Archive for category: Blog

I. Plants: They React; They Don’t Respond

Every now and then, the internet lights up with the most recent claim that new evidence indicates that plants are sentient; that is, that they are conscious and have some sort of mind and are relevantly similar to animals.

The evidence on which these claims are based establishes at most that plants are alive and conduct various activities, some of which are very complex. That is, the evidence shows that plants react; it does not show that plants respond. For example, in his 2012 book, What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses, Tel Aviv University scientist Daniel Chamovitz wrote that plants could see, smell, and hear. This gave rise to a wealth of claims in the popular media that plants were sentient. But when Scientific American interviewed Chamovitz and asked him point blank, “Would you say, then, that plants ‘think’?” Chamovitz replied, “No, I wouldn’t.” He added, “Just as a plant can’t suffer subjective pain in the absence of a brain, I also don’t think that it thinks.”

Philosopher Michael Marder, author of Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life (2103) made headlines when he was credited with claiming that plants are sentient. In a debate that I had with Marder, I asked him whether he thought plants were sentient. He responded that he thought that they were capable of “nonconscious intentionality.” What in the world does that mean? How can one intend to do something in a nonconscious way? Isn’t consciousness necessary for intention? Do plants engage in activities that achieve certain states of affairs? Yes. But it begs the question to talk about “intentionality” in this context. At this very moment, there are all sorts of complex biological processes going on in our bodies. We hope that these processes are conducted toward certain ends, such as cellular repair, and not toward other ends, such as tumor formation. But can we talk about the “intentionality” of cancer cells? Only if we assume that cellular reactions have a cognitive component. We could say that the electrically charged particles that travel down the wire are nonconsciously intending to make the bell sound. But we wouldn’t say that because it would be silly to do so.

I do not believe that there is any evidence whatsoever that plants are sentient in the sense of being subjectively aware and able to experience pain and suffering. I do not believe that that there is any evidence that plants have minds that prefer, desire, or want any state of affairs. But I am not presently interested in debating whether plants are sentient.

Rather, I want to argue that claims about plant sentience have nothing to do with any sincere interest in plant sentience. The real interest in plant sentience is in challenging the claim that we cannot morally justify continuing to exploit the billions of cows, chickens, pigs, sheep, fishes, etc. That is, the plant sentience argument is, in a nutshell: we can’t avoid exploiting sentient beings because plants are (supposedly) sentient so it’s fine for us to keep exploiting nonhuman animals. In other words, your salad involved killing sentient beings so go ahead and enjoy that steak.

II. Look at What Recognizing Sentience Has Done for Nonhuman Animals: Nothing

The evidence for plant sentience is non-existent in my view but is, at best, highly speculative. The evidence for animal sentience is certain. Indeed, our recognition of animal sentience is so well-established that we have laws — criminal laws — that reflect the moral principle that we should not impose “unnecessary suffering” on animals and that we should treat them “humanely.” None of these laws, and the moral ideas that animate them, would make any sense whatsoever if animals were not sentient. You cannot impose “unnecessary suffering” on a being who cannot suffer.

According to the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, all mammals and birds are undoubtedly sentient as are cephalopod mollusks such as octopuses. There has long been scientifically sound evidence of the sentience of fish and fish sentience is now widely accepted. Yes, there are philosophers who find consciousness to present all sorts of puzzles, and there are still a very few who deny that animals are conscious, but there are philosophers who tells us that our own consciousness is just an illusion. But this is all academic in the worst sense of the word. There is no real controversy about the existence of animal sentience. Yes, we may not be sure about clams and mussels but there is no doubt about the overwhelming majority of the billions of animals we exploit.

How has our certainty about animal sentience changed our behavior? That’s easy: it hasn’t.

When we recognized the moral importance of animal suffering in the 18th century, we bifurcated the interest of animals in not suffering from their interest in remaining alive. A primary architect of this thinking was lawyer and philosopher Jeremy Bentham. He argued that animals did not care that we used and killed them but only cared about how we treated and slaughtered them. They did not want to suffer but they were indifferent to whether they lived.

