Archive for category: Blog

On Thursday evening, April 17, I had the pleasure to participate in a program at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City in which we discussed the following proposition:

“Design can allow us to humanely include animal products in our diet.”

Nicola Twilley argued in favor; I argued against.

You can watch the debate here.

As I tried to tease out in my presentation and in the question period that followed, I think that there are three ways to interpret this question: one purely empirical; one partly empirical and partly moral; and one completely moral.

First, can design result in less suffering? Of course it can. As a purely factual matter, we can design systems of animal exploitation that result in less suffering. That’s clear. But it is also an uninteresting way to interpret the question. I do not believe that Nicola and I had any disagreement here.

Second, we can ask whether design can reduce suffering to a point where we would feel comfortable in consider calling the resulting level of exploitation “humane.” That is how I understood Nicola to interpret the question.

This is a mixed question that involves moral and empirical components.

As I discussed in the debate, because animals are chattel property, there are structural limitations on how far industry can go in reducing suffering. For the most part, our “humane” treatment is limited by economic efficiency: we protect animal interests to the extent that we get an economic benefit from doing so. So efforts to make treatment more “humane” are usually coextensive with efforts to reduce inefficiencies and increase profitability. That is exactly what slaughterhouse designer and meat-industry consultant Temple Grandin does–and acknowledges that she does. She focuses on industry inefficiencies and proposes ways to reduce those inefficiencies through more “humane” treatment.

As long as animals are chattel property, the ability of design to address the issue is structurally constrained. The most “humanely” treated animals are still subjected to what could only be called torture if humans were involved.

The primary reason why we think that design can make exploitation “humane” in some morally acceptable way is that there are animal advocates, such as Ingrid Newkirk of PETA, who put their stamp-of-approval on people like Grandin and the “solutions” she provides. PETA gave an award to Grandin, declaring her as a “Visionary” and as “the world’s leading expert on the welfare of cattle and pigs.”

(click on image to enlarge)

This not only assumes that “welfare” is consistent with exploitation, but it also tells us that meat-industry consultants who seek to increase the profitability of the meat industry have something to tell us about the welfare of animals as a moral matter. It establishes and reinforces the idea that we can exploit animals “humanely” in this mixed empirical and moral way. In my view, that is simply wrong on both the empirical and moral levels.

Although Newkirk’s praise for Grandin is ostensibly bewildering, it makes perfect sense. There is a symbiotic relationship here. Industry needs welfarists like Newkirk to provide a positive moral characterization of their efficiency efforts. Industry needs to have its efforts to achieve efficiency, resulting in largely minor changes to the institutions of animal exploitation, declared “humane” by those identified as animal advocates. But PETA needs industry as PETA uses these efficiency measures to proclaim “progress” and to fundraise. For the most part, the campaigns of animal welfare organizations target economically vulnerable industry practices for precisely that reason. These practices are “low hanging fruit,” so there is an easy “victory” for fundraising purposes.

As I have written in connection with this debate and elsewhere, including my academic work and blog essays, I regard the actions of groups like PETA to be problematic. I think that it is terribly wrong under any circumstance to say that some form of “better” exploitation should be normatively endorsed when the resulting situation still involves a violation of fundamental rights. To say that a slave owner who beats his slaves five times a week is “better” than one who beats his slaves six times a week does not mean that the former is practicing “humane” slavery, or that the “better” slavery is morally acceptable, or that the “better” slave owner ought to be declared a “Visionary.”

Third, the question can be interpreted as asking whether design can ever make it ethical to consume animals. This makes the question a purely moral one.

As I explained in the debate, I believe that we have already answered that question as a matter of our conventional wisdom, which maintains that we should not impose “unnecessary” suffering and death on animals. Whatever “necessity” includes, it must exclude suffering and death imposed for pleasure and convenience or else the moral norm about unnecessary suffering/death is meaningless.

But what is our justification for imposing suffering and death on 58 billion land animals and an estimated trillion sea animals every year?

We do not need to eat animals or animal foods for optimal health; indeed, mainstream health care professionals are increasingly telling us that animal foods are detrimental to human health. But animal foods are certainly not necessary in any sense.

Animal agriculture is, without question, an ecological nightmare.

So what’s the best justification we have for inflicting suffering and death–however “humane”–on all of those sentient (subjectively aware) beings?

The answer: they taste good; we derive palate pleasure from consuming animals.

And no one would accept such a justification in any other context. Think about Michael Vick, the football player who conducted a dog fighting operation. Everyone objects to what Michael Vick did.

Why?

Because he inflicted suffering on animals for no reason other than his pleasure.

