. Note the absence of any indication that emus are sentient, social beings, with interests of their own. To the people involved in the "emu business," emus are resources for human use and consumption. Only efficiency—not morality—dictates how they are treated. Here is information about emus.

Essays in Philosophy

The Internet is transforming scholarship. Here is an online, edited, refereed philosophical publication. This particular issue is devoted to animal ethics. I hope you enjoy it.

From Today's Dallas Morning News

Poultry trouble grows
Pilgrim's Pride flock is 2nd to be destroyed in recent infections
By KATIE FAIRBANK

A second flock of 24,000 chickens raised for Pilgrim's Pride Corp. has been killed after testing positive for avian influenza, the third incident in the state this year.

The flock of breeding birds was destroyed Saturday after state and federal workers found more evidence of the disease. The officials had been testing to learn whether the virus could be contained after an outbreak in the area last week also resulted in the destruction of 24,000 birds.

The tests of the second flock showed "the same strain of avian influenza as in the first flock (H7N3)," Dr. Bob Hillman, executive director of the Texas Animal Health Commission, said in a statement released Wednesday.

The birds were on farms near Sulphur Springs in Hopkins County. Officials have been testing surrounding commercial flocks, as well as privately owned chickens and waterfowl, to determine how far the disease had spread.

Nearly all of that testing is now complete, although test results are not yet known.

According to Dr. Hillman, the same people owned both sets of diseased flocks. Their names have not been released.

Pilgrim's Pride, based in Pittsburg, Texas, said that the chickens were used to lay eggs for hatching and that none of the products had left the farms.

Texas agriculture officials have tried to reassure consumers, saying the disease does not compromise the safety of cooked poultry or eggs.

The disease is usually transmitted from bird to bird through respiratory discharge.

It can also be passed in bird manure.

Pilgrim's Pride spokeswoman Sondra Fowler said the company decided to destroy the flock "as a prudent, pre-emptive action."

"One preliminary test showed a positive. Normally, they're tested a lot more than that. We went ahead and depopulated because we thought it was the prudent thing to do," she said.

The company expects no significant impact from this outbreak, unlike in 2002, when avian influenza cost the company millions and resulted in the destruction of 27.4 million birds.

This time around, the number of infected birds is "still a very small percentage, a fraction of 1 percent of our whole flock," said Ms. Fowler.

In February, more than 9,000 chickens were destroyed in South Texas, and big importers such as Mexico, Russia and Hong Kong banned Texas poultry as a result.

Most countries have relaxed the bans, but some have kept them because the February flu strain (H5N2) was highly capable of causing disease.

Pilgrim's Pride said the company is the second-largest poultry producer in Mexico, so that will help offset any trade issues that arise from bans there.

"That will somewhat mitigate the impact on us. We don't have to export, we're already there," said Ms. Fowler.

The company's stock was up 15 cents to close at $26.96 on the New York Stock Exchange.

From the Mailbag

keith—

was reading your post about dogs & cats—and got to the part about other animals.

would have to beg to differ with you about this section:

Wild animals such as lizards, snakes, monkeys, rodents (hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs), and birds did not evolve with humans. They are out of place living in houses. This is highly unnatural for them and must be a source of frustration and distress (although not, given their natures, resentment). We should treat animals according to their nature. It’s in the nature of domesticated animals to need care; it’s in the nature of wild animals to be left alone in their habitats.

all of my birds have been bred in the US—with most of them being hand fed. thus—these birds virtually are domesticated from coming out of the egg . . . and probably couldn't even survive out in the wild. they love people and depend upon them to feed them and play with them.

while mr mollo enjoys looking at the birdies outside his window—i think he honestly seems himself more like ed and me than he does those "outside" birdies!

for him, his natural habitat is INSIDE the house, eating his regular food, with daily treats of eggs, lettuce, nuts and popcorn!

peg

Confusions and Fallacies About Animals, Part 8

How, philosophically speaking, should we think about dogs and cats? I’ve heard it said by people in the animal-liberation movement that dogs, cats, and other companion animals are slaves. If so, then they are being wronged and must be liberated forthwith, at whatever cost to our other interests. Just as the institution of human chattel slavery was an abomination, so too is the institution of pet ownership. Both are unjust. Both, accordingly, must be abolished. If you live with a dog or a cat, you are no better, morally, than a plantation owner in the ante-bellum South.

I’m ashamed to admit that I used to think this way, but now I consider it confused. Dogs and cats are domesticated animals. They are not wild. Dogs are not wolves; cats are not wildcats; and you and I are not apes. We evolved from apes, just as dogs evolved from wolves, but being evolved from X doesn’t make one an X. Humans and dogs have lived together for thousands of years. To think that a dog, bred to live with or near humans and to depend on them for food and shelter, could fend for itself in the wild is absurd. Could you fend for yourself in the wild? You might last for a while, but your existence (to quote Hobbes) would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

The best way to think of dogs and cats is as children. They depend on us. They’re vulnerable. By bringing them into our lives, we assume responsibility for them. They need protection from things they don’t understand, such as automobiles, toxic substances, and malicious people. I’m tempted to say that the proper model for our relationships with dogs and cats is friendship, but while there are aspects of our relationships that are equal (as friendship requires), there are other aspects that are unequal. Parents aren’t their children’s friends, although one day, if they are lucky, they will be. So perhaps that’s the difference. Children can become friends of their parents. Dogs and cats cannot.

There’s a loose sense of “friend” in which I can befriend a dog. We do say, after all, that a dog is “man’s best friend.” But that’s metaphorical. A friend, as Aristotle pointed out, is an alter ego (other self). Friendship is a relation between equals. Some philosophers have thought (and some people still think) that even a man and a woman cannot be friends. Not because they’re different, which of course they are, but because they’re intellectually and morally unequal. As much as I love Sophie and Shelbie, my canine companions, they are not my friends. They are more like my children, looking to me for guidance and protection. I’m a moral agent; they’re moral patients.

To return to the charge that all companion animals are slaves, perhaps the person making it has in mind other animals besides dogs and cats. Wild animals such as lizards, snakes, monkeys, rodents (hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs), and birds did not evolve with humans. They are out of place living in houses. This is highly unnatural for them and must be a source of frustration and distress (although not, given their natures, resentment). We should treat animals according to their nature. It’s in the nature of domesticated animals to need care; it’s in the nature of wild animals to be left alone in their habitats.

If you want to read more along these lines, see my 1998 essay “Doing Right by Our Animal Companions,” which appeared in The Journal of Ethics.

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re "One Man's Cuddly Critter Is Another Man's Varmint" (Week in Review, May 23): Most people don't want to kill or harm animals they are educated about. Compassion knows no bounds, and we humans have plenty of compassion to share with all animals, human and nonhuman. When we save animals, we save ourselves.

SHERRILL DURBIN
Mounds, Okla., May 24, 2004

The Red-Winged Blackbird

I had a wonderful childhood. My parents provided me with a safe, secure world, with just the right mix of freedom and structure. I grew up in rural Michigan, about a hundred miles north of Detroit. Michigan’s Lower Peninsula is shaped like a mitten. I grew up in the Thumb area (as it’s called), not far from Saginaw Bay.

Between kindergarten and fifth grade, my family moved several times. This can be hard on kids, but I took it in stride. Old friends were simply replaced with new ones. Almost all of our houses were in wooded areas, with creeks and meadows nearby. Like my brother Glenn, who’s two years older and a lot crankier, I came to love nature and animals.

One of my earliest memories is of our house in Metamora, where I attended kindergarten and first grade. This would be 1962 through 1964, about the time our nation lost its innocence. We lived a couple of miles from town, near a marshy meadow. (The marsh part was filled with cattails, which waved in the wind.) Although I was only five or six years old, I loved going into the meadow to “explore.” (Is anyone surprised that I’m a Lewis and Clark buff?) Glenn and I made “forts” in the bushes. When we got BB guns, we hunted birds. (This is before we were moral agents, so don’t blame us.)

I will never forget the sound of the red-winged blackbirds that frequented the meadow near our house. Today, while riding my bike in Pilot Point (north of Dallas-Fort Worth) with my friend Butch Moldenhauer and his two-year old son Lance, I heard many red-winged blackbirds. It’s the only bird note I can identify, and it transports me instantly to Metamora four decades ago—to a time of innocence, wonder, security, and joy. Here is the Wikipedia entry on the red-winged blackbird. Here is a site that contains a sound file, which will allow you to hear the bird’s distinctive (and, to my ears, lovely) note.

Six Months Before the Mast

I began this blog on 28 November 2003, six months ago today. (See here for the first post.) The odometer shows 5,856 visits. As some of you know, the blog was originally communal, but one of the four members didn’t publish anything, another published only sporadically, and the third—a philosophical novice with more presumptuousness than sense—raised my hackles by challenging something I posted with the obvious aim of embarrassing me. With friends like that, who needs enemies? I decided to make it a one-person show. I’m glad I did. The others can start blogs of their own.

