In the s, the Australian American philosopher Peter Singer took that argument to its logical conclusions with his book Animal Liberation , which laid out a sweeping ethical case against eating animals or using them as research subjects.
More recently, the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer scored a critical and popular success with his nonfiction book Eating Animals , in which he talked to vegetarians and PETA activists and ranchers as he parsed what he calls our polarized food ethics. Any moral defense of meat eating, then, must confront and accept some level of animal suffering. The question becomes, might the suffering that animals experience in the course of being sacrificed for human food contribute to some other social good?
I think the answer is a conditional yes. By eating animals, we can remind ourselves of our animal natures. That recognition of our corporeal reality—the fact that we are flesh and blood and bones and skin, each of us ever on the way to very likely an unpleasant end—can, like few other things, keep us connected to the living earth.
Surely such a connection is vital in an age of increasing dislocation between human civilization and nonhuman nature. When we kill other animals for our sustenance—as long as we do so with careful moral consideration— it can reinforce our interdependence with other species, linking humans to the rest of nature. And that linkage is a social as well as a trans-species good.
Those laws state that everything is connected, and that there can be a harmonious balance in a natural food chain. Mindful meat eating plugs us into that chain and connects us to the fates of other living beings. Paradoxical as it might sound, the conscientious carnivore can reestablish our moral obligations to the other species with whom we share this planet. To be sure, there are other less lethal ways of hitching ourselves to nature.
The mindful vegetarian can find a connection to nature through a sense of awe at the alchemy of photosynthesis. The vegan dog-lover creates an emotional bond to another species through companionship. The relationship between the shepherd and the sheep, for example, is based on reciprocal debts: It is an exchange in which the sheep receives security and the possibility of a longer life, though one capped by slaughter and the shepherd receives sustenance.
This might be confirmation bias talking, but I think such a relationship goes deeper than the eating of a broccoli spear. To eat meat is to consume the body of the world. It offers us a chance to remember that the animal kingdom runs on blood—the mountain lion preying on the deer, the coyote going after a hare, the bobcat pouncing on a field mouse— and that we, too, are part of that kingdom. What if we were to accept that pain is an inescapable part of being an animal? What if we were to fearlessly acknowledge our own mortality, and in doing so recognize that we share something essential with animals: death itself?
No matter the name, this ideal of environmental ethics rests on the proposition that more unites us with animals than separates us. All animals have an instinct toward a life worth living, all animals suffer, all animals ultimately die … and many kill, too. A curious thing about some of the animal rights philosophy is that at times it seems to make equality into a one-way street. Near the beginning of Animal Liberation , Singer writes:.
There are obviously important differences between humans and other animals, and these differences must give rise to some differences in the rights that each have. Recognizing this evident fact, however, is no barrier to the case for extending the basic principle of equality to nonhuman animals.
Extending the basic principle of equality. Implicit in that line is the idea that humans will raise other animals to the ethical plane we inhabit. Maybe we humans should stretch in the other direction and acknowledge that we are animals, too, driven in large part by instinct. Such an acknowledgement might prompt us to consider that our equality with other animals rests less on our shared ability to feel pain than on the common way in which we are driven by instincts.
Homo sapiens is a moral animal. According to some studies, so are chimpanzees and dolphins and elephants, insofar as they demonstrate altruism and overlapping and interlocking bonds of responsibility—a primitive system of ethics, if you will. Two of three of those aforementioned species are also meat-eaters. My point here is that humans are animals every bit as much as we are moral beings—and that a strict animal rights philosophy may be counterproductive toward creating an environmental ethics.
It may divorce us from our animal selves. During one of the many illuminating interviews in Eating Animals , an anonymous animal rights activist says to Safran Foer:. Truth be told, this meat is a marketing gimmick, an ideological pose, which assuages the ethical compulsions of those who consume it even though it does nothing to kick America's cheap meat habit, and perhaps contributes to the growing international fetishization of meat as a class signifier.
Articles on the "new meat movement" never pose questions like, "could all of America's animal products be grown locally? These farms are described as ethical because of the fact that they are small, sustainable and have kinder animal-husbandry practices.
As many people have pointed out, these farms can individually produce meat in a way that is arguably just as "green" as eating vegan. Why do so few people understand the massive environmental impact of the fishing industry. Sylvia Earle's Ted Prize Wish. The problem is that we all eat too much meat, but the solution isn't eating no meat. I mean, let's assume that we were to all of a sudden all become vegans. What would happen to all the livestock?
