My point of departure in this post is the recent book by Peter Singer and Jim Mason entitled The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter. The main goal of the book is to examine the moral implications of our decisions concerning what we eat. Rather than focusing on meat consumption in general, for present purposes I want to focus exclusively on the moral problems associated with factory farming or confinement agriculture—although I should specify in advance that I will not be explaining these problems in detail here. For more information, you can look here, here, or here. My present goal is to suggest that if confinement agriculture is morally problematic, then knowingly eating meat produced by these methods—when doing so is unnecessary—is also morally problematic. As such, people who contribute to the corporations who are in the confinement agriculture business by eating their products should shoulder the responsibility of providing a moral justification for their eating and purchasing habits as far as meat is concerned. But I am getting ahead of myself. First, I need to briefly lay out the problem.
Given (a) the staggering number of animals that were killed last year in this country for food (estimates typically exceed 10 billion animals), (b) the horrific conditions animals are forced to endure in factory farms (e.g., no sunlight, inconceivable crowding, tail cropping, beak cutting, forced feeding, and the like), and (c) the health and environmental problems associated with contemporary meat production (e.g., overuse of hormones and antibiotics as well as polluted waterways and groundwater), confinement agriculture deserves more attention than it gets these days. For contrary to the mental images we have of what farms are like—with chickens, pigs, and cows wandering around idyllic green pastures and basking in the sun—modern day confinement agribusiness has reduced animals to nothing more than commodities. Indeed, industry insiders are perfectly aware of the disconnect between what people believe about how farm animals are treated while they are alive and the actual conditions these animals are forced to endure—a disconnect agricorporations foster by relying on misleading advertising and labeling and by making sure that confinement facilities are not open to the public. Unfortunately (and not surprisingly), these corporations have the law on their side.
For instance, there is no federal law governing the welfare of farmed animals. Federal laws only become applicable once the animals are transported to slaughterhouses. Moreover, most states that have animal welfare laws have built-in exceptions for “common farming practices.” As a result, farmed animals are literally invisible as far as the law is concerned, and any common farming practice, no matter how cruel and inhumane, is legal. This state of affairs has effectively enabled major corporations such as Tyson, Smithfield, and ContriGroup, to reduce animals to nothing more than meat producing machines. As a result, any and all decisions concerning how these animals are to be treated while they are alive are driven entirely by productivity and profitability. Given the current federal and state statutory schemes, these animals’ psychological well-being need not ever be taken into consideration.
I will leave it to the reader to further investigate these issues as she sees fit. For now I am more interested in a group of people that Singer and Mason call “compassionate omnivores”—i.e., people who choose to eat meat but who make sure that the animals whose meat they consume were treated humanely while they were alive. Given how Singer and Mason define "compassionate omnivore," we should presumably call meat eaters who do not insist the animals whose meat they eat were treated humanely while they were alive, “non-compassionate omnivores.” My question is the following: Are there any compelling arguments for the permissibility of being a non-compassionate omnivore—especially when being a compassionate omnivore, vegetarian, or vegan is always an option? Perhaps I simply lack a vivid imagination, but I can not think of any compelling arguments in this regard. I am interested to hear what kinds of arguments the readers of this blog manage to put forward.
To prevent people from either misunderstanding or misrepresenting what I am arguing for here, let me spell out very clearly what I am not trying to accomplish or argue for in this post. I am not suggesting that eating meat is intrinsically wrong nor am I suggesting that non-human animals either do or should enjoy the same moral status as human beings (although both of these claims have been put forward in the animal welfare literature). Moreover, I am not suggesting that it is always morally impermissible for humans to use non-human animals to suit our needs. What I am suggesting is that certain forms of meat production and meat consumption are at least prima facie morally problematic and hence require a moral justification. So, the onus is on the non-compassionate omnivores of the world to justify their eating and purchasing habits as far as meat is concerned. Indeed, this post can be viewed as a challenge to the readers of this blog who engage in the form of meat consumption I have been discussing—and who thereby finance the form of meat production I have suggested is morally problematic—to put forward a moral argument that justifies these habits. Eating the meat of animals that were treated humanely while they were alive is one thing. Eating meat that comes from animals that were unnecessarily forced to endure bleak and miserable lives is something else entirely.
I suspect that most non-compassionate omnivores are simply unaware of what happens to the animals whose meat they eat. Luckily, I have just given the readers of this blog the means of disabusing themselves of any misconceptions they might understandably have about how modern farm animals are often raised. As a result, ignorance will not suffice as a justification. Moreover, neither will simply pointing out how delicious meat is. After all, I have not suggested that people should not eat meat at all. I have only suggested that certain forms of meat eating are morally suspect. Indeed, if anything, the meat produced by small family farms that treat their animals well and do not pump them full of hormones and antibiotics should taste better than meat produced by confinement agriculture–plus, it’s better for you. This leaves cost as perhaps the main justification for eating factory farmed meat. But I am skeptical that enough moral mileage can be gotten out of cost alone to justify the practice under consideration. Would the people in this country really be that worse off if they ate meat a little less often? The statistics concerning obesity suggest we could all stand to eat a little less of nearly everything (except perhaps fruits and vegetables!). So, what (if anything) justifies non-compassionate omnivorism?
Comments are open; no anonymous postings. I should also be clear up front that juvenile and/or abusive comments will not be posted. If you do not wish to seriously engage the questions and probelms I have raised, I politely ask that you not bother commenting. Please post only once; comments may take awhile to appear.
UPDATE: It has been brought to my attention that Roger Scruton has an interesting post over at Right Reason entitled "Eating Our Friends"–where he talks about the "virtuous carnivore."
UPDATE: This article in the new Mother Jones talks about alternatives to industrial agriculture.
UPDATE: This article in the New York Times talks about the rising demand for organic beef.
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