I try to post at least one item a day, even if it’s only a link to something interesting. The daily readership is small, compared to, say, my AnalPhilosopher readership, but that’s okay. If you’re a regular visitor, thanks. I’ll keep the blog going. Spread the word. If you have something to share with me, please do. By the way, I would open a comments section, but I’m afraid it would attract cranks. In fact, I know it would, because it did. It’s not worth the hassle. If someone sends a civil letter to me, even if it’s opposed to animal liberation, I’ll post it. I’m not trying to avoid controversy. I’m trying to avoid incivility.

Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights

I just happened upon this site, so I thought I'd share it with you. I'll put a permanent link on the left.

"Sheep," by Pink Floyd, from Animals (1977)

Harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away;
Only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air.
You better watch out,
There may be dogs about
I've looked over Jordan, and I have seen,
Things are not what they seem.

What do you get for pretending the danger's not real.
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
Down well trodden corridors, into the valley of steel.
What a surprise!
A look of terminal shock in your eyes.
Now things are really what they seem.
No, this is no bad dream.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
He makes me down to lie
Through pastures green He leadeth me the silent waters by.
With bright knives He releaseth my soul.
He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places.
He converteth me to lamb cutlets,
For lo, He hath great power, and great hunger.
When cometh the day we lowly ones,
Through quiet reflection, and great dedication,
Master the art of karate.
Lo, we shall rise up,
And then we'll make the bugger's eyes water.

Bleating and babbling we fell on his neck with a scream.
Wave upon wave of demented avengers
March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.

Have you heard the news?
The dogs are dead!
You better stay home
And do as you're told.
Get out of the road if you want to grow old.

Empty Cages

See here and here for Tom Regan's new book.

Thinking Philosophically About PETA

It’s undeniable that PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is controversial. Sometimes I think controversy is its objective. By why would that be, unless it were clear that controversy advanced PETA’s goals? Is it clear? Let’s think about it.

There are four categories of people (logically):

1. Those who treat animals respectfully no matter what PETA does.

2. Those who treat animals disrespectfully no matter what PETA does.

3. Those who treat animals respectfully as a result of what PETA does.

4. Those who treat animals disrespectfully as a result of what PETA does.

Let’s call those in categories 3 and 4, respectively, converts and perverts. Both converts and perverts, by definition, have been affected (influenced) by PETA’s actions, but in different ways. Converts are those who, but for PETA, would continue to eat meat, wear leather, &c. Perverts are those who, but for PETA, would become vegetarians, or at least take seriously arguments for vegetarianism.

Whenever I talk like this in front of PETA members or sympathizers, I’m told that category 4 is not important. Only category 3 is important. But why isn’t category 4 important? If you care about animals, shouldn’t you care that you’re turning people away from your cause? Maybe the point is that category 4 has few or no members. But that’s an empirical question concerning which, qua philosopher, I have no expertise. My own experience over the past few years suggests that category 4 has many members, not few.

Let’s think about this. Imagine a thoughtful, sensitive person who grew up in an omnivorous family and who enjoys eating meat and other animal products. I think this describes most people. The person in question has a vague sense that we wrong animals by eating them, using them in experiments, and so forth, but hasn’t integrated this intuition into his or her value system or web of belief. This person is ripe for the picking, philosophically. He or she will be receptive to fair-minded, clear-headed argumentation about how we should treat animals.

Along comes PETA with its bucket-of-blood campaign, paint-throwing, name-calling, woman-degrading, celebrity-mongering, publicity-whoring behavior. The person in question may have children and not appreciate the in-your-face tactics used by PETA. What does PETA say about this person? Does PETA care about this person? I assure you that PETA’s tactics turn this person away, perhaps forever, from the cause of animal liberation. This person was, but no longer is, persuadable. Is this good for animals?

PETA might reply, first, that the person’s behavior is irrational. Perhaps so, but that doesn’t save any animals. PETA might reply, second, that this cost (alienation) is outweighed by the benefits of in-your-face campaigns. Is there any evidence of that? In other words, are there more converts than perverts? My sense is that there are more perverts than converts: More otherwise receptive people are turned off by PETA than are taken in by it. This is why I say that PETA has been a net detriment to animals. Its ends may be laudable, but its means are lousy and self-defeating. Unfortunately, PETA seems unwilling to even address this issue.

With friends like PETA, animals don’t need enemies.

Tom Regan

More people have heard of Peter Singer than Tom Regan, but they're equally important in the animal-liberation/animal-rights movement. Singer is a utilitarian (a species of consequentialist) who believes that the morally salient fact about animals is that they're sentient, i.e., capable of suffering. Regan is a rights theorist (a species of deontologist) who believes that the morally salient fact about animals is that they're subjects of a life. While Singer and Regan differ about the theoretical rationale for changes in our treatment of animals, they agree on many practical matters, such as that people should become vegetarians. Here is a site devoted to Regan's work. I hope you enjoy it. I put a permanent link to it on the left, in case you lose the address.

Confusions and Fallacies About Animals, Part 7

I’ve heard it said many times (usually by students in my Ethics course) that if people become vegetarians, as Peter Singer and others recommend, we’ll be overrun by animals. All the cows, pigs, goats, turkeys, and chickens being confined on farms and ranches will be roaming the streets and countrysides, interfering with our activities and generally making nuisances of themselves. You will wake up one morning to see a cow munching the grass in your front yard, or a pig rooting in your garden, or a turkey pooping on your driveway, or, god forbid, a goat eating the tin cans out of your recycling bin.

I’m not sure what’s supposed to follow from this. Imagine saying that slavery should not be abolished because it will result in unemployed former slaves roaming the countryside. Actually, now that I think of it, this argument was made. But surely there are more than two options: retain slavery and create anarchy. And even if there were only two options, we should opt for anarchy and the social disruption it entails rather than slavery! The former is an enormous problem; the latter is an enormity.

Perhaps the thought is this. An act is right only if it is universally prescribable. But one cannot universally prescribe that confined animals be liberated, since it will produce the aforementioned rampage. Therefore, it is not right to liberate one’s own animals. The problem is that this principle proves too much. It proves, for example, that it’s wrong for me to flush my toilet at five o’clock, since, if everyone did so, it would be ruinous. It proves that it’s wrong for me to withdraw my savings from the bank, since, if everyone did so, it would be disastrous.

I think we can see what went wrong. It’s highly unlikely that everyone, or even most people, will flush their toilets at five o’clock (although I’ve heard it said that halftime of the Super Bowl puts a severe strain on city sewage systems). Thus, there’s no harm in my doing so. In the case of animals, it’s highly unlikely that everyone will become a vegetarian at the same time. What will happen is what happens all the time in a market. Demand for a product will fall, causing producers to produce less. As demand continues to fall, marginal producers will cease production, and then the largest producers. There will no longer be a profit in producing animal flesh for human consumption.

At this point I get a different line of argument. It is said that people will be put out of work by these altered dietary choices. Those who made their living producing animal flesh, from the farmers and ranchers to the butchers, will be in trouble. But that’s how markets work. Imagine making a living producing horse-drawn carriages at the time the automobile was invented. The demand for automobiles lessens the demand for your carriages, much to your chagrin. Are you wronged? No. You have no right that people buy your products. You’re not wronged by their decisions to buy automobiles instead of carriages. You must adapt to the needs of consumers. We may regret that there is no longer a carriage industry, just as we regret that there are dead languages such as Latin, but nobody is wronged by their respective demises.

I sincerely hope, for the sake of the animals, that everyone who makes a living producing animal flesh for human consumption is put out of business, like the carriage producers. It won’t happen overnight, but it can happen—and will, if we choose rightly. Singer and others are simply trying to move us closer to that day by rationally persuading people to change their dietary habits.

Annie's World

Those of you who love dogs will love this site. (Thanks to Jan Bussey for the link.)

Getting Singer Wrong

Here is an in-house report on a new book about animal thinking. I found it interesting, but the psychology professor whose book is being discussed gets Peter Singer wrong. He says Singer “humanizes” animals. Singer does nothing of the sort. Singer, who understands biology better than most psychologists, would never say that humans and animals are alike in all or even most respects. He says (1) that they are alike in some respects and (2) that some of the respects in which they are alike, such as being sentient, are morally relevant.

Morally responsible agents take all morally relevant considerations into account. (Yes, that's a tautology, but it bears stating.) That means animals must be taken into account when we act. Their interest in not suffering must be neither disregarded nor discounted simply because of species membership. Species, in other words, like race and sex, is morally irrelevant. Sadly, most humans don’t take animals into account. They inflict suffering on them for little or no reason, such as taste, entertainment, and the production of unnecessary clothing and redundant “knowledge.” This, Singer argues, is morally irresponsible.

Singer isn’t imposing his values on you, so don’t dismiss him as a meddler. He’s trying to get you to think clearly about—and act upon—your values. He’s your friend, not your enemy. If you feel as though you’re being imposed on, it may be your moral scruples rather than Singer doing the imposing. Singer just reminds you of your scruples and helps you see their implications. That is what philosophers do, and have done, since Socrates. It is a noble undertaking.

