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Philosophers, Eating, Ethics–a Discussion of the Poll Results

Brian Leiter

So with over 2,000 votes cast, we know something about the eating habits of philosophers and their views about the ethics of those habits.  8% of respondents were vegans (a rate 10-20 times higher than in the population at large), 25% are vegetarians (a rate about 8 times higher than in the population at large), and 67% are carnivores.  Not quite a quarter of the vegetarians, however, had ethical doubts about their eating practices–I assume many of those thought they really ought to be vegans.  (Matthew Hernandez, a philosophy student at Portland State, wrote with a question for those folks:  "I've never heard a reason for being Vegetarian that did not extend further to Veganism. That is, every reason I've heard for being Vegetarian, is a reason to be Vegan and say if we rated the level of ethical outcome of the acts, the Vegan would rank higher than the Vegetarian (solely based on my knowledge of the arguments and relevant scientific and statistical data as well as knowledge of factory farm practices)."  I hope some readers will take that up in the comments.)

More than half of the carnivores professed ethical doubts about their eating practices.  (That might be consistent with a recent finding by Eric Schwitzgebel and Joshua Rust that moral philosophers "were…substantially more likely [than other philosophers] to self-report vegetarianism. However, when asked about their last evening meal, ethicists reported eating meat at approximately the same rate as did the other groups.")  It would be interesting to hear from carnivores on this subject.  Are moral considerations in fact not overriding in their practical reasoning?  Is it that they think the ethical arguments against meat-eating are not wholly persuasive, and they are still undecided?

Finally, 5% of carnivores identified ethical reasons as central to why they do eat meat.  What did readers have in mind?  Is it that that they are Kantians or contractarians who think that non-human animals have no intrinsic moral standing or worth, such that it would be a moral mistake to refrain from eating meat for allegedly ethical reasons?  Or do they share the view widespread, for example, in the disability rights community, that Singer-style reasoning in support of vegetarianism entails morally reprehensible conclusions in other domains, constituting a reductio of the premises?  Or something else altogether?

I'll consider unsigned comments, IF they include a valid e-mail address and they are substantive and on point.  I would prefer signed comments.  Readers may comment on any aspects of the results that are of interest.

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50 responses to “Philosophers, Eating, Ethics–a Discussion of the Poll Results”

  1. Eddy Nahmias

    The poll did not include what I take to be an ethically viable position (the one I currently hold): Avoid eating factory-farmed products. There may be ethical reasons (pain and suffering) and environmental reasons to avoid eating *all* animal products, but I think there are (at least) two reasons my position is viable:
    1. it supports more sustainable and ethical animal production in a way that might allow us to transition away from factory-farming more realistically.
    2. it allows people to enjoy moderate consumption of meat, cheese, milk, etc. (and any health-related benefits, if any, from moderate consumption of such foods), including cooking with such foods for one's family and enjoying some of the tastiest meals at some restaurants.

    I admit I have not done enough research on the ethical and environmental implications of more humane and sustainable farming, so my reasons may be weaker than I presume (and I eat some seafood without knowing enough about the sustainability of the fishing required to obtain it). And I realize my reasons may strike some as quite lame. But I thought I'd throw them into the mix since this position was somewhat obscured by the options in the poll (e.g., how should I have answered?), and I think it is much better than being a full-out carnivore/omnivore.

    Reply
  2. Mark van Roojen

    I think the comment that all arguments for vegetarianism lead to veganism is probably not going to be sustainable. I consider resource based reasons ethical reasons for not eating most meat. But since the concerns there have to do with conserving resources for others and eating sustainably, it isn't obvious to me that accepting those arguments lead to being vegan for several reasons.

    (1) That we have reason to use fewer resources doesn't entail we should do whatever it takes to use as few as absolutely possible. One could reasonably weigh those reasons against other reasons one has for eating certain things to wind up with an overall pattern in which one uses fewer scarce resources but not the absolutely minimal amount of scarce resources. So even if vegans used fewer resources overall than vegetarians that would not mean vegetarians were committed by such reasoning to being vegans. And (2) I'd be surprised if all vegans use fewer scarce resources than many vegetarian non-vegans. Certain vegan restrictions (against using honey, for example) probably don't lead to less resource use overall. And a good bit of the prepared vegan food has ingredients that I suspect use a good bit of energy to produce. (3) Probably scarce resource conservation doesn't line up in a straightforward way with any easy to follow rule for what to eat and not eat. So it is reasonable for people worried about that to adopt any rule of thumb that they find easy to follow and which leads to reduction of resource use.

    This is not to say that some arguments for being vegetarian also support switching to a vegan diet. I'm quibbling about the "all" in the original claim. And you know how we philosophers love to quibble.

    Reply
  3. Eric Morton

    One can imagine eating meat for Aristotelian reasons. The reasoning might go: the pleasures of meat-eating are a part of a wholesome, natural and complete human life. Granted, a diet that included only meat would be excessive. But on the other hand, totally abstaining from any meat-eating would be a deficiency. What we want is to avoid excesses in either direction. When it comes to meat-eating, as with all other activities that have a place in a wholesome human life, one should strive for moderation and for hitting the mean between extremes.

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  4. Anon Grad Student

    I found it extremely disheartening that one-third of respondents said they eat meat even though they believe it isn't moral (or, perhaps weaker, that it's "ethically dubious").

    I understand that a lot of people give in to akrasia, but these are PHILOSOPHERS! Shouldn't philosophers of all people try to ensure that their actions are guided by their moral beliefs? And this isn't a matter of one weak moment. This is a rather fundamental part of one's daily life.

    So we have a situation where, if the poll is an accurate representation, one-third of philosophers (1) believe X is morally wrong (probably very wrong, since we're talking about mass torture and damage to the environment); (2) do X every day, often several times a day; (3) could easily not do X with no damage to their well-being or even any great effort.

    I hope I'm not the only one who finds that somewhat shocking and even disgraceful.

    (Full disclosure, I'm a vegetarian for ethical reasons.)

    Reply
  5. Jonathan Birch

    Matthew Hernandez asks for a reason to be a vegetarian that is not also a reason to be a vegan.