But what is the difference between sitting around the ring watching dogs fight and sitting around a summer barbecue roasting the corpses of animals, or drinking milk or eating cheese, where–under the most “humane” circumstances–animals have suffered and died?

There is no difference. And as any first-year law student can tell you, it does not matter whether Mary with premeditation shoots Joe or hires Alan to shoot Joe. It’s murder in both cases. There may be a psychological difference between one who engages in violent conduct and one who pays another to do the deed but there is no moral difference, which is why the law treats them in the same way.

So I would suggest that the answer to the moral question posed in the MoMA debate is simple: no.

If animals matter morally, we have a moral obligation not to impose any level of suffering, or death, at least in the absence of a true conflict where there is compulsion. And that does not exist with respect to our consumption of animals.

So let me summarize: if you take morality seriously, and you regard animals as having moral value, go vegan. It’s the only option that is consistent with what we–you–say we believe about the moral status of animals. Anything else leaves us saying that we accept that animals matter morally but that we can disregard their fundamental interests for trivial reasons. That makes no sense.

Thanks to Paola Antonelli, Michelle Fisher, and all of the wonderful people at MoMA for having this program, and to Nicola Twilley for participating.

*****

If you are not vegan, please go vegan. Veganism is about nonviolence. First and foremost, it’s about nonviolence to other sentient beings. But it’s also about nonviolence to the earth and nonviolence to yourself.

The World is Vegan! If you want it.

Gary L. Francione
Board of Governors Distinguished Professor, Rutgers University

©2014 Gary L. Francione

Despite 200 years of animal welfare laws, which require “humane” treatment and prohibit the imposition of “unnecessary” suffering, animal exploitation is occurring in more horrific ways than at any time in human history.

On Friday, April 11, 2014, Rutgers School of Law–Newark will host a conference on “Animal Ethics: Abolition, Regulation or Citizenship” at which emerging approaches to acknowledging the moral value of animals will be explored in an interdisciplinary setting by some of the foremost scholars in the field.

These new approaches include: 1) arguing for the status of nonhuman animals as right-holders and challenging the use of animals as human resources and not just the treatment of animals whose use is assumed to be morally permissible (the rights or abolitionist approach); 2) retaining a welfarist framework of “humane” use but modifying it in certain ways (the regulationist approach); and 3) promoting a theory of animal rights that allows fora continued relationship between humans and nonhumans in various contexts and explores the various relational duties involved (the citizenship approach).

Speakers will include (in alphabetical order):

Anna E. Charlton, Adjunct Professor of Law, Rutgers School of Law–Newark, and former Director, Rutgers Animal Rights Law Clinic
Luis E. Chiesa, Professor of Law and Director, Buffalo Criminal Law Center, SUNY Buffalo
Sherry F. Colb, Professor of Law and Charles Evans Hughes Scholar, Cornell University
Sue Donaldson, independent researcher and author (co-author with Will Kymlicka of Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights)
Michael C. Dorf, Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law, Cornell University
Gary L. Francione, Board of Governors Professor, Distinguished Professor of Law, and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy, Rutgers School of Law–Newark
Will Kymlicka, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy, Queen’s University (Canada)
David Nibert, Professor of Sociology, Wittenberg University
Gary Steiner, John Howard Harris Professor of Philosophy, Bucknell University

The Conference will start at 10 am and conclude at 6 pm. Admission is free and open to the public but registration is required. You can register here as seating capacity will be limited.

A vegan lunch will be available from the Law School cafeteria. The cost of the lunch is approximately $6.00 exclusive of any beverages or other items.

The term “abolitionism” applied in the context of animal ethics is largely meaningless because there are people who describe themselves as “abolitionists” who want to see all animal use abolished, those who want to see some but not all animal use abolished, and those who simply want to end some of the “worst abuses” of animal exploitation but have no inherent objection to animal use. Therefore, there is no generally agreed-upon meaning as to what those who describe themselves as “abolitionists” want to abolish or how they propose to abolish whatever it is that they want to abolish. In this sense, “abolition,” standing on its own, does not describe any particular position any more than does the term “animal rights,” which has now become so meaningless that it is used by animal exploiters who claim to believe in “animal rights.”

This essay describes a particular abolitionist theory, known as the abolitionist theory of animal rights, which was developed as an alternative to the position developed by Australian philosopher Peter Singer. Singer embraces a form of preference utilitarianism, which promotes actions that maximize the satisfaction of the interests or preferences of those beings involved or affected. He gives priority to beings who have human-like self-awareness and can actively contemplate the future. Although he accepts that nonhuman great apes, dolphins, and elephants are self-aware in this way, he expresses doubt about other animals and regards many of the animals we exploit as living in a sort of eternal present. They have an interest in not suffering pain or distress, but they do not have an interest in continuing to live, or, at least, they do not have an interest that leads Singer to accord them the default presumption against use as replaceable resources that he accords to “normal” humans and nonhumans who have human-like self-awareness.

