Can we defend the things we do to animals? Christians, Jews and Moslems may appeal to scripture to justify their dominion over animals. Once we move beyond a religious outlook, we have to face ‘the animal question’ without any prior assumption that animals were created for our benefit or that our use of them has divine sanction. If we are just one species among others that have evolved on this planet, and if the other species include billions of nonhuman animals who can also suffer, or conversely can enjoy their lives, should our interests always count for more than theirs?
Of all the ways in which we affect animals, the one most in need of justification today is raising them for food. Far more animals are affected by this than by any other human activity. In the United States alone, the number of animals raised and killed for food every year is now nearly ten billion.1 All of this is, strictly speaking, unnecessary. In developed countries, where we have a wide choice of foods, no one needs to eat meat. Many studies show that we can live as healthily, or more healthily, without it. We can also live well on a vegan diet, consuming no animal products at all. (Vitamin B12 is the only essential nutrient not available from plant foods, and it is easy to take a supplement obtained from vegan sources.)
Ask people what the main ethical problem about eating animals is, and most will refer to killing. That is an issue, of course, but at least as far as modern industrial animal productions is concerned, there is a more straightforward objection. Even if there were nothing wrong with killing animals because we like the taste of their flesh, we would still be supporting a system of agriculture that inflicts prolonged suffering on animals.
Chickens raised for meat are kept in sheds that hold more than 20,000 birds. The level of ammonia in the air from their accumulated droppings stings the eye and hurts the lungs. Slaughtered at only 45 days old, their immature bones can hardly bear the weight of their bodies. Some collapse and, unable to reach food or water, soon die, their fate irrelevant to the economics of the enterprise as a whole. Catching, transport and slaughter are brutal processes in which the economic incentives all favor speed, and the welfare of the birds plays no role at all.
Laying hens are crammed into wire cages so small that even if there were just one per cage, she would be unable to stretch her wings. But there are usually at least four hens per cage, and often more. Under such crowded conditions, the more aggressive birds peck at the weaker hens in the cage, who are unable to escape. To prevent this pecking leading to fatalities, producers sear off all the birds’ beaks with a hot blade. A hen’s beak is full of nerve tissue – it is her principal means of relating to her environment – but no anesthetic or analgesic is used to relieve the pain.
Pigs may be the most intelligent and sensitive of the animals we commonly eat. In today’s factory farms, pregnant sows are kept in crates so narrow that they cannot turn around, or even walk more than a step forward or backward. They lie on bare concrete without straw or any other form of bedding. They have no way of satisfying their instinct to build a nest just before giving birth. The piglets are taken from the sow as soon as possible, so that she can be made pregnant again, but they too are kept indoors, on bare concrete, until they are taken to slaughter.
Beef cattle spend the last six months of their lives in feedlots, on bare dirt, eating grain that is not suitable for their digestion, fed steroids to make them put on more muscle, and antibiotics to keep them alive. They have no shade from the blazing summer sun, or shelter from winter blizzards.
But what, you may ask, is wrong with milk and other dairy products? Don’t the cows have a good life, grazing on the fields? And we don’t have to kill them to get milk. But most dairy cows are now kept inside, and do not have access to pasture. Like human females, they do not give milk unless they have recently had a baby, and so dairy cows are made pregnant every year. The calf is taken away from its mother just hours after birth, so that it will not drink the milk intended for humans. If it is male, it may be killed immediately, or raised for veal, or perhaps for hamburger beef. The bond between a cow and her calf is strong, and she will often call for the calf for several days after it is taken away.
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In addition to the ethical question of our treatment of animals, there is now a powerful new argument for a vegan diet. Ever since Frances Moore Lappé published Diet for a Small Planet in 1971, we have known that modern industrial animal production is extremely wasteful. Pig farms use six pounds of grain for every pound of boneless meat they produce. For beef cattle in feedlots, the ratio is 13:1. Even for chickens, the least inefficient factory-farmed meat, the ratio is 3:1.
Lappé was concerned about the waste of food and the extra pressure on arable land this involves, since we could be eating the grain and soybeans directly, and feeding ourselves just as well from much less land. Now global warming sharpens the problem. Most Americans think that the best thing they could do to cut their personal contribution to global warming would be to swap their family car for a fuel-efficient hybrid like the Toyota Prius. Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin, researchers at the University of Chicago, have calculated that while this would indeed lead to a reduction in emissions of about 1 ton of carbon dioxide per driver, switching from the typical U.S. diet to a vegan diet would save the equivalent of almost 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide per person. Vegans are therefore doing significantly less damage to our climate than those who eat animal products.2
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Is there an ethical way of eating animal products? It is possible to obtain meat, eggs, and dairy products from animals who have been treated less cruelly, and allowed to eat grass rather than grain or soy. Limiting one’s consumption of animal products to these sources also avoids some of the greenhouse gas emissions, although cows kept on grass still emit substantial amounts of methane, a particularly potent contributor to global warming. So if there is no serious ethical objection to killing animals, as long as they have had good lives, then being selective about the animal products you eat could provide an ethically defensible diet. It needs care, however. ‘Organic,’ for instance, says little about animal welfare and hens not kept in cages may still be crowded into a large shed. Going vegan is a simpler choice that sets a clearcut example for others to follow.
1Surprisingly, the number of farm animals killed in the US peaked around the time this article was written, and has subsequently fallen to 9.1 billion.
2Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin, ‘Diet, Energy and Global Warming’, Earth Interactions, 10–009 (2006).