    Here is one. A commitment to vegetarianism is the minimum entry-requirement to be part of the vegetarian movement: a large-scale, long-term campaign against the excesses of meat production and consumption that goes back at least as far as the founding of the Vegetarian Society in 1847. I'm a vegetarian at least partly because I want to contribute to that movement.

    Of course, veganism exists as a coherent movement too — a smaller and more recent one, and one with broader and more radical aims. People who support the vegetarian movement are usually sympathetic to the vegan movement. But that doesn't obligate them to join, any more than membership of a centre-left political party obligates one to also join a far-left political party.

    More generally, I think it's a misconception to think of the decision between vegetarianism, veganism and everything else as a wholly personal, wholly ethical decision. It is also (at least partly) a social and political decision. Vegetarianism is a movement and it has a cause. Adopting a vegetarian diet is a way to gain entry to the movement and a way to promote and publicize the cause.

    Reply
  6. Richard Yetter Chappell

    My thought, as a "dubious carnivore", is that there's basically a spectrum: the less animal cruelty you cause, the better, but marginal differences are not *that* big of a deal. So, given limited moral motivation, I don't see shifting from "rarely eating meat" to "never eating meat" as a high priority.

    Veganism may be morally ideal (in a context where products from humane farms are not an option). But of course we're all short of being morally ideal on all sorts of dimensions, many of which seem more important than individual dietary choices. It may be that similar thoughts of "moral prioritizing" explain why some people stop at vegetarianism (despite Matthew Hernandez's observation). The amount of moral "effort" it would take could perhaps be better directed elsewhere.

    On ethical reasons to be a carnivore: The main argument that springs to mind is that if you buy animal products sourced from humane farms (only), then you may cause more happy animals to live than would otherwise. That seems like a good thing to me.

    Reply
  7. Ben Saunders

    On vegetarianism leading to veganism, I've never been persuaded that it's wrong to eat honey. I can see that thinking that cows, goats, and even chickens, have rights (or some other moral status) can lead one to give up both meat and dairy, but if one denies this moral status to insects then – by continuing to eat honey – one doesn't count as vegan.

    Granted, someone who takes this position may not have any moral objection to eating insects either, and if they do that then I guess they're not even vegetarian. But most of us don't (intentionally) eat insects anyway, so provided this person doesn't in fact eat insects I think they qualify as vegetarian, not vegan, and on grounds of consistent moral beliefs (that it's wrong to eat the flesh or other products of any animal more considerable than an insect).

    Regarding the poll, I wonder how representative the 8% vegan finding is of philosophers generally. It seems it could reflect either or both of two possible explanations: i) the percentage of vegan philosophers is higher than the percentage of vegans in the population as a whole and/or ii) vegans are more likely to respond to a poll such as this (selection bias). I suspect that the truth is some of both, but it would be nice if we could disentangle them.

    Reply
  8. Tamler Sommers

    I hold the same position as Eddy and I would have liked to see that option on the poll as well. Animals that are raised humanely on local or family farms have a nice life until the end. You could certainly argue that the happiness they experience throughout their lives outweighs their suffering in the final moments. And these animals would not have had a chance to live at all if they weren't ultimately being raised for food. I know (like Eddy) that some vegetarians or vegans find this position implausible or wishy-washy but I'd like to hear more about why they think that. Also, I recall reading somewhere (Michael Pollan's book maybe?) that Peter Singer had no issue with this stance as long it could be sustainable–does that ring a bell for anyone else?

    BL COMMENT: This seems to me to fit either into being a carnivore and thinking it ethically unproblematic or being a carnivore for ethical reasons, depending on the emphasis.

    Reply
  9. Julia

    I am a meateater, of the same type as Eddy Nahmias: I try to avoid food that is produced in factory farms. There wasn't really an option for this on the poll, so I didn't end up voting.

    One issue I am concerned about, and that I don't see talked about a lot by vegans/vegetarians, are the ways in which vegetables are grown and harvested. It is my understanding that the workers who harvest vegetables and fruit are often forced to live and work under conditions that basically constitute slavery, and that are terrible for their health. Some companies and supermarkets have apparently agreed not to buy tomatoes harvested under those conditions, but I have no idea whether there is a general way of finding out about the working conditions under which fruits and veggies are produced. Maybe buying from farmer's markets helps, but I am not sure.

    In considering this issue, I often feel like almost all of my food choices are problematic in some way or another, and while I try to make an effort to be educated, and to make good choices, I often feel overwhelmed by all the things I would have to learn and investigate in order to be reasonably confident that I am making at least moderately good choices.

    Reply
  10. B. Junker

    I am torn between (1) Vegetarianism, (2) "Good" Omnivorism–of the sort articulated by Nahmias and Julia and wonderfully spoofed by the episode in Portlandia in which making sure that a chicken was humanely raised leads by degrees to joining a cult, and (3) the nagging suspicion that being intentional about food in the first place confirms my being implicated in the unjust structures of capitalist production and consumption, while giving me a moral 'out' as it were.

    Reply
  11. Douglas Portmore

    I'm a meat-eater presently, although I was during some past years a vegan and during other past years a vegetarian. I think that it's probably wrong to eat factory farmed meat, but I believe that a big part of the reason that I find it hard to motivate myself to stop eating meat is that it seems quite uncertain whether my refraining from eating meat will make much, if any, positive difference to the world. If I could ban factoring farming, I would. But I'm not convinced that any individual's consumption practices makes much, if any, difference. So I find the causal/individual impotence objection to vegetarianism quite troubling and the responses to it wanting. Of course, the issue of whether my refraining from eating meat (or factory-farmed) meat would make a net positive difference to the world is an empirical question that I don't know the answer to. Now, I suspect that the answer is that it would, but the answer seems very uncertain to me.

    Reply
  12. Daniel Farmer

    I voted as a conflicted carnivore because, though I'm morally drawn to veganism, my partner is pregnant and we both value minimally processed ("real") food. We added meat to our diets during her previous pregnancy after she was found to be anemic. So now we eat some turkey, some chicken, and the occasional salmon. I avoid dairy, beef, and pork–for moral reasons. I'm partial to mammals, obviously, and I suspect that they deserve higher moral consideration than fish and fowl (and insects, for sure!) in virtue of their psychological makeup. But, like many, I feel a bit underinformed here.