In arguing that animals mattered morally because they suffered, and that it was not necessary for them to have other cognitive characteristics, Bentham noted that the French had already rejected the idea that the skin color of humans should allow them to be enslaved and “abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor,” and added:

[i]t may come one day to be recognised, that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate? What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

But that did not mean that we could not use and kill them. According to Bentham, animals do not care that we use and kill them; they care only about how we treat them and kill them. If we kill and eat them,

we are the better for it, and they are never the worse. They have none of those long-protracted anticipations of future misery which we have.

He also maintained that we actually do animals a favor by killing them, as long as we do so in a relatively painless manner:

The death they suffer in our hands commonly is, and always may be, a speedier, and by that means a less painful one, than that which would await them in the inevitable course of nature.

That is, we decided that, although animals, because they are sentient, have an interest in not suffering, they do not have an interest in continuing to live because they are not self-aware. So we can use and kill them for our purposes as long as we treat them “humanely?” and don’t impose “unnecessary suffering” on them. This gave us a green light to continue to exploit animals subject to the limitation that we accord weight to the interest of animals in not suffering.

The problem is that this supposed limitation was no real limitation. Animals are property with an economic value and, as I discussed in Animals. Property, and the Law, Animals as Persons, The Animal Rights Debate, and other work, because it costs money to protect animal interests, the level of protection we accord to their interests is pretty low. Indeed, the treatment we accord to the animals who are the most “humanely” treated (the animals who are part of the niche market that goes beyond the legal requirements and supplies supposedly more “humane” animal products to those who are willing to pay more) are treated in ways that would be characterized as “torture” were humans involved. And the killing of animals — however supposedly “humane” it is — requires that we buy into the nonsensical position that a sentient being does not have an interest in continuing to live because that being is not self-aware in the way that most humans are.

As I discuss in Why Veganism Matters: The Moral Value of Animals, the accepted position amongst philosophers who believe that animals matter morally is that, although animal sentience is sufficient for the moral relevance of animal suffering, it is not sufficient for recognizing that animals have a morally significant interest in continuing to live. More is required. We need to be able to show that animals are not only sentient but have minds that are similar in relevant ways to the minds of typically-functioning humans. And nonhuman animals can never win what I call the “similar-minds” game. However similar their minds are to ours, they are not similar enough to require that we stop using and killing them — however supposedly “humanely” we do so.

We all claim to embrace that it is wrong to impose “unnecessary suffering” on animals, but we don’t need to consume animal products for optimal health. So, by definition, we impose unnecessary suffering on the approximately 80 billion land animals and the unknown number of sea animals (one trillion being the lowest estimate) we kill every year for food. To put this in perspective, we kill more animals every year for food alone than the number of human beings who have ever lived on the planet. Not only is all of this suffering and death unnecessary; it is an ecological catastrophe. Animal agriculture accounts for more greenhouse gases being spewed into the atmosphere than all of the fossil fuels we burn for transportation.

In sum, our recognition of certain animal sentience has had no significant effect on our behavior. But it does make us, or at least many of us, most uncomfortable. As just about any vegan can tell you — and this vegan will certainly tell you — one’s mere presence at a dinner party at which one is not partaking of the animal products served — even in the complete absence of any proselytizing —virtually guarantees a hostile reaction from other guests who will almost certainly remark about and lament the death of the vegetables on the vegan’s plate. Do any of those guests really think that the vegetables suffered? Of course not. But plant sentience makes those guests feel good about chomping on all of the animal products served.

III. Corn Carnage

All of this chatter about plant sentience serves one and only one purpose: it makes those who are uncomfortable about our exploitation of animals feel more comfortable about continuing to exploit animals. I have known many nonvegans who have called a local humane society to report the abuse by a neighbor of an animal. I have never known anyone — including my philosopher friends who purport to take seriously the moral importance of plant sentience — to call the humane society upon seeing a neighbor mow their lawn.

I was motivated to write this particular essay by a Facebook post on Philosophy Matters linking to an article that claimed plants feel and may even be able to see. The post caption was “Bad News For Vegans: Plants Feel Pain and Might Even See.” In other words, the vegetables you eat are no different from a cow and that’s bad news if you aren’t eating the cow because you think that the cow is relevantly different from vegetables.

