OUR OBLIGATION TO ANIMALS

How we treat animals can be the starting point for a new environmental ethic.

I never talk about my vegetarianism over dinner. It is not a winsome way to make friends or influence people. It is impossible to raise the issue without lapsing into moralism, which can only put carnivores on the defensive. Discoursing on one's vegetarianism can come across as virtue-flaunting or waxing superior. Some meat eaters, for whom vegetarianism falls outside their range of consciousness, will dismiss it with a smirk as if it were a fringe or silly issue, suggesting that it is not worthy of their consideration. It is my view that the treatment of animals is a serious ethical concern.

Refusing to consume meat, unless for overriding health reasons, is a choice heavily laden with moral values, and moral choice ineluctably partakes of judgment. I came of age in the counterculture of the 1960s. In those progressive circles, it became unfashionable to judge. And the word “should” was virtually banished from our conversations. It was an era dedicated to abolishing constraints, unmindful that a purpose of ethical principles is to place constraints on impulsive behavior.

Without judgment, there can be no ethics: “This is good, that is bad.” “This right, that wrong.” Nevertheless, we understandably recoil from being on the opposite end of the judgment of others. So, vegetarianism often becomes awkward to discuss; I choose my venues and strive to discuss it, when I do, with appropriate tact.

Becoming a vegetarian was a New Year's resolution in 1977. For the last 46 years, I have consumed neither meat nor poultry, except, perhaps, on very rare occasions, unwittingly and by accident. (Most likely in restaurants, mindlessly consuming a bowl of soup prepared with a chicken base).

But I need to come clean. I am in truth a hypocritical vegetarian. I do consume fish, which, as I will make clear, is a violation of my primary principled basis for rejecting meat eating. Some, like me, prefer to invoke the moniker “pescatarian,” to identify this culinary lifestyle. I don't like the term. It seems to me a weasel word, a disingenuous evasion of the principle that makes vegetarianism ethically compelling in the first place. I will pursue the implications of that position below.

There are arguably several major reasons to refrain from eating animals. Meat eating is greatly destructive to the environment. It is an extremely uneconomical way to garner adequate nutrition needed to sustain oneself. And it is arguably less healthy than a vegetarian diet. Any one rationale standing alone is sufficiently compelling to make the case for vegetarianism. Taken together, in my view, the position is unassailable.

At the top of my list, however, is a rationale that is paradigmatically ethical. Most simply stated, it is immoral to cause gratuitous pain to sentient creatures. (I say “gratuitous” because at times it is necessary to temporarily inflict pain on ourselves and others for a greater good, as may occur in medical treatment). 

“Sentience” is the operative concept. Throughout most of Western history, species status and respect were a function of intelligence, more especially reasoning capacity. Reason is the attribute that endows us with humanity and the entitlements that issue from it. We see this explicitly in Aristotle, Kant, and then brought to extreme lengths by Descartes (I think therefore I am). In the opinion of this founder of modern philosophy, there is no problem in torturing animals because, without a mind or rational capacity, they are little more than mechanical entities, incapable of suffering despite the immediate and visceral evidence. Some have even applied this conclusion to human infants on the grounds that they lack self-conscious awareness and so are incapable of feeling pain.

There is a hierarchy of human capacity wrapped up in these presumptions, which have played a major role in informing consciousness in the West. One is that reason takes precedence over sentiment. It is on such grounds that women have long been deprived of fundamental human rights. Until relatively recently it has been presumed that men possess a rational capacity that women lack. Their domain is that of feeling, and on that basis, their natural place is the home and not the public arena of work and politics. It was on such grounds that Thomas Jefferson uneasily kept slaves, maintaining that when it came to the capacity for abstract reasoning, in particular, Africans lacked the endowments that white Europeans possessed. It is assuredly a moral advance that status assigned on the basis of the superiority of reason over feeling has dramatically faded in the past century, though perhaps not completely.

But there have been counter-currents. Returning to the question of our treatment of animals, it was the British philosopher and utilitarian, Jeremy Bentham, who, to my mind, unquestionably got it right. Writing in 1789 in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Bentham, referencing animals, noted, “The question is not, "Can they reason?" nor, "Can they talk?" but "Can they suffer?”

It is their capacity for feeling, not thinking, that demands from us at least minimal respect and protection for animals.

Appreciation of this truth rests on our capacity for empathy across the boundary of species. This should not be hard for us. Millions of pet owners are exquisitely sensitive and moved by the feeling states of their animal companions. There is an assertion in philosophy that we cannot know “other minds.” For example, I know intimately what chocolate tastes like when I eat a chocolate ice cream cone. But I cannot claim with confidence to know how you subjectively experience the sensation of chocolateness.

But pain, I think, is different. Because of arthritic deterioration, there have been moments in my life when I have experienced excruciating pain. In such circumstances, the pain would overwhelm my consciousness and cognitive field, submerging any capacity for thought. Severe pain focuses the mind like nothing else. The lack of cognitive content makes such pain undifferentiated between me and others, and, I think, identifiable. It is a compelling foundational source of empathy between people. I do not want to suffer and it does not take much moral imagination to conclude that you don't either. And I conclude that the pain animals experience can be an immediate source of empathy between them and us as well. To deny this reality is to block out our moral imagination and turn away. To be blunt, merely satisfying our sense of taste, in no way I can countenance, justifies the infliction of pain on our fellow creatures.