Rattlesnake Hunt

Here is a tradition that is not worth conserving. (Scroll to the bottom to see images.)

From Today's Dallas Morning News

A satirical Web site spreading an anti-fur message by making fun of Neiman Marcus has survived a bid by the Dallas-based retailer to turn it into roadkill.

The National Arbitration Forum, an agency empowered to resolve disputes over Web addresses on the Internet, ruled that the Fund for Animals can continue using domain names that include "NeimanCarcass."

In March, Neiman Marcus filed a complaint that the Web address was "confusingly similar" to its own and would divert customers and hurt its business.

The Fund for Animals, which was founded by the late author and critic Cleveland Amory and operates an animal sanctuary in Henderson County, put up the site about a year ago.

The organization said the name was a parody that did not infringe on the retailer's business.

Visitors to neimancarcass.com find photos of suffering animals, pleas not to buy fur and links to urge Neiman Marcus not to sell it.

"We're not telling people to boycott Neiman Marcus," says Michael Markarian, president of the Fund for Animals, which is based in Silver Spring, Md.

"We're educating the public and asking them to speak out."

Mark Schaaf, a spokesman for Neiman Marcus, said the company had no comment.

The ruling by arbitrator Charles K. McCotter Jr., which was dated May 14, concluded that "NeimanCarcass was sufficiently distinguished" from Neiman Marcus and clearly a parody that would not confuse customers.

"It is unreasonable to believe that a reasonable consumer would be confused as to what the Web site is about or whether it is owned, sponsored or affiliated with" Neiman Marcus, he wrote.

Pierre Grzybowski, grass-roots coordinator for the Fund for Animals, called the decision "a victory both for free speech and the millions of animals who rely on us to tell the truth."

Mr. Grzybowski said the organization was targeting the upscale chain "because they set trends among the major department stores. We're eager to work with Neiman Marcus to become socially responsible."

From the Mailbag

I put up a guide to finding humane eggs on nakedvillainy, if you are interested. [See here.]

I sent you an e-mail a couple of weeks ago (it bounced, probably due to the huge number of e-mails you were getting about the "Explaining Liberal Anger" article) congratulating you on one of the fallacy posts—I thought you had hammered my argument and you had made me rethink my position. I posted a concession to your logic on nakedvillainy. I'm still working on a post about recreational fishing based on one of your links a couple of months ago—it convinced me that I ought not do catch-and-release recreational fishing since my fun was based on fish pain. But that's still in progress.

All the best.

Smallholder

Moosewood

Here are some recipes from the world-famous Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, New York (home of Cornell University). I'm hungry just looking at them. Now if only I could cook. . . .

Confusions and Fallacies About Animals, Part 6

Anyone who has been reading this blog for more than a few days knows that I care deeply about nonhuman animals. This doesn’t mean I don’t care about humans. It means I don’t care only about humans. Care is not a zero-sum game. Yes, there are conflicts between humans and nonhumans; but there are conflicts between humans and humans. Caring for nonhuman animals means taking them into account in one’s deliberations. It means, at a minimum, not treating them as resources for human use and consumption.

It may puzzle some people that I’m conservative. Isn’t concern for animals a trendy liberal idea? How can this Burgess-Jackson guy be both a conservative and a respecter of animals? He must be confused. This must be a vestige of his liberal days.

I’m not confused. If you think conservatism is incompatible with concern or respect for animals, you don’t understand conservatism. Conservatism is a political morality. Like any political morality, it is concerned with the relation of individuals to the state. This explains the adjective “political.” Political morality is a subset of morality. Animals, of course, are not moral agents, so they’re not political agents, either. But this just means they fall outside the scope of political morality. It doesn’t mean they fall outside the scope of morality. There are moral patients as well as moral agents.

Ah, you say; but isn’t conservatism committed to conserving traditions, and isn’t using and consuming animals traditional? This goes too fast. Yes, conservatism, unlike liberalism, is committed to conserving traditions, but not just any old traditions. Some traditions are worth conserving; others are not. Slavery is traditional in Western culture, but no self-respecting conservative defends slavery. I maintain that using and consuming animals is analogous to slavery. Conservatives should reject both.

You might think this is cheating. “How convenient! You pick and choose traditions in accordance with their worthiness.” But this is no different from liberalism. The central value of liberalism is liberty, understood as the absence of constraint. Liberals aren’t anarchists; they believe there are moral limits on the exercise of individual liberty. As the old saying goes, your liberty stops at the tip of my nose. Liberty, to the liberal, is intrinsically good, but it’s not the only intrinsically good thing. Liberals aren’t absolutists about the value of liberty.

Nor are conservatives absolutists about the value of tradition. Liberals accord a presumption to liberty. Liberty, it might be said, is innocent until proven guilty. Conservatives accord a presumption to tradition. Tradition is innocent until proven guilty. Just as the presumption in favor of liberty can be rebutted or overridden, the presumption in favor of tradition can be rebutted or overridden. Bullfighting, fox hunting, meat-eating, and rodeos, like human chattel slavery, are traditional. This creates a presumption in their favor to the conservative. But I would argue that the presumption is rebutted or overridden in each case.

When is the presumption in favor of tradition rebutted or overridden? When the tradition inflicts harm on others. Conservatives are just as concerned with harm prevention as liberals are. Ah, you say, but animals can’t be harmed. Why not? To harm another is to set back his or her interests. Animals have interests. The main interest any sentient being has is not suffering. Animals also have an interest in life, just as humans do. Life is the precondition for all else of value to the individual: enjoyments, activities, experiences, and, in the case of humans, projects. Animals also have an interest in liberty. Confining animals sets this interest back. Humans harm animals in myriad ways.

Please don’t equate conservatism with the views actually held by conservatives. The views of a conservative fall into two categories: essential and accidental. The essential views are those that cannot be subtracted from conservatism without making it a different political morality. The accidental views are those that can be subtracted from conservatism without making it a different political morality. I maintain that lack of concern for animals is an accidental property of conservatism. In some cases, it derives from the religious beliefs of the conservative. But religion is not essential to conservatism. I’m an atheist. I’m also conservative. Logically speaking, I can be both.

Please be good to animals. First, do no harm to them. Primum non nocere. Second, do what you can to prevent harm to them. Third, if you have it in you, work to improve their lives. Let’s start a new tradition of compassion, concern, care, and respect for other species. That will be a tradition worth conserving.

Ci[r]cadian Rhythms

I don't know whether insects such as cicadas feel pain, so I don't know whether the presumption against inflicting pain applies to them. I do know that it's not always healthy to eat animal products, as this man learned to his chagrin. (Thanks to Ally Eskin of Who Moved My Truth? for the link.)

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re "How to Catch Fish in Vermont: No Bait, No Tackle, Just Bullets" (front page, May 11):

Is there no end to the cruelty human beings can conceive and practice? This is not sport.

LORRAINE DERIENZO-BUCHBINDER
Suwanee, Ga., May 11, 2004

A Defense of PETA

Here is a short essay in support of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Ambrose Bierce

Reverence, n. The spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a man.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Harlan B. Miller on Philosophical Paralysis

The ethical incoherence of our customary treatment of nonhumans has been demonstrated time and again by [Peter] Singer, [Tom] Regan, [S. F.] Sapontzis, [David] DeGrazia, [Evelyn] Pluhar, and others. Almost every member of the American Philosophical Association would agree that all mammals are conscious, and that all conscious experience is of some moral significance. But somehow this has no connection with one’s choice of food. Like the undergraduate who listens to, and actually understands, the refutation of naive relativism, and still writes in the final exam that “no one can judge another person’s morality,” many philosophers suffer from a sort of inferential paralysis.

(Harlan B. Miller, review of Ethics into Action: Henry Spira and the Animal Rights Movement, by Peter Singer, Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy 110 [January 2000]: 441-3, at 443 [italics in original])

From the Mailbag

KBJ

I remember seeing a TV documentary interview with Peter Singer, set in his family home. Singer at that time lived here in Australia and the family had a cat. All members of the family were strict vegetarians, except the cat, of course. It was a cause of some angst to the Singers that puss would only eat canned cat food.

regards
TG

PETA

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is both loved and hated, both celebrated and excoriated, both supported and opposed. It might be said that those who love PETA do so because they accept its ends, while those who hate it do so because they reject its ends. PETA has a stake in promoting this view, for it diverts attention from the organization’s strategies and tactics.

I think the view being promoted is mistaken. There are many people who accept PETA’s ends but reject its means. There are many people who genuinely care about animals and would gladly throw their support behind a reputable organization, but who believe that PETA adopts reprehensible and counterproductive tactics. How do I know this? I teach. I receive letters. I read newspapers. I watch television. I’ve had over twenty years of experience with this issue. I know whereof I speak.