There are literally thousands of articles and posts about how vegans need to get over it and recognize that they are morally no different from those who eat animal products because vegans are killing sentient plants. One essay, “No Face, but Plants Like Life Too,” stands out in my mind as perfectly representing the “vegans and nonvegans are both killers” approach, was written in 2011 by Carol Kaesuk Yoon:

Yoon writes that although she gave up eating meat:

My entry into what seemed the moral high ground, though, was surprisingly unpleasant. I felt embattled not only by a bizarrely intense lust for chicken but nightmares in which I would be eating a gorgeous, rare steak — I could distinctly taste the savory drippings — from which I awoke in a panic, until I realized that I had been carnivorous only in my imagination.

Temptations and trials were everywhere. The most surprising turned out to be the realization that I couldn’t actually explain to myself or anyone else why killing an animal was any worse than killing the many plants I was now eating.

Yoon found that:

formulating a truly rational rationale for not eating animals, at least while consuming all sorts of other organisms, was difficult, maybe even impossible.

She states:

Plants don’t seem to mind being killed, at least as far as we can see. But that may be exactly the difficulty.

Unlike a lowing, running cow, a plant’s reactions to attack are much harder for us to detect. But just like a chicken running around without its head, the body of a corn plant torn from the soil or sliced into pieces struggles to save itself, just as vigorously and just as uselessly, if much less obviously to the human ear and eye.

This essay did not appear on some alternative, new-age website talking about spirituality and plants. It was in the Science section of the New York Times. Remarkable.

IV. But What If Plants Are Sentient? Answer: Eat Plants

But let’s play along for a minute. Let’s assume that plants are sentient; that they, like sentient humans and nonhumans, are subjectively aware and have minds that prefer, desire, or want not to suffer and to remain alive. What should we do if that were the case? Well, first, we would need to decide whether we were going to choose to starve to death. Second, if we decided that we were going to say alive, what should we eat?

The answer is simple: even if plants are sentient, and are thereby subjectively aware, we should continue to eat them.

The simple and indisputable fact is that it takes many times more plants to produce the same quantity of animal foods. Take a look at this chart:

As the chart indicates, when you eat that kilogram of beef, you are consuming 25 kilograms of sentient plants who, according to Carol Kaesuk Yoon, wanted to live. So if you really thought plants were sentient, and decided that you were not willing to starve to death but wanted to act as morally as possible, you’d consume the plants directly. You certainly wouldn’t suggest that plant sentience is a reason to not be vegan.

A related attack on veganism is that, because animals are incidentally and unintentionally killed in the process of planting, growing, and harvesting crops, those who eat plants are just as morally culpable as those who eat animals because the former are also responsible for animal deaths. Putting aside that this argument ignores that human activities (such as building roads and driving on those roads) result in humans being incidentally and unintentionally killed but we still have no problem distinguishing those deaths from murder, it ignores the plain and indisputable fact that eating animal foods means that we have more acres under cultivation than we would have if we were all vegans. As the chart below shows, if we were all vegan, we could reduce the acreage under cultivation for plants by 75% — from 4.13 billion hectares (one hectare is 2.47 acres) to one billion hectares. Think about that. If plants are sentient, eating only plants saves one hell of a lot of plants and it reduces dramatically the number of animals who are incidentally and unintentionally killed.

I know that many vegans find the “plant sentience” argument to be maddening. As someone who has heard this argument probably thousands of times over the years, I understand the frustration. But I always see an opportunity for further discussion. That is, it’s such an appallingly poor argument, the fact that anyone makes it means that they are troubled by the exploitation of animals but have little to say. They can often be persuaded to think seriously about going vegan. In this regard, the “plants are sentient” argument is similar to the “Hitler was a vegetarian” argument so those concerned about animals are likely to be genocidal maniacs. First of all, Hitler was not a vegetarian. And even if he were, Mao and Stalin ate a lot of meat so any attempt to link genocidal conduct to diet is a nonstarter.

In sum, the “plants are sentient” argument is not about plants. It’s about nonhuman animals and it represents nothing more than a feeble and ultimately incoherent attempt to deny the moral imperative of veganism.

Originally published on Medium.com

Part 1 of this essay is here.

Our social discourse is peppered with a great many words that reflect various aspects of woke culture. Let’s consider three that appear frequently in discussions about animal ethics and consider examples from that context.