Whether animals possess rights is open to philosophical debate, but there is no doubt that they possess interests, and this fact imposes obligations on us as to how we treat them. I see this as an objective circumstance, and we should not, as stated, cause them suffering, regardless of whether we find them winsome or not. Intellectual rigorist that I am, I find problematic those who fawn over their pets yet have no problem consuming a hamburger or pastrami sandwich. From an ethical standpoint, it seems an unacceptable contradiction. When it comes to so basic an interest as protecting a sentient being from extraordinary pain, how can we preference those who are close to us, and others not at all?

The awareness of the mistreatment of animals is beginning to gain traction in the public arena, in great measure through the movement advocating animal rights and their welfare. The New York Times recently published a lengthy article on the debate over the legality of serving foie gras in city restaurants. It has been legally banned on the basis of animal cruelty. Ducks and geese are tortured by force-feeding them in order to engorge their livers. The article quoted a food historian stating, “It's rich and delicious, and rich food makes you feel rich. New Yorkers are...obsessed with status. When you order foie gras, you have a $30 extra charge on your appetizer, right? If you can just do that, you know, you know that your status is better than the next person's.” The practice is horrid, and this rationale for it is morally repugnant and, I would argue, debases the dignity and ethical integrity of anyone so motivated.

The same paper on February 5^th published an opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof in which he describes the process by which pigs are slaughtered, noting that they are killed at the rate of four per second in this country. He cited a film secretly taken by an activist which shows pigs writhing in pain from exposure to carbon monoxide gas to prepare them for the knife. A veterinarian was quoted as stating that the practice partakes of “horrible cruelty.” It's a reality that industrial farmers attempt to keep hidden from the public. Clearly, if how animals were treated became transparent and broadly known, the appeal to fundamental humanity would begin to hasten a change.

Moral concern extends far beyond the slaughter of animals to embrace the much larger issue of how animals are raised, given the ubiquity of factory farming. According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), 99% of animals used for food in the United States are a product of factory farming. Prior to their meeting their end, as Kristof points out, sows are kept for most of their lives in gestation cages so small they cannot turn around.

In a summary provided by PETA,

“Animals on factory farms endure constant fear and torment:

They’re often given so little space that they can’t even turn around or lie down comfortably. Egg-laying hens are kept in small cages, chickens and pigs are kept in jam-packed sheds, and cows are kept on crowded, filthy feedlots.

Antibiotics are used to make animals grow faster and to keep them alive in the unsanitary conditions. Research shows that factory farms’ widespread use of antibiotics can lead to antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten human health.

Most factory-farmed animals have been genetically manipulated to grow larger or to produce more milk or eggs than they naturally would. Some chickens grow so unnaturally large that their legs cannot support their outsized bodies, and they suffer from starvation or dehydration when they can’t walk to reach food and water.”

Chickens are the most widely abused animals. According to PETA, approximately 9 billion chickens are killed for human consumption each year. That is a staggering, indeed incomprehensible, volume of agony and torture to inflict on feeling creatures, again, for no other reason than to satisfy a preference of taste. The conclusion is irrefutable in that a person can survive very well without consuming meat.

As a devotee of virtue ethics, I take my ethical reasoning further. Beyond a commitment to ethical principles as a standard for conduct, virtue ethics concerns itself with those factors that make for a good life. A major condition for a good life is the ability to flourish, that is to unfold one's potentialities as fully as possible in accordance with the distinctive type of being we are.

I am willing to extend this condition to all sentient beings, indeed to all living things. Again, it is debatable whether this gives rise to rights in the strict sense, but it assuredly recognizes and respects that all living things have interests. In briefest terms, a chicken has an interest in living a chicken life, a cow, a cow's life. The fact that this interest may not be self-conscious does not negate its reality or the ethical obligations that flow from it. There seems to me something very ethically violative in utterly exploiting the lives of animals to exclusively serve human ends and desires.

This does not, nor can it mean taking a hands-off approach. There is a place for animal husbandry and domestication. What it does frame are the conditions by which animals are raised, and they need to be humane ones. This propensity, I believe, is worthy of our appreciation and makes a moral claim on us. We elevate our own humanity by recognizing this.

As stated, I would apply this recognition even to non-sentient living beings – to trees, plants, and flowers. A touch of romanticism, perhaps. But what is at stake here goes beyond the well-being of animals.

We are in an era of unprecedented environmental loss and imbalance. It is wrought by human exploitation and is ravaging the natural world. We need a new way of relating to nature, on which we are wholly dependent. We need a new environmental ethic. Respecting animals and their natural interests, and the interests of all living things that share our planet and whose destinies are ineluctably interwoven can be a centerpiece of that new ethic and the requisite practices that follow.

Finally, becoming a vegetarian does not need to be accomplished in a day. It can be undertaken as a progressive process. Unless one construes it as a divine command, it is better to eat less meat than more. I cannot prevent genocide nor end the war in Ukraine. But it is certainly within my power to choose what I put in my mouth. When it comes to personal changes and taking on new habits, we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

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