Can we agree that it’s wrong to degrade women (or any other group) in order to promote a goal? If so, then we can ask whether PETA’s campaigns degrade women. I believe they do. Can we agree that rational persuasion is superior to manipulation? If so, then we can ask whether PETA prefers the latter to the former. I believe it does. Can we agree that commercialization is bad? If so, then we can ask whether PETA is commercialized. I believe it is. Can we agree that a serious organization, devoted to long-lasting social change, should not rely on celebrity? If so, then we can ask whether PETA relies on celebrity. I believe it does.

I’m trying to reach agreement on moral principles so that we can discuss facts. Sometimes I get the feeling that, to PETA, the end justifies the means. If manipulation works better than rational persuasion, then by all means manipulate! If tactic A gets more attention than tactic B, thus getting PETA into the news, then tactic A is preferable to B. If degrading women or cozying up to powerful commercial interests helps animals, then it must be done.

I despise this sort of result-oriented thinking. It appalls me. Animals do not benefit, in the long run, from anything but rational persuasion. It particularly galls me to find philosophers supporting PETA. No self-respecting philosopher would manipulate an audience, however important the end. Philosophers are concerned with knowledge, not mere belief. Their objective isn’t to change people’s beliefs but to provide good grounds for belief. This rules out appeals to emotion, for example. It rules out buckets of blood, paint-throwing, rudeness, and other vile, self-defeating tactics. PETA turns off more people than it recruits. I’m convinced of it. Is this good for animals? With friends like PETA, animals don’t need enemies.

Philosophers must remain independent. They must avoid affiliation, association, and membership. Philosophers (think Socrates) are devoted single-mindedly to the acquisition of knowledge, which means, among other things, having rational grounds for belief. Nothing must interfere with this objective. The philosopher, as such, would rather not change beliefs at all than change them through disreputable means. Philosophers are deontologists, not consequentialists. Philosophical argumentation is constrained, not free.

I call upon my philosophical friends (they know who they are) to sever ties with PETA. Immediately. Regain your lost independence and self-respect. Come home to philosophy. Come back to what attracted you to philosophy in the first place: its integrity, its honesty, and its methodological purity. You can’t be both a philosopher and a shill. You can try to be both, but you can’t succeed at it.

From the Mailbag

Keith,

A friend pointed out your blog to me noting that while she appreciates reading your Animal Ethics blog, there is a lot of anti-PETA rhetoric in it. I read through some of your blog and enjoyed a lot of your articles. I only discovered two anti-PETA posts (one calling them "jerks" and another citing Gary Francione's essay).

Getting involved with PETA and becoming a member has changed my view of them quite a lot. I used to think very negatively of PETA. This weekend my husband and I attended their "Helping Animals 101" conference. I found them to be very effective and consistent in their approach to helping the animals. I don't agree with everything they do, nor do I think every tactic they use is the best one, but overall I am very impressed with the level of their commitment and success. I also have a lot of respect for the PETA staff members; those I know personally are not only intelligent and gifted, but extremely ethical and concerned for humans and animals alike.

PETA is constantly misrepresented and taken out of context. And PETA's tactics reveal more about society and the media than they do about their seriousness regarding animal cruelty. PETA does what works to get their message across. Unfortunately we live in a society in which often, what works, is less than ideal.

Canis Familiaris

See here for some dog lore.

Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians

A reader named Eileen sent a link to this site. I'm delighted to hear about this organization and wish it success. I will put a permanent link on the left side of this blog.

Eggs

Yesterday I found a new source of free-range eggs. I was in Whole Foods Market in Arlington, Texas, to buy yeast flakes and Vegemite. Here are the eggs I bought. Before you jump on me for eating eggs, please note that Peter Singer eats free-range eggs (and dairy products) when he is away from home. He told me so.

Harming Animals

A student who should be studying for her Ethics examination sent this to me. Make of it what you will.

Huckleberry

Huckleberry died five years ago today. See here.

Confusions and Fallacies About Animals, Part 5

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who is considered by many contemporary philosophers as one of the greatest philosophers of all time, thought that all and only humans have dignity, by which he understood moral worth or value. This view can be challenged either by showing that some humans lack dignity or that some nonhumans have it. I believe some nonhumans have it. Indeed, I believe that all nonhuman animals have it.

Kant’s mistake was in locating worth in agency. But this is not part of the concept of dignity; it’s a normative position that one can consistently reject. Strictly speaking, dignity is the state of being worthy of honor or respect. It says nothing about the basis of worth or respect. A being can be worthy either in virtue of what it is or in virtue of what it does (or both). Thus, even if animals lack moral agency, they can still be worthy in virtue of what they are.

Let me give some examples. Have you been to a circus? What did you think when you saw bears wearing tutus and moving about on skates? Did you sense that it was undignified? Or what about mules who are trained to dive into pools? Or chimpanzees made to wear clothing and smoke cigars? Be honest. You felt sorry for the animals. You felt as though they were being degraded. Trust your feelings. They don’t lie.

Dignity does not require possession of the concept of dignity, much less the ability to defend oneself from affronts to it. That is a crude (but common) mistake. Having one’s dignity violated is not the same as being embarrassed or humiliated, so the fact (if it is a fact) that the aforementioned bears, mules, and chimpanzees are neither embarrassed nor humiliated is neither here nor there as far as having their dignity violated is concerned. Dignity is a condition, not a mental state or attitude.

Each animal species has a telos, or end. It has characteristic ways of behaving and feeling in response to environmental stimuli. When we take wild animals out of their natural habitats and train them to engage in unnatural behaviors for human amusement, we rob them of their dignity. This is no more acceptable in the case of animals than it is in the case of humans.

If you value dignity, you will boycott rodeos, circuses, bullfights, and zoos, all of which degrade and violate the animals they use and display. If you wouldn’t want your dignity violated, don’t violate the dignity of others, including our animal brethren.

Dogliness

One of my colleagues just sent a link to this beautiful essay from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Veganism in a Nutshell

I'm not a vegan, but I'm close. The only animal products I ingest are (1) fish and (2) eggs from free-roaming hens. I hope it will not seem hypocritical of me, therefore, to plug the vegan diet. It's a diet to which I aspire, even if I am not yet there. See here.

From Today's New York Times

More Mad Cow Mischief

The federal Department of Agriculture is making it hard for anyone to feel confident that the nation is adequately protected against mad cow disease. At a time when the department should be bending over backward to reassure consumers, it keeps taking actions that suggest more concern with protecting the financial interests of the beef industry than with protecting public health.

Just a few weeks ago, the department refused to let a small private company test its cattle for mad cow disease to satisfy Japanese customers. That decision was incomprehensible, unless it was driven by a desire to protect the beef industry from pressure to conduct such tests on all 35 million cattle slaughtered annually in this country.

Now the department has been caught refusing to test a cow that collapsed at a slaughterhouse in Texas; such a collapse could be an indication of mad cow disease. The department's own inspectors at the site wanted to take a brain sample for testing but were overruled by their regional office.

Further evidence of lax regulation emerged when the department quietly expanded the range of beef products that could be imported from Canada, where mad cow disease has been detected, only to be stopped short by a lawsuit.

There is no evidence yet that mad cow disease has invaded American cattle and thus no reason for inordinate worry. The task ahead is to make sure that our herds remain free of the disease. No one can be confident if the department remains so blatantly protective of the American meat industry.

Dolphin Intelligence

I grew up watching Flipper, so naturally I love dolphins. See here for an interesting and informative essay.

From the Mailbag

You need to check out and link penn and teller's show/ PETA episode from this season of "Bullshit" on Showtime. I wish more people would see this, then maybe they would stop funding the jerks at PETA.

If you have never seen this show, it is on Thursday nights at 9 cst 1 new and 1 older episode each week . . . tackling issues like environment, recycling, peta, bottled water, etc.

Season 1 is on dvd for sale and rent.

Artur Oczko

From the Mailbag

Dear Keith,

I just came across your website and wanted to let you know how incredibly excited I was to find someone with conservative political views who is still pro-animal rights. So rarely do I find someone who has the same values, morals, and beliefs as I do. Furthermore, I enjoyed your article on liberal anger immensely (in addition to laughing sooo hard at the core truth involved) and forwarded it to several of my liberal and conservative friends. Thanks for voicing your opinion.

Kelsey
California Lutheran University
Class 2007

Confusions and Fallacies About Animals, Part 4

Some people (including readers of my blogs) appear to think that in our dealings with animals, it’s enough to refrain from making them suffer. This explains why people think it’s acceptable to raise animals for food, provided they are not made to suffer along the way and provided they are killed painlessly. Some would insist, further, that any animal put to death be replaced by an equally happy animal, thus keeping the total happiness of the world the same.

We don’t think this way about humans. Suppose I had a taste for human flesh. Would it be acceptable for me to raise happy humans, the way Smallholder raises happy calves (see here), and then kill them painlessly? What’s the difference? Why the double standard? Why do we think like consequentialists with respect to animals but insist on deontology for humans? Why do we view animals, but not humans, as interchangeable and (therefore) replaceable?