“Mansplaining”: There is no doubt we live in a patriarchal world that is replete with sexism and misogyny. One (of many) manifestations of this is when men simply ignore the perspectives of women or attempt to tell them what their experiences or thoughts are or should be. Another manifestation of this is that a man and woman can say the exact same thing; what the man says is listened to and is often praised. What the woman says may be completely ignored.

For example, if a woman says that she feels that talking about emotion in addition to reason is an important part of animal ethics, and that we miss out on an important aspect of our relationship with nonhumans by thinking of that relationship only as a matter of rules or principles that ignore the kinship we need to feel to make those rules have meaning, and a man dismisses this and says that emotion is irrelevant and only logic is important, that is properly described as “mansplaining.”

But if a man says that feminists who are not vegan fail to appreciate how we commodify the reproductive processes of female animals and the relationships female animals have with their offspring, this is not “mansplaining.” It is pointing out an inconsistency in the approach to moral issues of the feminist. If a non-vegan feminist disagrees, that person needs to be able to present a non-speciesist/non-anthropocentric distinction between female humans and female nonhumans that would justify the violation of the fundamental interests of nonhumans. To call this “mansplaining” is nothing more than an attempt to shut down discussion by focusing on the speaker and not on the idea being expressed in an effort to avoid addressing the vegan argument.

“Privilege”: We live in a racist and classist society. That is clear to anyone who is paying attention. White people as a general matter, and white people with economic means, enjoy benefits that others do not have. One of a zillion examples: think about the number of white, well-off people who get away with engaging in what is clearly and often serious criminal behavior, such as recreational drug use, as opposed to the many Blacks and other people of color, or poor people generally, who end up serving prison terms for being caught with a small amount of marijuana. If you are White, how many times have you been pulled over by the police for doing nothing at all other than driving? Ask a Black person, and particularly a Black man, the same question and I can guarantee the answers will differ.

If a white person says that all human beings, irrespective of their race or economic status, have an obligation not to violate the fundamental rights of innocent others and that “others” includes nonhumans as well as humans, and a person of color responds that this is true with respect to other innocent humans but that it is “privileged” to extend this protection to nonhumans, that is nothing more than an anthropocentric assertion that innocent nonhumans have no moral value. That assertion says nothing about the person promoting veganism; it says something about the speciesism of the person opposing it. Labeling the position of the former as “privileged” is nothing more than an attempt to shut down discussion.

“White fragility”: It is certainly the case that many White people feel uncomfortable about discussing race issues and, quite remarkably, deny that we live in a racist society. In response to a well-documented claim about discrimination based on race, these people will downplay or deny the facts of racism. That is properly labeled as “White fragility.”

But let’s consider the preceding example involving “privilege.” If a White person makes the argument about veganism as a moral baseline and the only response to this is that it is “racist” to say that veganism is a moral baseline, then a response by the White person that the claim of “racism” ignores the argument in favor of veganism is not an instance of “White fragility.” It is a request for a reason; it is a request to engage ideas rather than to use a strategy — a label — as a bigoted way of shutting down the discussion.

Part 1 of this essay is here.

Originally published on Medium.

The U.K. is proposing to do something that is absolutely revolutionary: it is going to enshrine in law that sentient animals are sentient.

Never mind that, in 1789, Jeremy Bentham argued that the moral significance of animals did not hinge on whether animals had humanlike cognitive attributes but only on whether they are sentient: “the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” Never mind that the arguments of Bentham and others lead the British Parliament to pass the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act in 1822 and the Cruelty to Animals Act in 1835, as well as many other pieces of legislation, including the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and the Animal Welfare Act 2006.

Was anyone confused about whether these laws applied to rocks or bicycles, wooden stools, buildings, or blades of grass? No, of course not. These laws only made sense if animals were sentient and had interests in not experiencing pain and suffering.

But on May 13, the Tory government introduced a bill that will recognize animals as “sentient.” Big deal. That recognition has been enshrined in British law for a long, long time. But now the U.K. law will recognize that animals who can experience pain and suffering are sentient, which as about as monumental as recognizing that a person who is agreeable to reason is rational.

Why now?