    To the anonymous grad student, I can only say that "ought implies can", and that "can", for many but not all of us, is complicated business. If it were a simple matter of making a choice at the school cafeteria (say), veganism would always be the best choice. But I have to watch my daughter, finish a dissertation, apply for jobs, and while I can cook quite well, I haven't memorized all the bean and lentil recipes in the world, and my partner doesn't like tempeh. So watcha gonna do?

    The ethics of what we eat is also complicated by other pressing moral issues–labor concerns for one, and sustainability. My partner and I have prioritized some above others, and we do our best to move in morally progressive directions when it's possible. We shop exclusively at our local "natural" and organic foods co-op, for example. But even that's not something every can (and therefore "ought") to do!

    And so I think Jonathan is right to point to the ultimate point: a progressive political movement that calls attention to the plight of farm animals. That needs to coexist with a concern for farm workers and sustainability, of course.

    Reply
  13. Avram Hiller

    BL’s response to Tamler’s comment strikes me as a reductio ad absurdum of our taxonomic system regarding the consumption of animal products (in ordinary language and not just in BL’s comment, which is consistent with ordinary use). A grouping of those who refrain from eating most meat (who do so for reasons concerning the reduction of animal suffering) together with those who gladly eat meat simply because it is tasty without regard to animal suffering – 97% of meat consumption in the US is factory-farmed – is too disjunctive to be a useful category. What the world needs is a scalar concept to replace the binary ‘vegan’ and ‘vegetarian’. Perhaps other philosophers who are better with neologisms than I can propose something better than "veganish" (as in "How veganish are you?"). If the average meat-eater reduces animal product consumption by 20%, that would have so much more benefit than having 5% of people reduce their consumption by 100%, and the lack of a scalar category may scare people off from reducing meat consumption since they do not wish to be a dreaded (absolutist) vegan.

    BL COMMENT: I don't recognize this as representing my comment about the categories! Please read what I said again.

    Reply
  14. Eddy Nahmias

    Brian, seriously? Tamler, Julia, I and presumably others of similar belief *could* have marked carnivore and ethically unproblematic or carnivore for ethical reasons, but that would have completely obscured our belief that almost all of the meat-eating in our society *is* ethically problematic. I certainly do not think meat-eating, as practiced, is ethically unproblematic, and I certainly don't want to put myself in the category presumably meant to indicate people who think meat-eating of any sort is in fact *ethical*. On the poll, I misleadingly indicated I was a vegetarian for ethical reasons. Julia did not vote. Some people may have misleadingly indicated one of the positions you suggest. But it would have been nice to have a separate category for this position.

    But I quibble. I appreciate the poll. And I'd be curious to hear vegetarians and vegans explain why we "attempting-to-be-ethical omnivores" are fooling ourselves.

    BL COMMENT: Eddy, I take it you think you're kind fo meat-eating is ethically unproblematic. The poll asked about your practices and your view of their ethical status.

    Reply
  15. Jean Kazez

    Response to Matthew Hernandez: Yes, it seems like anyone who supports vegetarianism (for moral reasons) would have to think veganism was even better, but Tzachi Zamir (author of Ethics and the Beast) argues that it's better to be a humane vegetarian (consuming only humanely produced eggs and milk) than to be a vegan. The argument is explained here–http://kazez.blogspot.com/2010/05/vegans-vs-vegetarians.html More, in his own words, here: http://kazez.blogspot.com/2010/05/interview-with-tzachi-zamir.html

    Reply
  16. Mike K.

    Here's a reasonable principle that would lead to vegetarianism but not veganism: it's wrong to consume any animal product that can be produced only by killing or disfiguring the animal. This would rule out meat but leave room for honey and at least some dairy.

    Reply
  17. Kris Kemtrup

    "I've never heard a reason for being Vegetarian that did not extend further to Veganism."

    By analogy, suppose Michael Vick said this:

    "I've never heard of a reason for banning dog fighting that did not extend to banning the owning of dogs as pets or using them to assist the blind."

    I'm a vegetarian but not a vegan. I go back and forth on this, but here is the sort of case that motivates my position, even though it's not well-worked out.

    I can imagine (in rough detail, anyway) an ideal world where people don't kill animals, where there are no factory farms and awful kill-floors, where animals are allowed to live long and free lives in the wild, or at least in large areas where they are free to move about and interact with each other in a way that is conducive to their happiness. The reason that I don't eat animals (this is my reason for not watching dog fighting, too, along with the fact that I find both to be physically gross) is that eating animals necessarily creates a demand for killing animals that moves us further away from that ideal world. And any action that leads away from a more ideal world is -and this is a sort of utilitarian case- an immoral act.

    Of course, it's debatable whether that ideal world would be made less ideal by the occasional taking of eggs from free-range chickens, or the occasional milking of cows, or the occasional harvesting of bones (for gelatin) of a cow that has died of natural causes, or the occasional taking of honey from bees, or the occasional raising of animals as pets, etc., etc. Vegans generally think of these actions as necessarily harmful to animals, but a vegetarian could -and a case needs to be made in more detail here- argue that some use of animal products is not necessarily harmful to animals, and some (fairly minimal, I think) use of animal products like eggs, milk, honey, and cheese is consistent with a morally-ideal treatment of animals.

    If you are like Reagan and you think the utilitarian position on animals isn't morally sufficient, and you take a deontological position, then it gets harder -as Reagan himself argues- to claim that it is okay to milk cows, take eggs, or even own pets. But I think even that can be argued, because it's not immediately clear to me that the right of an animal to live, to have some freedom of movement, and to have freedom from torture are morally on par with an animal's right to not be milked, to live in the wild, or to have its eggs not taken.

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  18. Phil Brown

    I agree with Eddy Nahmias too. Most activities *can* involve unethical behaviour, but that doesn't mean they always do. It is not unethical to play sport, but one can play sport unethically — the same goes, in my opinion, for eating meat.

    Vegetarianism/veganism might seem attractive on utilitarian grounds, but does a well-looked-after domestic animal really have a worse balance of pleasure and pain then its wild equivalent? The domestic animal does not have to constantly look out for predators, worry where its next meal is coming from, suffer a long lingering death from starvation or disease, or a horrific one in the fangs of a predator. It *may* have a shorter life than its wild cousin, but it is not clear to me that length of life is something important for creatures that are not perturbed by the fact that every day of their lives is essentially the same as the one before.