Think about why it’s wrong to kill humans. (Here I draw on Don Marquis’s essay on abortion, from which I have learned much.) To kill a human is to deprive him or her of a future that contains activities, enjoyments, projects, and experiences. Life is the precondition for these things. Without it, they cannot exist. Even a painless killing deprives a human of these valued things.

But animals have futures that contain activities, enjoyments, and experiences, although perhaps not projects in the strict sense. Their lives are the preconditions for these things. Without their lives, these things cannot exist. Even a painless killing deprives an animal of these valued things.

The cases are parallel. You might object that humans and animals are different. Of course they’re different. But are the differences morally relevant? Humans differ among themselves, but not all the differences are morally relevant. We don’t let skin color, for example, affect one’s rights. Why is species membership morally relevant? How could it be, since it’s a biological concept? Species is no more relevant than race is, and you don’t think race is relevant.

Your life is the most important thing you have, since it’s the foundation on which everything else you value is built. This is as true for cows, pigs, and chickens as it is for you. What makes it wrong for someone to kill you is that it deprives you of these valued activities and experiences. That’s precisely why it’s wrong to kill animals. Apply the same standard to both cases. Be a consequentialist through and through, like Peter Singer, or be a deontologist through and through, like me. Don’t be a consequentialist with respect to animals and a deontologist with respect to humans. That’s irrational and self-serving.

Tough but Not Cruel

Joanna Lucas also sent a link to this animation about veal. Thanks, Joanna.

Bullfighting in Barcelona

Joanna Lucas sent a link to this report, which says that Barcelona, Spain, has declared itself a nonbullfighting city. Surely Spaniards can find a replacement for this barbaric form of "entertainment." What I don't understand is how Spain could oppose capital punishment, which upholds the dignity of persons, and allow bullfighting, which degrades it. Europeans, in general, have things backwards.

From the Mailbag

Keith,

Just a note to let you know that the "Peaceable Kingdom" screening, that you so graciously announced on your blog earlier this month, went exceptionally well. We had over 80 people in the audience, unanimously positive comments on the survey cards and nice proceeds to contribute to our local farm sanctuaries.

Peaceable Kingdom is a beautiful film—a remarkable work of art and philosophy—I encourage you to see it if you haven't already.

Meanwhile, this e-card is to thank you for your support of our effort to show Peaceable Kingdom (turn up you speakers).

All the best,

Joanna

Bucket of Blood

Dennis Mangan sent a link to this debate about PETA's Bucket of Blood campaign against KFC. Thanks, Dennis.

From the Mailbag

Keith,

Thanks for sending me your recent blog entry [dated 5 April; see below] on eating meat. I am not a purist in the sense you attribute to me. Of course, I agree that the state of affairs of one woman being raped is objectively LESS BAD, than the state of affairs of twenty-four women being raped. I acknowledge the comparative judgment. I just don't think it gets the rapist (or you) off the hook. Even committing one rape is so bad that the rapist deserves serious moral sanction. I know you think of rape as an extremely heinous instance of wrongdoing. I don't think that, in the case of rape, you would maintain, of a person who regularly rapes 24 women a year, but who out of conscience cuts back to only one rape a year, that that person has done enough where rape is concerned. One rape is one too many. Better than twenty-four? Yes. Good enough. NO!

How is your position on eating fish any different?

Your friend,

Mylan

T-Shirts

Here is a link to a T-shirt company that may be of interest (but in which I have no financial or other interest). I, personally, need a T-shirt like I need a blow to the head. I get a T-shirt at nearly every bike rally and footrace I do. I've done 327 bike rallies and over a hundred footraces. My walk-in closet is filled with T-shirts!

Soymilk

I have consumed no dairy products since 1972, when I was fifteen. No milk, cheese, butter, ice cream, or yogurt. Recently I discovered White Wave Chocolate Soymilk, which has the taste, texture, smell, and appearance of chocolate milk. I haven't tried the other White Wave products (see here for details), but I assume that if the company got the chocolate milk right, it got everything else right. What a world! The taste you want, without harming anyone. Please look for White Wave products in your local grocery store. I get mine at Kroger.

Xenotransplantation

Should organs and other bodily tissues be transplanted from animals to humans? See here and here.

The Center on Animal Liberation Affairs

Here is a site that may be of interest.

From the Mailbag

Hi Keith,

This [see here] is a topic that is close to my concerns at the moment. Australia exports tens of thousands of live sheep to the Middle East every year. Last year, one shipment was refused by Saudi Arabia, and 58,000 sheep spent months at sea, without room to move and in temperatures around 100 degrees. Thousands died. Refusal of shipments is fairly common (of course, the sheep certainly suffer even when all goes to plan; some sheep are too stressed to eat, and starve to death). Information here.

Here's where religion comes in: the sheep are destined to be slaughtered by Muslims performing a religious duty. You write that no religion requires meat eating. True, so far as I know. But some religions require killing: Islam, and also Santeria (see P. Casal, "Is Multiculturalism Bad for Animals?" Journal of Political Philosophy [March 2003]). The shipments are refused because apparently the Koran requires that the sheep be in good condition: obviously, that's hard to guarantee when they're shipped from Australia. This is a big debate at the moment in Australia (I'm addressing the Australian Veterinary Association annual conference on the topic). Of course, I want the sacrifices stopped. But I think given the mutual mistrust between Islam and the West right now, this has to come from their side. We can only hope. . . .

cheers,

Neil

Dr Neil Levy
Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics
University of Melbourne
Parkville, 3010
Australia

Confusions and Fallacies About Animals, Part 3

“Animals kill each other, so why can’t we kill them?” Anyone who lectures on the moral status of animals, as I’ve been doing for twenty years (almost to the day), has heard this question dozens of times. It has a powerful appeal to certain minds. But it’s thoroughly, almost ludicrously, confused.

Nobody doubts that animals kill each other. It’s just that nothing of a normative nature follows from that fact. In general, that something is the case is no reason that it ought to be the case. This principle—that one cannot validly infer an “ought” statement from “is” statements—is known as Hume’s Law, after the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776). (Some people mistakenly call it “the naturalistic fallacy,” but that refers to something else.) Imagine a parallel argument: “People murder each other, so why can’t I murder?” Pretty lame, eh?

Let’s reconstruct the questioner’s reasoning to make it valid. In other words, let’s make it so that the conclusion follows logically from the premise(s). This will focus attention on the truth or acceptability of the premise(s). Perhaps the person who asks the question is reasoning as follows:

1. Predation is morally permissible.
2. When humans kill and eat other animals, they are preying.
Therefore,
3. It is morally permissible for humans to kill and eat other animals.

This reasoning would justify interspecific predation but not murder.

The problem with the reasoning is that the first premise is nonsensical. It has a false presupposition. To say that predation is morally permissible is to presuppose that the animals who engage in it are moral agents, capable of reasoning and acting on principle. No animal is a moral agent. Only humans are moral agents. Only humans, therefore, are morally responsible for their conduct. Predation is just a fact about our world. Those who engage in it are neither blameworthy nor praiseworthy.

It might be said that if no animal is a moral agent, then no animal has moral status. But moral status comes in two forms: moral agency and moral patienthood. Children are moral patients, but not moral agents. The severely retarded are moral patients, but not moral agents. The senile are moral patients, but not moral agents. Are we to cast these individuals out of the moral community because they cannot reason or act on principle? To be a moral patient, one needs only interests, and animals clearly have interests, the main one being in not suffering.

There’s also a relevant difference between humans and animals that undermines the analogy. Humans don’t need animal flesh in order to survive. Many animals (the carnivores) do. (Humans are omnivores, not carnivores.) Even if animals were moral agents, and therefore morally responsible for their conduct, it would not follow from the fact that they kill and eat each other that humans may follow suit. In the case of animals, it’s self-defense (which is not to say that they think in those terms). They kill to survive. They have no choice. Humans don’t need to kill animals to survive. We have a choice.

At this point it might be said that something has to die for another thing to live. This is true, but, as I argued a week ago (see here), there are morally relevant differences between animals and plants. Both are alive, but only animals can suffer, and suffering is intrinsically bad. Humans must eat. Nobody denies that. They do not have to add to the world’s suffering in order to do so.

Isn’t it odd that the people who ask the question posed at the outset don’t look to the animal world for moral guidance in other areas? If we’re to emulate animals with respect to diet, why shouldn’t we emulate them with respect to habitat, reproduction, child-rearing, hygiene, social structure, and other matters? Let’s not be selective! I suspect that people who ask the question aren’t thinking clearly and carefully. They’re groping for a reason to continue eating meat.

Cruelty

Ever heard of pâté de foie gras? See here. You have to wonder about someone who would contribute to such cruelty. Not knowing how this “food” is produced is one thing; knowing and not caring is another. Please get the word out so that consumers of this “food” are deprived of the excuse of ignorance. (By the way, I’m not implying that ignorance always excuses. There is such a thing as culpable ignorance. People have a duty to find out how the foods they eat are produced.)