The background to this is that, in 2017, when the U.K. was trying to figure out how to leave the European Union, Conservative Party MPs voted to not include in the E.U. Withdrawal Bill that portion of the Treaty of Lisbon that committed EU nations to recognize the sentience of animals. At the time, the Tories said that U.K. law already recognized that animals were sentient. That statement was undoubtedly correct. All of those U.K. laws necessarily assume that animals are sentient because they would make no sense otherwise. The law recognizes that these laws apply to animals who are “capable of experiencing pain and suffering” but does not label them as “sentient.”

The official Tory explanation was that the E.U. animal welfare law was “insufficient” and the British did not want to in any way import that insufficiency by including it in what became the E.U. Withdrawal Act 2018. The government claimed that it wanted to improve animal welfare and would introduce progressive animal welfare legislation along with an official recognition that animals are sentient.

The government’s announcement that it will enshrine the recognition that sentient animals are sentient into law is being proclaimed by the U.K. government and the animal welfare charities as some sort of paradigm-shifting event that is going to change the world for animals.

To regard this as a monumental change is absurd. So why the fanfare?

That’s easy: politics and money. This meaningless law allows the government to play hero and to pander to all of those “animal lovers” who vote. And the fundraising opportunities for animal charities are endless. Groups like Humane Society International and Compassion in World Farming, both of which promote supposedly “humane” animal exploitation and reject the idea that veganism is a moral imperative, are right there on the gov.uk website proclaiming support for the legislation of this synonym. The HSI representative says that “45 of the UK’s most respected animal protection organisations have been united in calling for this Bill.” Wow. That will mean that we will be deluged with endless requests from these charities for donations to acknowledge the importance of this non-victory victory.

And the fundraising opportunities will only increase. On May 12, the government announced its Action Plan for Animals that promises to usher in a new era of animal welfare. This Plan is also being promoted enthusiastically by animal charities such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that will no doubt need your support to make it happen. In other words:

Despite the longstanding recognition that animals can experience pain and suffering, there is still a ton of animal exploitation in Britain. People are still eating animals, wearing animals, and using and killing animals for all sorts of purposes. That shows no sign of ending anytime soon.

If animals have moral value, then the only rational response is to not eat, wear, or otherwise use them as resources for our benefit — that is, to go vegan. Everything else is just a sideshow that is more about making us feel more comfortable about continuing to exploit animals and has nothing to do with securing fundamental justice for animals.

Originally published on Medium.

Although the vaccines for COVID-19 that are presently available are being represented as having no animal ingredients, the blood of many thousands of horseshoe crabs is being used to make sure that the vaccines are free of contamination. Although the crab blood is technically not an ingredient of the vaccine, it might as well be. Horseshoe crabs are not really crabs; they are more closely related to spiders and other arachnids than they are to crabs or lobsters. But horseshoe crabs have a complex nervous system and it is very likely that they are sentient, or subjectively aware and able to experience pain. The crabs are captured, placed in racks, and have the tissue around their hearts pierced. Up to 30% of their blood (which is blue) is drained. The process is certainly distressing to the crabs.

Although they are returned to the ocean, between 10% and 30% of the crabs die in the bleeding process and after they are returned. Many are re-caught and bled again. Although there is a non-animal alternative to using crab’s blood, that alternative has not been accepted and will not be employed with respect to the COVID-19 vaccines.

So Putting aside any issues of animal testing of the finished vaccine, this raises the question about whether it is morally acceptable for vegans to get the vaccine. I have been a vegan since 1982. I take my veganism very seriously. I believe that we cannot justify using sentient nonhumans exclusively as resources for humans for any reason (food, clothing, entertainment, research, and so forth), and that we have an obligation to abolish all animal use. Therefore, I do not think that we can morally justify getting the vaccine.

But I don’t think that that ends consideration of the matter.

I want to make a distinction between actions that are morally justifiable and those that are morally excusable. The former are acts that are morally good acts, or are at least not morally objectionable. The latter are acts that are morally objectionable but where circumstances mitigate the culpability of engaging in the act.

We can see the distinction easily if we look at two doctrines in criminal law; self-defense and duress. If I am minding my business and you approach me in such a way that I reasonably believe that you are about to kill me, I can use deadly force against you to protect myself. My killing of you is legally justifiable and this reflects our moral view that in killing you in self defense, I have done nothing wrong.