    Reply
  19. Kris Kemtrup

    That should say "Regan," obviously.

    I doubt "Reagan" accepted the "Rights View" for animals, what with him being morally bankrupt and all.

    Sorry.

    Reply
  20. Tamler Sommers

    Brian, my point was that putting down 'carnivore and think it's ethically unproblematic" would not distinguish me from someone who finds it unproblematic to eat factory farmed meat. But I find factory farming extremely problematic ethically–one of the worst things we do as a society. To me that's where the real ethical divide is.

    Reply
  21. Brian Leiter

    If factory farming were banned, as suggested above, one immediate consequence would be that meat would become unaffordable for tens of millions of people (just in the US) for whom it provides nutritional and gustatory value, and for whom meat consumption figures in a variety of cultural and familial traditions. On the other hand, the affluent would continue to be able to consume meat even if factory farming were banned. Is that kind of inequity at all relevant, or is the immorality of meat consumption (or consumption of factory farmed meat) so clear, that this kind of unfairness should not be of concern?

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  22. RoryKraft

    First, the category should be omnivore, not carnivore. I imagine few philosophers are exclusively meat eaters.

    Second, I agree that some distinction needs to be made for those who continue to eat meat, just not factory farmed meat.

    And it would be interesting to see the extent to which that (now missing) category overlaps with locavores — which is likely to be a much smaller set of vegetarian and vegans. For v/vs there is a big difference between deciding to do so for suffering reasons and reasons of env. impact. The impact argument can lead one to locavore.

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  23. Brian Leiter

    Tamler's and my comments crossed paths in cyber-space, but his remark leads me to pose another question: who agrees that factory farming is "one of the worst things we do as a society"? What else would be in that category?

    Reply
  24. Eric Jonas

    The option of eating food from "humane" farms is being put forth more and more frequently these days as an alternative to ethical vegetarianism and veganism, but it is seriously problematic for reasons not often remarked upon. One way of understanding animal issues is to ask what sort of rules, laws, etc. will govern the place of animals in our society. At present, animals are property, and in profit-seeking ventures like farms, they are units of production which must generate a profit for their owners. Organizing our relationships with animals in this way systematically pits human interests against animal interests, both on the supply side and on the demand side.

    On the supply side, consider that the abuses of factory farming (breeding for weight gain instead of health, crowding and intensive caging and the unanesthetized mutilations that this requires) became ubiquitous because they increase the speed and decrease the costs of production. Increasing the amount of space, time, care and attention invested in maintaining the happiness of farmed animals increases production costs and decreases yields per acre of farmland. So, farmers have a strong incentive to either to keep engaging in these bad practices but try to hide them or else to try to justify these practices as "necessary" or unproblematic to customers who don't know better. The continuation of many of the abuses of factory farms in small "family farms" that bill themselves as humane is widespread and well-documented.

    On the demand side, the increased costs of "humane" animal agriculture are passed on to consumers–and the price differences are significant. Of course, there will always be a niche market for people willing and able to pay double, triple or more for what they believe to be less obnoxiously-raised animal products, but many of us are either financially unable or simply unwilling (due to apathy or suppression of guilt) to voluntarily pay more for food. Again, it's a matter of incentives: you have a strong incentive to find some way to salve your conscience rather than to pay more. Furthermore, it takes significant time, effort and knowledge of animal health and husbandry to finding out which of the so-called humane farms are actually sufficiently humane and which are free riders, advertising themselves as humane while they are not.

    The main point is that although some farmers will go far out of their way to stop engaging in abusive practices, and some consumers will go far out of their way to find these farms (and pay significantly more for their products), the property status of animals provides heavy incentives for the widespread continuation of factory farms (since factory farms are economically rational both for producers and consumers) and the widespread continuation of abuse on "humane" farms.

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  25. Daniel Hooley

    Several respondents have voiced the "What about Happy Cows?" objection to an absolute, or near absolute, prohibition against killing animals for their flesh. The idea is relatively straightforward: if it were the case that we could raise some nonhuman animals (like cows, chickens, and pigs) in conditions that allowed for their flourishing, and then painlessly kill them, what could be wrong with that? Supporting such a practice would allow animals to come into existence who would enjoy their (admittedly short) lives before their premature death.

    Most vegans, I take it, would respond in a few different ways:

    First, there is a practical question of when we are actually in a position to know that the meat we are buying treated animals in these ways. I take it that this is a very difficult thing to actually find out. There is a lot of mislabeling when it comes to animal products. So I think that, in practice, it would be quite hard to be sure, or relatively sure, that the lives of animals being raised for their flesh and biproducts actually looked like this. Moreover, the flesh and biproducts would be quite expensive. Ensuring a painless death (something that is almost impossible because of the laws relating to slaughter in the US) would be quite expensive, as would arranging for conditions that allowed these animals to have a flourishing life while alive.

    Second, you might worry that the profit motive would make it likely that animals would not be treated in the ways described above. I think we have lots of historical and present day examples that can confirm this. But this worry would apply not only to how the animals are treated on the farm, but to things like transport and slaughter.

    Finally, and more fundamentally, many vegans think it is wrong to kill many/most non-human animals. Cutting the lives of animals short to enjoy the taste of their flesh is not something we think could justify this practice. Admittedly, what makes killing wrong is controversial. But I think it is very plausible to hold that at least part of an explanation of the wrongness of killing is that it prevents a being from having enjoyable experiences in the future (One virtue of this view of the wrongness of killing is that it can account for the wrongness of killing human beings that have severe cognitive disabilities.) The life of a cow or dog or pig or chicken matters to that cow or dog or pig or chicken, whether or not that particular being has the capacities to conceptualize their life as a whole, or their death, or has plans or goals that extend over long periods of time (months or year). All of these considerations lead many to think that many nonhuman animals have a right to life and to not be killed for their flesh.

    Reply
  26. Matt H

    The whole honey issue is one that plays out significantly in the vegan community. Many vegans say you cannot eat honey, whatsoever, and others state there is no issue with honey. Personally, I recognize myself as vegan, but don't avoid it at all costs. Especially when it's just an ingredient in another product like trail mix.