Ambrose Bierce

Carnivorous, adj. Addicted to the cruelty of devouring the timorous vegetarian, his heirs and assigns.

(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)

Veal

If I could get people to make one change in their diets, it would be eliminating veal. This would destroy the market for veal and prevent a great deal of misery. See here.

René Descartes (1596-1650) on Animal Minds

I know that animals do many things better than we do, but this does not surprise me. It can even be used to prove that they act naturally and mechanically, like a clock which tells the time better than our judgement does. Doubtless when the swallows come in spring, they operate like clocks. The actions of honeybees are of the same nature; so also is the discipline of cranes in flight, and of apes in fighting, if it is true that they keep discipline. Their instinct to bury their dead is no stranger than that of dogs and cats which scratch the earth for the purpose of burying their excrement; they hardly ever actually bury it, which shows that they act only by instinct and without thinking. The most that one can say is that though the animals do not perform any action which shows us that they think, still, since the organs of their bodies are not very different from ours, it may be conjectured that there is attached to these organs some thought such as we experience in ourselves, but of a very much less perfect kind. To this I have nothing to reply except that if they thought as we do, they would have an immortal soul like us. This is unlikely, because there is no reason to believe it of some animals without believing it of all, and many of them such as oysters and sponges are too imperfect for this to be credible.

(René Descartes to the Marquess of Newcastle [William Cavendish (1593-1676)], 23 November 1646, in The Correspondence, vol. 3 of The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham et al. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991], 304)

A Friend of Animals

Marc Bekoff is a biologist at The University of Colorado at Boulder. He writes both scholarly and popular essays on animals. Here is one of his latest popular essays. Here is Marc's personal home page. Keep up the good work, Marc!

Vegemite

Has anybody eaten Vegemite? I haven't, but I want to. Where can I get some? I've never seen it in a grocery store. What does it taste like?

Fighting the Facts

Some people cannot entertain hypotheticals. See here.

Old Font

Having tried Comic Sans for a few days, I decided to go back to Bookman Old Style. Sorry for the inconvenience (if any). Thanks to those of you who provided feedback.

Engineering Animals

Here is a short essay on genetically engineered animals. Let me know what you think.

Repartee

I received the following letter from a reader:

Professor Burgess-Jackson:

Forthwith, I am no expert in the field of animal ethics. . . .

However, as a constant reader of your site, many of your posts prompt internal questions. The following came to mind upon reading your plant/animal dichotomy [see the previous post], and since I've heard many make a similar point in regard to animal rights, I'll ask you (perhaps you could deal with it on your blog someday).

Where does one draw the line, and is the line arbitrary? I'm thinking here about insects. Surely, building one's home not only displaces but destroys many thousands of insects. Are we to take this issue weightily or lightly? Mosquitoes stinging us? Stepping on ants as we walk through the grass? Etc. I guess I'm asking whether insects have rights, and how far one may go before an ordinary swatting of a gnat away from one's ear deigns moral responsibility?

I think you get the point. Now, I'm honestly not offering this as an "argument" against your views—I would just like to hear something said about it. Surely, it seems to me, such considerations are stronger than the "plant" examples to which your interlocutors alluded?

One final request: could your answer entertain a non-utilitarian mode of argument? As a non-utilitarian, I am less likely to be convinced by such an argument (though I can readily see how the argument would be formed on utilitarian grounds).

Just food for thought.

Take care, Allan

Here is my reply:

19 April 2004, 2:15 P.M. Allan: The line is not arbitrary. If a being is sentient, it has moral status. There are two kinds of case: (1) those in which it is clear that the being is sentient and (2) those in which it is not clear that the being is sentient. Let's call these cases, respectively, "easy" and "hard." Cows, pigs, and chickens are easy cases. Insects and mollusks are hard cases. Let's not commit the fallacy of inferring the absence of easy cases from the presence of hard cases. In other words, from the fact that it's unclear whether insects are sentient, it doesn't follow that it's unclear whether cows, pigs, and chickens are sentient. As to your final question, I'm a deontologist. It's wrong to harm others. Suffering is a harm. So it's wrong to inflict suffering on others. You don't have to be a consequentialist (or, more particularly, a utilitarian) to think that suffering matters, morally. kbj

Keep those cards and letters coming!

Confusions and Fallacies About Animals, Part 2

It is astonishing how often plants come up in connection with animal liberation. Even intelligent people think that bringing animals into the moral community requires bringing plants in. Since it is absurd to think that plants have moral status, they say, it is absurd to think that animals have moral status. The assumption is that there are no morally relevant differences between animals and plants. Either both of them have moral status or neither of them has moral status. Since plants clearly do not have moral status, neither do animals.

The flaw in the reasoning is that there are morally relevant differences between animals and plants, differences that ground a difference in treatment. Animals (most of them, anyway; certainly those that are most often eaten) are sentient; plants are not. Both are living, to be sure, but nobody thinks that being alive is a sufficient condition for having moral status. Peter Singer doesn’t. Tom Regan doesn’t. I don’t. You don’t.

It might be said that plants are sentient, in the sense of having the capacity to suffer. There is no evidence for this. (Take my word for it. I wrote an essay entitled “Do Plants Have Rights?” for a graduate seminar many years ago, which required that I review the scientific literature.) The people who say it don’t believe it, either. I often hear it said that plants have amazing abilities. They respond to all manner of environmental stimuli, from light to heat to magnetism to noise. But machines can be made to respond to environmental stimuli. Your thermostat isn’t sentient. Your car isn’t sentient. Your computer isn’t sentient.

There is no reason whatsoever to think that plants can feel pleasure or pain. They lack brains and nervous systems. What good would a pain response do for an organism that can’t move to avoid painful stimuli? Animals can avoid pain by moving; plants cannot. Evolutionarily speaking, it would be pointless for a plant to be sentient. It is not pointless for an animal to be sentient.

There is a great deal of intellectual dishonesty among those who deny animals moral status. They seem committed to thinking of and using animals as resources and will let nothing—not even logic and common sense—stand in the way. They ridicule those who take animals seriously. When they make the point about plants, they do so with an air of triumph. But the joke’s on them. Those who think animals have moral status have thought things through to a much greater degree than those who don’t. Take my word for it. I’ve been reading, writing, and talking about the issue for a quarter of a century.

If you sincerely believe that plants are sentient, act on your belief. You may think it shows that any living organism may be killed and eaten. What it actually shows, when you combine it with your belief that pain is intrinsically bad, is that you’re acting wrongly. You should be foraging for plants and animals that died natural deaths, not raising and killing them for food. But suppose this were an inadequate diet. Then one would have to make comparative judgments about the degree to which various organisms suffer. Presumably, if plants were sentient, they would be less sentient than animals, so one would have an obligation to consume them rather than animals. Either way, it’s wrong to eat animals.

From the Mailbag

I don't see how Smallholder can love on his cattle every day [see Smallholder's post of 14 April 2004, infra] and then lead them to their death. That's like me taking my cats or dogs to the slaughterhouse after they sleep in the bed with me!

Maybe he could find another career that allows cow-petting and makes him a profit so he can cow-pet on a regular basis.

Mindy Hutchison

New Font

As you will undoubtedly have noticed, I changed fonts. One of my students used an interesting font in her term paper. I snooped around in a Word document until I found it. It's Comic Sans MS. It looks like hand lettering. There's something rustic and endearing about it, so I decided to use it in one of my blogs (the other being AnalPhilosopher). I still like Bookman Old Style, but there's no reason both of my blogs have to have the same font, is there? Feedback is welcome.

By the way, there appears to be a controversy about Comic Sans MS. See here and here.

From Today's New York Times

The Bush administration generally frowns on federal regulation and touts the virtues of voluntary efforts to deal with all manner of national problems. So it was quite a shock when heavy-handed regulators at the Agriculture Department refused to let a private company test all the cattle it slaughters for mad cow disease.

The request to conduct tests was submitted by Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, a small producer in Kansas, which wanted to resume selling its high-priced Black Angus beef in Japan, a major market. The Japanese have detected some 10 or so cases of mad cow disease in their own country, so they now test every animal slaughtered for food purposes there. They want American exporters to do the same.

Creekstone was willing to oblige even though it believes the American beef supply is already safe. (One cow in the state of Washington tested positive for the disease last December, but it was found to have originated in Canada.) The Japanese ban is costing the company some $200,000 a day and has forced it to lay off 45 workers. Creekstone planned to test all 300,000 animals slaughtered at its Kansas plant each year, using the same rapid diagnostic tests used in Japan.

In a country like the United States, where not a single indigenous case of mad cow disease has yet been detected in cattle of any age, such blanket testing is probably overkill. It would seem adequate for consumer safety purposes simply to test most of the nation's disabled cattle and a suitable sample of healthy cattle, as Agriculture officials plan to do. But it is hard to see how Creekstone's desire to do more would hurt anyone else.