Contrast this with the situation in which you approach me on the street and place a gun to my child’s head, demanding that I rob the grocery store across the street or you will kill my child. I reasonably believe that you will make good on your threat so I rob the store, give you the money, and you run off and do not harm my child. My action is legally excusable and this reflects our moral view that what I have done is wrong — I have harmed the store owner who is an innocent party here — but we understand why I did what I did. I acted under compulsion. I did not really have a choice. Moral culpability assumes that the actor chooses to act in a particular way and in this hypothetical, I am being compelled to act in the way that I did. Our view of the lack of moral culpability in this example informs the legal doctrine of duress.

Let’s apply this distinction in a context involving animals. I am shipwrecked at sea. I am starving. My companion in the lifeboat is a rabbit. Am I morally justified in killing and eating the rabbit? No. The rabbit has a morally significant interest in continuing to live and I have no right to ignore that interest because it would benefit me to do so. But if I had no other choice but to starve, my killing and eating the rabbit may be excusable — in killing and eating the rabbit, I have acted in a morally wrong way but my culpability is mitigated by the compulsion of the situation.

I would say the same thing if the other occupant of the lifeboat were another human. It would be wrong to kill and eat my human companion, but it might be excusable in that it is wrong, but my culpability is mitigated by the circumstances. Indeed, there is a famous English legal case from 1884, Regina v. Dudley and Stephens, where three shipwrecked sailors who were starving killed and ate a fourth. Although they were eventually rescued and prosecuted for murder, their death sentences were commuted by Queen Victoria to imprisonment for six months precisely because although they did commit murder, they were compelled to do so.

Virtually none of our animal use involves this sort of compulsion. That’s the problem. Just about all of our animal use is transparently frivolous; we eat animals because we like the taste or because of habit or because it is convenient. We wear animals because we like the way we look.

But what about situations in which we need to take some medication that has animal ingredients? Assume that you are dying and that your only chance of survival requires that you take a pill that has an animal ingredient. Is it morally justifiable to take the pill? No. It is not morally justifiable. It violates the right of the animal to not be used exclusively as a resource. But is it morally excusable? It may be. If you are able to get the pill without the animal ingredient from a compounding pharmacist, then you should do so. If, however, you cannot get the pill without the animal ingredient, and there is no other alternative to using the pill with the animal ingredient, then your taking the pill is excusable — what you’re doing is not morally okay but you don’t really have a choice. You are not advocating for the institutionalized exploitation of animals; indeed, if you are a vegan, you oppose that exploitation. But you are dying; you need the pill.

The same analysis applies to the COVID-19 vaccine. COVID-19 is a nasty virus. It kills people, including those who do not have underlying illnesses, and it can cause long-term harm in those who survive. We are just becoming aware of the significant adverse consequences that the virus has. If it were possible to get the same level of protection against getting the virus if we wore a mask whenever we were with others, I’d say that we should mask-up and that there is no situation in which getting the vaccine would be excusable, let alone justifiable. But masking-up, although a very good thing to do, especially before the vaccine is widely available, will not provide the same level of protection. The vaccine presents a situation that is sufficiently analogous to the lifeboat situation; there is a compulsion that mitigates culpability.

In sum, getting the vaccine is not morally justifiable; it may, however, be morally excusable.

As this controversy heats up, I have seen countless claims that any vegan who gets the vaccine has abandoned their moral principles. I have asked at least a dozen of these people whether, if they were ill and could be saved only by taking a pill that contained animal ingredients, they would take such a pill. In all cases, they have answered that, although it might not be the right thing to do, they would take the pill but that would be different because they would have no choice except to choose to die and that it is not reasonable to maintain that anyone has a moral obligation to die. Their reaction illustrates that they intuitively accept the justification/excuse distinction; that is, they recognize that where there is no meaningful choice and issues of life or death are involved, preferring to live makes one’s choice excusable even if not justifiable. Their reaction also illustrates that the real dispute here is that many simply don’t see COVID-19 as presenting a serious situation; that is, many vegans are simply pandemic deniers, or or they are just anti-vaxx. They see deciding to take the vaccine as more akin to deciding to eat a steak rather than a salad for dinner and less like the decision to eat the rabbit (or the human) when one is starving on the lifeboat. I find the position that the pandemic is not a real and serious threat to be absurd. Moreover, these people ignore that, if they get the virus and end up being hospitalized, they will end up consuming more medications with more animal ingredients than whatever was in, or involved in, the vaccine.