    For the humane farmer arguments, I want to insert another thought about how even this position can potentially harm the economy and workers. All of this information comes from Safran Foer's book "Eating Animals." Most humane farmers still need to use the big slaughterhouses that factory farmers use. Ignoring how brutal this form of turning animals into meat is, it also creates a large toll emotionally and physically on the workforce. Foer states that the employment turn around in this industry is over 100% per year. Many leave the industry because of physical strain it puts on them. And since the vast majority of these workers are illegal immigrants, it makes it so many of them can't go into manual labor jobs after they leave, due to disability.

    I know the next argument to come up would be that if these slaughterhouses didn't exist, then they'd never have work in the first place. If we assume that a lowering in livestock farming would bring about a surge in plant-based farming, that would create many jobs for these workers as well.

    I'm all for people who want to eat meat and dairy doing so through humane routes. But I think many don't realize how hard this actually is.

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  27. praymont

    Here's Singer in a 1979 paper:

    "Given that an animal belongs to a species incapable of self-consciousness [so it can't worry about its future], it follows that it is not wrong to rear and kill it for food, provided that it leads a pleasant life and, after, being killed, will be replaced by another animal which will lead a similarly pleasant life and would not have existed if the first animal had not been killed. This means that vegetarianism is not obligatory for those who can obtain meat from animals that they know have been reared in this manner." (Singer, 'Killing Humans and Killing Animals', *Inquiry* 22 [1979]: 153; I'm quoting from a paper by Thomas Young at http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1239&context=ethicsandanimals ).

    Elsewhere (can't remember the source) he says that while humane rearing of animals for slaughter may be morally ok, it wouldn't be economically feasible on any large scale.

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  28. Kathryn Norlock

    I'm one of those who agree that factory farming is indeed one of the worst things America, in particular, does as a society, to animals, to the land, to incredibly trusting citizens filled with antibiotics, and to almost every farmer in my extended family (and this is not to imply that other societies aren't also seriously in error). I can imagine a society which really dedicates itself to seeing its worst-off are well-fed, with robust access to food options, environmental safety, and communities of food growers. A wealthy country is not stuck with factory-farming as the only source of affordable nutrition.

    I voted as a "troubled carnivore," as it was the least inaccurate of the options, because like many who've posted already, I find ethical arguments for doing much more than I can quite right, including arguments from resource and animal rights justifications. I'm not comfortable with eating locally raised chickens and fish any more than I'm comfortable with having a lot more wealth than most, or driving my car so often. But anon grad student was presumptuous to say those who opted for 'troubled carnivore' "(3) could easily not do X with no damage to their well-being or even any great effort." How does a philosopher confidently aver that anonymous poll-takers whose lives are unknowable can do things easily?

    I mean, I was raised to be Christ-like too, but I'm not even close to being an actual God-made-manifest. That's not weakness of will. That's the complications of imperfect lives and bodies.

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  29. Daniel Groll

    Hi Tamler. I don't have the book in front of me but in Animal Liberation Singer suggests (somewhere around the middle if I recall correctly. Maybe Chapter 4: "Becoming Vegetarian") that there is no principled problem with eating meat from (most) animals that die painlessly, but that as a practical matter, it is better to adopt a policy of not eating meat at all. The reasons he thinks this, if I recall correctly, are roughly that a) it is hard for most of us to know the conditions of the death of the animals we consume and b) allowing ourselves to eat "happy" meat is likely to lead to backsliding over time so that we end up eating, at least on occasion, "unhappy" meat. Better, then, to have a blanket "no meat" policy. But apologies to Peter Singer if my memory serves me ill.

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  30. praymont

    Here's what Singer says in a 1979 paper:

    "Given that an animal belongs to a species incapable of self-consciousness, it follows that it is not wrong to rear and kill it for food, provided that it leads a pleasant life and, after, being killed, will be replaced by another animal which will lead a similarly pleasant life and would not have existed if the first animal had not been killed. This means that vegetarianism is not obligatory for those who can obtain meat from animals that they know have been reared in this manner." "Killing Humans
    and Killing Animals," Inquiry 22(1979): 153 (quoting from a paper by Thomas Young called "The Morality of Killing Animals").

    Elsewhere (can't remember the source) Singer says that such humane rearing of animals for food would not be economically viable on a large scale.

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  31. Ken

    I am an omnivore with few specifically ethical qualms about let's call it the intrinsic morality/immorality of meat-eating as such. In particular, I don't think we owe it to animals not to raise them, kill them, and eat them. Nor do we owe to them not to exploit their labor. On the other hand, I do think we've made a mess of the earth in lots of different ways — the mass production and distribution of meat being one of the contributing factors to the mess we have made. In addition, I should say that I actually like and even love (some) animals. Indeed, animals in their natural habitats, doing the things that evolution has designed them for, fill me with wonder and awe. They are objects of supreme beauty, a testament to the glorious powers of natural selection. I do not at all like the idea of destroying their habitats or killing them for sport or killing them in unnecessarily cruel ways. But I see that as a (deep) fact about my own psychology. I do not see sharing my outlook as any requirement of either morality or reason. I do believe, however, that it would be morally preferable for us to leave an earth that is richer in biodiversity, more bountiful and also more beautiful to those who come after us than it would be to leave to them an earth that everywhere "wears man's smudge and shares man's smell" as Wordsworth put it. I think of that, though, as something that we moral agents owe to each other, not as something that we owe to the natural world and its animal and non-animal inhabitants directly. But that belief does lead me to believe that we should treat the earth and it's non- human inhabitants as gently as we possibly can, consistent with also promoting human flourishing. Does that make me an omnivore with ethical qualms about meat eating? Sort of, I guess, but mainly because of the contemporary context in which meat eating takes place.

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  32. Radim Belohrad

    In response to Douglas Portmore´s "causal/individual impotence objection": I think this objection could be raised to many other practices that some people consider worth doing. Consider recycling. I recycle my household waste conscientiously, but from a purely consequentialist perspective it is irrational, as my personal contribution to environmental protection and pollution prevention is absolutely negligible. Still, the reason I do that is that I do not want to participate in activities that I consider wrong. Same for eating factory farmed meat. If I do not buy the pork chops, somebody else will. But that fact does not mean that I might as well join in.