The Agriculture Department gave a curt no when Creekstone, which was required under a 1913 law to get permission to conduct the tests, sent in its request. The stated reason for the rejection was that the rapid tests are licensed only for surveillance, not to guarantee consumer safety. But critics contend the department is primarily trying to protect the beef industry from pressure to test all 35 million or so cattle slaughtered in this country annually. Such blanket testing would raise production costs, and discovery of a single case of mad cow disease, or even a false positive, might cause American beef sales to plummet.

What is most worrying about this entire incident is not that Creekstone will not be able to do the tests, or even that the federal government appears to be discouraging a minor concession that would lead to both exports and jobs. If the cattle industry has the clout to sway a government department on this kind of issue, it probably has the clout to influence federal officials when it comes to questions much closer to the interests of American consumers.

American negotiators are pressing the Japanese to relax their requirements, and if they succeed Creekstone, at least, will have a happy ending. If they do not, the government should change its mind and let the market rule. That would be at least a small sign that the people who help protect the safety of American meat have their priorities in the right place.

Biocentrism

Do plants have rights? See here.

From the Mailbag

dear mr. burgess-jackson, i have discovered your web log (both, actually), parts of which i rather enjoy. especially issues on animal rights and their linking (though i could not disagree more) with vegetarianism [to which i had to link in my nectar&ambrosia blog]—and the variety of responses you publish.

best regards,
jens f. laurson
Editor-in-Chief
Center for International Relations
International Affairs Forum

A PETA Apologist

Dennis Mangan replies to my PETA post here.

From the Mailbag

Yet another reason for animal-rights folks to distance themselves from PETA. This is disgusting.

I'm all for the humanest possible treatment of animals, but this isn't how I'd go about convincing people!

jan

From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re "U.S. Won't Let Company Test All Its Cattle for Mad Cow" (news article, April 10):

Is this government bureaucracy gone amok or simply another example of the failure of public servants to protect the interests of the American public?

How can testing of all cattle for mad cow disease, a potentially fatal illness, be bad for consumers?

Contrary to what the National Cattlemen's Beef Association says, the most important thing is not the potential false impression that untested beef is not safe but rather the truthful understanding that tested beef is not infected.

What a perversion of the free-market system and what an example of a government agency's pandering to an industry group at the expense of the health of all Americans.

NORMAN OKSMAN
Katonah, N.Y., April 12, 2004

From the Mailbag

Keith,

I am not sure what your policy is on reader-to-reader discussions, but I would like to respond to Joanna's criticism if I may. I was unclear in my post and do not want to leave the impression that I deny the individuality of the steers I raise.

What follows is a bit lengthy, so feel free to cut and paste as you see fit—I also posted it on Mike's blog. I hope Big Hominid and Naked Villainy are ginning up some more site traffic for you.

Dear Joanna,

I'm always happy to bring happiness, humor, and joy to others. You should see me dance. Unfortunately, your amusement at my failure to recognize that meat comes from "individuals" arises only because I did not specify my background in my brief post. I am a small-scale organic farmer who sells a few (seven this year) custom-raised, humanely treated, grass-fed baby beef in the Shenandoah Mountains and certainly do not deny the individuality of the animals I raise. In fact, my blogosphere handle, "Smallholder," is taken from the English term that not only denotes someone who traditionally farms a small patch of land, but also lives in close harmony with his animals. I know each animal intimately, spending one or two hours in direct, hands-on contact with my boys every day.

If you were to drive up the hill at Sweet Seasons Farm at 5:00 AM on any day of the week, you would find the barn light on and yours truly inside, feeding the boys with hand-mixed milk replacer. As they drink, I rub their sides, talk to them, scratch their ears, and lift their tails to make sure they don't have runny manure. They particularly like chin rubs. As I clean out the night's manure, the only real difficulty I have is the lads throwing me off balance as they seek even more attention. The same process gets repeated each evening as well. In fact, one of the little scamps was too affectionate last night—I had forgotten the egg basket and carefully placed several eggs in my front pants pocket. One of my twins didn't think he had gotten enough love and butted my hip—breaking four of the eggs.

In fact, the close association with the individuals can get even more intense. Last year, a snowstorm coupled with freakish wind swirling through the hills pushed snow through the barn's second story, around the hayloft, and into the pen. I went out at eleven in the evening to check to see if my boys were snuggly warm in the midst of the blizzard and found them standing forlornly with a quarter inch of snow on their backs. Intellectually, I understand that cattle are built to survive this sort of thing—I have seen my neighbor's cattle with an inch of encrusted ice all over their hides—but I didn't want my lads to be cold. I jerry-rigged (look at me ethnically slandering myself) a tarp over the calf pen, rubbed them all over with a blanket, changed the straw bedding, and then proceeded to sleep in the barn to add my body heat to their pen. It was cold, nasty work. But I kind of enjoyed waking up at three in the morning with calves snuggled up to me on each side, their heads tucked between my shoulders and face.

This year I had an outbreak of pneumonia. I had one calf that I tube-fed three times a day for a week, cradling it in my arms and massaging its ribs to aid digestion.

I could provide many, many more examples.

I'm sure Joanna will object that it can't be humane because the guys must be terrified at the end of their lives. I'm sure the slaughtering process is hard on 99.9% of the steers destined for hamburger, but the kindness I have shown the boys and the mutual affection we have also help their ends come cleanly. They follow me right up to the truck and I drive over to a Mennonite Farmer who slaughters on the side. He takes the animals in the order that they arrive, so I shoot to get to his place at 4:00 AM so I am first in line. They calmly walk down the ramp and into the facility. He was shocked that they would just follow me like little lambs—normally unloading and moving is accompanied by a fair amount of yelling and shoving. He hits them with a .22-caliber bullet to the brain and they are down—no muss, no fuss.

Ah, many animal-rights advocates might contend, there is still cruelty because they die in the end. While I am in agreement with animal-rights activists in their critiques of unnecessary (mental and physical) cruelty, they typically lose me when they make that judgment. If the goal of animal-rights activists is to eliminate as much animal suffering as possible, attacking humane farming is not conducive to their end. My animals lead TREMENDOUSLY better lives on my farm then they would in nature.

The PETA crowd seems to misunderstand that "Mother Nature" is, as Gene Logsdon puts it, often "Old Bitch Nature." Animals aren't living out in a state of Disney Technicolor utopia. Animals in the wild are perpetually fearful, subject to predation, parasite-ridden, frequently sick, and constantly hungry. Most die young and their deaths are ugly, traumatic affairs.

Professor Burgess-Jackson has stated that the art of persuasion is based on making people realize that their basic beliefs are in conflict. I have a challenge for his readers.

If my beliefs are:

A) Suffering should be minimized.

B) Animals in my care, provided with meals, shelter, health care, and protection from predation, suffer much less than they would in the state of nature.

Show me where these beliefs are in conflict. Please do so without using the "don't use others as an end" arguments. I'd buy that in person-to-person relationships, but don't accord full moral (human) weight to animals.

Smallholder

From the Mailbag

Donovan and Smallholder's posts read so much like Psychology 101 illustrations of Denial (animals don't suffer, Donovan), Justification (it's acceptable to eat meat because other animals do it, Donovan, or because the "meat" was raised "humanely," Smallholder) and Dissociation (meat comes from "humanely raised meat" not from individual animals, Smallholder), that they are almost comedic. Thank you, I enjoyed reading them.

Joanna

From the Mailbag

Dr. Burgess-Jackson,

Yesterday you posted a letter from "Donovan." May I reply?

Dear Donovan,

As a fellow omnivore, I also believe in eating meat. However, I am dismayed that you so blithely dismiss animal suffering. While the position that animals are not morally equivalent to humans is defensible, we still ought not to cause unnecessary pain and suffering when it is avoidable. If you are unwilling to minimize suffering for the sake of animals, do so for your own sake. The way we treat "lessers"—however one might define that term, reflects on us and changes us.

The best parallel that I can think of is the historical opposition that many virulent racists offered to the institution of slavery. They opposed chattel bondage not because they felt any sympathy for Africans but because the racists were alarmed by the way that the institution coarsened slaveholders.

I believe (the good professor will have to confirm this for me; it has been awhile since freshman philosophy) that Aquinas extended this rationale to animals. If I may paraphrase badly: even though they do not have moral weight (souls) we ought to treat them well so as not to develop the habit of cruelty that might then be extended to our fellow man.

You don't have to become a vegetarian to eschew being a cog in the horror machine. Buy humanely raised meat and enjoy it with a clean conscience.

Smallholder

Your political posts still tend to irk me, but the animal rights stuff is always thought-provoking.

All the best.

From the Mailbag

Why cant i deny that pain and suffering is bad for animals? For me its as simple as the food chain and im at the top of it. I love meat and have no quibbles about doing whatever is required to put it on my families dinner table. The super market just makes it easy. Got to love the division of labor!