Moreover, every vegan I know (and I know many) goes to a doctor at least on occasion, or has an event that requires emergency treatment. Any doctor who treats them was almost certainly trained using animals so the vegan is participating in animal exploitation by making a simple office/emergency visit. And even if their doctor was not trained using animals, unless the doctor is incompetent, the doctor reads medical journals and applies or shapes treatment based on what they read in those journals. And just about every article in those journals directly or indirectly involves animal use. The doctor prescribes medications which, even they don’t have animal ingredients, are the result of using animals in experiments and testing. Animal exploitation is pervasive and every single vegan participates in it because there is no meaningful choice not to do so. It is completely arbitrary to say that a vegan who goes to a doctor or to the emergency department after they are involved in an accident is a vegan as long as they never take any medication that was tested on or includes animal ingredients but a vegan who takes those medications when necessary is not really a vegan. That is simplistic thinking and it is simply wrong. Being vegan requires that we avoid animal exploitation to the extent practicable. And in a world in which most people think of eating, wearing, and using animals as “normal,” and in which we kill 80 billion land animals and a trillion sea animals annually for food alone, anyone who thinks that they can avoid contact with animal exploitation is simply naive. Indeed, almost all vegans eat plants that have been fertilized with manure that is obtained from animals who have been exploited. A vegan who eats those plants is no different from a vegan who takes a medication or a vaccine that they need. Remember: the key thing here is to always reject exploitation where practicable. Again, necessity does not make any animal exploitation morally justifiable; it can, however, make exploitation morally excusable in situations in which there is no meaningful choice. As more and more of us become vegan, things will change and what will become practicable will expand in scope. But we are a tiny sliver of the population right now. We have an obligation to work every day to change that.

In any event, there is a great deal more that could be said about all of these issues. But I want to keep it short and simple in this essay and to focus only on the distinction between justification and excuse. I do, however, want to make three additional points before closing.

First, I am not making any claim about the safety of the vaccines. That is a separate issue. Although we are being told that the vaccine is safe, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the U.S. has acknowledged that there are a number (2.79%) of adverse reactions at least to the m-RNA vaccine and these reactions involve more than a swollen arm; recipients were “unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, required care from [a] doctor or health care professional.” I have written to the CDC to get further information about this and have thus far received no reply. This matter needs further exploration.

Second, we should always promote the development of drugs to to not include animal products. It is 2020. With our technological sophistication, I sincerely believe that we could develop vaccines (and everything else) without using horseshoe crabs or any other animals, or doing any animal testing (which is crude and inexact anyway). It’s just a matter of demand.

Third, we should be clear that this pandemic, like all pandemics, came from animals. Pandemics involve zoonotic diseases that jump from animals to humans usually in the context of our exploiting animals, and that exploitation often involves using those animals for food. As long as we continue to eat and otherwise use animals, we will continue to have pandemics.

If we really want to do something about pandemics as a general matter — or to avert climate catastrophe — we have no choice but to move toward a vegan world. We would then have no need to worry about the distinction between justification and excuse. And before you think that veganism is extreme, consider that it would be more extreme to let endless pandemics and global warming destroy us. Moreover, veganism is a moral imperative for anyone who thinks that animals matter morally and are not just things.

Originally posted on Medium.

For the past several weeks, news outlets have been telling us repeatedly that, as a result of meat processing plants closing because large numbers of employees have contracted Covid-19, and as a result of supply-chain disruptions for meat, milk, and eggs caused by the virus, many millions of farm animals are having to be “euthanized.” Farmers and industry executives are appearing as daily guests on news shows talking about how heartbroken they are that they have to “euthanize” these animals. The news anchors doing the interviews often treat their guests with a level of sympathy similar to what they show to people who have lost family members as a result of the virus. I saw one report where an anchor interviewed a woman who had just lost her mother to Covid-19 and then talked to a pig farmer who was moaning about having to “depopulate” his farm by “euthanizing” his pigs. The anchor treated both as suffering a similar sort of personal tragedy.