It'd still be around presumably. Where would it all go? How would the livestock population be managed and kept under control? The problem with industrial meat production is that it enables us to eat so much meat. The article then assumes that we would keep eating the same amount of meat if we were to switch to local meat production and consumption.
So they're looking at the problem from the wrong end. But that's not going to happen overnight. On an individual basis, I think we just need to set a good example, promote responsible eating as much as we can, and hope people start following our lead.
So in short, yeah, just eat responsibly and only go vegan or vegetarian if that feels right to you and doesn't feel like an enormous sacrifice. Personally, I was near-vegan for a few years, but I've since switched to being a "social carnivore", just eating meat now and then in restaurants or at friends' houses, but never at home. At home, it's not a problem being vegetarian, but outside the home it was, so for me this works. It's not ideal, because I'm sure I eat a fair amount of industrial meat when I eat it, but it's only 2 or 3 times a month at most, so The issue is that we've made meat a staple of our diet, and it's neither healthy for us or healthy for the planet.
It's the paradigm of meat as a staple that's the problem. My wish is for people to separate out the "cruelty to animals" argument from the efficiency argument. While I do not endorse factory farming and avoid foods that come from them, the ethical argument doesn't quite hold up. The state of nature is cruel and painful suffering.
Do predatory animals have ethical concerns when they disembowel their prey? Are humans not part of this cycle of life? Many vegans would have us believe that man was not meant to eat meat. Perhaps for some, but I have hunted big game and can attest that there is something deeply primal within me that is suited to the hunting and killing of animals for food.
My genetic roots are from the European north, where meat meant simply this, surviving winter. Veganism versus vegetarianism is about minimizing suffering.
It is impossible to produce eggs and milk without vast amounts of killing. Veganism is about nonviolence. Veganism is more broadly sustainable, less economically divisive and less cruel than eating local meat and other animal products.
There is no truly sustainable and humane way to feed all Americans even a fraction of the amount of animal products they currently consume. An acre of land used for grass-fed beef could feed 10 times as many people if used for crops. Veganism recognizes that compassion is not a limited resource. Veganism is not an asceticism. It is not a form of self-denial. Vegans do not claim to be ethically perfect. Agriculture is, and always will be, a messy business -- there will most likely always be some level of exploitation and misguided or inefficient methods.
Perhaps, as the cynical jibe goes, even the plants feel pain. That is not an argument for the continued exploitation of animals, who demonstrate clear analogs to the states which in humans recognize as indicating suffering.
Vegans actively try to stop as much known suffering as possible. Veganism is humanitarian. Becoming vegan is good for the planet and for hungry people around the globe.
It is perhaps the only practicable solution to the global food crisis. It does not indicate a preference for animals over people. It is egalitarian as it does not create a class system of food access. However, if one really examines the issues and thinks beyond their taste buds, it has to be agreed that animal products are dangerous for the planet and always cause unnecessary suffering.
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Thank you. Click to donate by check. What if the situation was reversed, and only 1 percent of meat was factory farmed? Presumably, this is exactly what advocates of small-scale animal farming want. But it's hard to imagine how the proliferation of free-range alternative farms, all of which would be competing with each other on some level to meet demand, could possibly avoid cutting corners to achieve efficiencies of production.
This ineluctable quest for efficiency would be fine if we were talking about gadgets. But we're not. We're talking about humans owning and exploiting sentient beings—beings with a foremost interest in staying alive—in order to make a profit. In this respect, alternative systems might look innocuous at 1 percent, but at 10, 20, 30 percent basic business history dictates that expansion in scale and scope will lead the industry to assume aspects of the factory farming system it originally intended to replace.
When you have people owning, raising, and killing animals to meet growing demand, does anyone really believe that animals are going to be given primary consideration? Do we truly think that a farmer whose livelihood depends on owning and killing animals is, in the face of economic competition, going to sacrifice market share to a competitor for the sake of his animals who are going to be turned into meat anyway? Within the confines of free-market capitalism, selling animals for food will always entail unnecessary suffering.
It goes without saying that there would be nothing conscientious about this inevitable downward cycle of economic efficiency, animal exploitation, and market capitalization. Finally, if conscientious producers and consumers put their money where their mouth is and get closer to where our food comes from, they'll confront the act of killing an animal. And as they do so, as more and more consumers get closer to the slaughter, they'll have no choice but to call into question the justice of commodifying emotionally aware animals.
Last year an online article for Food and Wine interviewed chefs who, in an admirable effort to shorten the supply chain and connect with the food they served, slaughtered their own animals. Here is what one of them had to say:.
It's poignant testimony, and I respect the chef for his openness.
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