Sorry i just dont put animals on the same playing field as humans.

Donovan

From the Mailbag

Keith,

I am looking forward to your "series of blog entries that address the most common confusions and fallacies" about the moral status of animals. I will definitely stay tuned.

Meanwhile, see the link below for an activist effort that we hope will achieve similar results in terms of clarifying people's moral thinking (ha!). Should confusion still persist even after the screening, then, at least the event will have benefited local farm sanctuaries. The fundraiser will be held at my studio. Discussion to follow the film. Wish us luck.

Joanna

Confusions and Fallacies About Animals, Part 1

Some people defend their omnivorous diet by citing their religion. This is puzzling. No religion, to my knowledge, requires meat-eating. Some forbid it. For those that neither require nor forbid it, meat-eating is permissible, optional, or discretionary. Whether you should eat meat depends, therefore, on other considerations besides your religion, such as whether it contributes to the amount of pain and suffering in the world.

Do you care about pain and suffering? I assume you care about your own pain and suffering. You probably also care about the pain and suffering of your loved ones. But why are pain and suffering bad? Don’t say you’re not sure whether they’re bad. If you didn’t believe they were bad, you wouldn’t care whether you or your loved ones experience them. And once you admit that pain and suffering are bad, you can’t very well deny that it’s bad for anyone, even animals, to experience them. Pain is pain. Suffering is suffering. Why should it matter whether the being who suffers or experiences pain is white or black, male or female, American or Ethiopian, human or animal?

The meat you eat involved a great deal of pain, suffering, and deprivation. This is a fact, not an evaluation. (See here.) Most meat-eaters shield themselves (conveniently) from the suffering their actions cause. Find out how the meat that ends up in your grocery store got there. Ask yourself whether it’s right for you to support an industry that inflicts such suffering. Don’t say I’m imposing my values on you. I’m imposing your values on you. I’m trying to get you to examine your beliefs and behavior. I believe that if you do, you’ll see that you’re not living up to your moral principles. You would never think to inflict pain, suffering, and deprivation on a human being because of something as trivial as taste. Why is it permissible to inflict them on an animal?

Don’t say that your religion draws a moral line between humans and animals. We’ve already been over that. Your religion doesn’t require that you eat meat. At most, it allows you to eat meat. Whether you should do so, all things considered, is independent of your religious beliefs. It requires that you examine your beliefs about pain and suffering and draw a connection between your actions and various states of the world. It’s within your power to reduce the amount of pain and suffering in the world. Do think it through—for the sake of the animals.

Dispelling Confusion About Animal Rights

I am constantly amazed and disappointed by the poor quality of thought about the moral status of animals. Sometimes I think meat-eating makes people’s minds shut off. I’ve decided to begin a series of blog entries that address the most common confusions and fallacies. Stay tuned!

Don't Kill the Whales

Here is Greenpeace's page on whaling. Here are the lyrics of the Yes song "Don't Kill the Whale," from Tormato (1978):

You're first—I'm last
You're thirst—I'm asked to justify
Killing our last heaven beast
Don't hunt the whale

In beauty—Vision
Do we—Offer much
If we reason with destiny, gonna lose our touch
Don't kill the whale

Rejoice—They sing
They worship their own space
In a moment of love, they will die for their grace
Don't kill the whale

If time will allow
We will judge all who came
In the wake of our new age to stand for the frail
Don't kill the whale

CETACEI

John Tuohey and Terence P. Ma on the Animal-Liberation Movement

Animal Liberation [1975; 2d ed., 1990] has played an important role in shaping the animal rights movement in the United States. [Peter] Singer’s work is recognized as central to the movement’s effort to claim legitimation on the contemporary scene. This legitimation remains, fifteen years after the publication of Animal Liberation, largely absent from the movement. The principal success of the movement seems to have more to do with the rise of sentimental attachment to animals due to their movement from the farm to the urban household than it does with a clear and compelling philosophical logic. The flaw in Singer’s approach is that he seeks to establish the equality of animals with humans on the level of characteristics where he finds similarities, rather, and more appropriately, than on the level of nature where there are real distinctions.

(John Tuohey and Terence P. Ma, “Fifteen Years After ‘Animal Liberation’: Has the Animal Rights Movement Achieved Philosophical Legitimacy?” The Journal of Medical Humanities 13 [summer 1992]: 79-89, at 88 [footnote omitted])

Modern Meat

Have you seen this PBS documentary?

Meat-Eating and Health

Vegetarianism is good for the animals and good for you. See here.

Feminism and Vegetarianism

Carol J. Adams is a feminist and a vegetarian. She has written many books at their intersection, including The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (New York: Continuum, 1990). See here for details.

Meat-Eating and Rape

As many of you know, I stopped eating red meat (beef, pork, venison, &c) in early 1981. I gave up turkey, as planned, on the last day of 1981. Since then, the only animal products I've ingested are chicken, fish, and eggs. (I've been allergic to dairy products since 1972.) A couple of years ago I stopped eating chicken. More recently still, I ruled out eggs from confined hens. As of today, the only animal products I ingest are (1) fish and (2) eggs from free-roaming hens.

Do I live up to my moral standards? No. But I'm close, and that should count for something. A few years ago, in correspondence with several philosopher friends, I was taken to task by one of them for continuing to eat chicken and fish. He couldn't believe I hadn't gone all the way (cold turkey, whole hog). He said it was preposterous for me to think I was doing well. "Imagine someone saying that he commits only an occasional rape," he said. The implication, of course, is that rape is unacceptable. It's not good enough to reduce the number of rapes one commits (unless the reduction is to zero).

One virtue of my friend's analogy is that it brings individual animals into the picture. The flesh one eats comes from individual animals, not from a species, a population, or a collection. Each rape is an affront to the dignity of a distinct person. Each act of consuming steak, hamburger, or a chicken leg is an affront to the dignity of a distinct animal. We tend to think of chicken as a mass term, like peanut butter, but it refers to body parts of individual chickens.

My friend's criticism stung me, and it has bothered me ever since. Am I no better than the rapist who "cuts back" on the number of victims? Does my sense that I'm doing better than most people and better than I once did rest on sand? Am I deluding myself?

I don't think I'm deluding myself, and I hope I'm not deluding myself by thinking that I'm not deluding myself. Suppose I were a rapist, and suppose I had been raping five women a month for many years. If I cut back to two women a month, I'd be doing better than I was. There are fewer victims. Clearly, I should not be raping at all, but raping twenty-four women a year is morally better than raping sixty a year. Would my friend disagree?

He would probably say, "You shouldn't be raping any women!" But I can agree with that without giving up my belief that I'm doing better now than before. The two judgments—one comparative and one noncomparative—are compatible. My friend seemed unwilling to address the comparative claim. He's a purist. To him, there are just two choices: (1) rape at will and (2) don't rape at all. By analogy, (1) eat as much meat as you want, of whatever types you want, and (2) don't eat meat at all.

There's a lot of purism (my term) in the animal-liberation movement. Anyone who hasn't purged animal products from his or her diet is viewed with skepticism (at best) or animosity (at worst). I wonder why this is. Why not celebrate each incremental movement toward veganism? After all, most of us grew up eating meat. Is it reasonable to expect people to eliminate animal products from their diets overnight, or even over the course of a year? There's a learning curve, for one thing. Vegetarian diets require new cooking skills and a better understanding of nutrition. There's also this brute fact: People enjoy the taste of meat. Perhaps they shouldn't (if that makes sense), but they do; and we're talking about changing lifelong habits. Dietary habits are especially difficult to change, since food plays such an important role in our rituals and identities. (I'll write about that in another post.)

If you're a vegan, like my friend, be reasonable. Rape is abominable. But it's better for one woman to be raped than for two to be raped. This doesn't justify or excuse the rape; it simply compares two states of the world in terms of the individuals that compose those states. Eating only fish is better than eating all meats. Eating only eggs from free-roaming hens is better than eating just any eggs. It seems like common sense, but then, philosophers are not long on common sense.

Conservatism and Animals

I'm a longtime defender of animals. I'm also a conservative. If these attributes were incompatible, I'd be in trouble. But they're not. Qua conservative, I value tradition. But the presumption in favor of tradition is rebuttable. If a tradition harms others, the presumption is overridden. All of the following traditions harm others: human chattel slavery, bullfighting, bear-baiting, rodeos, zoos, and hunting. Any good conservative can and should oppose these oppressive institutions. Here is an essay on conservatism and animals. Thanks to Khursh for the link.

Festival of the Oxen

One of my readers, Khursh, sent a link to this. I had never heard of it. I'm sorry I now know of it.

My New Stinker

Shelbie, my stinkin' monkey, is a year old today. See here for details.

Bear-Baiting

As a conservative, I accord a presumption to tradition (the way liberals accord a presumption to individual liberty). But presumptions, by their nature, are rebuttable. Here is a tradition the presumption in favor of which is rebutted.