The fact that we are lamenting the killing of these animals shows how deeply committed we are to our horribly confused thinking about animals.

First, let’s deal with the use of “euthanasia” to describe what is going on here. Euthanasia is a death that is in the interest of the being who is killed. If someone were to say, “I decided to euthanize my dog because he had cancer, was in great pain, and had stopped eating or exhibiting any behavior consistent with his having any quality of life,” I would regard that as a proper use of “euthanize.” If someone were to say, “I decided to euthanize my dog because I just didn’t want to live with a dog anymore even though my dog was healthy, happy, and had a great quality of life,” I would regard that as an improper use of “euthanize.” The proper word in the second example is kill. Death was not in the interest of the dog in the second example. Death is not ever in the interest of a healthy sentient being — human or nonhuman.

The deaths of these farm animals is not as a result of euthanasia; it is the result of killing; it is the result of slaughter.

“Euthanasia” is being used in the context of animals being killed in the wake of the Covid-19 virus precisely because it evokes the sort of emotional reactions we experience when we think about ending the life of a beloved nonhuman family member. It promotes the notion that we care morally and emotionally about the farm animals being killed. Although I do not defend the institution of pet ownership, it is clear that the context in which we decide to euthanize a nonhuman family member when the animal is ill and no longer has any quality of life is completely different from the context in which we kill farm animals because workers are sick and not showing up for work or because demand for meat is decreasing as a result of the pandemic.

Moreover, “euthanasia,” when used properly, involves a method of causing death that is as painless as possible, and is without distress or fear. I can assure you that the the farm animals being killed as a result of the virus are suffering considerable pain, fear, and distress — just as they do during the conventional slaughtering process.

Second, why is anyone lamenting the killing of farm animals who were going to be killed and eaten anyway? It’s not as if these animals were going to have a nice life if they weren’t “euthanized.” They were going to be killed; indeed, if it were not for the virus disrupting things, most of these animals would have been slaughtered already. The reason why they are being “euthanized” is because the workers are not there to kill them and the demand is such that their butchered bodies won’t sell for the time being and no one wants to waste any more money on these animals because there are others coming up through the supply chain.

These animals have no inherent or intrinsic value. They are property; they are things that have only an extrinsic, external, and economic value. They exist to be used by humans exclusively as replaceable resources. They exist to be part of an institutional use where producers and consumers engage in selling and buying them and their body parts and products. The only difference between a pig who has been “euthanized” and one who has been slaughtered, butchered, and sold in the supermarket is that no humans benefited from the death of the animal in the former case. No one made a profit; no one got to eat the animal. The animal property was wasted. That may occasion feeling sorry for us. It is absurd for us to lament the deaths of these animals as though they were a tragedy for them. They were going to be killed no matter what. We “euthanize” them because it is in our economic interest to do so.

Our lamenting the deaths of these animals, and our use of “euthanasia” to describe what is just plain and simple killing, provide yet another example of our confused thinking about our use of nonhuman animals. We claim to regard animals as having moral value. Most of us believe that it is wrong to inflict “unnecessary” suffering on animals. But it is not necessary to eat animals for reasons of health; indeed, there is a growing consensus that animal products are detrimental to human health. We eat animals because we like the taste or because it’s convenient or because we’ve been doing it for a long time and it’s a habit. None of those reasons makes the practice of eating animals and animal products necessary. All of the harm that we inflict on these animals is gratuitous. And that means that, despite our claim that we take animals seriously as a moral matter, we don’t.

So we try to make ourselves feel better by lamenting the deaths of these animals and talking about their “euthanasia.” Like many fantasies, it may make us feel better, but it is nothing more than an attempt to make it seem as though we care about animals when, if we did, we would not be using them for food (or for clothing, entertainment, etc.) in the first place.

And as we contemplate the dystopian nightmare that we are all living as a result of this pandemic, and contemplate that it, like almost all pandemics, is the result of humans exploiting nonhumans, and consider the ecological devastation of animal agriculture, maybe veganism will seem less “extreme.” For more information about a vegan diet and veganism as a general matter, including all sorts of easy, cheap, and nutritious recipes, visit here.

Originally published on Medium.