    I also think that it is not crucially important whether one is a vegan, vegetarian or avoids factory farmed meat, as long as they keep in mind that the steak in the plastic foil that can be bought in the supermarket comes from a sentient being that had a life of its own, lived in certain conditions and was killed in order to be eaten. The problem with factory farming and many consumers is that they completely ignore these facts.

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  33. G. G.

    Here is an argument for vegetarianism that does not lead to veganism. Sure, the argument is pretty general, makes some important assumptions, and requires some further stipulations and clarifications, but I think it is the kind of argument most ethical vegetarians, particularly those who are not philosophers, operate with.

    1) We have a duty to make the world a better place by carrying out reasonable actions that do not cause harm to ourselves.

    2)Eating a healthy vegetarian diet would make the world a better place (It is beneficial to animals, humans, and the environment).

    3)Eating a healthy vegetarian diet is a reasonable action that does not cause harm to ourselves.

    4)Therefore, we have a duty to eat a healthy vegetarian diet

    With a few stipulations about the not having duties to carry out radical actions but only reasonable ones (and whether an action is reasonable or radical may be historically contingent),the argument continues:

    5)Eating a vegan diet is not a reasonable action, but a radical one.

    6)Therefore, eating a vegan diet is not a duty.

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  34. Raj Patel

    Just to caveat: I am a vegetarian. I think that the economic consequences of doing away with factory farming and promoting 'humane' animal farming is something that vegetarians must contend with. From a utilitarian point of view, the suffering of the animals must be placed against the (projected) suffering of millions of people now unable to afford meat. This is a real problem and cannot be answered with Utopian references to "better" food distribution systems because, as Dr. Leiter pointed out, this isn't just a matter of nutrition (although that is big part of it), but also has a heavily cultural component to it.

    Even relatively small shocks to food prices can literally cause riots, particularly if the food item is a cultural staple (think Mexican tortilla riots). I don't think anyone is envisioning an "overnight" transformation in the way meat is produced, but that is a small example of what happens when you mess with a cultural staple on a large scale.

    As Eric Jonas wrote, incentives for making meat production more efficient lead to factory farming. Efficiency demands are, in many areas of life, inhumane. But efficiency affords us cheaper meat, which many people (not just poor people) depend upon for a number of reasons.

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  35. Daniel Polowetzky

    I am not particularly perplexed by carnivorous ethicists any more than I am perplexed by cigarette smoking physicians. That is not to say that one might not expect the fraction of vegetarians or vegans to be greater among ethicists than the general population or the fraction of non-smokers to be smaller among physicians than the general population. It is only to suggest that whatever processes operate within intelligent persons whose behaviors are not changed by their knowledge or beliefs are operating among such people, assuming that they are adherents to ethical arguements against meat eating.

    That such discrepant behavior would occur among professional philosophers rather thatn lay persons sympathetic to animal rights arguments is even less perplexing. Professional phisophers are salaried academics with interests in certain philosphical issues. Unless animal rights is one's "thing", I would not expect eating behaviors to be significantly influenced by philosophical argument. Furthermore, I would not be perplexed by a preponderance of carnivorous professional philosophers/ethicists who were in fact adherents to arguments against eating animals and who held these argements as surely sound.

    How many readers of Peter Unger's arguments for giving a large proportion of one's money to charity do so, even among those convinced of his arguments' soundness?

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  36. Peter Kail

    To echo some sentiments expressed earlier. I am an omnivore for gustatory reasons. However,my purchasing of meat is guided by ethical considerations. I buy only free range meat or, better, wild game, sourced from farms that put their names to it. I detest the intensive meat production that dominates the market. It makes for unhappy animals and for very bad meat, Eat less meat but better meat and respect the animal on your plate.

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  37. Daniel Polowetzky

    I meant, the "fraction of non-smokers to be greater among phsycians…"

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  38. Roger Clarke

    I'd just like to chime in on some of the ties that have been brought up between animal issues and other issues of social justice (agricultural workers, access to nutritious food in impoverished communities). Well, I'd like to chime in, but really I'm just going to point to a group (not mine, though I think they're spiffy) that works on exactly these sorts of things: the Food Empowerment Project (http://www.foodispower.org/), who are based in San Jose, but have done a whole lot of research on food justice issues that's pretty generally applicable in North America. E.g.:

    Produce workers: http://www.foodispower.org/produce_workers.php
    Factory farm workers: http://www.foodispower.org/factory_farm_workers.php (they aren't just bad for the animals)
    "Food deserts" in communities of colour and low-income areas: http://www.foodispower.org/food_deserts.php

    My take-home message from the stuff about agricultural working conditions: it's all bad, so it's best to eat lower on the food chain.

    OK, a couple more things because I can't resist:

    -Nobody's going to ban factory farming, so it's not clear to me how the effects of such a ban would bear on the ethics of our individual dietary choices. We do see rises in the cost of animal products in response to legislation banning specific practices (e.g., battery cages, gestation crates, etc.). On the other hand, prices are as low as they are in part because of massive government subsidies to animal agriculture. The animal ag lobby is *huge*.

    Access to nutritious food is a complicated issue. It doesn't just come down to "if you can't afford meat anymore, then you'll be unhealthy." Even if banning factory farming practices would raise prices and thereby reduce access to meat for people of lower income, it doesn't immediately follow that it's wrong to ban factory farming practices. Even if we don't ban battery cages, e.g., there's a lot that needs doing wrt improving access to nutritious food in oppressed communities.

    -I think it's a mistake to identify veganism with eating any specific kind of food. Veganism can be expensive and unhealthy if you eat lots of processed faux-meats; it can be cheap and healthy if you eat lots of rice & beans & vegetables (if you live in a place where these are accessible; see the stuff on food deserts). What makes a vegan is the refusal to eat certain kinds of food.

    -Three cheers for veganism, vegetarianism, people who try to eat less meat, and all the rest as part of a broad political movement! All-or-nothing-ism gets us nowhere. To Douglas Portmore: your personal food choices might not make a big difference, but they can be part of a broader movement that does. If you look at what the industry itself is saying (I'm thinking of the pork and egg boards specifically, but I bet there are other examples), they're worried about dwindling profits, and chalk it up to decreasing demand due to animal rights/welfare (they usually say "welfare") concerns. Plus, it seems there's some responsiveness to decreasing demand in decreasing production. The number of land animals slaughtered for food in the US has been declining over the last few years in response to lowered demand. Of course, part of the explanation for decreased demand is the economy, but the point is that decreasing demand seems to make a difference.

