Animal Ethics

It goes without saying (doesn't it?) that torturing animals is wrong. The resulting minor benefit of a cheap and tasty meal does not excuse it. So if the reality of factory-farms is anywhere near as bad as what I've heard about them, then they are surely immoral.

Does anyone know if there is any legislation to protect animals from severe suffering at the hands of the meat industry? There should be, in any case.

I don't think meat-eating is necessarily wrong, however. It is bad to the extent that it supports the unethical industries which inflict suffering on animals. But if that suffering could be minimised, then this objection disappears. The Ethical Werewolf outlines the practical conclusions reached by this line of reasoning:

I divide meats into 3 categories: the Normal, the Weird, and the Fallen. Unethically farmed meats that someone else would eat if I didn't eat them are Normal (Normal here isn't a normative term that attributes any positive value, it's a descriptive term that is appropriate because these meats are the most common). Weird meats are those where the animals live under non-cruel conditions. This gets its name because it includes many of the unusual things that I'm happy to still be able to eat, like squid, shrimp, and alligator, as well as most fish. Fallen meat is any kind of meat, Normal or Weird, that would go to waste if I didn't eat it. When my roommate left for two weeks and a sausage was in the fridge, it became Fallen meat. By eating only Weird and Fallen meat, I generate no economic demand pressures on factory farming. So that's what I do.

But some might argue that to kill animals painlessly is still wrong.

Would it be acceptable to humanely raise and painlessly kill humans if there were a use for their body parts, or if, all of a sudden, many humans acquired a taste for human flesh? ... Just as each human life is precious and irreplaceable, so is each animal life.

(See also his Animal Ethics blog.)

I'm not so sure that animal-friendly farming is wrong, though. There are, after all, some pretty significant differences between humans and other animals that are worth bearing in mind here. A good life for an animal will (obviously) not be the same as that for a human. Human flourishing requires freedom, opportunities for intellectual stimulation and creativity, etc. Animals, by contrast, wouldn't seem to have their quality of life in any way impaired by living in a pleasant captivity.

Notice that we have few qualms about killing a suffering animal to put it out of its misery. This suggests that it's not life itself which is intrinsically valuable, so much as the quality of life. There is no absolute 'categorical imperative' against killing animals.

Killing a person is wrong because it impedes their flourishing. We have future interests, many of which we have heavily invested in throughout our lives. Death thwarts those interests. So killing us (usually, though not always) makes us worse off than we otherwise would have been. Can the same be said of farm animals?

The animals in question simply would not exist were it not for the farms. It seems odd that someone who cares about animals' interests could wish them non-existence - thus precluding the possibility of any of those interests being realised!

Compare the following options: (a) non-existence, or (b) life on an animal-friendly farm, where during their lives animals can 'flourish' as much as possible given their nature, followed by a painless death at human hands. Isn't it clear that (b) is better for the animals in question? It seems so to me, anyway. Though one might object that evaluating non-existence is an impossible (perhaps even incoherent) task.

Even if we restrict our focus to dealing with animals already in existence, we can still defend the practice of farming as being in an animal's best interest. It seems altogether possible that the quality of life an animal would enjoy on a good farm could far exceed that it would endure in the wild. A painless death, in particular, would be a very welcome blessing.

I think the extreme anti-farming view rests on a mistaken view of morality. It requires that 'killing' be intrinsically wrong. But it is not. It is wrong to cause harm. Death is generally a harm, and so killing is generally wrong. But in the case of animals, it is not so clear that death is a harm to them. Taking a broader view of things, it actually looks like an animal-friendly farm would be in the animal's best interests. If this is so, then eating meat from such farms would be morally permissible (perhaps even praiseworthy, odd though that sounds). The opposite conclusion can only be reached by focusing on abstract rules of human conduct, to the exclusion of the animals' own interests.

Update: See also Fake Barn Country