Singer focuses primarily on issues of treatment rather than use and he advocates for welfare reform. For example, in 2005, Singer spearheaded an effort, joined by most large animal organizations, including The Humane Society of the United States, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Farm Sanctuary, Mercy For Animals, Vegan Outreach, and Compassion Over Killing, to publicly praise a U.S. based supermarket chain, Whole Foods Market, for adopting what could be called a “happy exploitation” labeling program. Singer might well be described as the primary figure of the “happy exploitation” movement that promotes the “compassionate” consumption of “higher welfare” meat and other animal products as normatively desirable and, along with welfare reforms generally, as the proper subjects of animal advocacy. This “happy exploitation” movement is now the dominant faction of the modern animal movement in North and South America, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

The abolitionist approach rejects Singer’s approach and incorporates a deontological element that is characteristic of rights views, such as that of Tom Regan, but has several distinct elements and emphases:

I.

First, the abolitionist approach rejects all animal use. The doctrinal basis for this rejection is that all humans, irrespective of their particular characteristics, have a fundamental, pre-legal moral right not to be treated exclusively as the resources of others. It is this right that rules out the chattel slavery of humans. To have moral worth entails the rejection of status as chattel property that allows the life and fundamental interests of a human to be valued at zero by the slave owner. We cannot justify failing to extend this one right to nonhumans unless we arbitrarily declare that animals have no moral value whatsoever, a position that most people reject. Therefore, if animals matter morally, we cannot treat them exclusively as resources and recognizing the right not to be property would rule out all institutionalized exploitation of animals. Abolitionists (as I use the term) reject domestication and maintain that nonhumans ought not to be brought into existence for human use, however “humanely.”

There is a sense in which we can arrive at largely the same conclusion without invoking the notion of rights. We share a moral intuition that we should not impose “unnecessary” suffering and death on sentient beings; that other things being equal, the fact that an act causes or results directly in the suffering of a sentient being is something that counts against that act as a moral matter. There is, of course, a great deal of disagreement when it comes to what satisfies the necessity element here, but we generally agree that we cannot characterize pleasure, amusement, or convenience alone as involving any necessity or compelling reason. This is why most of us object to, for example, dog fighting or bull fighting, or “crush” videos, which are intended to eroticize the crushing of small animals by a woman’s foot.

The abolitionist perspective is that the overwhelming amount of animal use involves only pleasure, amusement, or convenience. The most significant animal use both in terms of numbers of animals involved and in terms of cultural importance is the use of animals for food. We kill an estimated 58 billion land animals, and an unknown, but certainly not smaller number of aquatic animals, annually for food. Eating animal foods has generally been justified, at least in part, on grounds of human health and sound nutrition. Those grounds have, however, largely been discredited and it is now recognized that a vegan diet is sufficient for health. Moreover, an increasing number of mainstream health-care professionals are claiming that animal foods are detrimental to human health. And there can no longer be any serious question whether animal agriculture is an ecological disaster. The best justification for the staggering amount of suffering and death involved in the use of animals for food is that they taste good, we are used to eating animal foods, and they are convenient. Indeed, 99% of our animal use is transparently frivolous and contravenes a fundamental moral principle that we claim to accept.

Our only use of animals that is not transparently frivolous, and analysis of which requires rights language, involves the use of animals to cure serious human illnesses. Putting aside that there are serious issues about the benefits for human health that are supposedly obtained from vivisection, we cannot morally justify using animals in experiments where we would not be able to justify using similarly situated humans. We regard humans as having a fundamental right not to be used exclusively as resources. We cannot justify failing to extend this right to nonhumans. Read more

Some people claim that it is “extreme” to be vegan. In our new book, Eat Like You Care, we explain why not being vegan is “extreme.”

Direct link to the paperback format: https://www.createspace.com/4423398

Direct link to the ebook format on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Eat-Like-You-Care-Examination-ebook/dp/B00DLTN43C

*****

If you are not vegan, please go vegan. Veganism is about nonviolence. First and foremost, it’s about nonviolence to other sentient beings. But it’s also about nonviolence to the earth and nonviolence to yourself.

The World is Vegan! If you want it.

Gary L. Francione
Professor, Rutgers University

©2013 Gary L. Francione