    Relatedly, it would be interesting to see stats on how common it is for omnivores to reduce their consumption of animal products. 7 people doing Meatless Mondays = 1 vegetarian.

    [Full disclosure: Team Ethical Vegan]

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  39. Tamler Sommers

    Thanks Daniel and Praymont. It seems like the unknown variable then is an empirical question: how feasible is it to ban factory farming practices while still making meat reasonably affordable and accessible to the 99%? (This speaks to Brian's point as well.) Factory farms are a fairly new development in human history, right? We can't just assume that it's impossible without causing serious collateral damage. I don't see a big problem with meat becoming expensive enough so that it can't be on dinner tables every night. There are plenty of other delicious options as vegetarians know well. If that's an injustice, it pales in comparison to lack of access to health care and good education. At the same time, I agree that it would be unfair if meat became something that was restricted to the wealthy on all but special occasions. I've heard people weigh in on both sides of this empirical question, but without much in the way of evidence to back up their claims. Has there been any research on what would happen if we banned factory farms? Have any countries tried this?

    BL COMMENT: I was basing my supposition that factory farming lowers the cost of meat on the fact that "organic" and similar meat products are so much more expensive.

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  40. Jean Kazez

    Tamler, I think you're remembering a passage in a NYT article by Pollan–"An Animal's Place." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/10/magazine/an-animal-s-place.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm Go to about the middle of the article to see what Singer said about a humane farm Pollan visited.

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  41. Dennis Whitcomb

    There are ways to buy morally raised meat, for about the price you pay for factory farmed meat at the grocery store. Find a small local farmer or hobbyist who is into animal welfare and environmental responsibility (this can be difficult; craigslist can help). Go to the farm yourself to see how their animals are raised. Arrange to buy a whole cow or pig or lamb from them. By buying the whole animal, you can (sometimes anyway) lower your price per pound to the same level as that of individually wrapped factory farmed cuts at the grocery store. You can store the whole thing in a standalone freezer, or split it with some friends.

    In many cases, this will require that the animal be trucked to a butcher – a terrifying and inhumane experience for a creature raised on a pasture. But in some cases there are butchers who will come to the farm, kill the animal there, and butcher and wrap the meat on the spot. This does add a bit more to the cost, but not terribly much more, and it is a good practice to support.

    You have to live in the right sort of area to make all this work, but these areas are more common than folks might think. It is fairly easy to do where I live in northwest Washington State, for instance.

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  42. Shane Glackin

    I voted as "carnivore for ethical reasons", for approximately the reasons I think David Benatar's arguments in "Better Never To Have Been" are unpersuasive. The vast majority of the animals we consume not only are bred for consumption, but could not survive in the wild; the effect of millennia-old domestication is to create a symbiotic dependency on humans.

    So for the vast majority of these animals, the alternative to a life which culminates in being eaten is *not* a life of untramelled natural freedom, it is no life at all. Miserable as the lives of many animals undoubtedly are, it's no more obvious to me that never existing would be better for those animals than David Benatar says it would be for myself.

    Now, this is assuredly *not* to say that the misery in which most animals are kept is acceptable, that chickens should have to "put up with" debeaking and a miniscule coop since it's better than never living at all. There are very strong moral imperatives to improve the lot of animals; if anything, I think the use carnivores make of them *intensifies* our moral duties towards them. The $2 broiler chicken is an abomination.

    So not only may meat be eaten, I think it *should* – to some extent – be eaten. But it shouldn't, as a matter of independent moral urgency, be cheap meat. BL points out, correctly, that under current economic arrangements this would generate further inequality between those who could and those who could not afford to eat meat. But the problem there is with our current, unequal, economic arrangements; the "further" inequality a ban on inhumane farming practices would cause seems to me merely epiphenomenal.

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  43. Alex Guerrero

    The future: tissue science and 3D bio-printing. See: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=tissue-engineered-leather-could-be-mass-produced-by-2017

    I think "bucket meat" is likely to be delicious and cheap well before we manage to reign in the agribusiness lobby which has been so effective at carving out (ahem) agricultural animal exceptions from animal cruelty statutes to support the worst factory farming practices.

    We will have to work on the marketing…

    (And, of course, that doesn't mean that Brian will want to eat it!)

    BL COMMENT: Why not, if it's really delicious?

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  44. Shane Glackin

    addendum: as it happens, I am trying to reduce the amount I eat for health and environmental reasons. But I take it that those are independent of what is at issue in the discussion.

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  45. Alex Guerrero

    Another nice article on developments in the science: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jun/22/fake-meat-scientific-breakthroughs-research

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  46. RoryKraft

    I'm interested in the claims from folks that non-factory protein is too pricey. As Dennis Whitcomb points out above, it is possible to get non-CAFO protein for the same price as the subsidized big-ag protein. We do. And I don't buy half a steer at a time. Our year round farmer's market has a local pasture raised farm-to-market stand. Prices are the same to slightly lower than at the grocery.

    We do eat less animal protein than we used to, but in the midst of the winter when the local fresh produce options start diminishing, root veggies, stews, and soups go in heavier rotation.

    Do I still have qualms about others who eat meat which are raised and butchered in poor conditions? Yes. But there is little that my changing to a v/v diet would do to change that situation. I feel worse about my inability to find seasonal food choices while in an airport than I do about the lingering aspects of the so-called "Happy Cow" being slaughtered. If seasonal/local options became more plentiful than I think I might have more an obligation to move my bar for right action.

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  47. Amanda M

    If 'vegan' is being used to describe a diet that cuts out most animal biproducts on ethical grounds then the term should surely allow for the consumption of certain less morally dubious animal biproducts like honey. The idea that eating honey should be a prerequisite of being an ethical vegan seems like an unfortunate result of a needlessly strict 'no animal biproducts whatsoever' use the term.

    It's also worth noting that if you are motivated by animal suffering, then it will not be equally important to avoid all animal products. It will probably be more important to avoid eggs than to avoid beef, for example. And it will be more important to avoid chicken than to avoid pork or beef. Similar considerations will apply to factory farmed vs. free range products vs. non-animal products. (But even if a free range egg is morally better than a factory farmed egg, the relevant comparison is between free range eggs and all potential sources of those calories and nutrients, many of which will probably produce even less suffering than free range eggs.)

    One consideration against using rules like 'don't eat non-happy meat and animal biproducts' is that it may be difficult to comply with them consistently. I suspect that, conditional on using this as a heuristic, I would eat more non-happy meat and animal biproducts than I would conditional on using a heuristic that simply prohibits the consumption of the relevant meat and animal biproducts.

    As some have pointed out, one could be an ethical omnivore for the following reason: eating non-factory farmed meat products and biproducts create more happy animal lives than not doing so. And, all things being equal, it's good to create happy lives. But whether it's true that eating animal products does create more happy animal lives or not seems to depend on various factors that need to be worked out. For example, if demand for these products fell and demand for plant-based food increased, how would land be used in response to this? Would this increase or decrease the number of small animals in the world (such as mice) and would those small animals have lives that were good or bad on average? Would the change in land-use reduce or increase wild animal suffering? I'd be interested to know if anyone who defends this view has actually worked through all of the relevant considerations.

    Finally, on the equality issue: It seems extremely implausible to me that the 'nutritional and gustatory value' of factory-farmed meat for poor people compared to that of a diet free from factory-farmed meat will outweigh the suffering that the required factory-farmed meat produces. Here are some back of the envelope calculations: if someone consumes about 1lb of chicken per week from factory-farmed 7-week fryer chickens (that produce about 3lbs of meat each) then that's just over 2 weeks of chicken suffering per week of meat consumption. Suppose that 1lb of chicken meat is eaten over four meals. Then the moral cost per meal is about four days of chicken suffering. If you think that factory-farmed chickens don't have lives worth living, then the additional nutritional and gustatory value swapping the chicken for some meat-substitute of equivalent cost seems pretty negligible by comparison.

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  48. Tamler Sommers

    Thanks Jean, that's it! Here's the relevant passage for those who are interested:

    ''I agree with you that it is better for these animals to have lived and died than not to have lived at all,'' Singer wrote back. Since the utilitarian is concerned exclusively with the sum of happiness and suffering and the slaughter of an animal that doesn't comprehend that death need not involve suffering, the Good Farm adds to the total of animal happiness, provided you replace the slaughtered animal with a new one. However, he added, this line of thinking doesn't obviate the wrongness of killing an animal that ''has a sense of its own existence over time and can have preferences for its own future.'' In other words, it's O.K. to eat the chicken, but he's not so sure about the pig. Yet, he wrote, ''I would not be sufficiently confident of my arguments to condemn someone who purchased meat from one of these farms.''

    Singer went on to express serious doubts that such farms could be practical on a large scale, since the pressures of the marketplace will lead their owners to cut costs and corners at the expense of the animals. He suggested, too, that killing animals is not conducive to treating them with respect. Also, since humanely raised food will be more expensive, only the well-to-do can afford morally defensible animal protein. These are important considerations, but they don't alter my essential point: what's wrong with animal agriculture — with eating animals — is the practice, not the principle."

    The whole article is highly recommended. I didn't realize how much it had influenced my thoughts on this issue.

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  49. Anon

    A thought: it’s hard to say whether the poll more accurately reflects the practices of the respondents or whether it more accurately reflects their self-definition (or self-conception). I say this because, although, as the survey showed, many of us are morally-conflicted meat-eaters, there are many and great differences in practice between the people who fall into that category. For example, suppose we had three different people: Person 1 only eats certain kinds of meats (fish, cage-free, etc.), Person 2 eats meat only on certain days or occasions (holidays, weddings, etc.), and Person 3 eats meat regularly or just about every day (at home, at work, in restaurants, etc.). Although P1, P2, and P3 all have different meat-eating practices, they all equally find these practices to be unethical or at least problematic and, consequently, they also label themselves as omnivores with a morally questionable diets. I would say that there's a HUGE difference between these three persons, even though they all self-identify as "omnivores who have ethical reservations about their meat-eating habits." The person who eats meat only on Thanksgiving but thinks there is something wrong with that is much closer to a vegetarian than he/she is to the meat-eater who eats a Whopper every day for lunch and thinks there is something wrong with that too. My guess is that if we tweaked the options on the poll, we'd probably get different results. I'm going to guess that many people who identify as "morally-conflicted omnivores" might also identify as "akrasia-prone vegetarians," or, as my grad-school roommate termed it, as "aspiring vegetarians." In other words, some people who identify as vegetarians might have the same exact, or nearly the same, meat-eating practices as people who identify as morally-conflicted meat-eaters. The difference between them would therefore be a difference of self-definition rather than one of practice or even one of principles.

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  50. VL

    I think we can't usefully discuss the ethics of eating meat apart from considering our larger context: state-supported industrial capitalism. This context has at least three distinct effects:

    (1) it narrows our options in favor of consumerism, i.e., we think primarily of what is presented to us for purchase, rather than what we can create/grow ourselves, and are subtly biased in favor of consumerist values such as low price and "convenience";
    (2) it obscures information about the options we do have that challenge the dominant modes of production and consumption; and
    (3) it positions nature as a resource with humans "above" it. Arguments based on separating us from the rest of nature (or denying our omnivorous evolutionary heritage) are to me suspect from the get-go.

    This last point, to me, is key: in nature animal and plant lives are inseparable. Turns out they are inseparable in human culture, too. Vegetable crops are often fertilized by animal manure– what does that do to the vegan argument? What about vegans or vegetarians who live off grocery store tofu shipped in from half way around the country in plastic packaging, lending support at multiple levels to a rapacious oil industry that is fast destroying the planet? Those of us with companion animals must daily contend with the fact that, whatever our own diets, our dogs and cats need meat to be healthy (so do many humans).

    I just stumbled across a very nuanced, thoughtful, beautifully written essay by Tovar Cerulli that does a much better job than I can here with such considerations:
    http://www.aeonmagazine.com/nature-and-cosmos/tovar-cerulli-vegetarian-food-production-hunting/

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